I worry that some EAs consider certain interventions to be interventions with high expected value (high EV) because the intervention tackles a major EA cause area, rather than using major EA cause areas as a tool to identify high EV interventions. This strikes me as “thinking in the wrong direction”, and seems wrong because I think we should expect there to be many, many potential interventions in global health and development, reducing existential risk and improving animal welfare that have low expected value (low EV).
As a result of this error, I think some EAs overvalue some interventions in major EA cause areas, and undervalue some interventions that are not in major EA cause areas.
Because of one of the problems with the ITN framework (that we seem to switch between comparing problems and interventions when we move between importance, tractablity and neglectedness), I think it may help and be more accurate to view the major EA cause areas as areas where high EV interventions should be easier to find, and to view other cause areas as areas where high EV interventions should be harder to find.
Thinking in these terms would mean being more open to interventions that aren't in major EA cause areas.
The main examples where I think EAs may underestimate the EV of an intervention because it doesn't involve a major EA cause area are those where a particular form of activism / social movement / organisation could potentially be made more efficient / effective at a low cost. There are probably many such examples, with some having much greater EV and some having much smaller EV, but 2 examples I'd provide are:
a) starting a campaign for the USA to recognise Palestine (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qHhLrcDyhGQoPgsDg/should-someone-start-a-grassroots-campaign-for-usa-to)
b) identifying areas and ethnic groups internationally at greatest risk of genocide / ethnic violence and trying to redirect funding for western anti-racism movements towards these areas
From discussion in comments:
One general point I'd like to make is if a proposed intervention is "improving the efficiency of work on cause X", a large amount of resources already being poored into cause X should actually increase the EV of the proposed intervention (but obviously, this is assuming that the work on cause X is positive in expectation).
Hi! I was one of the downvoters on your earlier post about Israel/Palestine, but looking at the link again now, I see that nobody ever gave a good explanation for why the post got such a negative reception. I'm sorry that we gave such a hostile reaction without explaining. I can't speak for all EAs, but I suspect that some of the main reasons for hesitation might be:
I'm more positive about your second idea -- trying to identify the areas at greatest risk of conflict throughout the whole world and take actions to calm tensions before violence erupts. To some extent, this is the traditional work of diplomacy, international NGOs, etc, but these efforts could perhaps be better-targeted, and there are probably some unique angles here that EAs could look into. While international attention from diplomats and NGOs seems to parachute into regions right at the moment of crisis, I could imagine EAs trying to intervene earlier in the lead-up to conflicts, perhaps running low-cost radio programs trying to spread American-style values of tolerance and anti-racism. I could also imagine taking an even longer-term view, and trying to investigate ways to head off the root causes of political tension and violence on a timespan of decades or centuries. (Here is a somewhat similar project examining what gave rise to positive social movements like slavery abolitionism.)
Hi, thanks for providing those reasons, I can totally see the rationale!
One general point I'd like to make is if a proposed intervention is "improving the efficiency of work on cause X", a large amount of resources already being poured into cause X should actually increase the EV of the proposed intervention (but obviously, this is assuming that the work on cause X is positive in expectation, and as you say, some may not feel this way about some pro-Palestinian activism).
FWIW, this is pretty much the rationale behind the climate recs of FP, we recommend orgs we think can leverage the enormous societal resources poured into climate into the most productive uses within the space. In line with your reasoning we also think that events that increase overall allocation to climate might improve the cost-effectiveness of the climate recs (e.g. Biden's victory leading to higher returns).
I would also think (though don't know for certain) that OPP's recent bid to hire in global aid advocacy would draw on a similar theory of change, improving resource allocation in a field that is, comparatively speaking, not neglected.