What do you think the effective altruism movement sucks at?

By Evan_Gaensbauer @ 2023-01-30T06:38 (+9)

Effective altruism obviously does a lot of good for the world in X, Y, Z, ways, whatever. There is a lot of discourse both from outside and from within about how it needs to change in X, Y, Z, philosophical ways. I want to know in a more simple, matter-of-fact way: what do you think EA just sucks at, like, is just really, really super bad at doing, and needs to get better at?

Chris Leong @ 2023-01-31T13:31 (+18)

Volunteering. Effective Altruism doesn't have as strong a culture of volunteering as other community groups. When we had access to massive amounts of funding we were able to substitute paying people for volunteering, but I think we're going to have to address this situation in the new funding environment.

Jack_S @ 2023-01-30T09:35 (+15)

I'd argue that EA is quite bad at something like: "Engaging a broad group of relevant stakeholders for increased impact". So getting loads of non-EA people on your side, and finding ways to work together with multiple, potentially misaligned orgs, governments and individuals.

Don't want to overstate this- some EA orgs do this well. Charity Entrepreneurship include stakeholder engagement in their program, for example. But it seems neglected in the EA space more generally.