I’d add any low hanging fruit in climate advocacy to this list. The costs of carbon emissions in rich countries are disproportionately borne by poorer countries.
Also policies which shift R&D investment towards infectious diseases, where spillovers to poorer countries are likely to be larger.
Vasco has come to a certain conclusion on what the best action is, given a potential trade-off between the impact of global health initiatives and animal welfare.
I think it is reasonable to disagree but I think it is bad for the norms of the forum and unnecessarily combative for us to describe moral views we disagree with as “morally repugnant”. I think this is particularly unfair if we do not elaborate on why we either:
a) think this trade-off does not exist, or is very small.
or
b) disagree.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
In my view, discussing difficult, morally uncomfortable trade-offs between prioritising different, important causes is a key role of the EA forum—whether within cause areas (should we let children die of cancer to prioritise tackling malaria / should we let cows be abused to prioritise reducing battery cage farming of hens), or across cause areas. We should discuss these questions openly rather than avoiding them to help us make better moral decisions.
I think it would also be bad if we stopped discussing these questions openly for fear of criticism from reporters—this would bias EA towards preserving the world’s moral status quo enforced by the media.
Also, traditionally, criticism of “ends justifies the means” reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), eg—prioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa. With a more expansive use of the term, critics could reject GiveWell style charity comparison as “ends justifies the means reasoning” which argues one should let some children die of tetanus to save other children from malaria.
Is there reason to believe that Nigeria’s population size is more likely to be exaggerated than other LMICs? (Since I imagine the incentives to exaggerate, and weak safeguards against this, exist in many other contexts too)
RCT-informed interventions focused on the poorest will not increase demand for factory farmed meat—only broad based economic growth will do this. So one solution is to focus on micro interventions targeted at the extreme poor.
Another solution is to support the alternative proteins sector in LMICs, which could enable some degree of “leapfrogging” factory farmed meat and reduce carbon emissions.
In terms of changes in status and what people are doing:
pivot from AI safety technical research to AI governance policy work
pivot from broader biosecurity to intersection of AI and bio
adoption of progress studies ideas / adoption of metascience and innovation policy as a priority cause area
taking broad-based economic growth seriously rather than a sole focus on randomista development
greater general engagement with politics
further reduction in focus on effective giving, increased focus on career impact
I don’t think the Global Health and Animal Welfare cause areas have changed too much, but probably get a smaller proportion of attention.
Yep, I think credibility and credentials in policy advocacy are very important, especially when you need to build networks sort of from scratch. Perhaps AIM can pay attention to this aspect going forward when founding more policy oriented charities?
I think this is a really important point. My “public sphere” of EA has very little longtermism just because of who I happen to follow / what I happen to read.
Unrelated to this post, but FYI I think some of the downvotes you’ve received on other posts are because generic productivity advice at least usually isn’t a category of post which this forum is intended for. (Also, most EAs are the types of people who are probably familiar with most e genetic productivity tips already).
Exceptions may be if it is a long list, or something that has been extremely novel or life-changing for you.
Your productivity tips may be better off being posted as Shortform instead of as Posts.
I think there is a very strong right-wing case to be made for alt proteins, i.e, “This is an example of how private businesses can solve climate change via capitalism and innovation”, and alt protein advocates should be making this case inside right wing political parties.
Is the impact of falling birth rates expected to be so large that we won’t be able to sustain innovation through other means (eg—directing far more resources towards innovation, optimising the innovation process etc)?
Even more reason to think that transitioning to socialism is not tractable—some people will fight against it like hell!
“Thinking in terms of group rather than individual agency makes transition from capitalism to socialism appear more tractable.”
I disagree. There is a long history of large, organised, and well-funded groups failing to engineer transitions to socialism within individual countries, let alone a global transition to socialism.
I’d also like to add “backlash effects” to this, and specifically effects where advocacy for AI Safety policy ideas which are far outside the Overton Window have the inadvertent effect of mobilising coalitions who are already opposed to AI Safety policies.
I think Yudkowsky’s public discussion of nuking data centres has “poisoned the well” and had backlash effects.
I think this is really worrying, and I think it’s also surprising how little work I’ve seen trying to explain it.
One view I’ve come across is that the public are so traumatised from Covid that they want to avoid thinking about pandemics.
FWIW I think this kind of post is extremely valuable. I may not see him as very EA-aligned but identifying very rich people who might be a bit EA-aligned is very good because the movement could seek to engage with them more and potentially get funding for some impactful stuff.
“Most charities seem much less effective than the most effective for-profit organizations, and most of the good in the world seems achieved by for-profit companies.”
I disagree but even I did agree, per dollar of investment, I think the best charities far outpeform the best for-profit companies in terms of social impact, and we can do a reasonable job of identifying the best charities, such that donating a lot of money to these charities should be seen as a necessary component of being EA-aligned if you’re rich.
I don’t think the third question is a good faith question.
This is the context for how Wenar used the phrase: “And he’s accountable to the people there—in the way all of us are accountable to the real, flesh-and-blood humans we love.”″
I interpret this as “direct interaction with individuals you are helping ensures accountability, i.e, they have a mechanism to object to and stop what you are doing”. This contrasts with aid programs delivered by hierarchical organisations where locals cannot interact with decision makers, so cannot effectively oppose programs they do not want, eg—the deworming incident where parents were angry.
“If I accepted every claim in his piece, I’d come away with the belief that some EA charities are bad in a bunch of random ways, but believe nothing that imperils my core belief in the goodness of the effective altruism movement or, indeed, in the charities that Wenar critiques.”
I agree—but I think Wenar does a very good job of pointing out specific weaknesses. If he alternatively framed this piece as “how EA should improve” (which is how I mentally steelman every EA hit-piece that I read), it would be an excellent piece. Under his current framing of “EA bad”, I think it is a very unsuccessful piece.
I think these are his very good and perceptive criticisms:
Global health and development EA does not adequately account for side-effects, unintended consequences and perverse incentives caused by different interventions in its expected-value calculations, and does not adequately advertise these risks to potential donors. Weirdly, I don’t think I’ve come across this criticism of EA before despite it seeming very obvious. I think this might be because people are polarised between “aid bad” and “aid good”, leaving very few people saying “aid good overall but you should be transparent about downsides of interventions you are supporting”.
The use of quantitative impact estimates by EAs can mislead audiences into overestimating the quality of quantitative empirical evidence supporting these estimates.
Expected-value calculations rooted in probabilities derived from belief (as opposed to probabilities derived from empirical evidence) are prone to motivated reasoning and self-serving biases.
I’ve previously discussed weaknesses of expected-value calculations on the forum and have suggested some actionable tools to improve them.
I think Givewell should definitely clarify what they think the most likely negative side-effects and risks of the programs they recommend are, and how severe they think the side-effects are.
How does this differ to citizens assemblies?