Like I’ve said in many other comments, I don’t have a problem with their ranking or the fact that there is a ranking in the first place. And of course they are explicit about their values. But I still think there are ways to push x-risk as the top priority whilst also conveying other cause areas as more valuable than they currently are. Difficult of course, but not impossible. The key problem is that I’m not sure many people discouragd from “less important causes” then happily go into longtermism. I think it’s more likely they stop being active altogether (this is my personal impression of course from my own experiences and many conversations). Because you can’t force yourself to care about something when you simply don’t—even if you want to and even if that’d be the “best” and most rational thing to do. So people in “less important causes” might be lost altogether and not doing their “less important” but still pretty valuable (I think) work anymore. And that I the concern I wanted to voice. Not all that “absurd”, I think.
I dislike this reasoning because it feels deceptive? Like I don’t think we should push global health and well-being jobs to make people more aware of EA and 80k. We should communicate the correct information about them and let people choose while letting them know the full range of trade-offs.
As above, in response to Chris, you kind of town and castle (I’m explicitly trying to move away from motte and bailey because I can never remember which is which) to being less explicit on cause prioritisation means more people working on x-risk causes etc. I don’t think this is something EA should do on principle.
Like I’ve said in many other comments, I don’t have a problem with their ranking or the fact that there is a ranking in the first place. And of course they are explicit about their values. But I still think there are ways to push x-risk as the top priority whilst also conveying other cause areas as more valuable than they currently are. Difficult of course, but not impossible. The key problem is that I’m not sure many people discouragd from “less important causes” then happily go into longtermism. I think it’s more likely they stop being active altogether (this is my personal impression of course from my own experiences and many conversations). Because you can’t force yourself to care about something when you simply don’t—even if you want to and even if that’d be the “best” and most rational thing to do. So people in “less important causes” might be lost altogether and not doing their “less important” but still pretty valuable (I think) work anymore. And that I the concern I wanted to voice. Not all that “absurd”, I think.
I dislike this reasoning because it feels deceptive? Like I don’t think we should push global health and well-being jobs to make people more aware of EA and 80k. We should communicate the correct information about them and let people choose while letting them know the full range of trade-offs.
As above, in response to Chris, you kind of town and castle (I’m explicitly trying to move away from motte and bailey because I can never remember which is which) to being less explicit on cause prioritisation means more people working on x-risk causes etc. I don’t think this is something EA should do on principle.