Welcome to the forum. You are not missing anything: in fact you have hit upon some of the most important and controversial questions about the EA movement, and there is wide disagreement on many of them, both within EA and with EA’s various critics. I can try and give both internal and external sources asking or rebutting similar questions.
In regards to the issue of unintended consequences from global aid, and the global vs local issue. this was an issue raised by Leif Wenar in a hostile critique of EA here. You can read some responses and rebuttals to this piece here and here.
With regards to the merits of Longtermism, this will be a theme of the debate week this coming week, so you should be able to get a feel for the debate within EA there. Plenty of EA’s are not longtermist for exactly the reasons you described. Longtermism the focus of a lot of external critique of EA as well, with some seeing it as a dangerous ideology, although that author has themselves been exposed for dishonest behaviour.
AI safety is a highly speculative subject, and their are a wide variety of views on how powerful AI can be, how soon “AGI” could arrive, how dangerous it is likely to be, and what the best strategy is for dealing with it. To get a feel for the viewpoints, you could try searching for “P doom”, which is a rough estimate for the chance of destruction. I might as well plug my own argument for why I don’t think it’s that likely. For external critics, pivot to AI is a newsletter that compiles articles with the perspective that AI is overhyped and that AI safety isn’t real.
The case for “earning to give” is given in detail here. The argument you raise of working for unethical companies is one of the most common objections to the practice, particularly in the wake of the SBF scandal, however in general EA discourages ETG with jobs that are directly harmful.
Welcome to the forum. You are not missing anything: in fact you have hit upon some of the most important and controversial questions about the EA movement, and there is wide disagreement on many of them, both within EA and with EA’s various critics. I can try and give both internal and external sources asking or rebutting similar questions.
In regards to the issue of unintended consequences from global aid, and the global vs local issue. this was an issue raised by Leif Wenar in a hostile critique of EA here. You can read some responses and rebuttals to this piece here and here.
With regards to the merits of Longtermism, this will be a theme of the debate week this coming week, so you should be able to get a feel for the debate within EA there. Plenty of EA’s are not longtermist for exactly the reasons you described. Longtermism the focus of a lot of external critique of EA as well, with some seeing it as a dangerous ideology, although that author has themselves been exposed for dishonest behaviour.
AI safety is a highly speculative subject, and their are a wide variety of views on how powerful AI can be, how soon “AGI” could arrive, how dangerous it is likely to be, and what the best strategy is for dealing with it. To get a feel for the viewpoints, you could try searching for “P doom”, which is a rough estimate for the chance of destruction. I might as well plug my own argument for why I don’t think it’s that likely. For external critics, pivot to AI is a newsletter that compiles articles with the perspective that AI is overhyped and that AI safety isn’t real.
The case for “earning to give” is given in detail here. The argument you raise of working for unethical companies is one of the most common objections to the practice, particularly in the wake of the SBF scandal, however in general EA discourages ETG with jobs that are directly harmful.