Interestingly Iâve been thinking about something similar myself (in the context of what to do with the EA Forum this year), though I do feel skeptical that âshut down the EA Forumâ is the best solution. I appreciate a lot of the points you bring up, and I am always happy to hear critical feedback about the Forum, but I do find your post too overconfident[1] and I personally donât think the existing data warrants that level of confidence.
My best guess is that, although there is no perfect system for this right now, the Forum is close enough that itâs worth trying to make it serve this function better. There are many examples of Forum posts of this sort getting significant attention, such as Policy advocacy for eradicating screwworm looks remarkably cost-effective (which I think contributed to Launching Screwworm-Free Future â Funding and Support Request), Interstellar travel will probably doom the long-term future (which I believe led to the author getting his current position at Forethought), and Frog Welfare (one of the highest-karma posts from 2025). I would not characterize the comments in those posts as âaggressively red-teamingâ â in fact they skew quite supportive, moreso than I would personally like (but I think I am unusually happy to receive criticism).
You also mentioned EA Funds â Iâm not that familiar with their grantmaking processes, but just looking at their âFeatured grantsâ list I see that Alfredo Parra was given a â6-month salary to do prioritization research and community building focused on reducing extreme pain in humansâ, plus heâs written extensively about this work on the Forum and recently founded ClusterFree. This seems to me to be a success story for current systems.
In any case, I think a lot of people around EA have been successfully impactful because they do things rather than just post on the Forum. Since you think this is a problem, I would encourage you to take action to try to improve the situation, for example:
You could post a thread on the Forum asking people to pitch potential Cause X candidates, to get a better sense of âwhat might we be missingâ. Youâre welcome to contact the Forum team if youâd like us to consider pinning it or promoting it via other channels. I would be excited for more Forum users to proactively try to make the Forum a more valuable community space.
Weâre very open to Forum users running events, since our capacity is stretched pretty thin. If you want a green-teaming contest to happen on the Forum, especially if youâre willing to put in the effort to help organize it, contact us!
Pitch this as an activity for EA groups â I think this could both be valuable for the community and a valuable exercise for groups to work on together, to practice EA thinking. (And Iâd love to see them post their results on the Forum! đ)
I would guess that, if you attended some EA events or conferences and talked to some people about this, you could find at least one other person who would be interested in starting a project to address this problem (especially if you had a list of âpotential Cause X candidatesâ that they thought looked promising). I bet if you could show positive results from a small side-project, youâd have a significantly easier time getting funding to work on this more or convincing someone else to work on it.
If you have specific suggestions for the EA Forum (including if you want to expand on your âshut it downâ idea), Iâd be happy to hear it! :)
I think the key question is what portion of EAâs total funding goes toward genuine discovery versus optimization within existing spotlights. Your examples may well be real successes. But if they represent a tiny fraction of total resource allocation, thatâs consistent with my argument rather than a counter to it.
I do think an argument over funding allocation is importantly different from the one made in your post â for example, I think convincing EA groups to do more of this work could be an effective way to improve the situation that could also be essentially free. Although if youâre trying to make a point similar to Doing Prioritization Better (âSince cross-cause prioritization work (and to a lesser extent cause prioritization) is presently rare, and has considerable benefits, the EA community may well be radically misallocating its prioritization efforts.â) then I broadly agree. :)
Iâm also curious whether you think CEARCH matches the solution youâre thinking of?
The funding allocation question and the structural argument arenât as separable as youâre suggesting. Nobody decided 89% within-cause was optimal. Itâs the revealed preference of a system where within-cause work is legible, fundable, and career-safe, and discovery work is none of those things.
Iâd also draw a distinction the RP piece doesnât make: even the 9% classified as âcause prioritizationâ is mostly ranking known cause areas against each other. Thatâs a different task from discovering new ones. CEARCH is the closest thing to dedicated cause discovery in EA, and itâs a tiny team doing top-down desktop research. Thereâs no intake mechanism where a community member with unusual domain knowledge can surface an observation. EA Funds is organized into four pre-existing cause area buckets with no âotherâ category, and even within those buckets the lens is narrow. The entire system is built to optimize within the existing map. Nobodyâs job is to ask whatâs not on it.
To be clear, I donât think shutting down the Forum is the answer. But the Forum needs a real connection to the power structure. Right now, someone could discover Cause X and post it here, and in all likelihood it would get modest engagement from people without allocation power, sit for a day or two, and sink. The people who could actually act on it probably arenât reading the Forum systematically, and thereâs no process that routes a promising signal to them. Thatâs what I mean by performance of openness. The door is open but it doesnât lead anywhere.
The suggestion that this work could be done essentially for free by volunteer EA groups is itself revealing. Nobody suggests within-cause prioritization should be unpaid side work. The system prices discovery at what itâs willing to pay for it.
Interestingly Iâve been thinking about something similar myself (in the context of what to do with the EA Forum this year), though I do feel skeptical that âshut down the EA Forumâ is the best solution. I appreciate a lot of the points you bring up, and I am always happy to hear critical feedback about the Forum, but I do find your post too overconfident[1] and I personally donât think the existing data warrants that level of confidence.
My best guess is that, although there is no perfect system for this right now, the Forum is close enough that itâs worth trying to make it serve this function better. There are many examples of Forum posts of this sort getting significant attention, such as Policy advocacy for eradicating screwworm looks remarkably cost-effective (which I think contributed to Launching Screwworm-Free Future â Funding and Support Request), Interstellar travel will probably doom the long-term future (which I believe led to the author getting his current position at Forethought), and Frog Welfare (one of the highest-karma posts from 2025). I would not characterize the comments in those posts as âaggressively red-teamingâ â in fact they skew quite supportive, moreso than I would personally like (but I think I am unusually happy to receive criticism).
You also mentioned EA Funds â Iâm not that familiar with their grantmaking processes, but just looking at their âFeatured grantsâ list I see that Alfredo Parra was given a â6-month salary to do prioritization research and community building focused on reducing extreme pain in humansâ, plus heâs written extensively about this work on the Forum and recently founded ClusterFree. This seems to me to be a success story for current systems.
In any case, I think a lot of people around EA have been successfully impactful because they do things rather than just post on the Forum. Since you think this is a problem, I would encourage you to take action to try to improve the situation, for example:
You could post a thread on the Forum asking people to pitch potential Cause X candidates, to get a better sense of âwhat might we be missingâ. Youâre welcome to contact the Forum team if youâd like us to consider pinning it or promoting it via other channels. I would be excited for more Forum users to proactively try to make the Forum a more valuable community space.
Weâre very open to Forum users running events, since our capacity is stretched pretty thin. If you want a green-teaming contest to happen on the Forum, especially if youâre willing to put in the effort to help organize it, contact us!
Pitch this as an activity for EA groups â I think this could both be valuable for the community and a valuable exercise for groups to work on together, to practice EA thinking. (And Iâd love to see them post their results on the Forum! đ)
I would guess that, if you attended some EA events or conferences and talked to some people about this, you could find at least one other person who would be interested in starting a project to address this problem (especially if you had a list of âpotential Cause X candidatesâ that they thought looked promising). I bet if you could show positive results from a small side-project, youâd have a significantly easier time getting funding to work on this more or convincing someone else to work on it.
If you have specific suggestions for the EA Forum (including if you want to expand on your âshut it downâ idea), Iâd be happy to hear it! :)
Which may just be an artifact of the AI-assistance
I think the key question is what portion of EAâs total funding goes toward genuine discovery versus optimization within existing spotlights. Your examples may well be real successes. But if they represent a tiny fraction of total resource allocation, thatâs consistent with my argument rather than a counter to it.
I do think an argument over funding allocation is importantly different from the one made in your post â for example, I think convincing EA groups to do more of this work could be an effective way to improve the situation that could also be essentially free. Although if youâre trying to make a point similar to Doing Prioritization Better (âSince cross-cause prioritization work (and to a lesser extent cause prioritization) is presently rare, and has considerable benefits, the EA community may well be radically misallocating its prioritization efforts.â) then I broadly agree. :)
Iâm also curious whether you think CEARCH matches the solution youâre thinking of?
The funding allocation question and the structural argument arenât as separable as youâre suggesting. Nobody decided 89% within-cause was optimal. Itâs the revealed preference of a system where within-cause work is legible, fundable, and career-safe, and discovery work is none of those things.
Iâd also draw a distinction the RP piece doesnât make: even the 9% classified as âcause prioritizationâ is mostly ranking known cause areas against each other. Thatâs a different task from discovering new ones. CEARCH is the closest thing to dedicated cause discovery in EA, and itâs a tiny team doing top-down desktop research. Thereâs no intake mechanism where a community member with unusual domain knowledge can surface an observation. EA Funds is organized into four pre-existing cause area buckets with no âotherâ category, and even within those buckets the lens is narrow. The entire system is built to optimize within the existing map. Nobodyâs job is to ask whatâs not on it.
To be clear, I donât think shutting down the Forum is the answer. But the Forum needs a real connection to the power structure. Right now, someone could discover Cause X and post it here, and in all likelihood it would get modest engagement from people without allocation power, sit for a day or two, and sink. The people who could actually act on it probably arenât reading the Forum systematically, and thereâs no process that routes a promising signal to them. Thatâs what I mean by performance of openness. The door is open but it doesnât lead anywhere.
The suggestion that this work could be done essentially for free by volunteer EA groups is itself revealing. Nobody suggests within-cause prioritization should be unpaid side work. The system prices discovery at what itâs willing to pay for it.