8 ms·

Effective altruism as a tower of assumptions

37 points by feross 4y ago

ajross 4y ago
This is all a strawman. When people (me included) criticize EA for it's questionable priorities, it's an expression of exasperation, not an existential attack on the movement or its practitioners. We like EA. We think it's a good idea. We also think it, on the whole, has made some outrageously bad analysis about what it should work on, and is perpetutating that nonsense in an echo chamber of sci-fi speculation. And that really sucks, because we see all that energy that could be spent on climate issues or public health or democratization instead aimed at predicting when WOPR or SkyNet will achieve sentience. It's... frustrating.
- not-my-account 4y ago
  I think that EA is a lot more decentralized than you think it is. You could totally be an effective altruist devoted to climate issues, public health, and democratization. Just pop down (or move sideways from) the pillar that states that AI Safety is paramount and chug away!
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    I think the issue is that while the majority of funding through EA and EA-adjacent orgs still goes to poverty-reduction work, the majority of mindshare and interest (among EA!) is in primarily AI- but also pandemic-risk. The first of these especially avoids addressing many real, pressing, ML/AI problems in the world today for philosophizing (and getting paid to do it by people who were previously donating their money to global poverty reduction). If you consider EA Global as a charity, and the money donated to longtermist AI to be, functionally, salaries paid to employees, the overhead of EA jumps by like 15%. That's not admirable, by EAs own metrics.
    - not-my-account 4y ago
      Sure, but these people and others truly believe that AI safety is an important issue. There are a lot of really smart people who have thought a lot about it, and I have not looked deeply into it so I can't say, but it doesn't seem like that would invalidate EA entirely. I.E. I still don't understand why you can't just dislike the fact that some people are devoting time, energy, and money to AI safety, and just be an effective altruist for the issues that you think are most important. In other words, don't throw the EA baby out with the AI Safety bathwater.
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        > In other words, don't throw the EA baby out with the AI Safety bathwater. I don't! I donate (lots of) money to GiveWell, and I credit EA members for convincing me to do that. The parts of EA that are functionally "hey donate money to effective charities" are good things that make the world better. I do think that it is dangerous to EA as a movement to be discolored by self-dealing AI longtermism.
        not-my-account 4y ago
        Ah! Gotcha, I misunderstood your position. Sorry for the misunderstanding! I think we are in more-or-less the same / similar position.
- lrobinovitch 4y ago
  > When people (me included) criticize EA for it's questionable priorities, it's an expression of exasperation, not an existential attack on the movement or its practitioners. I have had different experiences with critics of EA. Many critics come off as passive, finding one or two basic disagreements with institutions or moonshot/futurist ideas that they use to justify their total disengagement with their potential positive impact in the world beyond themselves and their friends/families. You might not even call these folks critics - maybe they're just "excuse-seekers"? It sounds like you are a critic who is actively engaged at the second and third blocks of the tower, which I assume the author would have no issue with.
- notahacker 4y ago
  This. And the analysis (good and bad) is the movement. It's great that they're encouraging people to donate money, and have goals in doing so, but that idea's been around since ancient times. (And they're far the first people to apply utilitarian frameworks or RCTs to philanthropy either, so it's really the detail that's novel) And since the movement set itself up with the goal of debating the effectiveness of altruistic interventions (including explicit suggestions that others weren't doing altruism effectively), it seems ludicrously antithetical to that objective to shield it from criticism by telling us to shut up about the bits we think are ineffective and go away and give 10% of our own income instead. (Apart from anything else, 10% of the average sceptic's lifetime income probably isn't worth nearly as much in QALY as a throwaway comment convincing a single SV billionaire with exit money to spend on the future of humanity that they might be better off listening to boring old aid agencies that don't even do RCTs, rather than being seduced by arguments in favour of donating to a more EA-approved cause like the nonprofit marketing wing of OpenAI Inc)
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    AI research is not "more EA-approved" than global development - any such claim is peddling gross misinformation. Most EA's donate a lot to global development, healthcare research, animal rights, disaster preparedness and other very mainstream causes.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      > AI research is not "more EA-approved" than global development - any such claim is peddling gross misinformation I haven't made that claim. I have accurately stated that EA organisations have both explicitly criticised many/most aid agencies for not providing enough evidence of efficacy in the form of RCTs etc and explicitly endorsed and funded OpenAI. In my opinion, the latter cause is a less effective and in-need-of-funds one than the average "do not recommend" charity on GiveWell, and so I think human QALYs would benefit from high net worth individuals regarding the core of the EA movement's opinions on effectiveness as highly debatable and listening to voices outside it too. (And obviously whilst many EAs recommend and contribute significantly to global development causes, it's also true that this cause is extremely highly prioritised outside the movement whereas AI risk and "longtermism" - an increasingly emphasised if not universally approved part of the movement - is pretty much exclusive to it, so I think the net direction of most people already committed to human-life centred philanthropy paying attention to the EA movement is going to be to fund the former less and the latter more)
karaterobot 4y ago
I don't donate 10% of my income to effective charities, but I do donate about 2.5% to charities I am told are very lean and productive. I've always wondered where the 10% number comes from: is it just because that's the traditional tithing amount in Christianity? Is it because it's a round number? In the spirit of this article: why not 11%?
- skybrian 4y ago
  Yes, it’s just because it’s a traditional amount. They picked a number at which people who are inclined to feel guilty about not doing enough should stop feeling guilty.
- chadash 4y ago
  10% might be arbitrary but it seems to be a number that people have found to be reasonable for over 2000 years, so it is well tested. If you go too low then less money goes to charity. Too high and people brush it off as unreasonable. On a side note, Judaism has a 10% min but also a 20% max (but which doesn’t necessarily apply to the very wealthy).
wrnr 4y ago
Crumbs and pennies I need all of mine
Imnimo 4y ago
