✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments — EA Forum

forum.effectivealtruism.org · 15,677 words · saved by 1 readers

In this article, I argue most of the interesting cross-cause prioritization decisions and conclusions rest on philosophical evidence that isn’t robust enough to justify high degrees of certainty that any given intervention (or class of cause interventions) is “best” above all others. I hold this to be true generally because of the reliance of such cross-cause prioritization judgments on relatively weak philosophical evidence. In particular, the case for high confidence in conclusions on which interventions are all things considered best seems to rely on particular approaches to handling normative uncertainty. The evidence for these approaches is weak and different approaches can produce radically different recommendations, which suggest that cross-cause prioritization intervention rankings or conclusions are fundamentally fragile and that high confidence in any single approach is unwarranted. I think the reliance of cross-cause prioritization conclusions on philosophical evidence that

We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments — EA Forum Hide table of contents We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments by Rethink Priorities , Marcus_A_Davis Jul 3 2025 30 min read 7 179 Cause prioritization Philosophy Building effective altruism Moral uncertainty Rethink Priorities Announcements and updates Criticism of effective altruist causes Normative ethics Organization updates Research Frontpage We should be more uncertain about cause prioritization based on philosophical arguments Summary Cause P

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading