Different admission bars for events isnât giving up cause-generality.
Why not? I think we agree (?) that EAG in its current form is ~cause-general. If we changed it so that the admission bar depends on the applicantâs cause, isnât that making it less cause-general?
Less cause-agnostic (which is a property of what causes youâre aiming at), not less cause-general (which is a property of the type of resource which is being deployed; and remains ~constant in this example).
Ahhh ok, I think maybe Iâm starting to understand your argument. I think you are saying something like: the âresources being deployedâ at an event are things like chairs, the microphone for the speaker, the carpet in the room, etc. and those things could be deployed for any cause, making them cause general.
In my mind the resources being deployed are things like the invites, the agenda, getting speakers lined up, etc. and those are cause-specific.
I would maybe break this down as saying that the Marriott or whoever is hosting the event is a cause general resource, but the labor done by the event organizing team is cause specific. And usually I am speaking to the event organizing team about cause generality, not the marriott, which is why I was implicitly assuming that the relevant resources would become cause specific, though I understand the argument that the Marriottâs resources are still cause general.
Thanks, I think this is helpful towards narrowing in on whether thereâs a disagreement:
Iâm saying that the labour done by the organizing team in this case is still cause general. Itâs an event on EA principles, and although itâs been targeted at GHD, it would have been a relatively easy switch early in the planning process to decide to target it at GCR-related work instead.
I think this would no longer be the case if there was a lot of work figuring out how to specialise discussion of EA principles to the particular audience. Especially if you had to bring a GHD expert onboard to do that.
You say that the labor is cause general because it could counterfactually have been focused on another cause, but would you say that the final event itself is cause general?
Would you say that a donation which is restricted to only be used for one cause is cause general because it could counterfactually have been restricted to go to a different cause?
I think figure 2 in Schubertâs article is important for my conception of this.
On question 1: I think that CEA has developed cause-general capacity, some of which (the cause-flexible) is then being deployed in service of different causes. No, I donât think that the final event is cause-general, but I donât think this undercuts CEAâs cause-generality (this is just the nature of cause-flexible investments being eventually deployed).
On question 2: I donât think the donation itself is cause-general, but Iâd look at the process that produced the donation, and depending on details I might want to claim that was cause-general (e.g. someone going into earning to give).
ok, if we agree that the final event is not cause general, then Iâm not sure I understand the concern. Are you suggesting something like: where I say âcommunity building projects must either:.. or break cause-generalityâ I instead say â⊠or be targeted towards outputs (e.g. events) that break cause-generality?â
Hmm. I suppose I donât think that âbreak cause-generalityâ is a helpful framing? Like there are two types of cause-general capacity: broad impact capacity and cause-flexible capacity. The latter is at some point going to be deployed to a specific cause (I guess unless itâs fed back into something general, but obviously you donât always want to do that).
On the other hand your entire post makes (more) sense to me if I substitute in âcause-agnosticâ for âcause-generalâ. It seemed to me like that (or a very close relative) was the concept you had in mind. Then itâs just obviously the case that all of the things you are talking about maybe doing would break cause-agnosticism, etc.
Iâm very interested if âcause-agnosticâ doesnât seem to you like itâs capturing the important thing.
As you mentioned elsewhere, âcause agnosticismâ feels like an epistemic state, rather than a behavior. But even putting that aside: It seems to me that one could be convinced that labor is more useful for one cause than it is for another, while still remaining agnostic as to the impact of those causes in general.
Working through an example, suppose:
I believe there is a 50% chance that alternative proteins are twice as good as bed nets, and fifty percent chance that they are half as good. (I will consider this a simplified form of being maximally cause-agnostic.)
I am invited to speak about effective altruism at a meat science department
I believe that the labor of the meat scientists Iâm speaking to would be ten times as good for the alternative protein cause if they worked on alternative proteins then it would be for the bed net cause if they worked on bed nets, since their skills are specialized towards working on AP.
So my payoff matrix is:
Talk about alternative proteins, which will get all of them working on AP: 12Ă2Ă10+12Ă12Ă1=9.25
Talk about bed nets, which will get all of them working on bed nets: 12Ă2Ă1+12Ă12Ă1=1.25
Talk about EA in general, which I will assume results in a fifty percent chance that they will work on alternative proteins and fifty percent chance that they work on bed nets: 12Ă2Ă(12Ă10+12Ă1)+12Ă12Ă(12Ă10+12Ă1)=6.88
I therefore choose to talk about alternative proteins
It feels like this choice is entirely consistent with me maintaining a maximally agnostic view about which cause is more impactful?
Thanks for the example. I agree that thereâs something here which comes apart from cause-agnosticism, and I think I now understand why you were using âcause-generalâ.
This particular example is funny because you also switch from a cause-general intervention (talking about EA) to a cause-specific one (talking about AP), but you could modify the example to keep the interventions cause-general in all cases by saying itâs a choice between giving a talk on EA to (1) top meat scientists, (2) an array of infectious disease scientists, or (3) random researchers.
This makes me think thereâs just another distinct concept in play here, and we should name the things apart.
