“In a time of rapid change, we should re-examine system-level interventions” by jackva

Watching what is happening in the world -- with lots of renegotiation of institutional norms within Western democracies and a parallel fracturing of the post-WW2 institutional order -- I do think we, as a community, should more seriously question our priors on the relative value of surgical/targeted and broad system-level interventions.

Speaking somewhat roughly, with EA as a movement coming of age in an era where democratic institutions and the rule-based international order were not fundamentally questioned, it seems easy to underestimate how much the world is currently changing and how much riskier a world of stronger institutional and democratic backsliding and weakened international norms might be.

Of course, working on these issues might be intractable and possibly there's nothing highly effective for EAs to do on the margin given much attention to these issues from society at large. So, I am not here to confidently state [...]

---

First published:
March 9th, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MWomDeHBi2D33PzRx/in-a-time-of-rapid-change-we-should-re-examine-system-level

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.