Thanks for this post. I am trying to think about charities, like CEA’s Groups team recommendations, in this light. Besides, I think someone should deeply think about how EAs should react to the possibility of social changes – when we are more likely to reach a tipping point leading to a very impactful event (or, in a more pessimistic tone, where it can escalate into catastrophe). For instance, in situations like this, neglectedness is probably a bad heuristics—as remarked by A. Broi.
On the other hand, this sounds inaccurate, if not unfair, to me:
Is EA really all about taking every question and twisting it back to malaria nets and AI risk?
But most people have never even heard of it – I hadn’t, until three years ago, when I had my first contact with EA. Likewise, if the refugee crisis in Europe is a hot topic in world politics, the fact that Uganda is home to more than 1.4 million refugees (mainly from DRC and Sudan) is largely ignored—but not by GD.
There are some who would argue that you can’t tackle such a structural issue without looking at yourselves too, and understanding your own perspectives, biases and privileges.
How important is this issue? I don’t know
How much of a problem is this for EA? I don’t know
I didn’t want to try to answer those questions in this piece (it’s long enough as it is!)
But I worried that tackling the topic of racism without even mentioning the risk that this might be a problem risked seeming over-confident.
Thank you Ramiro. If I understand correctly your point around attention being a scarce resource, you are challenging whether we should pay too much attention to topics like racism at a time when lots of people are thinking about it, while other more neglected issues (like the Ebola outbreak and other issues you mentioned) may be higher impact things to pay attention to.
I think this makes a lot of sense.
But I don’t think everyone will be so cause neutral, and I think EA ways of thinking still have something to for people who want to focus on a specific cause.
Actually, I think that, before BLM, I underestimated the impact of racism (probably because it’s hard to evaluate and compare current interventions to GW’s charity recommendations); also, given BLM and the possibility of systemic change, I now think it might be more tractable - this might even be a social urgency.
But what most bothered me in your text was:
a) EA does not reduce everything to mosquito nets and AI—the problem is that almost no one else was paying attention to these issues before, and they’re really important;
b) the reason why most people don’t think about it is that the concerned populations are neglected—they’re seen as having less value than the average life in the developed world. Moreover, in the case of global health and poverty interventions in poor countries (mostly African countries), I think it’s quite plausible that racism (i.e., ethnic conflicts, brutal colonial past, indifference from developed countries) is partially responsible for those problems (neglected diseases and extreme poverty). For instance, racism was a key issue in previous humanitarian tragedies, such as the Great Famines in Ireland and Bengal.
Besides, I think someone should deeply think about how EAs should react to the possibility of social changes – when we are more likely to reach a tipping point leading to a very impactful event (or, in a more pessimistic tone, where it can escalate into catastrophe).
In my head I am playing with the idea of a network/organization that could loosely, informally represent the general EA community and make some kind of public statement, like an open letter or petition, on our general behalf. It would be newsworthy and send a strong signal to policymakers, organizations etc.
Of course it would have to be carried out to high epistemic standards and with caution that we don’t go making political statements willy nilly or against the views of significant numbers of EAs. But it could be very valuable if used responsibly.
Thanks for this post. I am trying to think about charities, like CEA’s Groups team recommendations, in this light. Besides, I think someone should deeply think about how EAs should react to the possibility of social changes – when we are more likely to reach a tipping point leading to a very impactful event (or, in a more pessimistic tone, where it can escalate into catastrophe). For instance, in situations like this, neglectedness is probably a bad heuristics—as remarked by A. Broi.
On the other hand, this sounds inaccurate, if not unfair, to me:
I don’t actually want to argue about “what should EAs do”. Just like you, all I want is to share a thought – in my case, my deep realization that attention is a scarce resource. I had this “epiphany” on Monday, when I read that a new Ebola outbreak had been detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the same week, same country, the High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced the massacre about 1,300 civilians. Which reminded me this region has faced ethnic and political violence since the 1990s, when the First and the Second Congo Wars happened, leading to death more than 5 million people.
But most people have never even heard of it – I hadn’t, until three years ago, when I had my first contact with EA. Likewise, if the refugee crisis in Europe is a hot topic in world politics, the fact that Uganda is home to more than 1.4 million refugees (mainly from DRC and Sudan) is largely ignored—but not by GD.
So, I didn’t really see your point with this:
In response to:
So, I didn’t really see your point with this:
There are some who would argue that you can’t tackle such a structural issue without looking at yourselves too, and understanding your own perspectives, biases and privileges.
How important is this issue? I don’t know
How much of a problem is this for EA? I don’t know
I didn’t want to try to answer those questions in this piece (it’s long enough as it is!)
But I worried that tackling the topic of racism without even mentioning the risk that this might be a problem risked seeming over-confident.
Thank you Ramiro. If I understand correctly your point around attention being a scarce resource, you are challenging whether we should pay too much attention to topics like racism at a time when lots of people are thinking about it, while other more neglected issues (like the Ebola outbreak and other issues you mentioned) may be higher impact things to pay attention to.
I think this makes a lot of sense.
But I don’t think everyone will be so cause neutral, and I think EA ways of thinking still have something to for people who want to focus on a specific cause.
Actually, I think that, before BLM, I underestimated the impact of racism (probably because it’s hard to evaluate and compare current interventions to GW’s charity recommendations); also, given BLM and the possibility of systemic change, I now think it might be more tractable - this might even be a social urgency.
But what most bothered me in your text was:
a) EA does not reduce everything to mosquito nets and AI—the problem is that almost no one else was paying attention to these issues before, and they’re really important;
b) the reason why most people don’t think about it is that the concerned populations are neglected—they’re seen as having less value than the average life in the developed world. Moreover, in the case of global health and poverty interventions in poor countries (mostly African countries), I think it’s quite plausible that racism (i.e., ethnic conflicts, brutal colonial past, indifference from developed countries) is partially responsible for those problems (neglected diseases and extreme poverty). For instance, racism was a key issue in previous humanitarian tragedies, such as the Great Famines in Ireland and Bengal.
In my head I am playing with the idea of a network/organization that could loosely, informally represent the general EA community and make some kind of public statement, like an open letter or petition, on our general behalf. It would be newsworthy and send a strong signal to policymakers, organizations etc.
Of course it would have to be carried out to high epistemic standards and with caution that we don’t go making political statements willy nilly or against the views of significant numbers of EAs. But it could be very valuable if used responsibly.