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The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

• MrPatan 4y ago
  We need a way for bored narcissistic rich people to feel good about themselves while letting the rest of use go on about our lives. I wish they just partied and spent their money competing on luxury buys with each other. Instead, we made that "bad" or something, and now they compete on who can signal the most and biggest virtues, and here we are.
• lloydcamp 4y ago
  It seems like Effective Altuism is just an excuse to be an asshole.
• rosywoozlechan 4y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20221115182258/https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad https://web.archive.org/web/20221115182258/https://www.econo...
• codefreeordie 4y ago
  "effective altruism" was never either effective nor altruistic. If people are finally working that out, good for them.
  • nuclearnice1 4y ago
    How did it fall short?
    • kristianov 4y ago
      It justifies doing bad things for "the greater good".
      • mikeyouse 4y ago
        Saw it referred to as "Indulgences for billionaires" which seems apt.
      • unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
        Maximizing earnings by any means is verifiably not effectively altruistic, because if everyone did this... no one would ever engage in true charitable causes. Young people would compete simply to rip off the gullibility of older people looking to scratch the charitable itch.
    • codefreeordie 4y ago
      It is purely people justifying doing the evil things they personally desire by claiming some unverifiable benefit that accrues to hypothetical future people who may never even exist.
      • kmeisthax 4y ago
        Aaaand this is why time discounts exist and are steep. Not because we are incapable of or unwilling to comprehend future rewards, but because we don't know if they'll come to pass. It's a dampening parameter - if you don't do it, you fall prey to Basilisks.
    • onetimeusename 4y ago
      idk if it's all bad, I remember reading about it maybe a decade ago when rationalists talked about it. Like one good idea is donating to charities that are more efficient. But it seems like mostly BS wrapped up in mathematics to make it seem more rational. Some assumptions are not necessarily true but if you disagreed then you were immoral and irrational. It also comes with a form of very elitist virtue signalling like forming clubs where people bloviate about this. Also a problem with charity, especially in the US, is as the IRS defines it, it's not necessarily charitable. So it's easy to confuse altruism with plain old politics, vanity, and for-profit business disguised as a tax-exempt and then argue that anyone that disagree is not rational.
  • dang 4y ago
    Ok, but please don't post shallow dismissals to Hacker News. We're hoping for something more than putdowns and supercilious swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. You've unfortunately been posting a bunch of unsubstantive/baity comments lately. Can you please not? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
    • codefreeordie 4y ago
      • dang 4y ago
        The politics of your comment completely elude me; I couldn't care less about your view or theirs, have no idea what "effective altruism" is, and learned nothing from your post since it was purely snark and swipes. All I care about is that you broke the HN guidelines. You've been doing that repeatedly (e.g. posting informationless flamebait) on lots of different topics. If you keep doing it, we'll end up having to ban you for what ought to be obvious reasons (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so please stop.
        • codefreeordie 4y ago
          [flagged]
          • dang 4y ago
            If I tell you that repetitive railing against Marxism is tedious and off-topic, does that make me a Marxist? what if I tell you that repetitive railing against capitalism is just as tedious and off-topic? Every passionate ideologue thinks that the mods are secretly against them (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=mods%20against%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This you're-just-moderating-me-because-you-don't-like-my-opinion perception is a cognitive bias. If you don't believe me, look at the first batch of examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. I could give you a hundred more of those. The truth is that we're bored, tired, profoundly do not care, and feel exactly the same way about all such comments—the ones you'd consider most wrong and offensive, as well as the ones you'd most passionately agree with. Why? Because they're all mirror images of each other.
• losteric 4y ago
  The title is unfairly conflating the idea with one organization. Plenty of people quietly donate some fraction of income to effective charities (effective altruism), without engaging with the Effective Altruism institution. Though, yeah wow, I didn't realize how cliquey Effective Altruism had become.
  • progrus 4y ago
    Yeah it’s basically “give me your money and I promise I’ll do really cool things with it”. No thanks.
  • civilized 4y ago
    It is sad! Distributing mosquito nets in malaria-afflicted areas saves lives on the cheap and is universally acclaimed. How better to describe this than "effective altruism"? Why do perfectly nice general descriptive terms so often become tightly bound with one small group and their whole very particular worldview?
