Hi Nick, what else did you find compelling from the text? I personally didn't think boycotting chatGPT would have the potential to get the same public appeal as big historical successes, but maybe I'm just too cynical. 

This seems like a good time to remind everyone of @JamesÖz 🔸classic post why you can justify almost anything using historical social movements. This seems especially true when a single anecdote is referenced. Maybe Bregman has more evidence behind this claim but he certainly hasn't shared it in this post. 

Despite being the one who wrote the original post I did think in writing it that trying to figure out if one cause is being underfunded compared another cause is a really difficult question to answer. Part of my motivation to write this was to see if anyone had any insights as to whether my claims were right or not.

I agree that EA funds shouldn't be distributed democratically, nor that "EA leaders" or survey participants are necessarily the right allocators. Do you think that the current resource allocation is being made by experts with "judgment, track record, and depth of thinking about cause prioritization"? 

If I had to guess, I would say it is a combination of this, but also EA UHNW donor preferences, a cause's ability to attract funding from other sources, etc. 

Ideally we would survey some of the best grantmaking experts on cause prio, but I still found the EA survey and MCF survey to be a useful proxy, albeit flawed.

Ohh I like this. I think this articulates the pheomenon well. Thanks. 

I agree re the career problem. I wonder how much additional money would fix the problem vs other issues like the cultures of the two movements/ecosystems, status of working in the spaces, etc.

Glad to hear. Welcome to the community Karen!

One take is that what is happening is that the movement cares more about animal welfare as a cause area over time, but that the care and concern for AI safety/x-risk reduction has increased even more, and so people are shifting their limited time and resources towards those cause areas. This leads to the dynamic of the movement wanting animal advocacy efforts to win, but not being the ones to dedicate their donations or career to the effort. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tyler. I tend to think that 2 & 3 tends to account for funding discrepancies. 

I do think at the same time there might be a discrepancy in ideal and actual allocation of talent, with so many EAs focused on working in AI safety/x-risk reduction. To be clear I think these are incredibly important and think every, but that maybe a few EAs who are on the fence should work in animal advocacy.

I definitely think this should happen too, but reducing uncertainty about cause prio beyond what has already been done to date is a much much bigger and harder ask than 'share your best guess of how you would allocate a billion dollars'.