Different group organizers have widely varying beliefs that affect what work they think is valuable. From certain perspectives, work that’s generally espoused by EA orgs looks quite negative. For example, someone may believe that the harms of global health work through the meat eater problem dominate the benefits of helping reduce human suffering and saving lives. Someone may believe that the expected value of the future with humans is negative, and as such, biosecurity work that reduces human extinction risk is net-negative. In this post I’ll briefly consider how this issue can affect how CBs do their work.
Obligations to others
Since many major EA orgs and community members provide support to groups, there may be obligations to permit and/or support certain areas of work in the group. Open Phil, for example, funds EA groups and supports biosecurity work. There’s no mandate that organizers conduct any particular activities, but it’s unclear to me what degree of support for certain work is merited. It currently seems to me that there is no obligation to support work in any given area (e.g. running a biosecurity seminar), but there may be an obligation to not prevent another organizer from engaging in that activity. This seems like a simple solution, but there is some moral conflict when one organizer is providing background support such as managing finances, conducting outreach, and running social events that facilitate the creation and success of the controversial work.
Deferring
CBs could choose to accept that we (generally) aren’t philosophy PhDs or global priorities researchers and weigh the opinions of those people and the main organizations that employ them heavily. This sort of decision making attempts to shift responsibility to other actors and can contribute to the problem of monolithic thinking.
Gains from trade
Maybe the organizers of groups A, B, and C, think that the meat eater problem makes global health work net negative, but the organizers of groups D, E, and F prioritize humans more, which makes global health look positive. If everyone focuses on their priorities, organizers from A, B, and C miss out on great animal welfare promoters from D, E, and F, and organizers from D, E, and F miss out on great global health supporters from A, B, and C. On the other hand, if everyone agrees to support and encourage both priorities, everyone’s group members get into their comparative advantage areas and everyone is better off. This plan does ignore counteracting forces between interventions and the possibility that organizers will better prepare people for areas that they believe in. Coordinating this sort of trade also seems quite difficult.
Conclusion
I don’t see a simple way to solve these issues. My current plan is to reject the “deferring” solution, not prevent other organizers from working on controversial areas, accept that I’ll be providing them with background support, and focus on making, running, and sharing programming that reflects my suffering-focused values.
Different group organizers have widely varying beliefs that affect what work they think is valuable. From certain perspectives, work that’s generally espoused by EA orgs looks quite negative. For example, someone may believe that the harms of global health work through the meat eater problem dominate the benefits of helping reduce human suffering and saving lives. Someone may believe that the expected value of the future with humans is negative, and as such, biosecurity work that reduces human extinction risk is net-negative. In this post I’ll briefly consider how this issue can affect how CBs do their work.
Obligations to others
Since many major EA orgs and community members provide support to groups, there may be obligations to permit and/or support certain areas of work in the group. Open Phil, for example, funds EA groups and supports biosecurity work. There’s no mandate that organizers conduct any particular activities, but it’s unclear to me what degree of support for certain work is merited. It currently seems to me that there is no obligation to support work in any given area (e.g. running a biosecurity seminar), but there may be an obligation to not prevent another organizer from engaging in that activity. This seems like a simple solution, but there is some moral conflict when one organizer is providing background support such as managing finances, conducting outreach, and running social events that facilitate the creation and success of the controversial work.
Deferring
CBs could choose to accept that we (generally) aren’t philosophy PhDs or global priorities researchers and weigh the opinions of those people and the main organizations that employ them heavily. This sort of decision making attempts to shift responsibility to other actors and can contribute to the problem of monolithic thinking.
Gains from trade
Maybe the organizers of groups A, B, and C, think that the meat eater problem makes global health work net negative, but the organizers of groups D, E, and F prioritize humans more, which makes global health look positive. If everyone focuses on their priorities, organizers from A, B, and C miss out on great animal welfare promoters from D, E, and F, and organizers from D, E, and F miss out on great global health supporters from A, B, and C. On the other hand, if everyone agrees to support and encourage both priorities, everyone’s group members get into their comparative advantage areas and everyone is better off. This plan does ignore counteracting forces between interventions and the possibility that organizers will better prepare people for areas that they believe in. Coordinating this sort of trade also seems quite difficult.
Conclusion
I don’t see a simple way to solve these issues. My current plan is to reject the “deferring” solution, not prevent other organizers from working on controversial areas, accept that I’ll be providing them with background support, and focus on making, running, and sharing programming that reflects my suffering-focused values.