13 ms·

Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them

322 points by robertwiblin 8y ago

anjc 8y ago
Thanks. You use the word 'field' 54 times and 'risk' 33 times in the article but never explain what you mean by them. I found this confusing. E.g. at one point you say that 'reducing extinction risk' is a field, but then later say that not every risk is pressing in every field. Is 'reducing extinction risk' both a field and a risk?
- ardillaroja 8y ago
  field: A particular field is a particular subject of study or type of activity. So the authors are using 'field' to mean area of study which has standard usage in English I think so probably didn't need to be explained further. When the authors wrote: "Nonetheless we think cataloguing these risks is important if we’re going to be serious about having an impact in important but ‘fragile’ fields like reducing extinction risk." They are talking about 'reducing extinction risk' being a field of study. And the risks of doing damage to a that new field with early research.
  - anjc 8y ago
    Thanks > They are talking about 'reducing extinction risk' being a field of study. And the risks of doing damage to a that new field with early research. Then this is an unfortunately named field to introduce first, given that the article is about 'risks' which are not 'fields'
    - FabHK 8y ago
      'risk X' is a risk, and 'reducing risk X' is a field. There is the (meta-)risk that you harm a field (the 'harming field Y' risk). They're studying that (meta-)risk here, in an attempt to reduce it. The article is thus squarely in the 'reducing risk Z (of harming field Y (of reducing risk X)))' field. Your misunderstanding of it poses certain risks, that this comment attempts to reduce, with a concomitant risk of failure, but that gets a bit complicated.
      - anjc 8y ago
        Ha :)
blackflame7000 8y ago
Because the desire to do a good deed causes people to discount the ramifications of detrimental effects by rationalizing with the “it was for the best” adage
- curiousgal 8y ago
  Which is why Avengers: Infinity War (Thanos) was the only Marvel movie I ever liked.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  The thing I hate most is the "We had to do something" statement, justifying the horrible outcomes they created in a vain attempt to do a little good. No, you didn't have to do anything. Doing nothing is actually sometimes better than doing something stupid.
kineticdial 8y ago
I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
- cgag 8y ago
  In short, no. I don't know how to put it in long.
- atlasunshrugged 8y ago
  I was a little skeptical at first as well but I initially got involved when doing a career quiz and then by helping out with the Estonian chapter of Effective Altruism and I'll say that at least on an individual basis they're quite open to other thoughts and opinions and acknowledge that what they believe doesn't necessarily follow for everyone (ex. the idea that you can 'earn to give' - it only works if you have the personality type where you can do a job such as Ibanking and can satisfy your need to do good by giving and not actively participating as much)
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Nope, same here. Feels a bit (a bit) like religion for atheists. For example I don't dislike Nick Bostrom but I feel like he's being quoted so uncritically in this article - not totally unlike how a few years ago some HN commenters could quote Paul Graham essays as holy scripture.
- n4r9 8y ago
  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.
chrisseaton 8y ago
This is very interesting! But I've seen a lot of push back against this kind of thinking in some political groups. For example saying that you should follow norms of niceness when promoting a cause - people call that tone policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing You could say you should criticise the people who are tone policing rather than the people who are worked up about a cause that personally effects them so aren't managing to be very polite, but the problem is not the people who try to tone police you, it's the people who don't like your tone and don't criticise you for it - they silently just ignore your cause or vote against it.
- hueving 8y ago
  People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care to make. How many pro-choice people do you think are persuaded by the people screaming "murderer" outside of Planned Parenthood? People have a limited amount of time to deal with all of the issues in the world. If you can't explain your argument in a calm, rational manner, people who are on the fence will shut you out. See what Howard Dean's screaming did to his campaign.
  - atq2119 8y ago
    And then there's King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.... Sometimes you need to make waves in order to advance a cause. Now that doesn't mean you should be uncivil (like screaming "you fucking moron!"), but it can be a fine line to walk. So it's understandable that tone policing itself can become a controversial topic.
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      It's proportionate to the cause. If we're talking about the Jim Crow south, that's one thing. King even wrote a whole essay about how white moderates 'tone policing' the civil rights movement needed to get on board or get out of the way. And he was right. Emmett Till's lynching had just happened, they were being categorically denied rights, and then getting fucking attack dogs unleashed on them, churches firebombed, etc, when they spoke up. Some of the noisier people on twitter and in our workspaces in 2018, however... their net effect is giving talking points to Sean Hannity. At least 80% of America is turned off by their rhetorical excess. King's body of work was productive. He was after results, not after feeding his own ego or outrage.
