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What I like about the effective altruist movement is the research they provide. What I don't like is the cultish behavior, and inherent bias that what I think

• vog 11y ago
  > Should I kill someone if it is the best way to increase child mortality rates in Africa? Did you mean "decrease" here?
  • dmvaldman 11y ago
    right....sure.... (fixed :-P)
• radu_floricica 11y ago
  There was a post the other day on the Effective Altruists facebook page which read like: > Does abnormal self-sacrifice inspire social change? (A response to "A Defense of Normality" link below) > The conventional wisdom is that many movements throughout history (christianity, buddhism, Indian independence) were inspired and fueled by the extraordinary sacrifice of leaders/early adopters (or at least myths about such extreme altruism). The conventional wisdom may be wrong, but maybe we need more abnormal sacrifice in our movement, not less. In fact, I think it's plausibly a good idea for us to donate our kidneys, precisely as a symbol of our commitment-- not necessarily in the hopes that others will follow suit-- but in the hopes that it inspires people to take altruism more seriously.
• jal278 11y ago
  Many of the perceived problems with utilitarianism result from confusing "utility" with wealth, or in otherwise simplifying what optimizing human flourishing would actually look like in practice. Although reasonable people disagree on many principles of moral thought, a point of near-consensus is that if all other things are equal, we should try to reduce needless suffering as much as possible. For a great and nuanced treatment, see: "Moral Tribes" by Joshua Greene.
  • lucajona 11y ago
    This hits on the problem with "Effective Altruism" — it is exactly the bad form of utilitarian thinking. It seems purely about reallocating some wealth from the rich to the poor. That's nice, but it's only treating the symptoms and ignoring many other factors that influence human flourishing, such as an individual's ability to improve their own circumstances (instead of waiting for a generous benefactor to give them some cash). Surely addressing poverty involves systemic changes, not just charity. And besides, charity can also have a negative utility, feeding feelings of inferiority in the receiver and leading to resentment.
    • philh 11y ago
      One of the factors that influences human flourishing is the prevalence of malaria nearby. If you get malaria and die, your ability to improve your own circumstances falls to 0. "People now have access to bed nets which make them less likely to get malaria and die" seems like it would count as a systemic change.
      • lucajona 11y ago
        Good point. But if the only way you can avoid malaria is if someone gives you a bed net, then your ability to improve your own circumstances is still close to 0. You're still impoverished and powerless, you're just not dead. And now you're dependent on a source of bed nets that might dry up. If plain old reciprocal altruism hadn't somehow failed, there would be a way that you could exchange your labour or otherwise for bed nets. The people paying your wages could be acting altruistically, or they could be rationally self-interested actors. These are the sort of systemic changes I was thinking of, but I like your argument.
• philh 11y ago
  > Should I kill someone if it is the best way to decrease child mortality rates in Africa? I'd be very surprised if the EA movement has a consensus opinion on this question. > Should we all quit our jobs to solve friendly AI? I'm not aware that anyone has ever said we should do this. (If you have an example, feel free to share.) The closest I can come is something like "most people should donate as much money as they can to the cause of AI risk". That might itself be an exaggeration, and it's a fringe position within EA.
  • viscountchocula 11y ago
    >> Should I kill someone if it is the best way to decrease child mortality rates in Africa? >I'd be very surprised if the EA movement has a consensus opinion on this question. Right, but the rest of the world absolutely does have a consensus opinion on this. I think dmvaldman's point is that it's disturbing EA doesn't.
    • Anderkent 11y ago
      The world thinks they have a consensus opinion on this, but actually they probably don't. Otherwise, why is bin laden dead?
      • maaku 11y ago
        Revenge.
      • a3voices 11y ago
        Because Obama likes to kill bad guys.
        • Anderkent 11y ago
          And how is someone who is single-handedly responsible for a significant portion of child mortality rates in Africa not a bad guy? If we find killing Bin Laden excusable (even if not morally correct), shouldn't killing some kind of Joker - who's poisoning African wells with mercury and increasing child mortality rates - be excusable as well? The problem with all those 'oh should I kill someone if it is the best way to decrease child mortality rates in Africa?' is that people try to intuitively reason about abstract situations; for which our intuition is shit. If you imagine what it would actually take for one person to have measurable impact on child mortality, so that just killing that one person decreases the rates, you always end up with monsters that 1. don't actually exist 2. your intuition would say should be killed.
• maaku 11y ago
  > and the math clearly says this should be our top priority. with some gigantic assumptions...
• dan00 11y ago
  > What I don't like is the cultish behavior, and inherent bias that what I think is good is "universally" good. I think people just have the desire for easy answers, that they have the one true answer and don't have to wrangle with the complexities of life.
• darkmighty 11y ago
  I don't get what people have against utility theory (if that's what you mean by utilitarianism). For me it's one of the few models that must be obeyed: there must be a way to create a partial order among possible choices. Whatever the reasoning behind your actions is, you are going to choose a single action (at each step) -- this forces you to choose the best. That's all utilitarianism is for me -- it tells you nothing about how to construct the utility function. Now the utility this view provides is just that: you can see clearly what sorts of thing you give greater priority, so you'll make the best possible judgement.
  • eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    Utilitarianism <: utility theory (that is, a subtyping relationship). Utilitarianism of the Peter Singer kind is specifically choosing a utility function that consists of a linear, nonweighted sum of one-dimensional happiness/pleasure measurements across the entire animal population of the world, minus a linear, nonweighted sum of one-dimensional misery/pain measurements across the entire animal population of the world. The inherent problems are the usual objections to hedonic total utilitarianism: the Repugnant Conclusion, wireheading and experience machines, the fact that emotions and sensations just aren't linear real-valued variables, the difficulty in measuring them as such even if they were, and of course the Repugnant Conclusion. Oh, and the fact that Singer has long-since given up on trying to prove hedonic total utilitarianism normatively correct, and thus simply begins his books by saying, "Well, I can't prove it to you, but let me appeal to your emotions and intuitions to hammer it into you, and then proceed on with my arguments about what I demand from you." Which is why it's really quite disappointing to see people fawning over Singer's utilitarianism: it's unproven, it's unreasonable on its face, it engages in rather flagrant neoliberal apologia (ie: charity rather than social reform or revolution), and it thus adds up to a series of bad ideas wearing nice suits.
  • deleted 11y ago
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  • gress 11y ago
    The problem is there is no utility function and choices are path dependent.
• mrob 11y ago
  Sacrificing other people for a supposed "greater good" is highly unlikely to be beneficial because it destroys trust in society. It's a major cost if everybody has to be constantly wary of utilitarians pushing them in front of trolleys, and if everybody will betray you as soon as their calculations say it's a good idea then capitalism can't function, and capitalism is the only effective economic system yet discovered. Even the murders for organ transplants variation of the trolley problem doesn't avoid this problem, because the mere fact that you observe people acting as though they are utilitarians is good evidence for them actually being utilitarians. Deontological ethics has a predictability that makes planning things much easier and it preserves the functionality of contracts in society, so the long term consequences could be better even by utilitarian standards.
  • evanpw 11y ago
    This seems like a straw man, but maybe this really is how some utilitarians think. My view is: if the cost in terms of trust lost is greater than the expected benefit of an action, then the utilitarian answer is not to do it. If the only way to prevent a "race to zero trust" is to make some bright line rules and enforce them universally, then that's the utilitarian answer. It's literally impossible for another ethical system to reliably provide greater total utility than utilitarianism, because utilitarianism is the rule that you do whatever leads to the greatest utility.
    • mrob 11y ago
      That's assuming that everybody calculates utility the same way, which is false. One obvious difference is how to value hypothetical people, which is why there's so much controversy about existential risk charities. Multiple competing utilitarian systems could easily be worse than none at all- eg. the health charities and the AI charities could both calculate the best option is to sabotage each other to avoid "wasting" resources, even if they both agree on expected results of their work. You end up with a prisoner's dilemma type situation. With deontology both "good" and "bad" people are protected by the rule of law, so you avoid that problem. Utilitarianism is ethical anarchy.
    • gress 11y ago
• Strilanc 11y ago
  You won't succeed at the goal of being optimal. But you can at least do better than the default, donate 10%, and feel good about that. [1] > Why ten percent? > [...] The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained [that's a tithing joke], and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. [...] > It’s ten percent because definitions were made for Man, not Man for definitions, and if we define “good person” in a way such that everyone is sitting around miserable because they can’t reach an unobtainable standard, we are stupid definition-makers. If we are smart definition-makers, we will define it in precisely that way which makes it the most effective tool to convince people to give at least that much. 1: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-everything-is-commensurable/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-every...
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• JamesBarney 11y ago
  I'm curious as to what are some alternate theories of how to do the most good besides a summing-like equation across individuals?
  • pdonis 11y ago
    The problem isn't that there are no "alternate theories" besides utilitarianism. The problem is the idea that "the most good" has some absolute meaning. What if it doesn't? What if there is no well-defined way to "sum across individuals"? What if goods experienced by different people are simply incommensurable? Utilitarianism blithely ignores all these possibilities, and just assumes that every single "good" in the world can be measured on a single numeric scale and summed up.
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I'm curious as to what are some alternate theories of how to do the most good besides a summing-like equation across individuals? See, as one of many alternatives, Rawls works (perhaps most particularly Justice as Fairness, but also the earlier A Theory of Justice) which present an approach which considers the position of different individuals and groups, but does not optimize a summing-like equation (unless you take "summing-like" very loosely.) But, ultimately, what constitutes what is desirable -- "the most good" -- is a subjective decision. Any philosophical/moral discussion of the most good is either about which axioms are most subjectively desirable to choose or which particular things fit a given set of axioms.
    • JamesBarney 11y ago
      I'd heard about choice under the veil of ignorance argument before, and I always thought it was really neat. I didn't know what philosopher was associated with that it until now. It's an interesting though experiment but I think we subconsciously way over estimate our chances of being born into similar circumstances and way underestimate being born a poor African child in Somalia. It's also hard to imagine what it would be like to be born with cognitive issues like reduced executive function, psychopathy, or reduced grit. But it seems to me it leads to similar conclusions as utilitarianism, such as 'Effective Altrusim'. The number of situations where these philosophies would differ seems fairly small to me.