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This article completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of most of the people quoted or referenced, then engages with those beliefs only via asserting the opposite

This article completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of most of the people quoted or referenced, then engages with those beliefs only via asserting the opposite without any supporting argument. I'm disappointed. For example: > The most charitable explanation of Singer’s dismissal of political action is that he is trying to sell being an altruist and he thinks a consumer -hero version is the one people are most likely to buy. Singer and other effective altruist philosophers believe that their most likely customers find institutional reform too complicated and political action too impersonal and hit and miss to be attractive. Interestingly, the author quotes part of Singer providing an argument against the effectiveness of institutional reform, but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." (I think that's far from obvious!) Instead, he jumps straight to accusing Singer of arguing in bad faith. This is actually the opposite of charitable. For another example, I'm deeply confused about how the author of this piece could cite Will MacAskill and Toby Ord, then write: > The underlying problem is that effective altruism's distinctive combination of political pessimism and consumer-hero hubris forecloses the consideration of promising possibilities for achieving far more good. Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change. EDIT: and I missed this one the first time around: > One could spend at most a few tens of millions of dollars on anti-mosquito bed nets before returns start dramatically diminishing because everyone who can be helped by them already has one. A single bednet charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, has literally already raised 10x this amount without substantially diminishing returns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Malaria_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Malaria_Foundation

dundarious 5y ago
> Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change. That’s not a universally true statement about 80,000 hours. I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income (which is what I was already doing — I’m fond of some of Effective Altruism). You could argue that is classic Consumer Hero advice. I know you qualified your statement but I just want to emphasize it as I think it leaves room for criticism.
- greenshackle2 5y ago
  I got that same advice circa 2015. However I'm under the impression they started moving away from "earning-to-give" recommendations around 2015-2016. It's still there mind you, but research and policy are prioritized higher. I'm not sure what else they would recommend to someone who is ill suited for these other careers.
- benkuhn 5y ago
  For more concrete data: If you look at their current "key ideas" page,[1] they go over 4 categories of high-impact careers (notably including government/policy) and then say "if you think none of the categories above are a great fit for you, we’d encourage you to consider earning to give. It’s also worth considering this option if you have an unusually good fit for a very high-earning career." This post[2] suggests 80k's key researchers think about 15% of people interested in EA would be the best fit for earning to give, while 10% of people attending an EA-themed conference were perfectly planning to. I don't think criticizing effective altruism based on the assertion that it's mostly about earning-to-give is reasonable given those numbers or the framing in 80k's "key ideas" post. [1]: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories [2]: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/should-you-switch-away-from-earning-to-give-some https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/...
- michaelt 5y ago
  > I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income The good thing about earning to give is it works no matter how niche your skill sets are. What's an efficient way to deploy an expert microchip designer, when so few global poverty NGOs need microchips designed?
scotty79 5y ago
> [...] but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." Maybe because vastly more people were lifted out of poverty (and associated issues) by political decission to switch to some version of free market economy than by any kind of individual charity? Author probably didn't state it because he assumed it's a common knowledge.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
medlyyy 5y ago
Yep. It's just bad. He's essentially advocating for effective altruism to become another lobbying group or NGO.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  But effective altruism is an NGO, isn't it?
puchatek 5y ago
Maybe political change would be the most obvious remedy but it's track record of helping the poor is gives ample reason to look for change elsewhere.
- okintheory 5y ago
  Political change has done pretty well at helping the poor in Scandinavia.
imtringued 5y ago
> but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." (I think that's far from obvious!) Argentina, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are basically nations that destroyed themselves through bad political reforms. If there had been a way to prevent those reforms you could have prevented millions of people from slipping into poverty and needing micro interventions.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." is not the same "if it worked then it would be useful in some cases". Author makes extremely strongly claim and expects to believe it without any support.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Countries, not nations. There are many nations living in Argentina and Venezuela, some do have political representation, some do not. e.g.: the Mapuche nation in Argentina lacks political representation. Then, Argentina is working extremely well, except for themselves, that is. They are in a treadmill of unpayable debt that works in the following way: - The left is tasked with buying people's complacency with borrowed money. - The right is tasked with giving away sovereignty: privatization and military bases. People are expected to pick a side and stay busy fighting over which side is right. Meanwhile, the country is taken over. Divide and conquer. It is working extremely well. There are now US military bases near Ushuaia, Neuquen and the Guarani acquifer, the 3 most strategic locations in Argentina. Everything that can be privatized has been privatized, and provisions have been made so that Argentineans can never pay off their debt, so that they can continue to lose their sovereignty. What should they privatize next? the sky is the limit.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Have they tried selling themselves back to Spain?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
cycomanic 5y ago
I think you are mischaracterising the argument. His argument is that effective altruism can not eliminate poverty, it's inherent in the concept. You also dis not show that he is the one who mischaracterises the "believes" (maybe you mean arguments here?). I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong? You have not actually engaged with the actual argument, you simply assert that change through political activism is not the "obvious most powerful tool we have". I think you need to back that up, I would say history at least tells us that the largest changes in wealth distributions have come through (often violent) political action. Regarding the bednet argument, you are simply nitpicking on the numbers. The argument still stands at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns, i. e. When everyone has a net giving nets is not helping anyone.
- solveit 5y ago
  No, the burden of proof lies on the person claiming that something is "obvious". And nitpicking the numbers is incredibly important if said nitpick happens to span orders of magnitude.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    It does not fundamentally change the argument, so nitpicking does not change how valid an argument is.
- riezebos 5y ago
  I don't know how "at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns" in this case is an argument against EA. In the book Doing Good Better one of the core ideas of EA is defined as investing in problems that are neglected, which prevents investing in diminishing returns. Whenever the malaria nets run into diminishing returns I am sure that GiveWell will start ranking AMF lower. If you are arguing that we should not invest in problems that have diminishing returns EA strongly agrees with you.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Yeah, that article is pretty weird. To add on your last point: > > One could spend at most a few tens of millions of dollars on anti-mosquito bed nets before returns start dramatically diminishing because everyone who can be helped by them already has one. That's a feature. It's half of what makes "effective" part of "effective" altruism effective. The fact that charities aren't infinite money sinks allows everyone to donate by a simple algorithm of: do { let charity = runQuery(" SELECT * FROM charities ORDER BY effectiveness DESC LIMIT 1;") donateTo(charity); } while(charity != null && hasMoneyToHelp()); The idea being, charities that can do most good now get the funds, and as they saturate and hit diminishing returns, they stop being the most effective ones, so other charities takes their place. Repeat until there are no more charities remaining, thus no more problems to solve. (People may have slightly different definitions of "effective", or one may prefer to do e.g. LIMIT 5 and pick one of the top 5 at random - the idea still works, the slight variance is a hedge against uncertainty.) It's an obvious idea, and it's how people approach other aspects of their lives if they care about the outcome, so why not donating too? The article continues: > > This points to the limits of the individualistic consumerist approach to ending poverty. The best – most beneficial – choice you can make as an individual spending $50 or even $5,000 is different from the best choice you should make if you have several hundred billion dollars to spend. There's only one entity with several hundred billion dollars to spare, and that's US Government. Other than that, this is why people donate to charities: charities exist to pool money, to turn ten thousand $50 donations into a single $500 000 force that can be better used than if everyone tried to apply their $50 directly at the problem.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  Effectiveness of charities has exactly the same problems as efficient market hypothesis: markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Or in other words, charities can remain full of shit for longer than you have money for.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Yes, and the same rules apply: - Don't invest more than you can comfortably lose. - Don't throw away the entire concept just because it's not perfect. - Get better at telling who's full of shit, or delegate it to someone you trust.