nosjwshere 8y ago
they use their feelings instead of brains. for example charity does harm in the long run as communities can't be self sufficient.
makach 8y ago
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
ElBarto 8y ago
To do good requires understanding the issue at hand and devising a measurable plan for improvement. This is not what many, if not most people do, or want to do, when they "try to do good". They simply want to do something based on what _they_ see as 'good'.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Well I read a bit, then thought "things like being verbose, generic, and over-guarded in offering advice and so wasting lots of readers time without making an impact on their behaviour"? If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ... "So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners will remember and act on then your sermon is moot. You can give a tonne of great advice, but sometimes less is more impactful. Perhaps they do that to. The title gave me high hopes.
- mnx 8y ago
  I think 80000 hours targets a fairly specific audience. Their style is in general to be in depth and long winded.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I’m a long-time follower of 80000 Hours. I agree with your comment, but still found this particular post to be far too verbose. The advice borders on non-actionable far-mode thinking.
    - mnx 8y ago
      I haven't yet read this one, so it is certainly possible.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    I'd expect an organization dedicated to making the most of the finite time people have wout care about not wasting so much time.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Luckily, they do state the lessons to be learned up front: > In brief, it raises the importance of finding good mentors, consistently seeking advice and feedback from experienced colleagues, and ensuring you’re a good fit for a project before you take actions with potentially large or long-term consequences.
FrankyHollywood 8y ago
This is an old problem :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
apathy 8y ago
You’ll never get anything done if you give in to this sort of analysis paralysis.
- unparagoned 8y ago
  They are just some factors you may want to take into account. Usually things like this have some clear cut answers. If these questions require real thought and potential paralysis then that's a good thing. If you are paralysed by the fact you aren't sure what you are doing may actually do more harm than good that's good.
- mcguire 8y ago
  Sometimes getting nothing done is the best outcome.
  - apathy 8y ago
    Rare, for the individual. Common, for congress
superplussed 8y ago
There is a German word for this: verschlimmbessern. This roughly translates in English to "imworsenprove". :)
- test1235 8y ago
  They have a word for everything!
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern
bjt2n3904 8y ago
Naturally a pessimist on these issues. Listening to graduation speeches on how we're gonna change the world, as if it were this one weird tip discovered by a student. (Philosophers hate him!) Bleh. You'll change the world alright. Likely, not for the better.
drchiu 8y ago
I think a lot of this boils down to having the right amount of introspection and insight on the part of the individual.
- tw1010 8y ago
  True introspection turns into a math puzzle when you want to go really deep. (It requires constant monitoring and logging of your own mind, and requires an insane amount of tests against self deception if you want to do it properly. Both of which are constrained by memory and compute power, which will likely not be sufficient if for no other reason than that you need to allocate some of it to other priorities.) I think it's a sign of wisdom to admit that it's too big of a challenge for an individual to rely on as a substitute for resources like this.
rapfaria 8y ago
That is not a good favicon, I was skimming for a list of '8 ways people trying to do good'.
lbriner 8y ago
The bit I struggled with is that in many fields, either the majority are wrong/don't have the solution (Argumentum ad populum) or otherwise listening to expertise/experience can either give you too much input or, again, implies that there is more chance that experience will give you a better solution to a problem. In their example, if Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis had asked his more experienced peers about approaching the problem of infections, they would have told him he was barking up the wrong tree with hand washing. The really difficult part of any venture is knowing how to distinguish wise advice from just another opinion. Many great solutions come from people with "crazy" thinking and I would expect they could have caused great damage (or perhaps have - jet engines) but otherwise we would be moving very slowly as a planet?
- taeric 8y ago
  I find the claim that the majority are wrong in fields tough to believe. Not impossible, mind. Just tough. I would think it matters on what is "right." Are they wrong in the way that Newton was wrong? Still far more correct that anyone else? (Obviously, not to that degree.)
  - lbriner 8y ago
    The majority are not wrong by definition but the fallacy is that you cannot assume that the majority are right. As far as knowledge is concerned, was Newton right for a period until we learned about quantum mechanics or was he always wrong? Was he always right but only within limits that he couldn't know in advance? Apologies for the philosophy but this is the real complexity of an article about avoiding harm by doing various "good practice" stuff!
    - Varcht 8y ago
