I have the same feeling. It concerns me because I'm not sure how to differentiate between my subconscious conservatism and my instinctive backlash against cultishness and/or over-complication.
The only thing I can put my finger on is this: those organisations - and this article - present themselves as being above-average rational and insightful. At least that's my impression. Yet many of these suggestions seem to be speculation based on very small data, for example the point about them not having competitors. Many others could simply be rephrased as "take a holistic view", for example considering whether recruiting people to your company is good for the cause as a whole.
Don't get me wrong, there is some insight here, it's well-written, and some of these heuristics might turn out to be helpful to some people. I just think that the website it's published on is inflating its perceived significance.
The history of the movement started in the Oxford Uni philosophy department. I could be wrong but having read a couple of the early books, I think the focus started much more on the ideas of:
1: you have an equal moral obligation to do good for all humans as you do for humans around you, having one without the other is not really logically justifiable
2: some charities are orders of magnitude more effective than others.
I agree somewhat with your sentiment with regards to where they are now, with a lot of their focus on far-future risk avoidance. That stuff can't really fit, because it can't be reasoned about very precisely/scientifically. It's gone from a movement with emphasis on measurement and scientific methods to having a lot of emphasis on things that can't be measured. I think part of the problem is literally it started with some of the brightest guys around and as it gets disseminated to general pop, they lose and distort the message.
Ask yourself this, do you disagree with the basic premise of the article, that the law of unintended consequences applies to charitable endeavors? If not, do you disagree with the ways they say it can manifest itself?
Now, ask yourself, if you don't disagree, why did you write this?
I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
It should be clear from my post that I don't directly disagree with the premises of the article. I'm questioning its significance, novelty, effectiveness, and interest.
> why did you write this?
I was exploring a shared, unexplained feeling of discomfort. This is an intellectually and emotionally fulfilling thing to do.
> I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
In my experience those people are not the same types that would read this article, nor do they seem to be the target audience. The target audience appears to be leaders and employers in "fragile fields".
It wasn't clear. My theoretical questions were to get you to answer your own question, which you started off with:
> I have the same feeling. It concerns me because I'm not sure how to differentiate between my subconscious conservatism and my instinctive backlash against cultishness and/or over-complication.
The only thing I can put my finger on is this: those organisations - and this article - present themselves as being above-average rational and insightful. At least that's my impression. Yet many of these suggestions seem to be speculation based on very small data, for example the point about them not having competitors. Many others could simply be rephrased as "take a holistic view", for example considering whether recruiting people to your company is good for the cause as a whole.
Don't get me wrong, there is some insight here, it's well-written, and some of these heuristics might turn out to be helpful to some people. I just think that the website it's published on is inflating its perceived significance.