Just chiming in here as HLI was mentioned—although this definitely isn’t the most important part of the post. I certainly see us as randomista-inspired—wait, should that be ‘randomista-adjacent’ - but I would say that what we do feels very different from what other EAs, notably longtermists, do. Also, we came into existence about 5 years after Doing Good Better was published.
I also share Habryka’s doubts about how EA’s original top interventions were chosen. The whole “scale, neglectedness, tractability’ framework strikes me as a confusing, indeterminate methodology that was developed post hoc to justify the earlier choices. I moaned about the SNT framework at length in chapter 5 (pp171) of my PhD thesis.
I agree with you about SNT/ITN. I like that chapter of your thesis a lot, and also find John’s post here convincing.
It does seem to me that randomista EA is alive and largely well—GW is still growing, global health still gets the most funding (I think), many of Charity Entrepreneurship’s new charities are randomista-influenced, etc.
There’s a lot of things going on under the “EA” umbrella. HLI’s work feels very different from what other EAs do, but equally a typical animal welfare org’s work will feel very different, and a typical longtermist org’s work will feel very different, because other EAs do a lot of different things now.
Just chiming in here as HLI was mentioned—although this definitely isn’t the most important part of the post. I certainly see us as randomista-inspired—wait, should that be ‘randomista-adjacent’ - but I would say that what we do feels very different from what other EAs, notably longtermists, do. Also, we came into existence about 5 years after Doing Good Better was published.
I also share Habryka’s doubts about how EA’s original top interventions were chosen. The whole “scale, neglectedness, tractability’ framework strikes me as a confusing, indeterminate methodology that was developed post hoc to justify the earlier choices. I moaned about the SNT framework at length in chapter 5 (pp171) of my PhD thesis.
I agree with you about SNT/ITN. I like that chapter of your thesis a lot, and also find John’s post here convincing.
It does seem to me that randomista EA is alive and largely well—GW is still growing, global health still gets the most funding (I think), many of Charity Entrepreneurship’s new charities are randomista-influenced, etc.
There’s a lot of things going on under the “EA” umbrella. HLI’s work feels very different from what other EAs do, but equally a typical animal welfare org’s work will feel very different, and a typical longtermist org’s work will feel very different, because other EAs do a lot of different things now.