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Effective altruism in a nutshell: “I can do more good by persuading/forcing more people around me to do more good — and to do it efficiently, I should spend mos
by atemerev 5y ago
Effective altruism in a nutshell: “I can do more good by persuading/forcing more people around me to do more good — and to do it efficiently, I should spend most of my time on it, and not trying to do good myself”.
Well, eventually you run out of other people.
- zozbot234 5y ago"I can do more good by persuading/forcing more people around me to do more good" This is what most well-known charities do. They spend a lot of money on fundraising and administration, and very little of it on the underlying cause. EA is trying to avoid this failure mode by ensuring that they can derive their visibility by demonstrating actual effectiveness at what they do (providing advice transparently) rather than simply "persuading" others via any other means.
- pessimizer 5y ago> Well, eventually you run out of other people. In this case, that means you've converted the entire world and that the problem is solved. That's like saying that eventually you run out of people who could vote for you.
- atemerev 5y agoA Kantian approach would be to imagine a world where everyone is following this strategy.
- tomcatfish 5y agoReal question: What are you talking about? EA is about doing math to find charities that the highest "good per dollar" and giving them dollars in exchange for created goodness. Whatever you're talking about is something I'm unaware of.
- dtagames 5y agoUpvoted for the TL;DR. Would upvote again for the Thatcher.