      “He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The man in the worst confusion will end his life without ever getting straightened out; the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light. If three men are traveling along and one is confused, they will still get where they are going - because confusion is in the minority. But if two of them are confused, then they can walk until they are exhausted and never get anywhere - because confusion is in the majority.” ― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
motohagiography 8y ago
The article seems written in a "gentle reminder," tone that implies a basic attribution error about the sort of people they are reminding. As a corollary to a famous adage, I would suggest that it is best not to attribute to ignorance what can be explained by incentives.
xtacy 8y ago
Interesting article, but I would have loved it if they touched upon how to effectively follow these principles in a world where there's competition. For instance, getting feedback, thoroughly vetting ideas, etc., is a good practice. But if you are competing against those who exploit the limited attention of investors/peers to quickly get ahead (in the short term), they _could_ get an enormous first-mover advantage. How does one deal with that?
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  The guide they're describing is for playing a pro-social game where everybody is trying to score points for the common good (i.e to save/better lives). In a competitive environment that is zero-sum in the short term has different rules.
ThomPete 8y ago
A good example of that is Germany. They removed Nuclear from their energy sources and now need to use coal instead to compensate. But it gets better than that. Denmark focused primarily on wind energy with the consequence that this summers heatwave resulted in them having to get their energy from Germany who now without Nuclear had to use even more coal.
- kardos 8y ago
  > They removed Nuclear from their energy sources Nope, it's not 2022 yet [1]. > and now need to use coal instead to compensate. Looks to me that wind/solar is compensating for the gradual decline in nuclear, and also for the bulk of increasing demand [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closures_and_phase-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu... [2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    It's also coal.
amelius 8y ago
> Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them Like Facebook engineers?
philipodonnell 8y ago
> Everyone understands that one risk of failure is that it tarnishes your reputation. But, unfortunately, people will sometimes decide that your mistakes reflect on your field as a whole. This means that messing up can also set back other people in your field. I find this to be the case with non-profits and others attempting to make big pushes to promote local entrepreneurship. I have objected to several attempts based on the organizers focusing on the wants of donors (not the entrepreneurs), lacking any marketing plan beyond "if you build it they will come" and not having long-term plans for sustainability. Every failed attempt sets back the next one by 2-3 years but no one wants to listen to a naysayer.
hinkley 8y ago
One that has gotten me and some of my cohort is the idea that if you have a below average income you have to live in an ugly run down neighborhood. But a few too many beautification projects and property taxes start to go up. Now you’re pricing people out of their neighborhood. With renters they don’t even get the benefit of selling their house. Most of the solutions I can think of could be easily gamed by speculators, which makes me wonder if the others just have a flaw I don’t see.
- zanny 8y ago
  This only happens in unique context, though. If you were in a theoretical environment where there wasn't any demand for beautified neighborhoods the value of the housing wouldn't rise if you beautified it. The circumstance though isn't unique and is applicable in a lot of different markets. Investing in almost anything makes it more valuable. Be that housing, a country, a company, a farm or a person. That is why education is such a potent force multiplier. Housing though has an elephant in the room being how bad the situation has gotten. Its the same class of problem as healthcare because both aren't luxury optional goods. People need housing, and that housing need requires parameters that are in conflict with one another. The worst part is that because sustainability of housing trumps all other aspects of it that means you can easily find yourself in an unsafe, insecure environment out of necessity. Beautification makes the living more enjoyable and prosperous but is trumped by the cost benefit analysis of living there. When people are already sacrificing personal safety for job security they quickly get pushed out if you make the housing more valuable for any reason but enhanced job security.
mcguire 8y ago
