Good point. I’d imagine that this objection stems from the perspective “basically all the highest utility/dollar interventions are in x-risk, but continuing global health interventions costs us little because we already have those systems in place, so it’s not worth abandoning them.”
From this perspective, one might think that even maintaining existing global health interventions is a bad util/dollar proposition in a vacuum (as those resources would be better spent on x-risk), but for external reasons, splintering EA is not worth pressuring people to abandon global health.
Let’s imagine splintering EA to mean nearly only x-riskers being left in EA, and maybe a group of dissidents creating a competing movement.
These are the pros for x-riskers post-split:
Remaining EAs are laser-focused on x-risk, and perhaps more people have shifted their focus from partly global health and partly x-risk to fully x-risk than vice versa. (More x-risk EAs and x-risk EAs are more effective).
These are the cons for x-riskers post-split:
Remaining EAs have less broad public support and less money going into “general EA stuff” like community building and conferences, because some of the general EA money and influence was coming from people who mostly cared about global health. As a related consequence, it becomes harder to attract people initially interested in global health and convert them into x-riskers. (Less x-risk EAs and x-risk EAs are less effective).
It seems that most x-riskers think the cons outweigh the pros, or a split would have occurred—at least there would be more talk of one.
The thing is, refraining from adding climate change as an EA focus would likely have a similar pro/con breakdown to removing global health as an EA focus:
Pros: No EAs are persuaded to put money/effort that might have gone to x-risk into climate change.
Cons:
Loss of utils due to potentially EA-compatible people who expend time or money on climate change prevention/mitigation not joining the movement and adopting EA methods.
Loss of potential general funding and support for EA from people who think that the top climate change interventions can compete with the util/dollar rates of top global health and x-risk interventions, plus the hordes of people who aren’t necessarily thinking in terms of utils/dollar yet and just instinctively feel climate change is so important that a movement ignoring it can’t possibly know what they’re doing. Even if someone acting on instinct rather than utils/dollar won’t necessarily improve the intellectual richness of EA, their money and support would be pretty unequivocally helpful.
These are basically the same pros and cons to kicking out global health people, plus an extra cost to not infiltrating another cause area with EA methods.
Therefore, I would argue that any x-risker that does not want to splinter EA should also support EA branching out into new areas.
I think this is a totally reasonable argument, and you can add a piece that’s about personal fit. Like 80,000 hours has pretty arbitrarily guesstimated how heavily one ought to weigh personal fit in career choice, slapped some numbers on it and published it in a prioritization scale that people take too seriously sometimes and doesn’t actually make sense if you actually look at what some of the numbers imply (ie everybody should work on AI safety even if an actively bad fit).
But if you start by weighing personal fit more highly, there becomes a case for saying “ok, I happen to care a lot about climate change, so even if it’s not the highest priority cause, it’s still what I personally ought to work on. And I need guidance about how to move the needle on climate change.” And if you start from there you can still do a whole EA solutions prioritization analysis just taking for granted that it will be 100% climate change focused.
Personally I suspect that’s a good solution—we have great ideas about how to prioritize stuff but I’m not very optimistic about our ability to fundamentally change what causes people work on. Like maybe people should work on AI x risk even if they’re an actively bad fit, but they won’t, and we shouldn’t waste time trying to convince them to. Instead we should just create a great on-ramp for people who are interested in AI safety and a second great on-ramp for people who are interested in climate change. Figure out where people are and are not flexible in what they work on and target that.
Good point. I’d imagine that this objection stems from the perspective “basically all the highest utility/dollar interventions are in x-risk, but continuing global health interventions costs us little because we already have those systems in place, so it’s not worth abandoning them.”
From this perspective, one might think that even maintaining existing global health interventions is a bad util/dollar proposition in a vacuum (as those resources would be better spent on x-risk), but for external reasons, splintering EA is not worth pressuring people to abandon global health.
Let’s imagine splintering EA to mean nearly only x-riskers being left in EA, and maybe a group of dissidents creating a competing movement.
These are the pros for x-riskers post-split:
Remaining EAs are laser-focused on x-risk, and perhaps more people have shifted their focus from partly global health and partly x-risk to fully x-risk than vice versa. (More x-risk EAs and x-risk EAs are more effective).
These are the cons for x-riskers post-split:
Remaining EAs have less broad public support and less money going into “general EA stuff” like community building and conferences, because some of the general EA money and influence was coming from people who mostly cared about global health. As a related consequence, it becomes harder to attract people initially interested in global health and convert them into x-riskers. (Less x-risk EAs and x-risk EAs are less effective).
It seems that most x-riskers think the cons outweigh the pros, or a split would have occurred—at least there would be more talk of one.
The thing is, refraining from adding climate change as an EA focus would likely have a similar pro/con breakdown to removing global health as an EA focus:
Pros: No EAs are persuaded to put money/effort that might have gone to x-risk into climate change.
Cons:
Loss of utils due to potentially EA-compatible people who expend time or money on climate change prevention/mitigation not joining the movement and adopting EA methods.
Loss of potential general funding and support for EA from people who think that the top climate change interventions can compete with the util/dollar rates of top global health and x-risk interventions, plus the hordes of people who aren’t necessarily thinking in terms of utils/dollar yet and just instinctively feel climate change is so important that a movement ignoring it can’t possibly know what they’re doing. Even if someone acting on instinct rather than utils/dollar won’t necessarily improve the intellectual richness of EA, their money and support would be pretty unequivocally helpful.
These are basically the same pros and cons to kicking out global health people, plus an extra cost to not infiltrating another cause area with EA methods.
Therefore, I would argue that any x-risker that does not want to splinter EA should also support EA branching out into new areas.
I think this is a totally reasonable argument, and you can add a piece that’s about personal fit. Like 80,000 hours has pretty arbitrarily guesstimated how heavily one ought to weigh personal fit in career choice, slapped some numbers on it and published it in a prioritization scale that people take too seriously sometimes and doesn’t actually make sense if you actually look at what some of the numbers imply (ie everybody should work on AI safety even if an actively bad fit).
But if you start by weighing personal fit more highly, there becomes a case for saying “ok, I happen to care a lot about climate change, so even if it’s not the highest priority cause, it’s still what I personally ought to work on. And I need guidance about how to move the needle on climate change.” And if you start from there you can still do a whole EA solutions prioritization analysis just taking for granted that it will be 100% climate change focused.
Personally I suspect that’s a good solution—we have great ideas about how to prioritize stuff but I’m not very optimistic about our ability to fundamentally change what causes people work on. Like maybe people should work on AI x risk even if they’re an actively bad fit, but they won’t, and we shouldn’t waste time trying to convince them to. Instead we should just create a great on-ramp for people who are interested in AI safety and a second great on-ramp for people who are interested in climate change. Figure out where people are and are not flexible in what they work on and target that.