Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them

This article highlighted a perspective I hadn't really considered before: just because we want to do good and even think we are doing good, we still need to be careful to mitigate risks. Rushing to implement changes or doing things the wrong way may take longer to recover from than the time you would have spent doing more initial research and community-building.

The effective altruists at 80,000 Hours are especially concerned with the outsize impact that mistakes by a well-intentioned novice can have on emerging fields – potentially making it harder for others to get funding or even just be taken seriously. Luckily they also discuss how to mitigate these risks, from building your expertise and seeking out the wisdom that already exists in your field, to the under-discussed basics of just being nice.