This is a list of cause areas that EA should consider prioritising more.
For most of these cause areas, I’m aware of a very small number of EAs working on them.
In another post where I suggested that EA cause priorities are highly uncertain and probably prone to “founder effects”, I proposed this thought experiment:
Imagine 100 different timelines where effective altruism emerged. How consistent do you think the movement’s cause priorities (and rankings of them) would be across these 100 different timelines?
These cause areas are ones that I can imagine an effective altruism movement in another timeline prioritising to the extent that our EA movement prioritises randomista development and global health, farmed animal welfare, pandemics, AI safety and community building at elite universities.
Improving democratic processes, reducing effects of media bias, money, voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc, especially in LMICs, maybe just throwing money at election commissions, helping them work better
Non randomista global health and development—eg—funding non-partisan policy think tanks and university departments in LMICs to advocate for better policies
Metascience, open access and science methods—probably huge flow through effects
Growing EA in India—large English speaking population, governments have historically been influenced by technocrats, middle income country, currently experiencing democratic backsliding so good place to promote liberal democracy, growing alternative protein industry, emerging meat eater problem, high risk area for zoonotic pandemics to originate, high burden of antimicrobial resistance, lots of software engineers so good place to grow AI safety awareness, is a nuclear power bordering two nuclear powers, large carbon footprint
Antimicrobial resistance—straightforward conclusion of longtermism—short term gains are being prioritised and risking long term harms
General medical research—research funding seems poorly optimised and there are probably areas we can identify which perform better under the ITN framework, very strong track record of social impact
Encouraging the use of tiered pricing systems across countries by multinational corporations to improve access to goods and services for poorer countries without reducing profits for companies
Improving education systems—designing curricula more systematically, tied to what produces value to the student, produces value to society and helps the student improve the world, and makes the student happier in the long term, rather than tied to traditional educational disciplines. Simple interventions could be along the lines of advocating for more lessons focused on ethics, economics, statistics, psychology, positive psychology, health, the scientific method, democracy, politics, voting and extremism and having students be examined on these topics.
Fighting the credential arms race
Studying the positionality of goods and services with regards to effect on wellbeing, and suppressing industries focused on producing highly positional goods and services.
General advocacy and education to improve public opinion on key political issues where public opinion diverges greatly from what is morally good / empirically effective—free trade, immigration, foreign aid
Space governance seems more urgent than many other cause areas—the tractability will probably reduce over time as norms become established organically
Frugal Innovation in global health (innovation targeted at maximising impact of resources in low resource settings)
Digital health in global health—highly scalable
Political representation for children, children’s rights and children’s issues (not the same as representation of future generations)
Political representation for animals
Political representation for foreigners
Treatment resistant depression, scalable mental health services and development of better antidepressants—particularly under prioritarianism
Child sexual abuse—particularly under prioritarianism
Torture of detainees—particularly under prioritarianism
Palliative care, including opioid access and development of alternative and better painkillers—particularly under prioritarianism
Eradication of infectious diseases—particularly under longtermism (as we approach eradication of an infectious disease, further reduction of the disease burden becomes less cost-effective, but if we factor in long-term benefits, it is probably a good use of resources)
Better treatment of prisoners—particularly under prioritarianism
Loneliness
Vaccine hesitancy
Global minimum wealth tax + cracking down on tax evasion by wealthy people in LMICs
Land value tax advocacy
Supervolcanoes
Community building in the least populous countries to influence national policy and then international governance via international organisations
Optimising intellectual property systems to speed up innovation
List of cause areas that EA should potentially prioritise more
This is a list of cause areas that EA should consider prioritising more.
For most of these cause areas, I’m aware of a very small number of EAs working on them.
In another post where I suggested that EA cause priorities are highly uncertain and probably prone to “founder effects”, I proposed this thought experiment:
Imagine 100 different timelines where effective altruism emerged. How consistent do you think the movement’s cause priorities (and rankings of them) would be across these 100 different timelines?
These cause areas are ones that I can imagine an effective altruism movement in another timeline prioritising to the extent that our EA movement prioritises randomista development and global health, farmed animal welfare, pandemics, AI safety and community building at elite universities.
Improving democratic processes, reducing effects of media bias, money, voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc, especially in LMICs, maybe just throwing money at election commissions, helping them work better
Non randomista global health and development—eg—funding non-partisan policy think tanks and university departments in LMICs to advocate for better policies
Metascience, open access and science methods—probably huge flow through effects
Growing EA in India—large English speaking population, governments have historically been influenced by technocrats, middle income country, currently experiencing democratic backsliding so good place to promote liberal democracy, growing alternative protein industry, emerging meat eater problem, high risk area for zoonotic pandemics to originate, high burden of antimicrobial resistance, lots of software engineers so good place to grow AI safety awareness, is a nuclear power bordering two nuclear powers, large carbon footprint
Antimicrobial resistance—straightforward conclusion of longtermism—short term gains are being prioritised and risking long term harms
General medical research—research funding seems poorly optimised and there are probably areas we can identify which perform better under the ITN framework, very strong track record of social impact
Encouraging the use of tiered pricing systems across countries by multinational corporations to improve access to goods and services for poorer countries without reducing profits for companies
Improving education systems—designing curricula more systematically, tied to what produces value to the student, produces value to society and helps the student improve the world, and makes the student happier in the long term, rather than tied to traditional educational disciplines. Simple interventions could be along the lines of advocating for more lessons focused on ethics, economics, statistics, psychology, positive psychology, health, the scientific method, democracy, politics, voting and extremism and having students be examined on these topics.
Fighting the credential arms race
Studying the positionality of goods and services with regards to effect on wellbeing, and suppressing industries focused on producing highly positional goods and services.
General advocacy and education to improve public opinion on key political issues where public opinion diverges greatly from what is morally good / empirically effective—free trade, immigration, foreign aid
Space governance seems more urgent than many other cause areas—the tractability will probably reduce over time as norms become established organically
Frugal Innovation in global health (innovation targeted at maximising impact of resources in low resource settings)
Digital health in global health—highly scalable
Political representation for children, children’s rights and children’s issues (not the same as representation of future generations)
Political representation for animals
Political representation for foreigners
Treatment resistant depression, scalable mental health services and development of better antidepressants—particularly under prioritarianism
Child sexual abuse—particularly under prioritarianism
Torture of detainees—particularly under prioritarianism
Palliative care, including opioid access and development of alternative and better painkillers—particularly under prioritarianism
Eradication of infectious diseases—particularly under longtermism (as we approach eradication of an infectious disease, further reduction of the disease burden becomes less cost-effective, but if we factor in long-term benefits, it is probably a good use of resources)
Better treatment of prisoners—particularly under prioritarianism
Loneliness
Vaccine hesitancy
Global minimum wealth tax + cracking down on tax evasion by wealthy people in LMICs
Land value tax advocacy
Supervolcanoes
Community building in the least populous countries to influence national policy and then international governance via international organisations
Optimising intellectual property systems to speed up innovation