There are a couple of other issues that could be added to this list. Credit One of the sayings that I know to be (mostly) absolutely true is, "there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." I have a (much more successful, and respected) friend to whom it is something of a mantra. On the other side, seeking credit has a lot of pitfalls. The obvious one is taking credit for someone else's work; that's just bad and leads to bad results. But further, by aggressively taking credit for things you've done, you can actively force other people out of the field you're working on. Has anyone been bitten by the off-handed, "yeah, we took a look that several years ago" comment? Further, becoming the face of some project means that you with all of your warts hanging out come to represent the project and its goals. Take care. Goals Choose the goals of your project carefully. For one thing, they can take on a life of their own. On one hand, our modern financial services system has the excellent goal of allocating resources where they can do the most good, but they have become so complex as to be a maze with great freakin' bear traps all over the place. Then there's opportunity cost. Some goals are laudable, but take on too much emphasis at the expense of other, more reachable, more effective goals. Take the "reducing extinction risk" mentioned (repeatedly) in the article. Sure, somebody should probably worry a bit about the risk of human extinction, but... "Many experts who study these issues estimate that the total chance of human extinction in the next century is between 1 and 20%. "For instance, an informal poll in 2008 at a conference on catastrophic risks found they believe it’s pretty likely we’ll face a catastrophe that kills over a billion people, and estimate a 19% chance of extinction before 2100." The risks they came up with are, molecular nanotech weapons, nanotech accidents, superintelligent AI, wars, nuclear wars, nuclear terrorism, engineered pandemics, and natural pandemics. (I'm surprised; global warming didn't make the list in 2008.) Here's the dealy-o, though: what actually is the risk of human extinction before 2100? 19%? (1 in 5, really?) Their conservative 3%? "Nanotech" currently is at most an OSHA problem. (Don't breathe in the microparticles!) The risk of "grey goo" is likely pretty damn low, given the history of the last 30 years of nanotechnology. (First thought on hearing of the possibility of nano-machines? "Ya mean, like proteins?") Conventional wars don't actually kill that many people; they tend to disperse too easily. I'm even given to understand that the effect of major wars is an increase in the rate of population growth. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, are very, very bad...for cities. But they're unlikely to do anything noticeable to people in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the Australian outback, or Mongolia. Pandemics have been a problem before, they'll be a problem again, but I'll let somebody else describe the problems with an infectious agent capable of killing all of its hosts. Likewise, climate changes have been problems before, and have led to bad outcomes. But killing everyone isn't ever been on the table. And for AI, I'm more concerned with the AI that runs your car off the road because it's not actually able to perceive the lane markers. Individually, each of those is bad. They'll possibly kill billions of people and possibly lead to the collapse of civilizations---some of them have done so before. But complete extinction is incredibly unlikely and "ending all life on Earth" is just silly. But human extinction is an issue that will get attention. It'll sell newspapers. And more than some minimal level of resources spent on it means less resources for other issues. Like, say, identifying and addressing actual problems with nanomaterials or wars or infectious agents.
yellowapple 8y ago
"Imagine a first year medical student who comes across a seriously injured pedestrian on a busy street, announces that they know first aid, and provides care on their own. They’ll look as though they’re helping. But imagine that a passerby who was about to call an ambulance refrained because the student showed up and took charge. In that case, the counterfactual may actually have been better medical care at the hands of an experienced doctor, making their apparent help an illusion." I think this is a poor analogy. Or maybe it's an excellent analogy for the dilemma the article glosses over: would the "right" answer be for the medical student to not help someone very obviously in need? Ambulances don't materialize instantaneously out of thin air, nor do they magically teleport themselves (and the patient inside) to a hospital. That hospital might be overcrowded, delaying treatment further. Or the med student could actually try to help (or at least triage) and at the same time call an ambulance.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  It is a very poor analogy given that step two of first aid after evaluating that one of the first steps is to call emergency services yourself or direct someone specifically to call (targetting bypasses diffusion of responsibility).
SOMMS 8y ago
Socialism. /thread
techscruggs 8y ago
The medical field has a term for this: iatrogenic.
Johnny555 8y ago
Imagine a first year medical student who comes across a seriously injured pedestrian on a busy street, announces that they know first aid, and provides care on their own...but imagine that a passerby who was about to call an ambulance refrained because the student showed up and took charge Then he's not following his first aid training. One of the first things they taught in my first aid class is to send someone for help first -- find someone in the crowd and tell them specifically to call 911. Don't just tell the crowd in general to call for help or everyone may assume someone else is doing it, direct someone in particular to call.
- ngokevin 8y ago
  That reinforces the article though. "You take on a challenging project and make a mistake through lack of experience or poor judgment" The student thought they were doing good, but they did not ask someone to call for help due to lack of experience / poor judgement, worsening the situation potentially.
jackconnor 8y ago
The moral seems to be "Don't do anything, because there are always too many risks, many of which aren't obvious." If we followed this, nothing would ever get invented or done, and we'd still be hunter gatherers, so I'm not really feeling it.

