Recently I have talked to a few people about the importance of publicly discussing cause selection, and we agreed that we generally don't do it enough. So I've decided to host September's EA blogging carnival with the topic "My Cause Selection." Write a post (on the EA forum or on your own blog) explaining which cause you currently believe is best and why. If you're confused about which is best (I know I am), explain the strengths and weaknesses of the causes you think might be the best. If you want, discuss your thinking on other causes that you think are promising, or that are popular in EA but you don't think are promising. You should write in sufficient detail that readers have a good understanding of why you support the cause(s) you do.
If you post on the EA forum, please use the title "My Cause Selection: <Your name or username>", and tag your post with "my-cause-selection". If you post outside the EA forum, please write a comment here with a link to your post.
You can structure your post however you like, but if you want an idea of what you could do, this is how I'm structuring mine. I explain what I value and some general considerations, and then list out every major cause area I think is plausibly the best (which includes malaria nets, deworming, animal advocacy, research on animal advocacy, AI safety, and a few others). I explain what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of each cause area and then weigh them against each other.
It's not September yet, but this is a big topic, so we could use the extra couple of weeks. Feel free to publish before September starts. Happy blogging!
Note to others: just because Tom and Peter plan to write a defense of prioritizing global poverty doesn't mean you don't need to, can't, or shouldn't write your own defense of the same cause if it's the one you favor as well. More publishing of cause selection rationale can only lead to a more robust defense of that cause! Even if you inadvertently make some of the same points Tom and Peter do, you'll probably phrase or put them differently, and having different angles on the same premise can help a wider diversity intuit its validity better.