The base level of the tower contains "we should strongly consider how much effort we devote to this". Isn't this the pillar that leads to all the crazy "Kill predatory animals" (I know this particular example is not a widely held position, it's just the one from the article) stuff? I think everyone is on board for the "altruism" part, it's the "effective" part that doesn't seem to be panning out so well. For whatever reason, it seems like a significant portion of people who devote a lot of time to trying to be effective end up being less effective than if they just gave their money to the Red Cross or other big-name charities.
- jimkleiber 4y ago
  I appreciate this. I've spent so much time (unrelated to EA) trying to optimize my work to help the most amount of people, and yet how much of that time could have been better spent helping someone in a less efficient way? 2 hours helping at 100% efficiency but 8 hours of thinking (0% efficiency) vs 8 hours of helping at 50% and 2 hours of thinking? Seems the latter would win, 4 hours to 2 hours.
- skybrian 4y ago
  How do you figure? The simplest way to do effective altruism is to donate to whatever GiveWell recommends and call it a day, and I would expect that to be significantly more effective than donating to the Red Cross. Maybe some people in EA forums are tying themselves in knots, but you don’t have to hang out there, and I’m skeptical that people who post a lot are typical.
  - Imnimo 4y ago
    I would say that using GiveWell is a perfectly fine approach, but it is not the one implied by the phrase "strongly consider".
    - skybrian 4y ago
      It’s outsourcing the “strongly consider” part; that is, donating through an organization that strongly considers effectiveness. I’m not sure that “we should strongly consider” necessarily means you do the considering yourself, since “we” is fairly vague about who does the work. But maybe the wording could be clarified?
brutusborn 4y ago
I find the 10% amount interesting because it seems to be a simple tithing, coming directly from the Bible. Im not suggesting that there is anything wrong with it, you have to start somewhere. However compared to the amount of discussion I hear about comparing the efficacy of giving strategies, there seems to be little discussion on the 10%. I wonder if this is because of Moral Relativism, i.e. a moral code that requires 90% is just as valid as a moral code that requires 10%.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  10% is just the number used to make EA seem approachable and avoid excessive "guilt tripping" when evangelizing. In that way it was chosen because it has been the socially accepted amount to donate for thousands of years. If you dive deeper into EA you will see that most of the thought leaders suggest far more than 10%, usually 50%, but no one wants to join a community that is guilt tripping you into giving away half your income.
jimkleiber 4y ago
I think my "too-spicy-to-publish" comment would be the problem I personally see with it is that it can seem to quickly go from effective altruism -> efficient altruism. Or rather, in my case — "more effective" -> "most effective" — and that search for how to perfectly save the world has been driving me insane a bit. So how to keep it at the "more effective" level?
vinceguidry 4y ago
10% towards charity is a bit much. One should absolutely donate 10% of their income, but charities are inefficient vehicles for change. There are political causes that, should we get better people in office, will direct the massive resources of government to either stop doing bad things or start doing better things. For those that were around for it, there was a big huge discussion here awhile back about Blue Tribe vs Grey Tribe mentality and this is just more Grey Tribe quibbling. Scale happens best not at the level of the firm / charity, but at the realm of the state. It's possible to participate meaningfully in politics just by making your voice heard, this is why the Blue Tribe is so powerful. Grey Tribe is fundamentally libertarian, and libertarians fundamentally just wanna be free to go their own way. But there's power in numbers. My recommendation is 2.5% politics donations, 2.5% personal cause donations (I like the FSF), 5% towards local organizations doing community stuff. Adjust as you see fit.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  I think even giving 2.5% to politics is too much. The amount of impact your money will have in influencing public policy is minuscule. Even if you donated 90% it would make almost no difference in a state-level political campaigns chance of success. And even assuming your preferred candidate did win, their ability to redirect the “massive resources” of government to a good causes is very small. However small amounts donated to the right charities (vaccines, mosquito nets, eye surgery, etc) can completely change peoples lives.
  - striking 4y ago
    > In an election year estimated to cost around $14 billion, money from small donors makes up 22 percent of 2020 fundraising — up from 15 percent at this point in 2016. > In what Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has called “the most important election of our lifetime,” small donor donations already total $2.8 billion — an unprecedented high considering the impact of COVID-19 on the American wallet. > Biden has seen a high tally of these small donations from a dollars-only standpoint. At around $368 million, money from small donors makes up about 38 percent of Biden’s total. But President Donald Trump has seen a higher proportion of money raised from small donors, with 45 percent, or $268 million, of his total coming from contributions of $200 or less. From https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/small-donors-give-big-2020-thanks-to-technology/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/small-donors-give-b... Seems like every donation, even those under $200, counts. In a proportion and as part of helping win races. I had a visualization in mind that showed size of donations per district among other stats but I can't find it now. There are rough estimates for the "cost per vote" based on donations divided by number of votes achieved but obviously there are a number of confounding factors with analyses starting from numbers like those. As far as redirecting funds to things you believe in, I don't imagine some of the recent changes enacted by recent bills would have taken effect in any way other than getting folks to vote for someone who would help push them through, and donating money for political ads and other kinds of campaigning can often make or break a campaign (I can't think of a better recent example than how JD Vance was just given $28M for the Ohio race that ostensibly favors Republicans).
ihm 4y ago
EA is bad because it in practice, as an actually existing movement, assumes capitalism as an immutable reality. The problem is that capitalism actually generates most of the problems they are worried about, so if they can’t address the root cause, they are perpetually spinning their wheels addressing symptoms. You can see this axiomatic commitment to capitalism in their actual practice and advice they give people: starting non-profit orgs that are integrated with the capitalist economy, recommending getting high earning jobs at capitalist firms, donating huge amounts to capitalist politicians like Joe Biden (see Sam Bankman-Fried), not taking any anti-capitalist political action, etc.
- not-my-account 4y ago
  Socialism or communism are the alternatives? Or do you imagine a different political system? Which do you strive for? And what are the steps from that to the new state performing the actions that an archipelago of effective charities are already taking? Genuine set of questions, that is an interesting take!
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    I'll step back a little and say that EA is somewhat anti-political, in that organizationally it doesn't believe in political action (any, really) as effective. It sometimes suggests donating to lobbying groups, but if EA took climate as seriously as they took AI-risk, you'd likely see a concerted effort to move people to Wyoming and push for a single-issue climate change candidate to support democratic climate initiatives.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      This isn't really true. OPP has political action as one of its top priorities and is donating millions a year. Bankman-fried just dropped 10 million on a house race in oregon, and I hear that he's only ramping up his political donations. "Move to wyoming" is something you hear about in the EA community often enough.
      - 4y ago
samsquire 4y ago
I have tap water, locomotive engines, industrial factories, electricity, computers, agricultural technology, an abundance of food in supermarkets, pain and drug medication available for ailments and the freedom to earn a living. The capability of buying a litre of oil which has enough energy to do the labour work of 100 people in one day. The countries that lack these things need some fundamental thing to be sustainable and grow in excess of their inputs. It takes resources to grow resources. The poverty strucken parts of the world don't have sustainable infrastructure or the capability of building it. The problem is obvious but nobody wants to talk about it. If I had responsibility to do something good, it needs to be on my own terms and I decided how it were to be used then maybe I would want to help. But if it is going to be lost to corruption, abuse, drugs then that's not the intended purpose of the investment. Takes resources to get resources. Also takes good management. If I'm investing resources, I don't want my resources being pilfered away.
- skybrian 4y ago
  Okay, but what are you actually going to do? What specific projects do you recommend supporting?
  - samsquire 4y ago
    I donate to a Christian charity that gives money, health checks to children to survive at their churches. The kinds of things that these countries need are large government backed projects with extreme amounts of funding to introduce core infrastructure such as water pipes, hospitals, education curriculums. Things that we in the West take for granted or are even free. For this to work, Everything hinges upon a high trust, values based society where people WANT civilization and WANT society. That means low crime, low criminality, the availability of work to earn money for food and effective shelter. And mutual good will. I don't think giving them money and letting them spend it on consumables helps as much as it could. In the UK parts of our national services are run by foreign companies, as direct foreign investment. They know how to run a railway or hospital or waste disposal. Governments in the west have enough on their plate, it would take a great deal of investment for a government to instigate a plan to introduce an infrastructural plan in a country that is NOT their own. The corresponding government organisational capability might not even exist in the recipient countries.
nonameiguess 4y ago
This seems uncharacteristically ad-hominemy of Scott, given all of his other work. He's usually pretty good about separating out the discussion of a topic from the personal virtues of who is doing the discussing. I would even say that is a core tenet of his entire project as a writer and a rationalist. Discussion and criticism of effective altruism, and of any other social movement, is and should be possible separate from the question of whether the people participating in that discussion and criticism are personally doing anything about what they're discussing. Got a problem with US drug policy? Well, what are you doing to heal addicts and stop international crime rings from funding their activities with the drug trade? Got a problem with mass surveillance from intelligence agencies? What are you doing to keep foreign adversaries from infiltrating and sabotaging public information systems? Got a problem with policing strategies? What are you doing to fight crime? In case it isn't clear, I think all of these are bad responses. EA, for better or worse, has made itself more or less a public-facing movement. Publicity exposes you to opinions of people who are not personally involved in whatever you're doing. Lots of people critique the athletes, coaches, and management of their favorite sports without ever having any hope or possibility of getting involved themselves. Very few people who vote are ever going to run for office. That's fine. And if people with opinions on EA are not themselves particularly altruistic in a way that involves giving money directly to charitable causes, so what? Maybe that makes them less personally virtuous according to your system of ethics, but it doesn't make what they're saying either more or less correct. Those are independent axes of evaluation.
hervature 4y ago
My main critique to effective altruism is that, because it is based on utilitarianism, it is a perfectly good framework with 0 ways to apply it practically. For example, show me the calculation where they take into account the probability of climate solving technology comes from supporting schools in Detroit. The amount of ALL small likelihood events with large impacts need to be taken into account. I emphasize ALL because otherwise you can just pick and choose the events you care about. Then, the next problem is quantifying the probability. Again, it is mostly assumptions and these assumptions dictate what you believe. If you believe "AI is the highest risk to humanity", utilitarianism doesn't matter as you are already deciding the probabilities. At that point, you are just doing performative art to make your belief feel legitimate. I do think that people should be encouraged to donate more (and should be progressive by income, not a fixed 10%) but I also think the organization misses the whole side of volunteering or personal actions, although they have "altruistic jobs". For example, converting to veganism would greatly outweigh 10% of a median salary to the most effective climate charity.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  As effective altruists love to claim, the core tenants aren't really based on utilitarianism. Yes, pretty much all the commentators are utilitarians, but the core stance of "you should help others, and you should do so in an effective way" doesn't actually say anything about what effective means. You can effectively seperate the church from the religion here. Yes, givewell is an inherently utilitarian organization, but being EA doesn't mean just doing whatever givewell tells you. It means you're putting some level of thought into the best way to help people and you're acting on your conclusions. Converting to veganism is something EA advocates for constantly by the way, it's pretty much the first thing you'll see when looking into animal welfare. I think the biggest issue is that people really like meat, and being told they should stop eating it is likely to turn them off of animal welfare all together, so organizations bury the lede sometimes.
  - skybrian 4y ago
    Just doing what GiveWell says seems fine? Why not?
renewiltord 4y ago
