This might be less than perfectly charitable, but my subjective impression of the past year or so of EA work is something like: ~Neartermists focusing on global poverty: "Look at our efforts towards eradicating tuberculosis! While you're here, don't forget to take a look at what the Lead Exposure Elimination Project has been doing." ~Neartermists focusing on animal welfare: "Here are the specific policy changes we've advocated for that will vastly reduce the amount of suffering necessary for eggs. In terms of more speculative things, we think shrimp might have moral value? Huge implications if true." ~Longtermists focusing on existential risk: "so incidentally here's some racist emails of ours" "also we stole billions of dollars" "actually there were two separate theft incidents" "also we haven't actually done anything about existential risk. you can't hold that against us though because our plans that didn't work still had positive EV"
I recognize that there are many longtermists and existential-risk-oriented people who are making genuine efforts to solve important problems, and I don't want to discount that. But I also think that it's important to make sure that as effective altruists we are actually doing things that make the world better, and separately, it (uncharitably) feels like some longtermists are doing unethical things and then dragging the rest of the movement down with them.
This might be less than perfectly charitable, but my subjective impression of the past year or so of EA work is something like:
~Neartermists focusing on global poverty: "Look at our efforts towards eradicating tuberculosis! While you're here, don't forget to take a look at what the Lead Exposure Elimination Project has been doing."
~Neartermists focusing on animal welfare: "Here are the specific policy changes we've advocated for that will vastly reduce the amount of suffering necessary for eggs. In terms of more speculative things, we think shrimp might have moral value? Huge implications if true."
~Longtermists focusing on existential risk: "so incidentally here's some racist emails of ours"
"also we stole billions of dollars"
"actually there were two separate theft incidents"
"also we haven't actually done anything about existential risk. you can't hold that against us though because our plans that didn't work still had positive EV"
I recognize that there are many longtermists and existential-risk-oriented people who are making genuine efforts to solve important problems, and I don't want to discount that. But I also think that it's important to make sure that as effective altruists we are actually doing things that make the world better, and separately, it (uncharitably) feels like some longtermists are doing unethical things and then dragging the rest of the movement down with them.