I am a researcher at Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigations Team. I also do work for Oxford’s Global Priorities Institute. Previously I was a research analyst at the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. I took the role after completing the MPhil in Economics at Oxford University. Before that, I studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
Find out more about me here.
Thanks for your comment Richard, I think the discussion is better for it. I agree with your clarification that there are key differences that distinguish EA from more traditional attitudes and that defending cause incommensurability and personal taste are two relevant dimensions.
Like you, it does seem to us that in the early days of EA, many people doing prioritisation of GHD interventions went beyond traditional intervention clusters (e.g. education) and did some cross-cause prioritisation (identifying the best interventions simpliciter).
That said, the times feel different now and we think that, increasingly, people are doing within-cause prioritisation by only trying to identify the best interventions within a given area without it being clearly ‘done in service of the ultimate goal of “cross-cause prioritization”’ (e.g. because they are working for an institution or project with funds dedicated exclusively to be allocated within a certain cause).