As an effective altruist, https://cosmicbraintrust.org/ https://cosmicbraintrust.org/ is the only concern that I would realistically advocate for. The numbers just overwhelm any other thing.
0xbadc0de5 4y ago
The trouble many people I've spoken to have with charities donating to "the poorest people in the world" is that it tends to create a dependency cycle that is hard to break out of and often helps prop up corrupt governments. It's seen as a low-resolution, hand-wavy, throw-money-at-the-problem solution that actually perpetuates the problem. Nobody seems to want to discuss the root causes of these impoverished peoples - typically generations of incompetent and corrupt governments (or higher-than-average levels of incompetence and corruption if you prefer) that are shielded from accountability because there's always someone to bail them out from the worst consequences of their actions.
- april_22 4y ago
  “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” ― Albert Einstein
keybored 4y ago
> It would be called something like How To Respond To Common Criticisms Of Effective Altruism (In Your Head Only, Definitely Never Do This In Real Life), and it starts: Either you would “never do this” because you feel that it would hurt the cause or because you realize that all of those initial responses are completely fallacious. “Steel man” those questions. It is obvious that they are attacking the intellectual ideas behind EA. But you’re conflating actions, moral character, and ideas. Here’s a steel man of one of the “questions” (assertions): Q: [Given that you are going to commit to donating 10% of your time or money or whatever and do X:] I think charity is a distraction from the hard work of systemic change. [Therefore you should put that 10% towards systemic change instead.] > Foundational Assumptions Say I accept these. Then I make my next assumptions: 1. I value my direct experience over second-hand experience, statistics, and science 2. Because I think (1) helps inform me better so that I can be true to the Foundational Assumptions (being effective) 3. I think Utilitarianism as a guiding framework is completely useless and won’t help me stay true to the Foundational Assumptions 4. I know my family and community better than I know people outside that circle, which helps me stay true to the Foundational Assumptions (being effective) 5. I will therefore focus 95% of my good-doing activities on very local help Would I still be in the EA club?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Yes, if you are spending time thinking about the most effective ways to help others and using your resources on the conclusions you come up with you are an effective altruist.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  Then the followup question is "What is being effective to you? Based on your second assumption, it appears that being effective to you means, at worst, only helping those close to you, and at best, helping in ways that are visible to you. Do you think those in your community are the most in need of assistance, and even if they are, do you think that your view of what they need is more insightful than their opinion of what they need?" The way you've defined things, asking a homeless person for what they believe would most help them is not effective, because it is second hand.
deleted 4y ago
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pessimizer 4y ago
I do not like this essay, but its central point is a good one to me. It seems to me that a somewhat superficial reason people criticize "effective altruism" is because of the dogshit politics and worldviews of most of the people advocating and participating in it. The fact is that valuing efficiency in humanitarian work is commendable, and anyone arguing for inefficiency in charity is trying to rob you. I think the motivations behind the loudest objectors, however, are because donating to charities in your own backyard, that work on things that you enjoy as a fan or as a hobby, that employ your friends and family etc. are the vast bulk of charities. And the bulk of the cash that goes to them is eaten up by a combination of overhead in the form of salaries, travel, and accommodations, and for the big boys hiring contractors with personal and political relationships to do studies and reports that deliver recommendations, rather than any direct improvement on the targets that are the nominal purpose of the organization. People just prefer to give money to charities that get kids to paint murals, or their local art museum (where their niece works) than those that would have a far larger effect on lives farther away that they relate to less. That's of course true for plenty of the effective altruists, too, it's just that their hobbies are ideological or science fictional, so the charities that they think are effective are often outlandish, hyper-libertarian, or simply stupid. But criticize the individual donating badly, not the idea. The complaint that effectiveness is impossible to measure so therefore the mean of all giving is inevitably moderate effectiveness is defensive nonsense and a direct appeal to the law of averages. We're just trying to hide the fact that, with the bizarre out-of-touch narcissistic elites that we've bred with our terrible politics, we pray that they're ineffective in pursuing what they think is best. Every time a rich guy accomplishes what he thinks is best, a public school closes. But the criticism largely seems to be coming from a middle class segment who thinks that charities are best when they're about going to parties, expressing yourself, being thanked, and pushing periodic press releases to raise awareness. I think it'd be better to ditch the larger brand, and push for effective alleviation of hunger, or effective relief of homelessness, or taking effective care of refugees or immigrants. Just get the ideology out of the way immediately i.e. this is the thing that I think is most important to do, let's find the most effective way to do it. Sorry for the rant.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > a middle class segment who thinks that charities are best when they're about going to parties, expressing yourself, being thanked, and pushing periodic press releases to raise awareness Isn't it a bit ironic then that so much of the criticism of EA has to do with these very activities? There is a legitimate role for awareness raising, as long as it's not consuming huge amounts of valuable resources. > push for effective alleviation of hunger, or effective relief of homelessness, or taking effective care of refugees or immigrants. This is exactly what EA's are doing. But picking the most viable cause areas is also important. Some incredibly popular causes, e.g. short-term disaster relief in foreign countries, really are a lot less viable than what EA's typically fund.
renewiltord 4y ago
More seriously, I've looked into true EA and suddenly realized I don't actually care that much for altruism. Just like most people, I really don't care to save an arbitrary life. For instance, when I bought my iPhone 13 I tried visualizing a dying child and seeing if I cared to save this arbitrary child and while it was heartrending, I'd rather have the iPhone. Yesterday, did the same thing with dinner at The French Laundry. Can't be helped, man, I don't care about random lives. But like the great philanthropists of old, I am happy to give away all but the first billion dollars I've made. And I think most people are like me. Like, you'd be accused of being a boor if someone said they were planning on buying an expensive engagement ring and you offered this alternative.

