Over the last year, I've written six posts about mistakes in the effective altruism community. I thought it would be helpful to collect them all here:
- Focus more on talent gaps, less on funding gaps
- Don't assume diminishing returns for small charities
- We need to use different rules of thumb to coordinate with the community
- Safe credentials are not always the best way to get career capital
- Working at effective altruist organisations is good for career capital
- Lots of people are analysing replaceability incorrectly
- Why effective altruism is totally wrong
- Probably more people should be aiming to do direct work. In particular, at startups and in less explored cause areas.
- Probably fewer people should be aiming to earn to give.
- When donating, we should be doing more to quickly fund startups.
Of course - the argument is more that if these are considerations that people are not already taking into account, and they push against etg, then probably the balance should move away from etg.
If they had already taken these considerations into account, then no adjustment needed. Or if these considerations turn out to be unimportant compared to others, then no adjustment needed. Or if people were incorrectly unfair on etg before, these considerations would just push them to the correct level.