    • wahern 4y ago
      > Distributing mosquito nets in malaria-afflicted areas saves lives on the cheap and is universally acclaimed. How better to describe this than "effective altruism"? Philanthropy? Charity? Those words fit perfectly. Does anyone sincerely set out to be ineffective in those endeavors? I can't imagine anyone who was knowingly insincere would have trouble also claiming the moniker of effective altruism. Nonetheless, I think the term "effective altruism" is also intended to encompass and imply some additional--if optional--characteristics about the giver or the form of giving, such as leading a more sustainable lifestyle or the consideration given to one's choices in choosing particular acts of charity. But we don't need that term merely for the act of distributing or funding the distribution of mosquito nets--philanthropy and charity are more than sufficient. And, technically speaking, charity has usually sufficed in any event--e.g. clergy who give their entire lives over to charity work weren't in search of more descriptive nomenclature, AFAIK.
      • civilized 4y ago
• armchairhacker 4y ago
  Like most things: EA as a concept is fine. Finding the "maximal" way to improve the lives of others is great, and finding better ways to contribute than charity and volunteering is honorable. The issue is when people take it to the extreme (like someone who literally argued that a person doing mere charity or volunteer work is bad, because they are wasting time and effort that they could've spent making money and recruiting to contribute more charity and volunteering), or just sidestepping "altruism" entirely and using the name and community as a stepping stone to push your unrelated scam. I don't know whether or not SBF genuinely believed in effective altruism, but if he did, he let the "principles" override common sense.
  • emmanueloga_ 4y ago
    Effective altruism (EA) is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". [1] Seems like a good idea, if only just to have some sort of open-system for rating charities. I suspect the issue is everything that comes around the idea, specially... people. The problem is always people :-). Perhaps a "Michelin Guide to Charities" would be easier to market and explain? :-p My favorite explanation of how "effective altruism" works is this SMBC comic [2]. :-) -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism 2: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13
    • bradbeattie 4y ago
      > if only just to have some sort of open-system for rating charities While the following examples aren't exactly _open_ systems, some organizations address the niche you highlight. Examples: https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/, https://animalcharityevaluators.org/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/
      • emmanueloga_ 4y ago
        I think _open_ is the important part: Would make sense if anyone could come up with the score, following some "standard". That way one could make sure that no specific grader has incentives to give good scores speculatively (or even maliciously).
• hardwaregeek 4y ago
  Maybe this is superficial, but I was put off by the name "effective altruism". By naming it such, it felt like an implicit dig that most altruism is not effective. Like oh your altruism is not that productive, but my altruism, well it's effective altruism. Especially when that notion is pushed by people who overlap with the rationalist subculture, another arrogantly named group. In general I find it concerning when technical people encroach upon non-technical areas without giving a sufficient amount of respect to the people who were in the field already. Those people, the experts, do know a lot and to have this kind of nerd savior branding of effective altruism, as if you are bringing the enlightenment that allows these poor altruists to finally be effective, well that just seems a little presumptuous.
  • googlryas 4y ago
    I feel like real effective altruism is achieved by sites like charity navigator, which give you a sense of how well your donations to a given cause are spent by the organization.
    • joindpp 4y ago
      This is not really true. Charity Navigator incentivize that charities operate on a shoestring which is not very effective: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...
      • googlryas 4y ago
        I haven't watched the video (yet), but for example wikipedia has a stellar near-perfect rating, but still devote 15%/$12M of their budget to salaries which surely could be cut drastically if they wanted to really be on a shoestring.
  • dchftcs 4y ago
    Your reaction is a bit absolutist. The basic premise is that if you're capable of making 500k a year in the developed world then going to Africa to volunteer to build houses is not as effective as just donating your money to charities that send people to help, or hire people yourself. What it evolved into is a bit controversial, overall they seem to be a bunch of kids who don't know what to do with the power and money they had at one point, as they all came too easy.