37 points by feross 4y ago

This is all a strawman. When people (me included) criticize EA for it's questionable priorities, it's an expression of exasperation, not an existential attack on the movement or its practitioners. We like EA. We think it's a good idea. We also think it, on the whole, has made some outrageously bad analysis about what it should work on, and is perpetutating that nonsense in an echo chamber of sci-fi speculation. And that really sucks, because we see all that energy that could be spent on climate issues or public health or democratization instead aimed at predicting when WOPR or SkyNet will achieve sentience. It's... frustrating.

not-my-account 4y ago
I think that EA is a lot more decentralized than you think it is. You could totally be an effective altruist devoted to climate issues, public health, and democratization. Just pop down (or move sideways from) the pillar that states that AI Safety is paramount and chug away!
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  I think the issue is that while the majority of funding through EA and EA-adjacent orgs still goes to poverty-reduction work, the majority of mindshare and interest (among EA!) is in primarily AI- but also pandemic-risk. The first of these especially avoids addressing many real, pressing, ML/AI problems in the world today for philosophizing (and getting paid to do it by people who were previously donating their money to global poverty reduction). If you consider EA Global as a charity, and the money donated to longtermist AI to be, functionally, salaries paid to employees, the overhead of EA jumps by like 15%. That's not admirable, by EAs own metrics.
  - not-my-account 4y ago
    Sure, but these people and others truly believe that AI safety is an important issue. There are a lot of really smart people who have thought a lot about it, and I have not looked deeply into it so I can't say, but it doesn't seem like that would invalidate EA entirely. I.E. I still don't understand why you can't just dislike the fact that some people are devoting time, energy, and money to AI safety, and just be an effective altruist for the issues that you think are most important. In other words, don't throw the EA baby out with the AI Safety bathwater.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      > In other words, don't throw the EA baby out with the AI Safety bathwater. I don't! I donate (lots of) money to GiveWell, and I credit EA members for convincing me to do that. The parts of EA that are functionally "hey donate money to effective charities" are good things that make the world better. I do think that it is dangerous to EA as a movement to be discolored by self-dealing AI longtermism.
      - not-my-account 4y ago
        Ah! Gotcha, I misunderstood your position. Sorry for the misunderstanding! I think we are in more-or-less the same / similar position.
lrobinovitch 4y ago
> When people (me included) criticize EA for it's questionable priorities, it's an expression of exasperation, not an existential attack on the movement or its practitioners. I have had different experiences with critics of EA. Many critics come off as passive, finding one or two basic disagreements with institutions or moonshot/futurist ideas that they use to justify their total disengagement with their potential positive impact in the world beyond themselves and their friends/families. You might not even call these folks critics - maybe they're just "excuse-seekers"? It sounds like you are a critic who is actively engaged at the second and third blocks of the tower, which I assume the author would have no issue with.
notahacker 4y ago
This. And the analysis (good and bad) is the movement. It's great that they're encouraging people to donate money, and have goals in doing so, but that idea's been around since ancient times. (And they're far the first people to apply utilitarian frameworks or RCTs to philanthropy either, so it's really the detail that's novel) And since the movement set itself up with the goal of debating the effectiveness of altruistic interventions (including explicit suggestions that others weren't doing altruism effectively), it seems ludicrously antithetical to that objective to shield it from criticism by telling us to shut up about the bits we think are ineffective and go away and give 10% of our own income instead. (Apart from anything else, 10% of the average sceptic's lifetime income probably isn't worth nearly as much in QALY as a throwaway comment convincing a single SV billionaire with exit money to spend on the future of humanity that they might be better off listening to boring old aid agencies that don't even do RCTs, rather than being seduced by arguments in favour of donating to a more EA-approved cause like the nonprofit marketing wing of OpenAI Inc)
- zozbot234 4y ago
  AI research is not "more EA-approved" than global development - any such claim is peddling gross misinformation. Most EA's donate a lot to global development, healthcare research, animal rights, disaster preparedness and other very mainstream causes.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > AI research is not "more EA-approved" than global development - any such claim is peddling gross misinformation I haven't made that claim. I have accurately stated that EA organisations have both explicitly criticised many/most aid agencies for not providing enough evidence of efficacy in the form of RCTs etc and explicitly endorsed and funded OpenAI. In my opinion, the latter cause is a less effective and in-need-of-funds one than the average "do not recommend" charity on GiveWell, and so I think human QALYs would benefit from high net worth individuals regarding the core of the EA movement's opinions on effectiveness as highly debatable and listening to voices outside it too. (And obviously whilst many EAs recommend and contribute significantly to global development causes, it's also true that this cause is extremely highly prioritised outside the movement whereas AI risk and "longtermism" - an increasingly emphasised if not universally approved part of the movement - is pretty much exclusive to it, so I think the net direction of most people already committed to human-life centred philanthropy paying attention to the EA movement is going to be to fund the former less and the latter more)

karaterobot 4y ago

I don't donate 10% of my income to effective charities, but I do donate about 2.5% to charities I am told are very lean and productive. I've always wondered where the 10% number comes from: is it just because that's the traditional tithing amount in Christianity? Is it because it's a round number? In the spirit of this article: why not 11%?

skybrian 4y ago
Yes, it’s just because it’s a traditional amount. They picked a number at which people who are inclined to feel guilty about not doing enough should stop feeling guilty.
chadash 4y ago
10% might be arbitrary but it seems to be a number that people have found to be reasonable for over 2000 years, so it is well tested. If you go too low then less money goes to charity. Too high and people brush it off as unreasonable. On a side note, Judaism has a 10% min but also a 20% max (but which doesn’t necessarily apply to the very wealthy).