322 points by robertwiblin 8y ago

anjc 8y ago

Thanks. You use the word 'field' 54 times and 'risk' 33 times in the article but never explain what you mean by them. I found this confusing. E.g. at one point you say that 'reducing extinction risk' is a field, but then later say that not every risk is pressing in every field. Is 'reducing extinction risk' both a field and a risk?

ardillaroja 8y ago
field: A particular field is a particular subject of study or type of activity. So the authors are using 'field' to mean area of study which has standard usage in English I think so probably didn't need to be explained further. When the authors wrote: "Nonetheless we think cataloguing these risks is important if we’re going to be serious about having an impact in important but ‘fragile’ fields like reducing extinction risk." They are talking about 'reducing extinction risk' being a field of study. And the risks of doing damage to a that new field with early research.
- anjc 8y ago
  Thanks > They are talking about 'reducing extinction risk' being a field of study. And the risks of doing damage to a that new field with early research. Then this is an unfortunately named field to introduce first, given that the article is about 'risks' which are not 'fields'
  - FabHK 8y ago
    'risk X' is a risk, and 'reducing risk X' is a field. There is the (meta-)risk that you harm a field (the 'harming field Y' risk). They're studying that (meta-)risk here, in an attempt to reduce it. The article is thus squarely in the 'reducing risk Z (of harming field Y (of reducing risk X)))' field. Your misunderstanding of it poses certain risks, that this comment attempts to reduce, with a concomitant risk of failure, but that gets a bit complicated.
    - anjc 8y ago
      Ha :)

blackflame7000 8y ago

Because the desire to do a good deed causes people to discount the ramifications of detrimental effects by rationalizing with the “it was for the best” adage

curiousgal 8y ago
Which is why Avengers: Infinity War (Thanos) was the only Marvel movie I ever liked.
wccrawford 8y ago
The thing I hate most is the "We had to do something" statement, justifying the horrible outcomes they created in a vain attempt to do a little good. No, you didn't have to do anything. Doing nothing is actually sometimes better than doing something stupid.

kineticdial 8y ago

I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?

cgag 8y ago
In short, no. I don't know how to put it in long.
atlasunshrugged 8y ago
I was a little skeptical at first as well but I initially got involved when doing a career quiz and then by helping out with the Estonian chapter of Effective Altruism and I'll say that at least on an individual basis they're quite open to other thoughts and opinions and acknowledge that what they believe doesn't necessarily follow for everyone (ex. the idea that you can 'earn to give' - it only works if you have the personality type where you can do a job such as Ibanking and can satisfy your need to do good by giving and not actively participating as much)
skrebbel 8y ago
Nope, same here. Feels a bit (a bit) like religion for atheists. For example I don't dislike Nick Bostrom but I feel like he's being quoted so uncritically in this article - not totally unlike how a few years ago some HN commenters could quote Paul Graham essays as holy scripture.
n4r9 8y ago
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.

chrisseaton 8y ago

This is very interesting! But I've seen a lot of push back against this kind of thinking in some political groups. For example saying that you should follow norms of niceness when promoting a cause - people call that tone policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing You could say you should criticise the people who are tone policing rather than the people who are worked up about a cause that personally effects them so aren't managing to be very polite, but the problem is not the people who try to tone police you, it's the people who don't like your tone and don't criticise you for it - they silently just ignore your cause or vote against it.

hueving 8y ago
People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care to make. How many pro-choice people do you think are persuaded by the people screaming "murderer" outside of Planned Parenthood? People have a limited amount of time to deal with all of the issues in the world. If you can't explain your argument in a calm, rational manner, people who are on the fence will shut you out. See what Howard Dean's screaming did to his campaign.
- atq2119 8y ago
  And then there's King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.... Sometimes you need to make waves in order to advance a cause. Now that doesn't mean you should be uncivil (like screaming "you fucking moron!"), but it can be a fine line to walk. So it's understandable that tone policing itself can become a controversial topic.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    It's proportionate to the cause. If we're talking about the Jim Crow south, that's one thing. King even wrote a whole essay about how white moderates 'tone policing' the civil rights movement needed to get on board or get out of the way. And he was right. Emmett Till's lynching had just happened, they were being categorically denied rights, and then getting fucking attack dogs unleashed on them, churches firebombed, etc, when they spoke up. Some of the noisier people on twitter and in our workspaces in 2018, however... their net effect is giving talking points to Sean Hannity. At least 80% of America is turned off by their rhetorical excess. King's body of work was productive. He was after results, not after feeding his own ego or outrage.