• dools 4y ago
  Just the other day I was listening to this Dave Troy podcast "against long termism"[0] and it's the first time I ever heard the term "effective altruism", however within the last few days of having listened to EA has come up multiple times. I also remembered when listening to it that the title screen of the Baba Is You videogame on the nintendo switch promotes the "Giving what we can" charity. Very interesting stuff, I highly recommend checking out not only that podcast but the rest of the Oil, Gold, Crypto and Fascism series from Dave Troy. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/against-longtermism-with-%C3%A9mile-torres/id1610914569?i=1000577363911 https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/against-longtermism-wi...
  • barbazoo 4y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Dave Troy and his podcast!
• xyzzy4747 4y ago
  Effective altruists would risk the 10% chance of making thousands of clients lose all their money if it gives them a 50% chance of donating more to charity later. Since it makes sense according to their utility function. That’s what we learned from the FTX debacle. Sort of reminds me of the paper clip manufacturer A.I. who ends up killing all humans due to a broken utility function.
  • metta2uall 4y ago
    That's an over-generalization... I would think most effective altruists recognise that acting unethically by for example, risking client money, is not justified due to the long-term damage that causes. Big lies usually get found out. Most effective altruists are outraged at what SBF apparently did..
• didibus 4y ago
  I've always found EA to be the most capitalist way of trying to do good. Instead of like being humble, not accumulating wealth for yourself, not thinking of yourself as better, etc. EA is pushing for this weird self-centered egotistical philanthropic avenue. That's literally the least efficient way to help anyone. This also always felt very American. I'll get rich by paying workers poorly, finding any advantageous loophole I can, screwing customers, but once I'm rich I'll donate some of that money to do good... How does this make any sense? If you want to do good, just work for others from the get go. Be nice, be kind, be humble, offer mentoring and encouragement, don't hord things for yourself to redistribute it later, instead work to create sustainable opportunities for others.
  • losteric 4y ago
    > This also always felt very American. I'll get rich by paying workers poorly, finding any advantageous loophole I can, screwing customers, but once I'm rich I'll donate some of that money to do good... That also feels very inaccurate and misrepresentative of the philosophy. Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus to bettering the world. Do not be a paperclip maximizer or "ends justify the means".
    • polygamous_bat 4y ago
      That is a good and fair philosophy, except in my personal experience EAs have been very much a "paperclip maximizer" towards their (self-defined) goals of "bringing the most good to the world". From my point of view, claiming that the self-serving class of consultants and cryptobros donating 10% of their is not "true EA" sounds very much like a no true scotsman fallacy.
    • nl 4y ago
      > Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus to bettering the world. Do not be a paperclip maximizer or "ends justify the means". I think that is a very valid philosophy and one I would agree with. However, EA has a large overlap with longtermism, which has some very paperclip maximizer like features: > Providing we are capable of colonising the rest of our galaxy and nearby ones, a 1% reduction in the risk of extinction on such a time horizon would be the equivalent of saving 1032 lives. In such a perspective, nothing else matters. > That year, Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, dedicated to mitigating risk. He elaborated on his theory of longtermism in a book in 2008, urging people to be “good ancestors” by practising “altruism toward our descendants”. He didn’t mean composting or stopping driving, but mitigating existential risks to humanity – “x-risks” in community parlance – from hazards such as advanced artificial intelligence and bio-hacking, that could potentially wipe out or severely deplete humankind. (from the linked article). I think this a very problematic view, because (as noted) almost everything is justifiable if you think you are avoiding extinction of the human race.
• deleted 4y ago
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• yawnxyz 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with Effective Altruism, but a takeaway as a tech person working in the clinical trial field: Most drugs go to market with the idea of being effective, e.g. treating as many people / conditions as possible. This leads to a problem that most people deal with a slightly different problem from the next person, so you just end up with large groups of small numbers of people who are essentially overlooked, because they're not profitable enough to make a drug or treatment for. This class is called "orphan drugs" Yes, this is mostly "how the industry / capitalism" works, but that's the point. By measuring how effective altruism is, and by only doing the things that are most effective, you'll essentially end up with many "orphan" categories at the end.
  • hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
    “Efficiency” isn’t a universally, objectively better goal, but it’s what technocrats focus on. There are many other equally good (and often conflicting) possible goals: sufficiency, diversity, happiness, regret, etc. The current economy focuses on efficiency because it’s about infinite capital accumulation using finite resources, and that’s what benefits the people at the helm.
