I appreciate you taking the time to write these thoughts, Owen, because they address a question I’ve been having about EA thanks to all the recent publicity. “How much does the EA community know about the field of Social Impact generally and all of its related areas of expertise?” (ex. Impact Investing, Program Evaluation, Social Entrepreneurship, Public Health, Corporate Social Responsibility, etc.) I don’t consider myself an effective altruist, but I have worked/taught in the field of Social Impact for about 16 years.
I’ve been wondering about this because the public discourse of EA seems to focus on only a few things: utilitarianism, GiveWell-recommended charities, animal welfare, and longtermism/existential risks. I know this isn’t a comprehensive picture. As MaxRa pointed out, 80,000 hours is representing a wide-range of areas for impact. But, for example, I don’t know how much the 80,000 Hours pluralism penetrates the group that takes the Giving What We Can pledge or the members of this forum.
Does the EA community consider itself embedded in the field of Social Impact, or as something distinctly different?
To answer your original point about getting out of EA bubbles, the book Impact by Sir Ronald Cohen is a nice, relatively recent survey of Social Impact and is chock full of examples. All the areas he covers are where EA could find likeminded people with useful expertise (along the lines of what DavidNash mentioned).
I appreciate you taking the time to write these thoughts, Owen, because they address a question I’ve been having about EA thanks to all the recent publicity. “How much does the EA community know about the field of Social Impact generally and all of its related areas of expertise?” (ex. Impact Investing, Program Evaluation, Social Entrepreneurship, Public Health, Corporate Social Responsibility, etc.) I don’t consider myself an effective altruist, but I have worked/taught in the field of Social Impact for about 16 years.
I’ve been wondering about this because the public discourse of EA seems to focus on only a few things: utilitarianism, GiveWell-recommended charities, animal welfare, and longtermism/existential risks. I know this isn’t a comprehensive picture. As MaxRa pointed out, 80,000 hours is representing a wide-range of areas for impact. But, for example, I don’t know how much the 80,000 Hours pluralism penetrates the group that takes the Giving What We Can pledge or the members of this forum.
Does the EA community consider itself embedded in the field of Social Impact, or as something distinctly different?
To answer your original point about getting out of EA bubbles, the book Impact by Sir Ronald Cohen is a nice, relatively recent survey of Social Impact and is chock full of examples. All the areas he covers are where EA could find likeminded people with useful expertise (along the lines of what DavidNash mentioned).