nosjwshere 8y ago

they use their feelings instead of brains. for example charity does harm in the long run as communities can't be self sufficient.

makach 8y ago

the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

ElBarto 8y ago

To do good requires understanding the issue at hand and devising a measurable plan for improvement. This is not what many, if not most people do, or want to do, when they "try to do good". They simply want to do something based on what _they_ see as 'good'.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

Well I read a bit, then thought "things like being verbose, generic, and over-guarded in offering advice and so wasting lots of readers time without making an impact on their behaviour"? If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ... "So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners will remember and act on then your sermon is moot. You can give a tonne of great advice, but sometimes less is more impactful. Perhaps they do that to. The title gave me high hopes.

mnx 8y ago
I think 80000 hours targets a fairly specific audience. Their style is in general to be in depth and long winded.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I’m a long-time follower of 80000 Hours. I agree with your comment, but still found this particular post to be far too verbose. The advice borders on non-actionable far-mode thinking.
  - mnx 8y ago
    I haven't yet read this one, so it is certainly possible.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  I'd expect an organization dedicated to making the most of the finite time people have wout care about not wasting so much time.
Vinnl 8y ago
Luckily, they do state the lessons to be learned up front: > In brief, it raises the importance of finding good mentors, consistently seeking advice and feedback from experienced colleagues, and ensuring you’re a good fit for a project before you take actions with potentially large or long-term consequences.

FrankyHollywood 8y ago

This is an old problem :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

apathy 8y ago

You’ll never get anything done if you give in to this sort of analysis paralysis.

unparagoned 8y ago
They are just some factors you may want to take into account. Usually things like this have some clear cut answers. If these questions require real thought and potential paralysis then that's a good thing. If you are paralysed by the fact you aren't sure what you are doing may actually do more harm than good that's good.
mcguire 8y ago
Sometimes getting nothing done is the best outcome.
- apathy 8y ago
  Rare, for the individual. Common, for congress

superplussed 8y ago

There is a German word for this: verschlimmbessern. This roughly translates in English to "imworsenprove". :)

test1235 8y ago
They have a word for everything!
onemoresoop 8y ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verschlimmbessern

bjt2n3904 8y ago

Naturally a pessimist on these issues. Listening to graduation speeches on how we're gonna change the world, as if it were this one weird tip discovered by a student. (Philosophers hate him!) Bleh. You'll change the world alright. Likely, not for the better.

drchiu 8y ago

I think a lot of this boils down to having the right amount of introspection and insight on the part of the individual.

tw1010 8y ago
True introspection turns into a math puzzle when you want to go really deep. (It requires constant monitoring and logging of your own mind, and requires an insane amount of tests against self deception if you want to do it properly. Both of which are constrained by memory and compute power, which will likely not be sufficient if for no other reason than that you need to allocate some of it to other priorities.) I think it's a sign of wisdom to admit that it's too big of a challenge for an individual to rely on as a substitute for resources like this.

rapfaria 8y ago

That is not a good favicon, I was skimming for a list of '8 ways people trying to do good'.

lbriner 8y ago

The bit I struggled with is that in many fields, either the majority are wrong/don't have the solution (Argumentum ad populum) or otherwise listening to expertise/experience can either give you too much input or, again, implies that there is more chance that experience will give you a better solution to a problem. In their example, if Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis had asked his more experienced peers about approaching the problem of infections, they would have told him he was barking up the wrong tree with hand washing. The really difficult part of any venture is knowing how to distinguish wise advice from just another opinion. Many great solutions come from people with "crazy" thinking and I would expect they could have caused great damage (or perhaps have - jet engines) but otherwise we would be moving very slowly as a planet?

taeric 8y ago
I find the claim that the majority are wrong in fields tough to believe. Not impossible, mind. Just tough. I would think it matters on what is "right." Are they wrong in the way that Newton was wrong? Still far more correct that anyone else? (Obviously, not to that degree.)
- lbriner 8y ago
  The majority are not wrong by definition but the fallacy is that you cannot assume that the majority are right. As far as knowledge is concerned, was Newton right for a period until we learned about quantum mechanics or was he always wrong? Was he always right but only within limits that he couldn't know in advance? Apologies for the philosophy but this is the real complexity of an article about avoiding harm by doing various "good practice" stuff!
  - Varcht 8y ago
    “He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The man in the worst confusion will end his life without ever getting straightened out; the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light. If three men are traveling along and one is confused, they will still get where they are going - because confusion is in the minority. But if two of them are confused, then they can walk until they are exhausted and never get anywhere - because confusion is in the majority.” ― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

motohagiography 8y ago

The article seems written in a "gentle reminder," tone that implies a basic attribution error about the sort of people they are reminding. As a corollary to a famous adage, I would suggest that it is best not to attribute to ignorance what can be explained by incentives.

