I realize that you weren’t the original author of this question, but I think this question really needs much more context to be a high-quality question on the EA Forum. Why does the question asker think that the status quo bias might be a problem in the EA community? What kinds of examples do they have in mind? Are they interested in a status quo bias towards the way the world is, or the way the EA community currently is?
He asked about a status quo bias favouring the world the way it is. He noticed much of the EA community appears to favour the status quo for politics, economics, etc. He presumably meant mainstream liberal/centrist positions in Western countries. To paraphrase, he is new to EA and his intuition is that if EA does more good on the margin that traditional institutions aren’t doing, advocating for what they’re already doing might defeat the purpose of maximizing marginal utility. He thought he might be missing something, which is why he asked.
I realize that you weren’t the original author of this question, but I think this question really needs much more context to be a high-quality question on the EA Forum. Why does the question asker think that the status quo bias might be a problem in the EA community? What kinds of examples do they have in mind? Are they interested in a status quo bias towards the way the world is, or the way the EA community currently is?
He asked about a status quo bias favouring the world the way it is. He noticed much of the EA community appears to favour the status quo for politics, economics, etc. He presumably meant mainstream liberal/centrist positions in Western countries. To paraphrase, he is new to EA and his intuition is that if EA does more good on the margin that traditional institutions aren’t doing, advocating for what they’re already doing might defeat the purpose of maximizing marginal utility. He thought he might be missing something, which is why he asked.
Gotcha, I think standard EA articles about systemic change such as Some personal thoughts on EA and systemic change would be relevant.