Why not? I think we agree (?) that EAG in its current form is ~cause-general. If we changed it so that the admission bar depends on the applicantâs cause, isnât that making it less cause-general?
Less cause-agnostic (which is a property of what causes youâre aiming at), not less cause-general (which is a property of the type of resource which is being deployed; and remains ~constant in this example).
Ahhh ok, I think maybe Iâm starting to understand your argument. I think you are saying something like: the âresources being deployedâ at an event are things like chairs, the microphone for the speaker, the carpet in the room, etc. and those things could be deployed for any cause, making them cause general.
In my mind the resources being deployed are things like the invites, the agenda, getting speakers lined up, etc. and those are cause-specific.
I would maybe break this down as saying that the Marriott or whoever is hosting the event is a cause general resource, but the labor done by the event organizing team is cause specific. And usually I am speaking to the event organizing team about cause generality, not the marriott, which is why I was implicitly assuming that the relevant resources would become cause specific, though I understand the argument that the Marriottâs resources are still cause general.
Thanks, I think this is helpful towards narrowing in on whether thereâs a disagreement:
Iâm saying that the labour done by the organizing team in this case is still cause general. Itâs an event on EA principles, and although itâs been targeted at GHD, it would have been a relatively easy switch early in the planning process to decide to target it at GCR-related work instead.
I think this would no longer be the case if there was a lot of work figuring out how to specialise discussion of EA principles to the particular audience. Especially if you had to bring a GHD expert onboard to do that.
Great, two more clarifying questions:
You say that the labor is cause general because it could counterfactually have been focused on another cause, but would you say that the final event itself is cause general?
Would you say that a donation which is restricted to only be used for one cause is cause general because it could counterfactually have been restricted to go to a different cause?
I think figure 2 in Schubertâs article is important for my conception of this.
On question 1: I think that CEA has developed cause-general capacity, some of which (the cause-flexible) is then being deployed in service of different causes. No, I donât think that the final event is cause-general, but I donât think this undercuts CEAâs cause-generality (this is just the nature of cause-flexible investments being eventually deployed).
On question 2: I donât think the donation itself is cause-general, but Iâd look at the process that produced the donation, and depending on details I might want to claim that was cause-general (e.g. someone going into earning to give).
ok, if we agree that the final event is not cause general, then Iâm not sure I understand the concern. Are you suggesting something like: where I say âcommunity building projects must either:.. or break cause-generalityâ I instead say â⊠or be targeted towards outputs (e.g. events) that break cause-generality?â
Hmm. I suppose I donât think that âbreak cause-generalityâ is a helpful framing? Like there are two types of cause-general capacity: broad impact capacity and cause-flexible capacity. The latter is at some point going to be deployed to a specific cause (I guess unless itâs fed back into something general, but obviously you donât always want to do that).
On the other hand your entire post makes (more) sense to me if I substitute in âcause-agnosticâ for âcause-generalâ. It seemed to me like that (or a very close relative) was the concept you had in mind. Then itâs just obviously the case that all of the things you are talking about maybe doing would break cause-agnosticism, etc.
Iâm very interested if âcause-agnosticâ doesnât seem to you like itâs capturing the important thing.
As you mentioned elsewhere, âcause agnosticismâ feels like an epistemic state, rather than a behavior. But even putting that aside: It seems to me that one could be convinced that labor is more useful for one cause than it is for another, while still remaining agnostic as to the impact of those causes in general.
Working through an example, suppose:
I believe there is a 50% chance that alternative proteins are twice as good as bed nets, and fifty percent chance that they are half as good. (I will consider this a simplified form of being maximally cause-agnostic.)
I am invited to speak about effective altruism at a meat science department
I believe that the labor of the meat scientists Iâm speaking to would be ten times as good for the alternative protein cause if they worked on alternative proteins then it would be for the bed net cause if they worked on bed nets, since their skills are specialized towards working on AP.
So my payoff matrix is:
Talk about alternative proteins, which will get all of them working on AP: 12Ă2Ă10+12Ă12Ă1=9.25
Talk about bed nets, which will get all of them working on bed nets: 12Ă2Ă1+12Ă12Ă1=1.25
Talk about EA in general, which I will assume results in a fifty percent chance that they will work on alternative proteins and fifty percent chance that they work on bed nets: 12Ă2Ă(12Ă10+12Ă1)+12Ă12Ă(12Ă10+12Ă1)=6.88
I therefore choose to talk about alternative proteins
It feels like this choice is entirely consistent with me maintaining a maximally agnostic view about which cause is more impactful?
Thanks for the example. I agree that thereâs something here which comes apart from cause-agnosticism, and I think I now understand why you were using âcause-generalâ.
This particular example is funny because you also switch from a cause-general intervention (talking about EA) to a cause-specific one (talking about AP), but you could modify the example to keep the interventions cause-general in all cases by saying itâs a choice between giving a talk on EA to (1) top meat scientists, (2) an array of infectious disease scientists, or (3) random researchers.
This makes me think thereâs just another distinct concept in play here, and we should name the things apart.