EA should taboo "EA should"

By Lizka @ 2022-03-29T09:07 (+210)

Tl;dr: 

In Forum posts and in conversations, you’ll hear (and find yourself saying) that “EA should” do something. But “EA” is not an agent, and it’s hard for “EA” to do anything. I think we should^[1] try to notice these moments and explicitly think through who the subject of that sentence could be. 

Disclaimers: 

1. Written quickly. I might have missed important considerations — feel free to point them out, and I may correct the post or add them in!
2. I am not claiming that all “EA should” posts and statements in the past have been unhelpful. I just think that many of them would be (even) more helpful if they were reworded.
3. I’m not including specific instances of the issue because I don’t want to single anyone out. My guess is that most of us have said something like this, as I certainly have!

Why “EA should” is an unhelpful phrasing

1. “EA should” is often vague.
   1. Statements like this can be interpreted in too many ways, which makes them less helpful than they could be.
   2. For instance, “EA should do more to help with COVID” could mean anything from “the EA movement has underestimated the severity of COVID” to “it is your duty as an EA to help with COVID” (and beyond).
   3. Vagueness also makes you much harder to argue with, and I believe that being easy to argue with is a virtue.
2. Responsibility gets diffused. 
   1. Nobody naturally thinks “oh, you’re telling me that I should do this,” and so fewer people take ownership of the issue.
   2. Suppose that you’ve discovered a very significant gap in EA work. If you write a post like “EA should do more to help with COVID,” you might mean, “EA funders should fund vaccine distribution” or maybe “someone with operations skills should improve vaccine distribution systems.” With these rewordings, grantmakers or people with ops skills might sit up and notice that this post or message is for them.
   3. (It’s almost a passive formulation.)
   4. Also:
3. You are part of EA.
   1. This might not apply in all situations, but—  if you think that, say, 80,000 Hours should have a problem profile for a problem that they’ve neglected to list, you might just want to write a version of the problem profile and publish it. Or, if you think someone should start a PA Agency, you could try to directly make that happen.
   2. (Related EA Forum tag.)
4. Specifying the statement could help you check that it’s true or identify a more specific bottleneck.
   1. Suppose you find yourself saying, “EA should rely more on personal assistants.” Then you think to yourself, “ok, I guess I’m saying EA grantmakers should be willing to fund you for PAs.” So you go check, and see that apparently, grantmakers are funding PAs. So maybe you think to yourself, “But there are still lots of EAs without personal assistants who should probably still have some. Maybe 80K should recommend that people go into that as a career path!” And you check, and see that that, too has happened. I don’t know what the real bottleneck here is, or if it’s even a problem, but it’s possible that at this point you conclude that either there are serious coordination issues (in which case maybe you’ll write a post about how valuable it would be if someone could coordinate a personal assistant service for EAs) or that there’s just not that much demand for one reason or another.

Types of “EA should” moments and how we can turn them into something more useful (examples)

Below are some example “EA should” statements and their translations (rephrasing the statements without using “EA should”), sorted by the types of meanings they would have.

1. Someone in the EA community should do a specific thing
   1. “EA should have a PA agency!”
      1. Might become “Someone (maybe you!) should start an EA PA agency!”
   2. “EA should fund XYZ”
      1. Might turn into “the Long-Term Future Fund should fund XYZ” (or “small donors should donate to XYZ, because of reasons”).
2. More people in the EA community should do a specific thing (or, “you, generic reader, should do a specific thing”)
   1. “EA should take comparative advantage seriously and outsource more labor”
      1. Might become “more EAs should outsource more of their labor” or maybe “take comparative advantage seriously; hire a PA,” etc.
   2. “EA should taboo ‘EA should’”
      1. Could become “You, reader, should rephrase ‘EA should’ statements (and so should I).”
3. EA would be better if it had a certain property
   1. “EA should be more geographically diverse”
      1. Becomes “here’s why geographic diversity would help EA”
4. An issue is underemphasized by many people in the community, or by large EA institutions (or, alternatively, an opportunity is being ignored)
   1. “EA should pay more attention to XYZ”
      1. Becomes “the scope of the XYZ problem is worse than you might think” or “the problem profile of XYZ understates its importance/ neglectedness/ tractability,” etc.
   2. “EA should have more events”
      1. Might become “events are impactful and there is demand for a lot more…”
5. There are likely other types of “EA should” statements that I’m missing. Hopefully the comments will help flesh this out. :)

If you think “EA should” do something, it’s possible you should just start the thing

See this post. 

Consider reaching out to people directly if you find yourself wanting to say “EA should” do something

The Forum is great (or at least, I think so). But if you think that e.g. Open Philanthropy should fund some project that they aren’t funding, you could consider just emailing Open Philanthropy or the people running the project, and try to put that in motion.

Semi-related thoughts

“EA should do XYZ” is not the only troublesome phrasing that I often see or hear. 

Another frequent offender is “EAs should XYZ” or “people in EA should do XYZ.” I generally view this as less of an issue than the subject of this post — it’s often plausible that many EAs should consider doing something (e.g. of this use 1, 2, 3). I still think that qualifying such statements can be helpful, but generally this phrasing seems better than the “EA should” phrasing, since there’s often an implied “at least some” or a “more”; “more EAs should post summaries…” [Edit:] David points out that there's a post on a very related topic: The Folly of EAs Should. It makes a stronger case against "EAs should" statements.

Other people have written about things like overuse or misuse of jargon. 

Conclusion and thanks!

I’m going to try to be more specific than “EA should do XYZ” when I think about potential improvements, and I think you should try to be specific, too. 

The name for this post came from a conversation with Ollie Base, Kuhan Jeyapragasan, JP Addison, and Will Payne.

Please don’t use this post to shut down criticisms of approaches in EA. If someone has noticed a gap in the EA movement and has used the “EA should” phrasing, feel free to use this post to suggest a rephrasing, but please don’t use it to tell them “you and your post suck” or the like. Thanks! 

1. ^{^}

   :)