  • mxwsn 4y ago
    Perhaps before 1983, but there's a strong case that since the Orphan Drug Act was passed in the US, orphan drugs are overincentivized and a massive misallocation of resources [0]. Orphan drugs represent nearly half of FDA approved drugs in some recent years and come with huge tax benefits, near monopoly conditions, and typically the most outrageous prices. Maximizing quality-adjusted life years would be better achieved by incentivizing single-dose therapeutics for common ailments. Not the best example but the first that comes to mind is upcoming psychedelic therapy, which could have major potential, but is seen as having a broken business model because most people won't want more than one treatment. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/509506836/drugs-for-rare-diseases-have-become-uncommonly-rich-monopolies https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/17/5095068...
• thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  I used to work for one of the largest software vendors in the non-profit space worldwide and it fundamentally changed the way I look at the non-profit world. The big ones have essentially become these weird quasi-think tanks that passively influence policy or actively engage the community to achieve an often political agenda. For example, a large non-profit can't explicitly lobby congress to ban sex education in schools. But, they can go around and "buy out" small non-profits into fulfilling their agenda. This is usually pretty easy to do because small non-profits are almost always cash-starved, and it can be really hard to say "no" when some outside figure is willing to provide a massive percentage of your operating budget in perpetuity in exchange for avoiding certain topics (like mutual consent) in schools. This very scenario happened to an acquaintance of mine. She wanted to teach consent in schools after the #metoo scandal, spent 2 years grinding to improve access to consent-based communication for kids and then someone offered her obscene money under the condition that she make tweaks (i.e. "don't talk about consent in school because that will encourage children to have sex", that kind of stuff). She took the money because she saw a way out of needing hustle so hard for cash, but of course she sold her soul at the end and regretted it. And none of those interactions ever get recorded. Nobody is tracking what big non-profits and charitable funds ask (or demand) others to do, and they get to market themselves as doing good for the world. I'm sure some of them are, and I'm sure there are tons of well-meaning people working for some of them, but that world was so much darker than I ever imagined, at least from the periphery.
  • hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    While I agree with you that non-profits can grow to a point that they become sclerotic and lost in their own bureaucracy, I'll give a contrary opinion as to why non-profits that actually want to be effective care deeply about public policy. For example, consider a simple animal rescue non-profit. While it may on its surface just seem like "this organization should just exist to try to find homes for pets needing adoption", it's actually more helpful to look at a more fundamental question: "What causes animals to be put up for adoption in the first place." It turns out that in most states there are a host of systemic, government-caused problems that are directly responsible for the reasons why many people need to surrender their pets to shelters in the first place. So yes, the animal rescue non-profit is still in the day-to-day business of finding homes for homeless animals, I would say a good organization would actually do more to try to change the status quo and fix the root cause problem, and that often intersects with government policy.
• jakear 4y ago
  > Over the past two years, I’ve heard many stories of young, ambitious people who came to effective altruism wanting to change the world but grew disenchanted. > This disillusionment was partly because the community expends so much effort raising money for the proliferation of institutes and think-tanks that host its most prominent thinkers. > Open Philanthropy, a foundation that Dustin Moskovitz helped to create, funds 80,000 Hours (over $10m since 2017), Is this the same 80,000 hours as https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/? A self help guide and a job board? Listing Sam Bankman-Fried as the #1 anecdote? $10,000,000? Hm.
