Placing too much emphasis on longtermism. I’m not against longtermism at all—it’s true that we neglect future sentient beings, as we neglect people who are distant from us, and as we neglect nonhuman animals. But it’s not good for people to get the impresson that EA is mostly about longtermism. That impression hinders the prospects of EA becoming a broad and popular movement that attracts a wide range of people, and we have an important message to get across to those people: some ways of doing good are hundreds of times more effective than others.
My impression, by the way, is that this lesson has been learned, and longtermism is less prominent in discussions of EA today than it was a couple of years ago. But I could be wrong about that.
What is EA getting the most wrong?
Placing too much emphasis on longtermism. I’m not against longtermism at all—it’s true that we neglect future sentient beings, as we neglect people who are distant from us, and as we neglect nonhuman animals. But it’s not good for people to get the impresson that EA is mostly about longtermism. That impression hinders the prospects of EA becoming a broad and popular movement that attracts a wide range of people, and we have an important message to get across to those people: some ways of doing good are hundreds of times more effective than others.
My impression, by the way, is that this lesson has been learned, and longtermism is less prominent in discussions of EA today than it was a couple of years ago. But I could be wrong about that.