I made a similar comment here so I wont re-hash all of it but I still havenāt seen a compelling case for caring about biodiversity. I dont want the EA community to be closed off, especially to people who are trying to do good in the world, but I think there needs to be a much stronger reason to care about biodiversity inherently. Otherwise, it feels hard to distinguish this from high impact projects to improve the Toronto Raptors and talking about basketball analytics.
I donāt think we should care about biodiversity inherently. But it could be instrumentally valuable to protect large areas of nature until we have a much more detailed understanding of the species that are out thereāand the potential food sources and medicinal compounds etc that could be valuable to humans and animals. My intuition is that the best interventions in this area will fall well short of the best interventions in other cause areasābut would still be a big step up from improving a basketball team!
I agree with the first half of your comment. Do you think that the EA community (or the EA Forum) should solely focus on cause prioritisation though?
I feel excited about scope sensitive decision-making and evidence-based prioritisation being used at various levels of abstraction/āconcreteness, e.g. cause prioritisation, intervention prioritisation, organisation prioritisation.
I welcome/āencourage this being done carefully and well (and discussed on the Forum) even if I disagree with someoneās prioritisation at another level of abstraction, and I donāt think we should expect someone to justify their prioritisation at other levels.
I.e. I think this is a cool post, even though I donāt prioritise biodiversity and the post doesnāt explain why the authors prioritise it.
Weāre working on it! A quick synopsis of the more fleshed-out argument Iām hoping to post soon on the foundational philosophy: It seems oddly universal that people to care about nature. For another it seems like the sort of scarce resource (like historical artifacts) that future humans will value. I think we will place great value on it after we reach takeoff, post-scarcity, etc. Furthermore I think that a variety of experiences existing is better than a world full of similar experiences.
A portion of the philosophical basis you are looking for was recently posted on the EA forum (it was one of the winners of the Essays on Longtermism competition!). The essay illustrates the value of ānow-or-neverā preservation and explores to what degree information is valuable to future generations. The essay suggests that preservation of species themselves is valuable but not practical compared to documentation. I think there are practical actions we can take to preserve species, but our second recommended intervention was biobanking for the reasoning given in the essay. The essay also touches on the concern of arbitrariness.
For context, weāve never said that extinction is an x-risk or otherwise a top-priority cause area. But Iām a believer in big-tent EA. In my view lots of things like improving housing policy or etc are good, even if not maximally good compared to the most-important cause. I certainly donāt want to take people off of x-risk work, but I think this still falls under the Effective Altruism umbrella.
Thereās lots of environmental conservation money being spent. People value something they label ānatureā, and it seems good for people to get more of what they want without being confused, counterproductive, economically destructive, etc, as so much of the environmental movement is. I also think its important to work on clarifying what exactly they/āwe are valuing. I hope to contribute on that front as well.
So, yes, very important, and weāre working on it!
I made a similar comment here so I wont re-hash all of it but I still havenāt seen a compelling case for caring about biodiversity. I dont want the EA community to be closed off, especially to people who are trying to do good in the world, but I think there needs to be a much stronger reason to care about biodiversity inherently. Otherwise, it feels hard to distinguish this from high impact projects to improve the Toronto Raptors and talking about basketball analytics.
I donāt think we should care about biodiversity inherently. But it could be instrumentally valuable to protect large areas of nature until we have a much more detailed understanding of the species that are out thereāand the potential food sources and medicinal compounds etc that could be valuable to humans and animals. My intuition is that the best interventions in this area will fall well short of the best interventions in other cause areasābut would still be a big step up from improving a basketball team!
I agree with the first half of your comment. Do you think that the EA community (or the EA Forum) should solely focus on cause prioritisation though?
I feel excited about scope sensitive decision-making and evidence-based prioritisation being used at various levels of abstraction/āconcreteness, e.g. cause prioritisation, intervention prioritisation, organisation prioritisation.
I welcome/āencourage this being done carefully and well (and discussed on the Forum) even if I disagree with someoneās prioritisation at another level of abstraction, and I donāt think we should expect someone to justify their prioritisation at other levels.
I.e. I think this is a cool post, even though I donāt prioritise biodiversity and the post doesnāt explain why the authors prioritise it.
Weāre working on it! A quick synopsis of the more fleshed-out argument Iām hoping to post soon on the foundational philosophy: It seems oddly universal that people to care about nature. For another it seems like the sort of scarce resource (like historical artifacts) that future humans will value. I think we will place great value on it after we reach takeoff, post-scarcity, etc. Furthermore I think that a variety of experiences existing is better than a world full of similar experiences.
A portion of the philosophical basis you are looking for was recently posted on the EA forum (it was one of the winners of the Essays on Longtermism competition!). The essay illustrates the value of ānow-or-neverā preservation and explores to what degree information is valuable to future generations. The essay suggests that preservation of species themselves is valuable but not practical compared to documentation. I think there are practical actions we can take to preserve species, but our second recommended intervention was biobanking for the reasoning given in the essay. The essay also touches on the concern of arbitrariness.
For context, weāve never said that extinction is an x-risk or otherwise a top-priority cause area. But Iām a believer in big-tent EA. In my view lots of things like improving housing policy or etc are good, even if not maximally good compared to the most-important cause. I certainly donāt want to take people off of x-risk work, but I think this still falls under the Effective Altruism umbrella.
Thereās lots of environmental conservation money being spent. People value something they label ānatureā, and it seems good for people to get more of what they want without being confused, counterproductive, economically destructive, etc, as so much of the environmental movement is. I also think its important to work on clarifying what exactly they/āwe are valuing. I hope to contribute on that front as well.
So, yes, very important, and weāre working on it!