EA is not prioritising causes well

[paul-crowe]

Example: RCT development will never scale

Summary: "A top priority for effective altruists should be to assess the best way to increase human welfare outside of the constraints of randomista development, i.e. allowing intervention that have not or cannot be tested by RCTs"

Date: 1/16/2020

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental Criticism:

Public responses:

• Givewell have been failing to go beyond RCTs since 2017 (16th Aug 2020)

• GiveWell mentioned in september 2020 that they hadn't looked into the ONE Campaign or the Borgen Project, but may in the future (October 21, 2020)

• Considered and rejected charter cities in 2021 (12th Jun 2021)

• 07/07/2021: emailed the ONE campaign and the Borgen Project for updates- add them here <----- (10/10/2021: No response.)

[paul-crowe]

GRIPE TEMPLATE

Example:

Summary:

Date:

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

[paul-crowe]

Example: EA needs to do more cause prioritisation work

Summary: "Many effective altruists donate to GiveWell’s top charities. All three of these charities work in global health. Is that because GiveWell knows that global health is the highest-leverage cause? No. It’s because it was the only one with enough data to say anything very useful about." Global health is supported because that's the only area with any real data to support it being high-impact.

Date: 12/2/2013

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• Meta-cause of comparing and evaluating causes (11th Aug 2022)
• EA has obviously branched out a lot since 2013, see "Worldview diversification seems underexplored" for examples.

[paul-crowe]

Example: OpenPhil blew $200m on criminal justice

Public responses:

• Comment from Gertler in original post (16th June 2022)
• Response to original post (2nd Sep 2022)

[paul-crowe]

Example: Needs more dedicated effort looking for new causes and ideas

Summary: "EA seems to have picked all the low-hanging fruit and doesn't know what to do with itself now."

Date: 7/2/2017

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• Giving away money if you can show them a new cause (May 25, 2022)
• Results of above (9th Sep 2022)
• Saying the same thing about OpenPhil, but was ignored (9th Jul 2022)
• Meta-cause of comparing and evaluating causes (11th Aug 2022)
• See also "Worldview diversification seems underexplored"

[paul-crowe]

Example: Worldview diversification seems underexplored

Summary: EA is too limited to the same old causes of animals, AI and world poverty.

Date: 1/26/2018

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• Cause X (Jan 26, 2022)
• The value of diversifying (Nov 2, 2016)
• Big list of cause candidates (25th Dec 2020)
• Arguing against limiting EA to a handful of 'key' causes (17th Jul 2021)
• Interest in cause areas over time (10th Apr 2022)
• Support for keeping EA broad (20th May 2022)
• Literally giving away money if you can show them a new cause (May 25, 2022)
• More drawing attention to less-discussed causes (31st May 2022)
• Red-teaming post which recommends expanding worldview (15th Jul 2022)
• Drawing attention to less-discussed causes
• Outlining how EA has changed its focus since 2011 (10th Aug 2022)