EA is too meta

[paul-crowe]

Example: EA risks falling into a meta trap

Summary: Too much effort spent on the 'effective' part, not enough on the 'altruism'.

Date: 25th Aug 2015

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses:

• "cause prioritisation" has wavered a bit in terms of how prioritised it is as a cause, while "meta" has been on the rise (29th Jul 2021)
• Predicted as a collapse scenario (note that this post won a prize and was never mentioned again) (27th Aug 2019)
• Longtermists need to actually DO something at some point (20th Apr 2022)
• 2017 survey: "Meta organisations were the third most popular cause area" (1st Sep 2017)
• 2018 survey: 6% said "meta" should be top priority (18th Jan 2019)
• 2019 survey- 5% said "meta" should be top priority (2nd Jan 2020)
• 2020 survey: 3% said "meta" should be top priority (29th Jul 2021)

[paul-crowe]

Example: Too focused on growth while ignoring object level problem

Summary: It's the Club Club objection. People are focusing on growing EA instead of working on solving EA problems because while the latter is hard, the former is both easy and make you feel productive.

Date: 21st Mar 2021

Status:

Lag to response:

Current canonical instance:

Prior status of critic:

Fundamental criticism:

Public responses: Too much community building (28th Jun 2022) Instead of building the community for the sake of it, built with a mind towards what EA needs (29th Jun 2022)