wrnr 4y ago

Crumbs and pennies I need all of mine

Imnimo 4y ago

The base level of the tower contains "we should strongly consider how much effort we devote to this". Isn't this the pillar that leads to all the crazy "Kill predatory animals" (I know this particular example is not a widely held position, it's just the one from the article) stuff? I think everyone is on board for the "altruism" part, it's the "effective" part that doesn't seem to be panning out so well. For whatever reason, it seems like a significant portion of people who devote a lot of time to trying to be effective end up being less effective than if they just gave their money to the Red Cross or other big-name charities.

jimkleiber 4y ago
I appreciate this. I've spent so much time (unrelated to EA) trying to optimize my work to help the most amount of people, and yet how much of that time could have been better spent helping someone in a less efficient way? 2 hours helping at 100% efficiency but 8 hours of thinking (0% efficiency) vs 8 hours of helping at 50% and 2 hours of thinking? Seems the latter would win, 4 hours to 2 hours.
skybrian 4y ago
How do you figure? The simplest way to do effective altruism is to donate to whatever GiveWell recommends and call it a day, and I would expect that to be significantly more effective than donating to the Red Cross. Maybe some people in EA forums are tying themselves in knots, but you don’t have to hang out there, and I’m skeptical that people who post a lot are typical.
- Imnimo 4y ago
  I would say that using GiveWell is a perfectly fine approach, but it is not the one implied by the phrase "strongly consider".
  - skybrian 4y ago
    It’s outsourcing the “strongly consider” part; that is, donating through an organization that strongly considers effectiveness. I’m not sure that “we should strongly consider” necessarily means you do the considering yourself, since “we” is fairly vague about who does the work. But maybe the wording could be clarified?

brutusborn 4y ago

I find the 10% amount interesting because it seems to be a simple tithing, coming directly from the Bible. Im not suggesting that there is anything wrong with it, you have to start somewhere. However compared to the amount of discussion I hear about comparing the efficacy of giving strategies, there seems to be little discussion on the 10%. I wonder if this is because of Moral Relativism, i.e. a moral code that requires 90% is just as valid as a moral code that requires 10%.

colinmhayes 4y ago
10% is just the number used to make EA seem approachable and avoid excessive "guilt tripping" when evangelizing. In that way it was chosen because it has been the socially accepted amount to donate for thousands of years. If you dive deeper into EA you will see that most of the thought leaders suggest far more than 10%, usually 50%, but no one wants to join a community that is guilt tripping you into giving away half your income.

jimkleiber 4y ago

I think my "too-spicy-to-publish" comment would be the problem I personally see with it is that it can seem to quickly go from effective altruism -> efficient altruism. Or rather, in my case — "more effective" -> "most effective" — and that search for how to perfectly save the world has been driving me insane a bit. So how to keep it at the "more effective" level?

vinceguidry 4y ago

10% towards charity is a bit much. One should absolutely donate 10% of their income, but charities are inefficient vehicles for change. There are political causes that, should we get better people in office, will direct the massive resources of government to either stop doing bad things or start doing better things. For those that were around for it, there was a big huge discussion here awhile back about Blue Tribe vs Grey Tribe mentality and this is just more Grey Tribe quibbling. Scale happens best not at the level of the firm / charity, but at the realm of the state. It's possible to participate meaningfully in politics just by making your voice heard, this is why the Blue Tribe is so powerful. Grey Tribe is fundamentally libertarian, and libertarians fundamentally just wanna be free to go their own way. But there's power in numbers. My recommendation is 2.5% politics donations, 2.5% personal cause donations (I like the FSF), 5% towards local organizations doing community stuff. Adjust as you see fit.

celeritascelery 4y ago
I think even giving 2.5% to politics is too much. The amount of impact your money will have in influencing public policy is minuscule. Even if you donated 90% it would make almost no difference in a state-level political campaigns chance of success. And even assuming your preferred candidate did win, their ability to redirect the “massive resources” of government to a good causes is very small. However small amounts donated to the right charities (vaccines, mosquito nets, eye surgery, etc) can completely change peoples lives.
- striking 4y ago
  > In an election year estimated to cost around $14 billion, money from small donors makes up 22 percent of 2020 fundraising — up from 15 percent at this point in 2016. > In what Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has called “the most important election of our lifetime,” small donor donations already total $2.8 billion — an unprecedented high considering the impact of COVID-19 on the American wallet. > Biden has seen a high tally of these small donations from a dollars-only standpoint. At around $368 million, money from small donors makes up about 38 percent of Biden’s total. But President Donald Trump has seen a higher proportion of money raised from small donors, with 45 percent, or $268 million, of his total coming from contributions of $200 or less. From https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/small-donors-give-big-2020-thanks-to-technology/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/small-donors-give-b... Seems like every donation, even those under $200, counts. In a proportion and as part of helping win races. I had a visualization in mind that showed size of donations per district among other stats but I can't find it now. There are rough estimates for the "cost per vote" based on donations divided by number of votes achieved but obviously there are a number of confounding factors with analyses starting from numbers like those. As far as redirecting funds to things you believe in, I don't imagine some of the recent changes enacted by recent bills would have taken effect in any way other than getting folks to vote for someone who would help push them through, and donating money for political ads and other kinds of campaigning can often make or break a campaign (I can't think of a better recent example than how JD Vance was just given $28M for the Ohio race that ostensibly favors Republicans).

ihm 4y ago

EA is bad because it in practice, as an actually existing movement, assumes capitalism as an immutable reality. The problem is that capitalism actually generates most of the problems they are worried about, so if they can’t address the root cause, they are perpetually spinning their wheels addressing symptoms. You can see this axiomatic commitment to capitalism in their actual practice and advice they give people: starting non-profit orgs that are integrated with the capitalist economy, recommending getting high earning jobs at capitalist firms, donating huge amounts to capitalist politicians like Joe Biden (see Sam Bankman-Fried), not taking any anti-capitalist political action, etc.

