My sense is that there is a lot of impact to be made from just convincing US foundations to donate to charities abroad, which is probably more tractable than selling EA as an entire concept, and is still very compatible with TBP.
(In my opinion they are basically correct about TBP and EA being incompatible!)
Interesting post!
I’m a big fan of both progress studies and effective altruism / international development.
I think we may disagree on the size of the trade-offs when it comes to drawing philanthropic funding to these areas. I think there is heavy overlap between the intellectual circles of progress studies and effective altruism, so most of the investment going into one approach is trading off directly against investment in the other approach.
I also think how progress studies aims to achieve American economic growth is very important. Some approaches to growth, eg—re-industrialisation in the West, are more likely to trade-off against growth in LMICs. Other approaches, like focusing on increasing innovation, liberalising immigration and deregulating housing are less likely to do this (and the first-two have obvious and direct spillover benefits to LMICs).
There’s also the moral question around equality. If you value the distribution of utility (eg—you are prioritarian or something similar), you may think that the international development approach is more desirable because it may be more effective at reducing inequality.
It’s also worth thinking about political considerations—I think there is a non-trivial risk that a Trump government turns way from internationalism, and the potential spillover benefits of American growth via larger aid budgets become much smaller. I don’t think there are similar obvious risks with the international development approach. This may be a case for ensuring that the progress studies movement works to maintain cross-partisan consensus on foreign aid, alongside cross-partisan work on science policy, immigration, etc.
(Btw, I love how short, clear and concise your post is!)
Why in the policy world, given the current size of the movement, EAs should narrowly focus on foreign policy and science policy
Just fund community health workers—the case for why EA underestimates the cost-effectiveness
A vision for wild animal welfare—lab-grown meat, population control via contraceptives—what successful wild animal welfare interventions could look like, hundreds of years from now
Urgency in global health—In defence of short-term, band-aid fixes
Against deference in EA, and problems with inteprreting consensus in fields where deference is common
Why evidence-based giving should be a mass movement (and decouple from EA somewhat)
The case for supporting Gulf-style immigration policy in the West
Why facial recognition tech is an underrated problem
Tips for effective policy work
How to best engage with criticisms of EA, from the perspective of helping the community achieve the goal of doing the most good
Reconciling evidence-based development, foreign aid and international health with decolonisation / local knowledge
Why impartiality in conseuqentialist moral systems does not contradict virtue ethics or deontology, and in fact logically follows from both the virtue of selflessness and the principle of treating people equally
I think you’re asking a general question of whether we should politicise or depoliticise issues we care about. I pretty much always think the answer is depoliticise, because very crudely, I expect the right and left to be in power about 50% of the time in 50% of the places, so if we want the laws we want everywhere, we should depoliticise things we care about.
There is high-quality evidence supporting some of these orgs, but for the think-tank types, giving to them would be part of a more hits-based giving approach.
Also, I think many people would say that economic development in LMICs in particular is neglected and underfunded. Stefan Dercon’s work (ex-chief economist of Britain’s aid agency and development economics professor) challenged my previous assumption that LMIC governments are already optimising for broad-based economic growth.
This can still be a counterfactual decrease in meat sales right?
Great question which merits more discussion. I’m sure there is an interesting argument to be made about how we should settle for “good enough” if it helps us avoid extinction risks.
Your first comment claims that the 120 fold difference in population makes Israel’s enemies more influential than its allies at the UN (which I disagree with), which is different to claiming that the disproportionate populations have “some” effect over the UN (which I agree with).
Religions are not represented at the UN, countries are, and the major forces influencing the UN in favour of Israel are the US and the UK, which are mostly not made up of Jews, and the main force influencing the UN against Israel is China, which is largely not made up of Muslims.
In other words, power struggles at the UN on Israel-Palestine are not really a power struggle between Jews and Muslims, and like lots of other geopolitics things are more of a power struggle between the USA and China.
This is great, thank you for doing this hard work!
A couple of disagreements:
“I think it’s important for many to realise the importance of other players and funding sources in the landscape. This could mean many more funding opportunities EAs are systematically neglecting.”
My view is that many players and funding sources means that fewer important funding opportunities will be missed.
“I was struck by how little philanthropy has been directed towards tech development for biosecurity, mitigating GCBRs, and policy advocacy for a range of topics from regulating dual-use research of concern (DURC) to mitigating risks from bioweapons.”
I 100% agree regarding policy advocacy, but I disagree regarding tech development and mitigating GCBRs for reasons you do mention—that many different interventions, including vaccine R&D and broad public health systems strengthening in LMICs, contribute to mitigating GCBRs.