• polygamous_bat 4y ago
  To me, SBF embodied the worst stereotypes about the Effective Altruism movement. The not-so-subtle air of I'm-smarter-than-thou, the hubris to think whatever they have thought of haven't been thought and dismissed by others (probably for good reason), and a bull-headed focus on risk and return that can be exactly quantified, to the point of ignoring other, "softer" sides of the issue. SBF isn't alone in this. In school, while interning for a competing hedge fund, I met a drove of Jane Street interns who thought exactly the same way, in terms of "EV" or expected value -- the mean outcome from a random event. For example, whenever we would go out for ice cream, they would try to flip a coin to see who pays, given the "expected cost" was same. This behavior is fine if you're a market maker betting 0.001% of your worth on a toss that you win 51% of the time, and I imagine this is why Jane Street tries to cultivate it. But unfortunately, in this hyperfocus on returns, they forgot that "risk"/"variance" exists, and sometimes flipping a coin will land you in such a deep hole that you can't continue to play the game long enough to dig yourself out of there. You can read some thoughts by the man himself here, which flies in the face of all such work (Kelly bets, etc.) in variance minimization: https://nitter.net/SBF_FTX/status/1337250686870831107 https://nitter.net/SBF_FTX/status/1337250686870831107
  • paulcole 4y ago
    > The not-so-subtle air of I'm-smarter-than-thou, the hubris to think whatever they have thought of haven't been thought and dismissed by others (probably for good reason), and a bull-headed focus on risk and return that can be exactly quantified, to the point of ignoring other, "softer" sides of the issue. It’s a little long for an HN tagline but it’ll do.
  • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    I don't think anything he said there flies in the face of kelly. Single event, he is explicit about his utility function and why. He just doesn't seem very good at managing risk in the real world. If you spend any time at an investment bank or similar where you do a lot of trading, there are just hundreds of "gotchas" that those institutions are aware of and manage (or they aren't and don't and go bankrupt eventually). There are lots of fields like this in the real world, just lots of gotchas. He didn't seem to understand that. I'd bet Jane Street understands this at the org level, but the younger folks likely just see a little bit of the whole picture, and have a lot of theory.
• throwboi123 4y ago
  EA is basically Judas Iscariot's method.
  • Devasta 4y ago
    Judas got 30 pieces of silver, and with Jesus being crucified he lived a life free of sin on humanities behalf, opening the gates of heaven for us all. Who knew Judas was the good guy this whole time?
    • throwboi123 4y ago
      I was referring to the alabastar flask. But yeah it applied to 30 pieces of silver as well.
• tomrod 4y ago
  I mean, it broke because utility isn't additive, which is the issue with utilitarian ethics generally.
  • drdeca 4y ago
    I agree that utilities between people aren’t really commensurate in a way that allows adding them to be particularly well-defined/meaningful, and that therefore utilitarianism is not the actual full truth of morality, However, I don’t think that precludes using a kind of utilitarianism where you just kinda fudge over that “there isn’t a canonical way of adding these” bit, in order to produce something which can be a rather good heuristic for “does this provide more or less help to people than that?”. Like, yes, you can’t really add utilities, but if you value helping people, you can consider how much you value different people getting different amounts of different kinds of help, and if you pretend that this is the same thing as “the utility you provide them”, then you can add up how much you value the individual things and assume that how much you value the stuff adds linearly. And, in some cases, morality should presumably impose some constraints regarding how much you should value providing one sort of help in some quantity to some person or persons, compared to how much you value providing some other kind of help in some quantity to some other person(s). And so, while I don’t think utilitarianism is true exactly, I think it likely that morality probably demands something which in some ways looks at least a little bit like utilitarianism? Though there are still cases where it is important to recognize that utilitarianism can lead one astray.
    • tomrod 4y ago
      Aye, you argue for sane bounds to utility where EA, to establish superiority as a morality, ignores and takes to extremes. Good listen: https://pca.st/episode/61ba0858-0eac-4a92-91a3-9fbbacc49e69 https://pca.st/episode/61ba0858-0eac-4a92-91a3-9fbbacc49e69
• deleted 4y ago
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• nemo44x 4y ago
  Why do we see replications of religious concepts and actions in all these modern replacement movements? Just call it tithing, for example. Please stop repackaging the same garbage and calling it new.
  • yanderekko 4y ago
    Well, I do believe that some of these charities explicitly recommend giving 10-20% of your income..
• duxup 4y ago
  > “It really suited my character at the time to try to think about effectiveness and rigour in everyday life,” So was there any of that… that made getting into crypto or AI a good idea? What was the math there? I’ve seen effective altruism mentioned on HN before and I don’t really understand how it turns into directing people to jobs or specific tech… at all. I feel like if you’re trying to help people the moment you mix your business in it, now you have conflicts of interest.
