I do independent research on EA topics. I write about whatever seems important, tractable, and interesting (to me). Lately, I mainly write about EA investing strategy, but my attention span is too short to pick just one topic.
I have a website: https://mdickens.me/ Most of the content on my website gets cross-posted to the EA Forum.
My favorite things that I’ve written: https://mdickens.me/favorite-posts/
I used to work as a software developer at Affirm.
Agreed with Mathias that the authors have a good grasp of what EA is and what causes EAs prioritize, and I appreciate how respectful the article is. Also like Mathias, I feel like I have some pretty fundamental worldview differences from the authors, so I’m not sure how well I can explain my disagreements. But I’ll try my best.
The article’s criticism seems to focus on the notion that EA ignores power dynamics and doesn’t address the root cause of problems. This is a pretty common criticism. I find it a bit confusing, and I don’t really understand what the authors consider to be root causes. For example, efforts to create cheap plant-based or cultured meat seem to address the root cause of factory farming because, if successful, they will eliminate the need to farm and kill sentient animals. AI safety work, if successful, could eliminate the root causes of all suffering and bring about an unimaginably good utopia. But the authors don’t seem to agree with me that these qualify as “addressing root causes”. I don’t understand how they distinguish between the EA work that I perceive as addressing root causes and the things they consider to be root causes. Critics like these authors seem to want EAs to do something that they’re not doing, but I don’t understand what it is.
It seems to me that if rich people come to terms with the origins of their wealth, they might conclude that they don’t “deserve” it any more than poor people in Kenya, and decide to distribute the money to them (via GiveDirectly) instead of spending it on themselves. Isn’t that ultimately the point? What outcome would the authors like to come out of this self-reflection, if not using their wealth to help disadvantaged people?
EAs spend more time than any other group I know talking about how they are among the richest people in the world, and they should use their wealth to help the less fortunate. But this doesn’t seem to count in the authors’ eyes.
This article argues that EAs fixate too much on “doing the most good”, and then appears to argue that they believe people should focus on addressing root causes/grassroots activism/power dynamics/etc. because it will do the most good—or maybe I’m misinterpreting the article because I’m seeing it from an EA lens. Sometimes it seems like the authors disagree with EAs about fundamental principles like maximizing good, and other times it seems like they just disagree about what does the most good. I wasn’t clear on that.
If they do agree in principle that we should do as much good as possible, then I would like to see a more rigorous justification for why the authors’ favored causes do more good than EA causes. I realize they’re not amenable to cost-effectiveness analysis than GiveWell’s top charities, but I would like to see at least some attempt at a justification.
For example, many EAs prioritize existential risk. There’s no rigorous cost-effective analysis of x-risk, but you can at least make an argument that it’s more cost-effective than other things:
Extinction is way worse than anything else.
Extinction is not that unlikely.
We can probably make significant progress on reducing extinction risk.
Bostrom basically makes this argument in Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.
My impression is there’s a worldview difference between people who think it’s possible in principle to make decisions under uncertainty, and people who think it’s not. I don’t have much to say in defense of the former position except to vaguely gesture in the direction of Phil Tetlock and the proven track record of some people’s ability to forecast uncertain outcomes.
More broadly, I would have an easier time understanding articles like these if they gave more concrete examples of what they consider to be the best things to work on, and why—something more specific than “grassroots activism”. For example (not saying I think the authors believe this, just that this is the general sort of thing I’d like to see):