I can’t speak for everyone associated with integral autism, but at least for myself I don’t see it as about avoiding tradeoffs so much as about making tradeoffs against a wider set of considerations that are often left out by EAs. For example, I’m generally more willing to evaluate interventions in non-consequentialist terms since looking at the consequentialist framing only, as many EAs do, can lead to classic right-magnitude-wrong-direction errors that would be easily caught by a deontological or virtue ethics frame.
But in practice I expect int/a to make its own errors that will need correcting. One way someone I know put it, EA is fundamentally Protestant, int/a is fundamentally Buddhist. Both want to do good in the world, but each has a different view of what that world is.
I think it more often goes the other way, in that there are interventions that look good to EAs that look less good to int/a. For example, I’m relative negative on unconditional cash transfers, and I think most of the evidence showing they work is too narrowly scoped and fails to consider what happens to a society that is nicer only because of handouts and is failing to build a self-sustaining economic engine needed for the niceness to persist. I know some such programs are aware of this problem and try to address it, but it also leaves me feeling like there might be better solutions.
I guess on the other side maybe I’d say EA is by default too negative on arts charities. I’m not saying that your typical arts charity is effective, but I am saying I think it’d be a mistake if we reallocated all arts funding to top GiveWell charities, as access to museums is worth something even if it’s hard to qualify against human lives (perhaps more generally, I think not all goods are actually as fungible as the typical EA thinks).
FWIW I doubt there are many (any?) EAs that would advocate for reallocating “ all arts funding to top GiveWell charities”. Everything is at the margin!
I’ve definitely met EAs who were maximizers who didn’t believe in acting on the margin. Of course, as the movement has grown, I think there’s relatively fewer of these people since most people prefer to act on the margin rather than totalize.
I can’t speak for everyone associated with integral autism, but at least for myself I don’t see it as about avoiding tradeoffs so much as about making tradeoffs against a wider set of considerations that are often left out by EAs. For example, I’m generally more willing to evaluate interventions in non-consequentialist terms since looking at the consequentialist framing only, as many EAs do, can lead to classic right-magnitude-wrong-direction errors that would be easily caught by a deontological or virtue ethics frame.
But in practice I expect int/a to make its own errors that will need correcting. One way someone I know put it, EA is fundamentally Protestant, int/a is fundamentally Buddhist. Both want to do good in the world, but each has a different view of what that world is.
Any examples of interventions EA might overlook that int/a rates highly in your view? (No need to speak for others)
I think it more often goes the other way, in that there are interventions that look good to EAs that look less good to int/a. For example, I’m relative negative on unconditional cash transfers, and I think most of the evidence showing they work is too narrowly scoped and fails to consider what happens to a society that is nicer only because of handouts and is failing to build a self-sustaining economic engine needed for the niceness to persist. I know some such programs are aware of this problem and try to address it, but it also leaves me feeling like there might be better solutions.
I guess on the other side maybe I’d say EA is by default too negative on arts charities. I’m not saying that your typical arts charity is effective, but I am saying I think it’d be a mistake if we reallocated all arts funding to top GiveWell charities, as access to museums is worth something even if it’s hard to qualify against human lives (perhaps more generally, I think not all goods are actually as fungible as the typical EA thinks).
FWIW I doubt there are many (any?) EAs that would advocate for reallocating “ all arts funding to top GiveWell charities”. Everything is at the margin!
I’ve definitely met EAs who were maximizers who didn’t believe in acting on the margin. Of course, as the movement has grown, I think there’s relatively fewer of these people since most people prefer to act on the margin rather than totalize.