dundarious 5y ago

> Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change. That’s not a universally true statement about 80,000 hours. I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income (which is what I was already doing — I’m fond of some of Effective Altruism). You could argue that is classic Consumer Hero advice. I know you qualified your statement but I just want to emphasize it as I think it leaves room for criticism.

greenshackle2 5y ago
I got that same advice circa 2015. However I'm under the impression they started moving away from "earning-to-give" recommendations around 2015-2016. It's still there mind you, but research and policy are prioritized higher. I'm not sure what else they would recommend to someone who is ill suited for these other careers.
benkuhn 5y ago
For more concrete data: If you look at their current "key ideas" page,[1] they go over 4 categories of high-impact careers (notably including government/policy) and then say "if you think none of the categories above are a great fit for you, we’d encourage you to consider earning to give. It’s also worth considering this option if you have an unusually good fit for a very high-earning career." This post[2] suggests 80k's key researchers think about 15% of people interested in EA would be the best fit for earning to give, while 10% of people attending an EA-themed conference were perfectly planning to. I don't think criticizing effective altruism based on the assertion that it's mostly about earning-to-give is reasonable given those numbers or the framing in 80k's "key ideas" post. [1]: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories [2]: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/should-you-switch-away-from-earning-to-give-some https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/...
michaelt 5y ago
> I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income The good thing about earning to give is it works no matter how niche your skill sets are. What's an efficient way to deploy an expert microchip designer, when so few global poverty NGOs need microchips designed?

scotty79 5y ago

> [...] but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." Maybe because vastly more people were lifted out of poverty (and associated issues) by political decission to switch to some version of free market economy than by any kind of individual charity? Author probably didn't state it because he assumed it's a common knowledge.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

medlyyy 5y ago

Yep. It's just bad. He's essentially advocating for effective altruism to become another lobbying group or NGO.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
But effective altruism is an NGO, isn't it?

