I appreciate that you wanted to contribute, but I must admit that I have found it too difficult to extract quickly the main arguments supporting your position for the post.
As it stands, the post is very, very long, and the executive summary made claims that were quite strong to believe without the evidence. I skimmed though the post to quickly find the evidence, but it’s hard to find it—there are many arguments but I have trouble seeing if they are all important enough to claim that EA is ineffective (for the toaster example, I really don’t think any of the EAs in France would do that, and I know most of them).
To claim that EA is “ineffective” is a high bar—is there any movement that has accomplished more with the same amount of resources ?
Let’s take animal welfare. The effective animal advocacy movement has helped billions of animals in the last ten years, with a stark contrast with the results from the 2000s. EA (as a general thing) isn’t responsible for all of that of course (the Humane League’s work predates that) but it brought a lot of funding and important considerations into the mix. Charities like the Shrimp Welfare Project probably wouldn’t exist, and they already helped around 4 billion shrimp (see their ‘shrimpact’).
That’s not to say there’s nothing to criticize, of course there are issues—the CEA even paid people to write ‘let’s red-team EA’ posts, with many relevant results. But from skimming your write up I don’t really know what you want the movement to do.
I also wish the post was much shorter, but I suppose that’s the nature of research projects haha. On the toaster example, that was included to illustrate a point about the ways utilitarian thinking can go against social norms, and I also pointed out in the text that the example was one that someone made up, not one that is representative of the EA community.
I agree with your point that my post doesn’t support that overall claim too well that EA is ‘ineffective’. I added that to the title only at the last moment and in retrospect it was a bit click-baity. I’ve removed that now, thanks for pointing that out. Content-wise neither was it my intention to make a claim about EA’s overall effectiveness / impact, but to compile and understand all the ways the EA movement has been hindered in its goals due to the way it’s organized and structured.
I also wish I had better and more concrete recommendations. Although, one of the main reason I don’t (the other being that this was already too long) is that the way I see it, change needs to come from EA leadership due to EA’s power dynamic. This post was geared more towards understanding causes and effects for the community and others interetsed in ‘doing good better’.
Thanks for changing the title of the post; that’s a good move as it was indeed saying too much.
I don’t think I’ll have the time to engage deeply with the post. But given the obvious effort you put into the post, I felt like pointing out why someone like me, who wanted to assess the solidity of the proposed arguments quickly, had trouble doing so at a glance.
I appreciate that you wanted to contribute, but I must admit that I have found it too difficult to extract quickly the main arguments supporting your position for the post.
As it stands, the post is very, very long, and the executive summary made claims that were quite strong to believe without the evidence. I skimmed though the post to quickly find the evidence, but it’s hard to find it—there are many arguments but I have trouble seeing if they are all important enough to claim that EA is ineffective (for the toaster example, I really don’t think any of the EAs in France would do that, and I know most of them).
To claim that EA is “ineffective” is a high bar—is there any movement that has accomplished more with the same amount of resources ?
Let’s take animal welfare. The effective animal advocacy movement has helped billions of animals in the last ten years, with a stark contrast with the results from the 2000s. EA (as a general thing) isn’t responsible for all of that of course (the Humane League’s work predates that) but it brought a lot of funding and important considerations into the mix. Charities like the Shrimp Welfare Project probably wouldn’t exist, and they already helped around 4 billion shrimp (see their ‘shrimpact’).
That’s not to say there’s nothing to criticize, of course there are issues—the CEA even paid people to write ‘let’s red-team EA’ posts, with many relevant results. But from skimming your write up I don’t really know what you want the movement to do.
It would also be helpful to think of who, exactly, should do things a certain way to improve: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pz7RdMRouZ5N5w5eE/ea-should-taboo-ea-should
Also, your personal experience at the end moved me a bit, I must admit.
Hi CB, appreciate this response as well!
I also wish the post was much shorter, but I suppose that’s the nature of research projects haha. On the toaster example, that was included to illustrate a point about the ways utilitarian thinking can go against social norms, and I also pointed out in the text that the example was one that someone made up, not one that is representative of the EA community.
I agree with your point that my post doesn’t support that overall claim too well that EA is ‘ineffective’. I added that to the title only at the last moment and in retrospect it was a bit click-baity. I’ve removed that now, thanks for pointing that out. Content-wise neither was it my intention to make a claim about EA’s overall effectiveness / impact, but to compile and understand all the ways the EA movement has been hindered in its goals due to the way it’s organized and structured.
I also wish I had better and more concrete recommendations. Although, one of the main reason I don’t (the other being that this was already too long) is that the way I see it, change needs to come from EA leadership due to EA’s power dynamic. This post was geared more towards understanding causes and effects for the community and others interetsed in ‘doing good better’.
Thanks for changing the title of the post; that’s a good move as it was indeed saying too much.
I don’t think I’ll have the time to engage deeply with the post. But given the obvious effort you put into the post, I felt like pointing out why someone like me, who wanted to assess the solidity of the proposed arguments quickly, had trouble doing so at a glance.