It seems to me some criticisms, including this one, paint a picture that does not very accurately describe what most effective altruists are up to in a practical sense. You could get the idea that EA is 10,000 people waking up every day thinking about esoteric aspects of AI safety, actively avoiding any other current issues regardless of scale.
In reality, a fair chunk (probably a vast majority?) do what most would perceive as “traditional” charity work, e.g. working at an organisation that tries to alleviate poverty or promote animal welfare, organising their community (university etc.) to promote doing good, doing research on effective methods for solving large problems in society today, or getting more people and organisations to donate money to charitable causes.
I have a hard time believing the general public actually thinks existential risk research on things like pandemic preparation/prevention is a bad idea or not money well spent. But if you equal existential risk with AI threat, it’s a whole other framing.
Every movement will have far-out elements that might be hard to make sense of without a lot of context, but that are also just one facet of the movement as a whole. A lot of the recent criticisms of EA I’ve seen target longtermism in its most “extreme” form, and drag all of effective altruism with it. The criticism of longtermism is very healthy and useful, in my opinion, but this conflation is concerning.
Well AI Safety is strongly recommended by 80k, gets a lot of funding, and is seen as prestigious / important by people (The last one is just in my experience). And the funding and attention given to longtermism is increasing. So I think it’s fair to criticize these aspects if you disagree with them, although I guess charitable criticism would note that global poverty etc got a lot more attention in the beginning and is still well funded and well regarded by EA.
A lot of the recent criticisms of EA I’ve seen target longtermism in its most “extreme” form, and drag all of effective altruism with it.
Although I am philosophically very persuaded by longtermism (I think it is an especially important contribution from the effective altruism community and I’m actively working on longtermist causes alongside other ones) I think that it’s not the only game in town and we should be careful about times when we might be accidentally representing EA in that way. I think that if we’re not especially careful to represent the diversity within EA and too actively promote one particular set of conclusions we’ll continue to have hit pieces (like this) that start to equate EA with longtermism.
Exactly! Somewhat of a sidenote but I find it relevant: I’ve seen this thing with many political parties in Sweden that usually have a youth organisation that for various reasons often represents a more radical version of the so-called party line on various issues. Political opponents will try to hold the party responsible for what the youth branch says and does, but it’s generally understood by most (I think) that the latter is the avant-garde and should not be conflated with the general views of e.g. those voting for the party in elections. Denying there are important connections between the two would be dishonest, but so would saying they are the same be.
It seems to me some criticisms, including this one, paint a picture that does not very accurately describe what most effective altruists are up to in a practical sense. You could get the idea that EA is 10,000 people waking up every day thinking about esoteric aspects of AI safety, actively avoiding any other current issues regardless of scale.
In reality, a fair chunk (probably a vast majority?) do what most would perceive as “traditional” charity work, e.g. working at an organisation that tries to alleviate poverty or promote animal welfare, organising their community (university etc.) to promote doing good, doing research on effective methods for solving large problems in society today, or getting more people and organisations to donate money to charitable causes.
I have a hard time believing the general public actually thinks existential risk research on things like pandemic preparation/prevention is a bad idea or not money well spent. But if you equal existential risk with AI threat, it’s a whole other framing.
Every movement will have far-out elements that might be hard to make sense of without a lot of context, but that are also just one facet of the movement as a whole. A lot of the recent criticisms of EA I’ve seen target longtermism in its most “extreme” form, and drag all of effective altruism with it. The criticism of longtermism is very healthy and useful, in my opinion, but this conflation is concerning.
Well AI Safety is strongly recommended by 80k, gets a lot of funding, and is seen as prestigious / important by people (The last one is just in my experience). And the funding and attention given to longtermism is increasing. So I think it’s fair to criticize these aspects if you disagree with them, although I guess charitable criticism would note that global poverty etc got a lot more attention in the beginning and is still well funded and well regarded by EA.
Although I am philosophically very persuaded by longtermism (I think it is an especially important contribution from the effective altruism community and I’m actively working on longtermist causes alongside other ones) I think that it’s not the only game in town and we should be careful about times when we might be accidentally representing EA in that way. I think that if we’re not especially careful to represent the diversity within EA and too actively promote one particular set of conclusions we’ll continue to have hit pieces (like this) that start to equate EA with longtermism.
Exactly! Somewhat of a sidenote but I find it relevant: I’ve seen this thing with many political parties in Sweden that usually have a youth organisation that for various reasons often represents a more radical version of the so-called party line on various issues. Political opponents will try to hold the party responsible for what the youth branch says and does, but it’s generally understood by most (I think) that the latter is the avant-garde and should not be conflated with the general views of e.g. those voting for the party in elections. Denying there are important connections between the two would be dishonest, but so would saying they are the same be.
And also what they do in their daily lives, outside the time or resources they allot to “effectiveness”.