xtacy 8y ago

Interesting article, but I would have loved it if they touched upon how to effectively follow these principles in a world where there's competition. For instance, getting feedback, thoroughly vetting ideas, etc., is a good practice. But if you are competing against those who exploit the limited attention of investors/peers to quickly get ahead (in the short term), they _could_ get an enormous first-mover advantage. How does one deal with that?

kerbalspacepro 8y ago
The guide they're describing is for playing a pro-social game where everybody is trying to score points for the common good (i.e to save/better lives). In a competitive environment that is zero-sum in the short term has different rules.

ThomPete 8y ago

A good example of that is Germany. They removed Nuclear from their energy sources and now need to use coal instead to compensate. But it gets better than that. Denmark focused primarily on wind energy with the consequence that this summers heatwave resulted in them having to get their energy from Germany who now without Nuclear had to use even more coal.

kardos 8y ago
> They removed Nuclear from their energy sources Nope, it's not 2022 yet [1]. > and now need to use coal instead to compensate. Looks to me that wind/solar is compensating for the gradual decline in nuclear, and also for the bulk of increasing demand [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closures_and_phase-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu... [2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
- ThomPete 8y ago
  It's also coal.

amelius 8y ago

> Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them Like Facebook engineers?

philipodonnell 8y ago

> Everyone understands that one risk of failure is that it tarnishes your reputation. But, unfortunately, people will sometimes decide that your mistakes reflect on your field as a whole. This means that messing up can also set back other people in your field. I find this to be the case with non-profits and others attempting to make big pushes to promote local entrepreneurship. I have objected to several attempts based on the organizers focusing on the wants of donors (not the entrepreneurs), lacking any marketing plan beyond "if you build it they will come" and not having long-term plans for sustainability. Every failed attempt sets back the next one by 2-3 years but no one wants to listen to a naysayer.

hinkley 8y ago

One that has gotten me and some of my cohort is the idea that if you have a below average income you have to live in an ugly run down neighborhood. But a few too many beautification projects and property taxes start to go up. Now you’re pricing people out of their neighborhood. With renters they don’t even get the benefit of selling their house. Most of the solutions I can think of could be easily gamed by speculators, which makes me wonder if the others just have a flaw I don’t see.

zanny 8y ago
This only happens in unique context, though. If you were in a theoretical environment where there wasn't any demand for beautified neighborhoods the value of the housing wouldn't rise if you beautified it. The circumstance though isn't unique and is applicable in a lot of different markets. Investing in almost anything makes it more valuable. Be that housing, a country, a company, a farm or a person. That is why education is such a potent force multiplier. Housing though has an elephant in the room being how bad the situation has gotten. Its the same class of problem as healthcare because both aren't luxury optional goods. People need housing, and that housing need requires parameters that are in conflict with one another. The worst part is that because sustainability of housing trumps all other aspects of it that means you can easily find yourself in an unsafe, insecure environment out of necessity. Beautification makes the living more enjoyable and prosperous but is trumped by the cost benefit analysis of living there. When people are already sacrificing personal safety for job security they quickly get pushed out if you make the housing more valuable for any reason but enhanced job security.

