Very big fan of this post. It is one of the best, substantial critiques of EA as it currently is that I’ve read/heard in a while. There are lots of parts that I’d love to delve into more but I’ll focus on one here, which seems to be one of the most important claims:
The three key aspects of this argument are expert belief in plausibility of the problem, very large impact of the problem if it does occur, and the problem being substantively neglected. My argument is that we can adapt this argument to make parallel arguments for other cause areas.
Sure, but this seems to miss out the tractability consideration. Your post barely mentions tractability or cost-effectiveness and the INT framework is really just a way of thinking about the expected value / cost-effectiveness of particular actions. I’d guess that some of the areas you list have been ignored or rejected by many aspiring EAs because they just seem less tractable at first glance.
I do think it’s important that the EA community explores plausibly high-impact cause areas, even if only a handful of individuals ever focus on them. So I’d be pleased if people took this post as an encouragement to explore the tractability of contributions to various areas that have been neglected by the EA community so far.
Very big fan of this post. It is one of the best, substantial critiques of EA as it currently is that I’ve read/heard in a while. There are lots of parts that I’d love to delve into more but I’ll focus on one here, which seems to be one of the most important claims:
Sure, but this seems to miss out the tractability consideration. Your post barely mentions tractability or cost-effectiveness and the INT framework is really just a way of thinking about the expected value / cost-effectiveness of particular actions. I’d guess that some of the areas you list have been ignored or rejected by many aspiring EAs because they just seem less tractable at first glance.
I do think it’s important that the EA community explores plausibly high-impact cause areas, even if only a handful of individuals ever focus on them. So I’d be pleased if people took this post as an encouragement to explore the tractability of contributions to various areas that have been neglected by the EA community so far.