Thanks for making this podcast feed! I have a few comments about what you said here:

 Like 80,000 Hours itself, the selection leans towards a focus on longtermism, though other perspectives are covered as well. The most common objection to our selection is that we didn’t include dedicated episodes on animal welfare or global development.

We did seriously consider including episodes with Lewis Bollard and Rachel Glennester, but i) we decided to focus on our overall worldview and way of thinking rather than specific cause areas (we also didn’t include a dedicated episode on biosecurity, one of our 'top problems'), and ii) both are covered in the first episode with Holden Karnofsky, and we prominently refer people to the Bollard and Glennerster interviews in our 'episode 0', as well as the outro to Holden's episode.

I think if you are going to call this feed "Effective Altruism: An Introduction", it doesn't make sense to skew the selection towards longtermism so heavily. Maybe you should have phrased the feed as "An Introduction to Effective Altruism & Longtermism" given the current list of episodes. 

In particular, I think it would be better if the Lewis Bollard episode was added, and one on Global Health & Dev't, such as either the episode with Rachel Glennerster or James Snowden (which I liked). 

If 80K wanted to limit the feed to 10 episodes, then that means 2 episodes would have to be taken out. As much as I like the episode with David Denkenberger, I don't think learning about ALLFED is "core" to EA, so that's one that I would have taken out. A 2nd episode to take out is a harder choice, but I would pick between taking one out among the episodes with Will MacAskill, Paul Christiano, or Hilary Greaves. I guess I would pick the one with Will, since I didn't get much value from that episode, and I'm unsure if others would.

Alternatively, an easier solution is to expand the number of episodes in the feed to 12. 12 isn't that much farther from 10.

I think it is important to include an episode on animal welfare and global health and development because

1. The EA movement does important work in these two causes
2. Many EAs still care about or work on these two causes, and would likely want more people to continue entering them
3. People who get pointed to this feed and don't get interested in longtermism (or aren't a fit for careers in it) might think that the EA movement is not for them, even when it could be, if they just learned more about animal welfare or global health and development.

As a broader point, when we introduce or talk about EA, especially with large reach (like 80K's reach), I think it's important to convey that the EA movement works on a variety of causes and worldviews. 

Even from a longtermist perspective, I think the EA community is better the "broader" it is and the more it also includes work on other "non-longtermist" causes, such as global health and development and animal welfare. This way, the community can be bigger, and it's probably easier to influence things for the long-term better the bigger the community is. For example, more people would be in government or in influential roles.

These are just my thoughts. I'm open to hearing others' thoughts too!

Hey commenters — so as we mentioned we've been discussing internally what other changes we should make to address the concerns raised in the comments here, beyond creating the 'ten problem areas' feed.

We think the best change to make is to record a new episode with someone who is in favour of interventions that are 'higher-evidence', or that have more immediate benefits, and then insert that into the introduction series.

Our current interviews about e.g. animals or global development don't make the case in favour of 'short-termist' approaches because the guests themselves aren't focused on that level of problem prioritisation. That makes them an odd fit for the high-level nature of this series.

An episode focused on higher-evidence approaches has been on the (dismayingly long) list of topics we should cover for a while, but we can expedite it. We've got a shortlist of candidate guests to make this episode but would be very interested in getting nominations and votes from folks here to inform our choice.

(It's slightly hard to say when we'll be able to make this switch because we won't be sure whether an interview will fit the bill until we've recorded it, but we can make it a priority for the next few months.)

Thanks so much,

— Rob and Keiran

TL;DR. I'm very substantially in agreement with Brian's comment. I expand on those concerns, put them in stronger terms, then make a further point about how I'd like 80k to have more of a 'public service broadcasting' role. Because this is quite long, I thought it was better to have it as a new comment.

It strikes me as obviously inappropriate to describe the podcast series as "effective altruism: an introduction" when it focuses almost exclusively on a specific worldview - longtermism. The fact this objection is acknowledged, and that a "10 problems areas" series is also planned, doesn't address it. In addition, and relatedly, it seems mistaken to produce and distribute such a narrow introduction to EA in the first place.

The point of EA is to work out how to do the most good, then do it. There are three target groups one might try to benefit - (1) (far) future lives, (2) near-term humans, (3) (near-term) animals. Given this, one cannot, in good faith, call something an 'introduction' when it focuses almost exclusively on object-level attempts to benefit just one group. At the very least, this does not seem to be in good faith when there is a substantial fraction of the EA community, and people who try to live by EA principles, who do prioritise each of three.