mcguire 8y ago

There are a couple of other issues that could be added to this list. Credit One of the sayings that I know to be (mostly) absolutely true is, "there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit." I have a (much more successful, and respected) friend to whom it is something of a mantra. On the other side, seeking credit has a lot of pitfalls. The obvious one is taking credit for someone else's work; that's just bad and leads to bad results. But further, by aggressively taking credit for things you've done, you can actively force other people out of the field you're working on. Has anyone been bitten by the off-handed, "yeah, we took a look that several years ago" comment? Further, becoming the face of some project means that you with all of your warts hanging out come to represent the project and its goals. Take care. Goals Choose the goals of your project carefully. For one thing, they can take on a life of their own. On one hand, our modern financial services system has the excellent goal of allocating resources where they can do the most good, but they have become so complex as to be a maze with great freakin' bear traps all over the place. Then there's opportunity cost. Some goals are laudable, but take on too much emphasis at the expense of other, more reachable, more effective goals. Take the "reducing extinction risk" mentioned (repeatedly) in the article. Sure, somebody should probably worry a bit about the risk of human extinction, but... "Many experts who study these issues estimate that the total chance of human extinction in the next century is between 1 and 20%. "For instance, an informal poll in 2008 at a conference on catastrophic risks found they believe it’s pretty likely we’ll face a catastrophe that kills over a billion people, and estimate a 19% chance of extinction before 2100." The risks they came up with are, molecular nanotech weapons, nanotech accidents, superintelligent AI, wars, nuclear wars, nuclear terrorism, engineered pandemics, and natural pandemics. (I'm surprised; global warming didn't make the list in 2008.) Here's the dealy-o, though: what actually is the risk of human extinction before 2100? 19%? (1 in 5, really?) Their conservative 3%? "Nanotech" currently is at most an OSHA problem. (Don't breathe in the microparticles!) The risk of "grey goo" is likely pretty damn low, given the history of the last 30 years of nanotechnology. (First thought on hearing of the possibility of nano-machines? "Ya mean, like proteins?") Conventional wars don't actually kill that many people; they tend to disperse too easily. I'm even given to understand that the effect of major wars is an increase in the rate of population growth. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, are very, very bad...for cities. But they're unlikely to do anything noticeable to people in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the Australian outback, or Mongolia. Pandemics have been a problem before, they'll be a problem again, but I'll let somebody else describe the problems with an infectious agent capable of killing all of its hosts. Likewise, climate changes have been problems before, and have led to bad outcomes. But killing everyone isn't ever been on the table. And for AI, I'm more concerned with the AI that runs your car off the road because it's not actually able to perceive the lane markers. Individually, each of those is bad. They'll possibly kill billions of people and possibly lead to the collapse of civilizations---some of them have done so before. But complete extinction is incredibly unlikely and "ending all life on Earth" is just silly. But human extinction is an issue that will get attention. It'll sell newspapers. And more than some minimal level of resources spent on it means less resources for other issues. Like, say, identifying and addressing actual problems with nanomaterials or wars or infectious agents.

yellowapple 8y ago

"Imagine a first year medical student who comes across a seriously injured pedestrian on a busy street, announces that they know first aid, and provides care on their own. They’ll look as though they’re helping. But imagine that a passerby who was about to call an ambulance refrained because the student showed up and took charge. In that case, the counterfactual may actually have been better medical care at the hands of an experienced doctor, making their apparent help an illusion." I think this is a poor analogy. Or maybe it's an excellent analogy for the dilemma the article glosses over: would the "right" answer be for the medical student to not help someone very obviously in need? Ambulances don't materialize instantaneously out of thin air, nor do they magically teleport themselves (and the patient inside) to a hospital. That hospital might be overcrowded, delaying treatment further. Or the med student could actually try to help (or at least triage) and at the same time call an ambulance.

Nasrudith 8y ago
It is a very poor analogy given that step two of first aid after evaluating that one of the first steps is to call emergency services yourself or direct someone specifically to call (targetting bypasses diffusion of responsibility).

SOMMS 8y ago

Socialism. /thread

techscruggs 8y ago

The medical field has a term for this: iatrogenic.

Johnny555 8y ago

Imagine a first year medical student who comes across a seriously injured pedestrian on a busy street, announces that they know first aid, and provides care on their own...but imagine that a passerby who was about to call an ambulance refrained because the student showed up and took charge Then he's not following his first aid training. One of the first things they taught in my first aid class is to send someone for help first -- find someone in the crowd and tell them specifically to call 911. Don't just tell the crowd in general to call for help or everyone may assume someone else is doing it, direct someone in particular to call.

ngokevin 8y ago
That reinforces the article though. "You take on a challenging project and make a mistake through lack of experience or poor judgment" The student thought they were doing good, but they did not ask someone to call for help due to lack of experience / poor judgement, worsening the situation potentially.

jackconnor 8y ago

The moral seems to be "Don't do anything, because there are always too many risks, many of which aren't obvious." If we followed this, nothing would ever get invented or done, and we'd still be hunter gatherers, so I'm not really feeling it.