Thanks for this, Mitra. I only have time for a quick response, sorry.
Sorry to hear that you have had some bad initial experiences with EAs. It’s a pretty big and diverse community, so please don’t assume that what a few people think is widely representative of what everyone else does.
There is general agreement that we’re trying to answer the question: How can we do the most good? There is very little agreement about how best to do that—some people are more action orientated, while others prefer to be more cautious. Those who act, or write about EA, also disagree a lot. You can check out the forum to see ample evidence. It is one of the things that attracts me to the movement, actually!
Note that we are running a contest for criticism and someone has entered your submission. You have done a lot of impressive stuff, and I am definitely invested in hearing your opinions based on that experience.
If I understand you, you are making the point that that obsession with “measurement” can rule out innovative and scalable solutions to problems by over burdening them. I tend to agree that that can happen, and think that most EAs would agree. However, I think that more than most, EAs tend to value measurement as a way to reduce the risk that our intuitions can lead us astray and to ensure that we are allocating resources efficiently. However, individual EA’s perspective on the right amount of measurement effort would vary greatly depending on the specific case.
I recommend that you check the main EA website if you would like to get a better sense of what EA is about—you can also get sent some free books if that’s more of a preference. There has been a lot of thought behind some perspectives that may initially seem wrong/confusing (or at least seemed wrong/confusing to me when I first encountered them).
Yes Peter, my point was indeed that EA’s obsession with measurement is, from what I’ve seen, making it less Effective, and less able to see how to lever the resources within the movement.
EA stood out as a good idea when I first heard about it, but the few encounters I had—mostly in the San Francisco area when I was based there—showed that it wasn’t really that effective as its approach tended to miss those leverage points.
For example—I notice the EA main website features SendWave in Senegal—I don’t know them (though I know their equivalents in several other African countries), my question would be whether EA was Effective enough to see the potential and invest in them, or would be effective enough to replicate the idea in other countries and so on.
Thanks for this, Mitra. I only have time for a quick response, sorry.
Sorry to hear that you have had some bad initial experiences with EAs. It’s a pretty big and diverse community, so please don’t assume that what a few people think is widely representative of what everyone else does.
There is general agreement that we’re trying to answer the question: How can we do the most good? There is very little agreement about how best to do that—some people are more action orientated, while others prefer to be more cautious. Those who act, or write about EA, also disagree a lot. You can check out the forum to see ample evidence. It is one of the things that attracts me to the movement, actually!
Note that we are running a contest for criticism and someone has entered your submission. You have done a lot of impressive stuff, and I am definitely invested in hearing your opinions based on that experience.
If I understand you, you are making the point that that obsession with “measurement” can rule out innovative and scalable solutions to problems by over burdening them. I tend to agree that that can happen, and think that most EAs would agree. However, I think that more than most, EAs tend to value measurement as a way to reduce the risk that our intuitions can lead us astray and to ensure that we are allocating resources efficiently. However, individual EA’s perspective on the right amount of measurement effort would vary greatly depending on the specific case.
I recommend that you check the main EA website if you would like to get a better sense of what EA is about—you can also get sent some free books if that’s more of a preference. There has been a lot of thought behind some perspectives that may initially seem wrong/confusing (or at least seemed wrong/confusing to me when I first encountered them).
Yes Peter, my point was indeed that EA’s obsession with measurement is, from what I’ve seen, making it less Effective, and less able to see how to lever the resources within the movement.
EA stood out as a good idea when I first heard about it, but the few encounters I had—mostly in the San Francisco area when I was based there—showed that it wasn’t really that effective as its approach tended to miss those leverage points.
For example—I notice the EA main website features SendWave in Senegal—I don’t know them (though I know their equivalents in several other African countries), my question would be whether EA was Effective enough to see the potential and invest in them, or would be effective enough to replicate the idea in other countries and so on.