  • thundergolfer 4y ago
    Totally agree. There are plenty of EAs, including myself, who use EA to direct their giving towards mosquito nets and not towards charitable organizations with overpaid CEOs or an otherwise terrible ROI. EA is best as as critique of the narcissism of most wealthy western ‘altruism’. But all this mixing of billionaires, crypto, and long-termism has reintroduced narcissism into the community.
• chatterhead 4y ago
  Effective Altruism is bullshit and here is why; because, the invisible hand has already shown itself to be a far better lever of human good through the acceptance of human nature. "Helping people" implies you know what people need. It's a power position to begin with and thus designed to fulfill the doers goals of doing good not the receivers 'need' of being helped. Each of us, individually, pursuing our own self-interests produce value to society and others as a whole. Whether through producing products, offering services, performing labor, or consuming goods, we all seek our own interests to the betterment of the whole. EA is just a new sort of chivalry for a new wannabe class of Nobles. That's it.
  • thundergolfer 4y ago
    How’d you like Atlas Shrugged? That speech goes on and on, doesn’t it.
    • chatterhead 4y ago
      Never read it. But, I did buy my brother a 1st edition cause he liked it. I'm aware of the theme.
  • yanderekko 4y ago
    >"Helping people" implies you know what people need. No it doesn't. I'm content to outsource my charitable decision-making to recommenders that I think align with my values. A competitor is free to come along and convince me that they'd make a better recommendation and I'll shift my money accordingly, just like buying any other product. They can even skim a bit off the top if I really trust them and give to their funds! That's the invisible hand.
  • metta2uall 4y ago
    The concept that seeking our own interests is to the betterment of the whole seems to be demonstrably false.. For example consider the tobacco and fossil fuel executives who are trying to delay the phase-out of their products. Or the people who buy/sell meat in spite of the resulting ecological damage & animal suffering. By the way, a charity quite popular in mainstream Effective Altruism is Give Directly - which aims to avoid trying to figure out what poor people need by giving them cash.
• pr337h4m 4y ago
  I've been convinced for sometime now that "effective altruism" (Lesswrong-ism? Yudkowskianism?) is the communism of the 21st century. Lots of parallels here beyond the obvious common thread of utilitarian collectivism: - Censorship: the concept of "infohazards" is super-popular https://nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/information-hazards https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/information-hazards - Social control + the creation of an 'other': They are absolutely convinced that sentient AGI will inevitably kill everyone without any real evidence. However, if we manage to create sentient AGI, what these guys plan to do with it is best described as modern slavery https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-boxing-containment#:~:text=to%20free%20itself.-,Containing%20the%20AGI,-Attempts%20to%20box https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-boxing-containment#:~:text=... - Surveillance: They justify it using Bostrom's "vulnerable world hypothesis": https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf?platform=hootsuite https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf?platform=hoots... (TFA also discusses it well) - Desire for government power: TFA is super clear about that. More interestingly, here's the FTX Future Fund on space governance: "We’d love to see workshops or a mock constitutional convention where sharp people think hard about how to structure international governance institutions for the long-term future, or how to govern space settlement. As explained in more detail on our areas of interest page, we believe that the onset of space settlement could be a watershed moment in human history. We want people to start thinking about how it should work." https://ftxfuturefund.org/projects/alternative-voting-systems/ https://ftxfuturefund.org/projects/alternative-voting-system... Also: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/space-governance/ https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/space-governance/ - Entryism/influence operations: Pretty much every career profile on 80,000 Hours encourages taking a job at government agencies/influential private organizations to push the EA agenda https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk. No one with morals and a spine should fear this. (FWIW, the same justification of fearing retribution by an evil power for refusing to collaborate could be used by people in occupied countries who collaborated with the Nazis.)
  • Vecr 4y ago
    The base model Roko's basilisk is pretty stupid, but I have talked to people who have worked on "improving" the idea, so it actually works in more realistic and diverse decision theories. It's like base model MOND vs improved versions of MOND, the idea is still pretty wacky but they did some fudging to get it to work better "empirically" (with that word being used very loosely, of course). I think some people don't want anyone talking about the improved basilisks, but if anyone cares I can try to dig them up. Probably don't care though, because it's really stupid.