puchatek 5y ago

Maybe political change would be the most obvious remedy but it's track record of helping the poor is gives ample reason to look for change elsewhere.

okintheory 5y ago
Political change has done pretty well at helping the poor in Scandinavia.

imtringued 5y ago

> but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." (I think that's far from obvious!) Argentina, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are basically nations that destroyed themselves through bad political reforms. If there had been a way to prevent those reforms you could have prevented millions of people from slipping into poverty and needing micro interventions.

matkoniecz 5y ago
"the most obvious and powerful tool we have." is not the same "if it worked then it would be useful in some cases". Author makes extremely strongly claim and expects to believe it without any support.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Countries, not nations. There are many nations living in Argentina and Venezuela, some do have political representation, some do not. e.g.: the Mapuche nation in Argentina lacks political representation. Then, Argentina is working extremely well, except for themselves, that is. They are in a treadmill of unpayable debt that works in the following way: - The left is tasked with buying people's complacency with borrowed money. - The right is tasked with giving away sovereignty: privatization and military bases. People are expected to pick a side and stay busy fighting over which side is right. Meanwhile, the country is taken over. Divide and conquer. It is working extremely well. There are now US military bases near Ushuaia, Neuquen and the Guarani acquifer, the 3 most strategic locations in Argentina. Everything that can be privatized has been privatized, and provisions have been made so that Argentineans can never pay off their debt, so that they can continue to lose their sovereignty. What should they privatize next? the sky is the limit.
- astrange 5y ago
  Have they tried selling themselves back to Spain?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

cycomanic 5y ago

I think you are mischaracterising the argument. His argument is that effective altruism can not eliminate poverty, it's inherent in the concept. You also dis not show that he is the one who mischaracterises the "believes" (maybe you mean arguments here?). I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong? You have not actually engaged with the actual argument, you simply assert that change through political activism is not the "obvious most powerful tool we have". I think you need to back that up, I would say history at least tells us that the largest changes in wealth distributions have come through (often violent) political action. Regarding the bednet argument, you are simply nitpicking on the numbers. The argument still stands at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns, i. e. When everyone has a net giving nets is not helping anyone.

solveit 5y ago
No, the burden of proof lies on the person claiming that something is "obvious". And nitpicking the numbers is incredibly important if said nitpick happens to span orders of magnitude.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  It does not fundamentally change the argument, so nitpicking does not change how valid an argument is.
riezebos 5y ago
I don't know how "at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns" in this case is an argument against EA. In the book Doing Good Better one of the core ideas of EA is defined as investing in problems that are neglected, which prevents investing in diminishing returns. Whenever the malaria nets run into diminishing returns I am sure that GiveWell will start ranking AMF lower. If you are arguing that we should not invest in problems that have diminishing returns EA strongly agrees with you.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Yeah, that article is pretty weird. To add on your last point: > > One could spend at most a few tens of millions of dollars on anti-mosquito bed nets before returns start dramatically diminishing because everyone who can be helped by them already has one. That's a feature. It's half of what makes "effective" part of "effective" altruism effective. The fact that charities aren't infinite money sinks allows everyone to donate by a simple algorithm of: do { let charity = runQuery(" SELECT * FROM charities ORDER BY effectiveness DESC LIMIT 1;") donateTo(charity); } while(charity != null && hasMoneyToHelp()); The idea being, charities that can do most good now get the funds, and as they saturate and hit diminishing returns, they stop being the most effective ones, so other charities takes their place. Repeat until there are no more charities remaining, thus no more problems to solve. (People may have slightly different definitions of "effective", or one may prefer to do e.g. LIMIT 5 and pick one of the top 5 at random - the idea still works, the slight variance is a hedge against uncertainty.) It's an obvious idea, and it's how people approach other aspects of their lives if they care about the outcome, so why not donating too? The article continues: > > This points to the limits of the individualistic consumerist approach to ending poverty. The best – most beneficial – choice you can make as an individual spending $50 or even $5,000 is different from the best choice you should make if you have several hundred billion dollars to spend. There's only one entity with several hundred billion dollars to spare, and that's US Government. Other than that, this is why people donate to charities: charities exist to pool money, to turn ten thousand $50 donations into a single $500 000 force that can be better used than if everyone tried to apply their $50 directly at the problem.

heavenlyblue 5y ago
Effectiveness of charities has exactly the same problems as efficient market hypothesis: markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Or in other words, charities can remain full of shit for longer than you have money for.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Yes, and the same rules apply: - Don't invest more than you can comfortably lose. - Don't throw away the entire concept just because it's not perfect. - Get better at telling who's full of shit, or delegate it to someone you trust.