For people inside effective altruism who do not share 80k's worldview, stating that this is an introduction runs the serious risk of conveying to those people that they are not "real EAs", they are not welcome in the EA community, and their sincere and thoughtful labours and perspectives are unimportant. It does not seem adequately inclusive, welcoming, open-minded, and considerate - values EAs tend to endorse.

For people outside EA who are being introduced to the ideas for the first time, it genuinely fails to introduce them to the relevant possibilities of how they might do the most good, leaving them with a misleading impression of what EA is or can be. It would have been trivially easy to include the Bollard and Glennister interviews - or something else to represent those who focus on animals or humans in the near-term – and so indicate that those are credible altruistic paths and enthuse those who might take them.

By analogy, if someone taught an "introduction to political ideologies" course which glossed over conservatism and liberalism to focus primarily on (the merits of) socialism, you would assume they were either incompetent or pushing an agenda. Either way, if you hoped that they would cover all the material and do so in an even-handed manner, you would be disappointed.

Given this podcast series is not an introduction to effective altruism, it should not be called "effective altruism: an introduction". More apt might be “effective longtermism: an introduction” or “80k’s opinionated introduction to effective altruism” or “effective altruism: 80k’s perspective”. In all cases, there should be more generous signposting of what the other points of view are and where they could be found.

A good introduction to EA would, at the very least, include a wide range of steel-manned positions about how to do the most good that are held by sincere, thoughtful, individuals aspiring to do the most good. I struggle to see why someone would produce such a narrow introduction unless they thought those holding alternative views were errant and irrelevant fools.

I can imagine someone defending 80k by saying that this is their introduction to effective altruism and there’s nothing to stop someone else writing their own and sharing it (note RobBesinger does this below).

While this is technically true, I do not find it compelling for the following reason. In a cooperative altruistic community, you want to have a division, rather than a duplication, of labour, where people specialise in different tasks. 80k has become, in practice, the primary source of introductory materials to EA: it is the single biggest channel by which people are introduced to effective altruism, with 17% of EA survey respondents saying they first heard about EA through it; it produces much of the introductory content individuals read or listen to. 80k may not have a monopoly on telling people about EA, but it is something like the ‘market leader’.

The way I see it, given 80k’s dominant position, they should fulfil something like a public service broadcasting role for EA, where they strive to be impartial, inclusive, and informative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting).

Why? Because they are much better placed to do it than anyone else! In terms any 80k reader will be familiar with, 80k should do this because it is their comparative advantage and they are not easily replaced. Their move to focusing on longtermism has left a gap. A new organisation, Probably Good, has recently stepped into this gap to provide more cause neutral careers advice but I see it as cause for regret that this had to happen.

While I think it would be a good idea if 80k had more of a public service broadcasting model, I don't expect this to happen, seeing as they've consciously moved away from it. It does, however, seem feasible for 80k to be a bit more inclusive - in this case, one very easy thing would be to expand the list from 10 to 12 items so concerns for animals and near-term humans feature. It would be a huge help to non-longtermist EAs that 80ks talks about them a bit (more), and it would be a small additional cost to 80k.

Hey Brian, Ula, and other commenters,

Thanks again for all the feedback! To what extent each piece of content closely associated with EA should aim to be 'representative' is a vexed issue that folks are going to continue to have different views on, and we can't produce something that's ideal to everyone simultaneously.

Fortunately in this case I think there's a change we can make that will be an improvement from everyone's perspective.

We had planned to later make another collection that would showcase a wider variety of things that EAs are up to. Given your worries combined with the broader enthusiasm for the underlying concept, it seems like we should just do that as soon as it's practical for Keiran and me to put it together.

That feed would be called something like 'Effective Altruism: Ten Problem Areas' and feature Bollard and Glennerster, and other guests on topics like journalism, climate change, pandemics, earning to give, and a few others which we'll think about.

We'll promote it similarly — and cross-promote between the two collections — so anyone who wants to learn about those problem areas will end up doing so.

(Independently we also realised that we should sub Ajeya's episode into 'An Introduction'. That only didn't happen the first time around because we settled on this list of ten in 2020 before Ajeya's episode existed. Ajeya's interview will be more neutral about longtermism than what it replaces.)

Speaking personally as Rob (because I know other people at 80,000 Hours have different perspectives), I favour a model where there are a range of varied introductory materials, some of which lean towards a focus on poverty, some towards animals, some towards longtermism, some with other angles, and still others that aims to be representative.

In any case, after this reshuffle we'll have two feeds for you — one that leans into the way we think about things at 80,000 Hours, and another that shows off the variety of causes prioritised by EAs.

Folks can then choose whichever one they would rather share, or listen to themselves. (And fingers crossed many people will opt to listen to both!)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts,

— Rob and Keiran