• thedudeabides5 4y ago
  now we all learn about consequentialism done wrong, yay
• steve76 4y ago
• fassssst 4y ago
  Sounds like a bunch of sociopathic, terminally online people found each other and started yet another hierarchical fund raising scheme. What’s better than picking individual charities based on utility? Charity index funds. Also known as social democratic governments that collect taxes.
  • selestify 4y ago
    > Also known as social democratic governments that collect taxes. Well yes, but in the absence (or inadequacy) of such government action for causes you care about, doesn't it make sense to donate to the charities that most effectively do the thing you care about?
  • kortilla 4y ago
    > Also known as social democratic governments that collect taxes. That conclusion does not follow. Why do you think a social democratic government has any focus on the utility of its work?
• yanderekko 4y ago
  I've seen this criticism a few times and figured it was just ambiguous.... while the FTX affair is obviously bad for the institutions that represent the modern EA movement, to me this doesn't represent a real critique of EA as a philosophy. "Most EA supporters are techbros and FTX reinforces the view that techbros are bad, therefore EA is bad" is not a real argument, it's a sneer. Is the implication that I should start donating money to the Red Cross rather than GiveWell? I don't think so. At the margin yes I should be more suspicious that my money won't be used well, but I don't believe that all of these institutions are corrupt. The more material argument is whether from an EA perspective running massive scams and funneling the proceeds to EA causes should be applauded or not. Obviously the fact that this discussion is even being surfaced will cause brand damage, but again it says nothing to which perspective is correct, just that these discussions are subject to optics-based constraints. It's like the open discussions in the rationalist community over whether various horrible civilizational collapses happening to humanity might actually be desirable because it will prevent (or at least delay) an AI from killing us. There's serious discussions but it never plays well to bring this to a "normie" audience. But pretty much every movement has its Straussian elements where the "insider" narratives contradict the "outsider" narratives.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • circular_lights 4y ago
    "but my _intentions_ were pure" lol who falls for that anymore
    • yanderekko 4y ago
      Not sure how this relates to my comment, unless you misread my point about "institutions" as being about "intentions"...
  • MaxfordAndSons 4y ago
    > The more material argument is whether from an EA perspective running massive scams and funneling the proceeds to EA causes should be applauded or not. Is that really the material argument? It seems obvious to this normie that the answer ought to be "hell no".
• ineedasername 4y ago
  >”But if he established a well-paid private practice in Britain, he would be able to “earn to give”: he’d save “considerably more” lives and still be comfortable… …As the community has expanded, it has also become more exclusive. Conferences, seminars and even picnics held by the Centre for Effective Altruism are application-only. Yes, by application only. Because the near-intuitive next step in thinking is that, heck, we can’t all be the comfortable one, someone has got to be the person getting their hands dirty incrementally adding to all of those QALY’s and clearly They’re too enlightened in understanding this to be the one living uncomfortably with dirty hands. So the mathematical inevitability is there needs to be some gate keeping, and why shouldn’t it be the people who realized that also make the decisions about access? Self serving, self reinforcing bullshit. Probably a mixture of honest good intentions and rationalizing of guilt for being better off than others. The modern age makes it just about impossible to not be aware of a lot of awful crap in the world, so it’s no surprise that some of the current generation, finding themselves at or adjacent to the pinnacle of wealth and opportunity through some admixture of at least a little ability and a lot of good fortune and circumstance and some degree— large or small— of actual empathy, become plagued by the cognitive dissonance. By living so well but knowing that right this moment countless people are at the absolute opposite most desperate and miserable end of that spectrum, many soon to be dead, many dead just in the time it took me to type this. Maybe I have it easier, cognitive dissonance wise, by virtue of having just a little of my formative years that 1) preceded a time when easy knowledge of the systemic awfulness of much of the world was unavoidable before a person hit a double-digit age and 2) Had a fair bit of personal awfulness in them as well. awfulness that was, in terms of the world wide range, still thankfully minor but enough that the dissonance is small. So it’s no surprise that a somewhat cliquish group of the generation around the cultural/economic/academic centers of the world that, even just by virtue of their location, afford a great deal of opportunity have come up with a line of thinking that justifies their place in the world. My hope is that an extra decade or two of experience and living and seeing how consequences play out slices off some critical mass of those folks who are a bit more self aware. At least enough to recognize that figuring out how to live your life as a decent person isn’t always going to be a problem that’s algorithmicaly or mathematically solvable. Because I’d really prefer the next crop of people who find themselves in positions of wealth, power, and influence— again through some combination of (hopefully) a little merit and a lot of good fortune and circumstance… well, I’d prefer them to not be well intentioned but tragically arrogant assholes trying to figure out things like: Is it better to suffer the inconvenience of saving the fleeing refugee on my doorstep? Or should I instead work an extra hour or two a month in order to earn a calculated incremental bonus in pay that might be donated to a cause that might be able to save 10 refugees? I don’t want people in positions of power and influence to think that is, in any way, an interesting or worthwhile question to pursue as a mature intellectual use of their brain power rather than a shitty waste of time.
