I’ll note that I used to have some reservations but no longer do, so I’ll answer about why I previously had reservations.
When EA got interested in what we now call longtermism, it didn’t seem obvious to me that EA was for me. My read was that EA was about near concerns like global poverty and animal welfare and not far concerns like x-risk and aging. So it seemed natural to me that I was on the outside of EA looking in because my primary cause area (though note that I wouldn’t have thought of it that way at the time) wasn’t clearly under the EA umbrella.
Obviously this has changed now, but hopefully useful for historical purposes, and there may be folks who still feel this way about other causes, like effective governance, that are, from my perspective, on the fringes of what EA is focused on.
I’ll note that I used to have some reservations but no longer do, so I’ll answer about why I previously had reservations.
When EA got interested in what we now call longtermism, it didn’t seem obvious to me that EA was for me. My read was that EA was about near concerns like global poverty and animal welfare and not far concerns like x-risk and aging. So it seemed natural to me that I was on the outside of EA looking in because my primary cause area (though note that I wouldn’t have thought of it that way at the time) wasn’t clearly under the EA umbrella.
Obviously this has changed now, but hopefully useful for historical purposes, and there may be folks who still feel this way about other causes, like effective governance, that are, from my perspective, on the fringes of what EA is focused on.