not-my-account 4y ago
Socialism or communism are the alternatives? Or do you imagine a different political system? Which do you strive for? And what are the steps from that to the new state performing the actions that an archipelago of effective charities are already taking? Genuine set of questions, that is an interesting take!
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  I'll step back a little and say that EA is somewhat anti-political, in that organizationally it doesn't believe in political action (any, really) as effective. It sometimes suggests donating to lobbying groups, but if EA took climate as seriously as they took AI-risk, you'd likely see a concerted effort to move people to Wyoming and push for a single-issue climate change candidate to support democratic climate initiatives.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    This isn't really true. OPP has political action as one of its top priorities and is donating millions a year. Bankman-fried just dropped 10 million on a house race in oregon, and I hear that he's only ramping up his political donations. "Move to wyoming" is something you hear about in the EA community often enough.
    - 4y ago

samsquire 4y ago

I have tap water, locomotive engines, industrial factories, electricity, computers, agricultural technology, an abundance of food in supermarkets, pain and drug medication available for ailments and the freedom to earn a living. The capability of buying a litre of oil which has enough energy to do the labour work of 100 people in one day. The countries that lack these things need some fundamental thing to be sustainable and grow in excess of their inputs. It takes resources to grow resources. The poverty strucken parts of the world don't have sustainable infrastructure or the capability of building it. The problem is obvious but nobody wants to talk about it. If I had responsibility to do something good, it needs to be on my own terms and I decided how it were to be used then maybe I would want to help. But if it is going to be lost to corruption, abuse, drugs then that's not the intended purpose of the investment. Takes resources to get resources. Also takes good management. If I'm investing resources, I don't want my resources being pilfered away.

skybrian 4y ago
Okay, but what are you actually going to do? What specific projects do you recommend supporting?
- samsquire 4y ago
  I donate to a Christian charity that gives money, health checks to children to survive at their churches. The kinds of things that these countries need are large government backed projects with extreme amounts of funding to introduce core infrastructure such as water pipes, hospitals, education curriculums. Things that we in the West take for granted or are even free. For this to work, Everything hinges upon a high trust, values based society where people WANT civilization and WANT society. That means low crime, low criminality, the availability of work to earn money for food and effective shelter. And mutual good will. I don't think giving them money and letting them spend it on consumables helps as much as it could. In the UK parts of our national services are run by foreign companies, as direct foreign investment. They know how to run a railway or hospital or waste disposal. Governments in the west have enough on their plate, it would take a great deal of investment for a government to instigate a plan to introduce an infrastructural plan in a country that is NOT their own. The corresponding government organisational capability might not even exist in the recipient countries.

nonameiguess 4y ago

This seems uncharacteristically ad-hominemy of Scott, given all of his other work. He's usually pretty good about separating out the discussion of a topic from the personal virtues of who is doing the discussing. I would even say that is a core tenet of his entire project as a writer and a rationalist. Discussion and criticism of effective altruism, and of any other social movement, is and should be possible separate from the question of whether the people participating in that discussion and criticism are personally doing anything about what they're discussing. Got a problem with US drug policy? Well, what are you doing to heal addicts and stop international crime rings from funding their activities with the drug trade? Got a problem with mass surveillance from intelligence agencies? What are you doing to keep foreign adversaries from infiltrating and sabotaging public information systems? Got a problem with policing strategies? What are you doing to fight crime? In case it isn't clear, I think all of these are bad responses. EA, for better or worse, has made itself more or less a public-facing movement. Publicity exposes you to opinions of people who are not personally involved in whatever you're doing. Lots of people critique the athletes, coaches, and management of their favorite sports without ever having any hope or possibility of getting involved themselves. Very few people who vote are ever going to run for office. That's fine. And if people with opinions on EA are not themselves particularly altruistic in a way that involves giving money directly to charitable causes, so what? Maybe that makes them less personally virtuous according to your system of ethics, but it doesn't make what they're saying either more or less correct. Those are independent axes of evaluation.

hervature 4y ago

My main critique to effective altruism is that, because it is based on utilitarianism, it is a perfectly good framework with 0 ways to apply it practically. For example, show me the calculation where they take into account the probability of climate solving technology comes from supporting schools in Detroit. The amount of ALL small likelihood events with large impacts need to be taken into account. I emphasize ALL because otherwise you can just pick and choose the events you care about. Then, the next problem is quantifying the probability. Again, it is mostly assumptions and these assumptions dictate what you believe. If you believe "AI is the highest risk to humanity", utilitarianism doesn't matter as you are already deciding the probabilities. At that point, you are just doing performative art to make your belief feel legitimate. I do think that people should be encouraged to donate more (and should be progressive by income, not a fixed 10%) but I also think the organization misses the whole side of volunteering or personal actions, although they have "altruistic jobs". For example, converting to veganism would greatly outweigh 10% of a median salary to the most effective climate charity.

colinmhayes 4y ago
As effective altruists love to claim, the core tenants aren't really based on utilitarianism. Yes, pretty much all the commentators are utilitarians, but the core stance of "you should help others, and you should do so in an effective way" doesn't actually say anything about what effective means. You can effectively seperate the church from the religion here. Yes, givewell is an inherently utilitarian organization, but being EA doesn't mean just doing whatever givewell tells you. It means you're putting some level of thought into the best way to help people and you're acting on your conclusions. Converting to veganism is something EA advocates for constantly by the way, it's pretty much the first thing you'll see when looking into animal welfare. I think the biggest issue is that people really like meat, and being told they should stop eating it is likely to turn them off of animal welfare all together, so organizations bury the lede sometimes.
- skybrian 4y ago
  Just doing what GiveWell says seems fine? Why not?

renewiltord 4y ago

As an effective altruist, https://cosmicbraintrust.org/ https://cosmicbraintrust.org/ is the only concern that I would realistically advocate for. The numbers just overwhelm any other thing.

