Hey Brian, Ula, and other commenters,
Thanks again for all the feedback! To what extent each piece of content closely associated with EA should aim to be ‘representative’ is a vexed issue that folks are going to continue to have different views on, and we can’t produce something that’s ideal to everyone simultaneously.
Fortunately in this case I think there’s a change we can make that will be an improvement from everyone’s perspective.
We had planned to later make another collection that would showcase a wider variety of things that EAs are up to. Given your worries combined with the broader enthusiasm for the underlying concept, it seems like we should just do that as soon as it’s practical for Keiran and me to put it together.
That feed would be called something like ‘Effective Altruism: Ten Problem Areas’ and feature Bollard and Glennerster, and other guests on topics like journalism, climate change, pandemics, earning to give, and a few others which we’ll think about.
We’ll promote it similarly — and cross-promote between the two collections — so anyone who wants to learn about those problem areas will end up doing so.
(Independently we also realised that we should sub Ajeya’s episode into ‘An Introduction’. That only didn’t happen the first time around because we settled on this list of ten in 2020 before Ajeya’s episode existed. Ajeya’s interview will be more neutral about longtermism than what it replaces.)
Speaking personally as Rob (because I know other people at 80,000 Hours have different perspectives), I favour a model where there are a range of varied introductory materials, some of which lean towards a focus on poverty, some towards animals, some towards longtermism, some with other angles, and still others that aims to be representative.
In any case, after this reshuffle we’ll have two feeds for you — one that leans into the way we think about things at 80,000 Hours, and another that shows off the variety of causes prioritised by EAs.
Folks can then choose whichever one they would rather share, or listen to themselves. (And fingers crossed many people will opt to listen to both!)
Look forward to hearing your thoughts,
— Rob and Keiran
Hey commenters — so as we mentioned we’ve been discussing internally what other changes we should make to address the concerns raised in the comments here, beyond creating the ‘ten problem areas’ feed.
We think the best change to make is to record a new episode with someone who is in favour of interventions that are ‘higher-evidence’, or that have more immediate benefits, and then insert that into the introduction series.
Our current interviews about e.g. animals or global development don’t make the case in favour of ‘short-termist’ approaches because the guests themselves aren’t focused on that level of problem prioritisation. That makes them an odd fit for the high-level nature of this series.
An episode focused on higher-evidence approaches has been on the (dismayingly long) list of topics we should cover for a while, but we can expedite it. We’ve got a shortlist of candidate guests to make this episode but would be very interested in getting nominations and votes from folks here to inform our choice.
(It’s slightly hard to say when we’ll be able to make this switch because we won’t be sure whether an interview will fit the bill until we’ve recorded it, but we can make it a priority for the next few months.)
Thanks so much,
— Rob and Keiran