Hey folks,
As an effective altruist-minded founder, I've been working to find ways to bring EA values and measures into a space that is relatively behind in terms of scientific rigor: Peacebuilding. I recently wrote an op-ed outline the scope, neglectedness, and potential for innovation in the field, which you can find on the World Economic Forum website. That's a great primer for the discussion, which I'll avoid regurgitating here.
However, I am not convinced it is enough. I believe a deeper analysis of the problem and solution spaces is deeply needed, and I'd love to bring together some of your great analytical minds to examine the space from an explicitly EA perspective. This includes sizing up the problem in contrast to other issues, and evaluating the potential for impact based on approaches and various parameters. We could develop some white papers to share here and beyond.
If this interests you, please feel free to comment below or get in touch with me directly.
Here's a snapshot of the size of the issue, along with its neglectedness, in economic terms:
Why should this be considered tractable? Why should we think your approach is specifically tractable?
I find this visualization to be likely deceptive. The 'cost of violence' most often includes a many types of violence (domestic, community, crime, etc.) that are unaddressed by 'peacekeeping' interventions. Is my read, that your visualization is comparing a huge category with a specific part of its spend, correct?
Why should we focus on peacekeeping, the effect of which is very difficult to measure, instead of scaling or improving interventions on community violence, some of which already show significant promise in cost-effectiveness?
Hi Josh, thank you for your thoughtful questions! Here's my answers.
We can ignore the proposed process from my article in terms of tractibility (there's a conversation to be had there, but not core to this conversation), but there is compelling evidence that on the inter-personal level, you can use social nudges to change human behaviors (probabilistically). Danial Kahneman, Eldar Shafir, etc, how shown this in a few ways. Contact Theory suggest this to be the case too for violence, but we don't have a measured way to turn the concept into probabiliti