0xbadc0de5 4y ago

The trouble many people I've spoken to have with charities donating to "the poorest people in the world" is that it tends to create a dependency cycle that is hard to break out of and often helps prop up corrupt governments. It's seen as a low-resolution, hand-wavy, throw-money-at-the-problem solution that actually perpetuates the problem. Nobody seems to want to discuss the root causes of these impoverished peoples - typically generations of incompetent and corrupt governments (or higher-than-average levels of incompetence and corruption if you prefer) that are shielded from accountability because there's always someone to bail them out from the worst consequences of their actions.

april_22 4y ago
“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” ― Albert Einstein

keybored 4y ago

> It would be called something like How To Respond To Common Criticisms Of Effective Altruism (In Your Head Only, Definitely Never Do This In Real Life), and it starts: Either you would “never do this” because you feel that it would hurt the cause or because you realize that all of those initial responses are completely fallacious. “Steel man” those questions. It is obvious that they are attacking the intellectual ideas behind EA. But you’re conflating actions, moral character, and ideas. Here’s a steel man of one of the “questions” (assertions): Q: [Given that you are going to commit to donating 10% of your time or money or whatever and do X:] I think charity is a distraction from the hard work of systemic change. [Therefore you should put that 10% towards systemic change instead.] > Foundational Assumptions Say I accept these. Then I make my next assumptions: 1. I value my direct experience over second-hand experience, statistics, and science 2. Because I think (1) helps inform me better so that I can be true to the Foundational Assumptions (being effective) 3. I think Utilitarianism as a guiding framework is completely useless and won’t help me stay true to the Foundational Assumptions 4. I know my family and community better than I know people outside that circle, which helps me stay true to the Foundational Assumptions (being effective) 5. I will therefore focus 95% of my good-doing activities on very local help Would I still be in the EA club?

colinmhayes 4y ago
Yes, if you are spending time thinking about the most effective ways to help others and using your resources on the conclusions you come up with you are an effective altruist.
joshuamorton 4y ago
Then the followup question is "What is being effective to you? Based on your second assumption, it appears that being effective to you means, at worst, only helping those close to you, and at best, helping in ways that are visible to you. Do you think those in your community are the most in need of assistance, and even if they are, do you think that your view of what they need is more insightful than their opinion of what they need?" The way you've defined things, asking a homeless person for what they believe would most help them is not effective, because it is second hand.

deleted 4y ago

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pessimizer 4y ago

I do not like this essay, but its central point is a good one to me. It seems to me that a somewhat superficial reason people criticize "effective altruism" is because of the dogshit politics and worldviews of most of the people advocating and participating in it. The fact is that valuing efficiency in humanitarian work is commendable, and anyone arguing for inefficiency in charity is trying to rob you. I think the motivations behind the loudest objectors, however, are because donating to charities in your own backyard, that work on things that you enjoy as a fan or as a hobby, that employ your friends and family etc. are the vast bulk of charities. And the bulk of the cash that goes to them is eaten up by a combination of overhead in the form of salaries, travel, and accommodations, and for the big boys hiring contractors with personal and political relationships to do studies and reports that deliver recommendations, rather than any direct improvement on the targets that are the nominal purpose of the organization. People just prefer to give money to charities that get kids to paint murals, or their local art museum (where their niece works) than those that would have a far larger effect on lives farther away that they relate to less. That's of course true for plenty of the effective altruists, too, it's just that their hobbies are ideological or science fictional, so the charities that they think are effective are often outlandish, hyper-libertarian, or simply stupid. But criticize the individual donating badly, not the idea. The complaint that effectiveness is impossible to measure so therefore the mean of all giving is inevitably moderate effectiveness is defensive nonsense and a direct appeal to the law of averages. We're just trying to hide the fact that, with the bizarre out-of-touch narcissistic elites that we've bred with our terrible politics, we pray that they're ineffective in pursuing what they think is best. Every time a rich guy accomplishes what he thinks is best, a public school closes. But the criticism largely seems to be coming from a middle class segment who thinks that charities are best when they're about going to parties, expressing yourself, being thanked, and pushing periodic press releases to raise awareness. I think it'd be better to ditch the larger brand, and push for effective alleviation of hunger, or effective relief of homelessness, or taking effective care of refugees or immigrants. Just get the ideology out of the way immediately i.e. this is the thing that I think is most important to do, let's find the most effective way to do it. Sorry for the rant.

zozbot234 4y ago
> a middle class segment who thinks that charities are best when they're about going to parties, expressing yourself, being thanked, and pushing periodic press releases to raise awareness Isn't it a bit ironic then that so much of the criticism of EA has to do with these very activities? There is a legitimate role for awareness raising, as long as it's not consuming huge amounts of valuable resources. > push for effective alleviation of hunger, or effective relief of homelessness, or taking effective care of refugees or immigrants. This is exactly what EA's are doing. But picking the most viable cause areas is also important. Some incredibly popular causes, e.g. short-term disaster relief in foreign countries, really are a lot less viable than what EA's typically fund.

renewiltord 4y ago

More seriously, I've looked into true EA and suddenly realized I don't actually care that much for altruism. Just like most people, I really don't care to save an arbitrary life. For instance, when I bought my iPhone 13 I tried visualizing a dying child and seeing if I cared to save this arbitrary child and while it was heartrending, I'd rather have the iPhone. Yesterday, did the same thing with dinner at The French Laundry. Can't be helped, man, I don't care about random lives. But like the great philanthropists of old, I am happy to give away all but the first billion dollars I've made. And I think most people are like me. Like, you'd be accused of being a boor if someone said they were planning on buying an expensive engagement ring and you offered this alternative.