• Fellshard 4y ago
  Forgive me if this is reductive, but could this mentality not be summarized as: 'Justifying the means by the ends, accumulate as much wealth as possible at any cost to some groups in order to distribute it to the other groups towards which /I/ feel altruistic.'
• kimixa 4y ago
  I feel this is an "actions speak louder than words" situation. Has there been any effective believer in "Effective Altruism" that has actually got past the "accumulation of wealth" stage? Where are their great works of human charity? It's been a concept in many wealthy circles long enough we should be seeing the payoff. Or is it just a self-justification of their current actions, of wealth accumulation, to be conveniently ignored later?
  • drdeca 4y ago
    I would think so, yes. Like, I know Vitalik Buterin said “stop making me a continued recipient of whatever coin project you are creating and just make those go to an effective charity like givewell and such”, and people followed that instruction. The great works of charity, well, look at the charities they endorse, like, against malaria foundation and givewell etc. , and look at what these organizations have achieved.
  • unmole 4y ago
    > More than 110,000 donors have trusted GiveWell to direct their donations. Together, they have given over $1 billion to the organizations we recommend. https://www.givewell.org/about https://www.givewell.org/about
  • disqard 4y ago
    I imagine that the rare folks who actually do structure their life to keep doing such things, are: 1. low-key, and 2. try to stay out of the spotlight to the maximum extent possible.
• csours 4y ago
  This post does not have a concrete conclusion, it is just some thoughts I had while reading the article. --- EA seems to have a core belief in post-scarcity. I've recently been thinking about post-scarcity. To my knowledge, I have not been engaging with EA content; I wonder if it has become pervasive because of their efforts, or if the time is ripe for the concept. I've also been thinking about the number of different times that religion has evolved in a population. Religion fulfills various psychological needs; for a while it was popular for atheist thinkers to say we have evolved past the need for religion. I am agnostic, but I think people still need 'religion' and they will in the future. It may not be a religion with a personal god or gods; the concept of the divine comes from the human mind, the human mind will always have a place for godliness of some kind. I could be wrong, religion could be a blip, but I don't think so. Religions of the past have reflected the tribalism inherent in the human condition. There has always been a fight with another tribe that was the most pressing. Other fights are suspended or suppressed until the main fight is concluded or paused. From my lifetime, the main fight was the Cold War until that concluded, and then it was national politics. It's very hard to come to terms with the core beliefs and morality of the main opponent, no matter who or when. I'm sure EA says something about religion and tribalism, but the human experience is also important. The human experience starts in a place, with some people. Those people are your tribe, until you find another tribe. Their religion is your religion, until you find another religion.
• chrchang523 4y ago
  Wow, these guys are really lost. I used to respect them, and even during the past few days I thought this crisis was a major opportunity for them to reflect and find their way again. So I posted a comment on their forum with (i) an observation that they could regain trust by doing their share (I suggested twice the money they received from FTX) to make financial fraud victims whole before resuming their regular program, and (ii) a link to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BZ6XaCwN4QGgH9CxF/the-kelly-criterion?commentId=3JEaWCYG2B5ocBJg7 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BZ6XaCwN4QGgH9CxF/the-kelly-... , the first paragraph of which might have stopped SBF from making the big wrong turn in his reasoning (note that almost all other arguments on the Internet against SBF's reasoning don't actually work). Nothing but downvotes. I recommend against any further association with these people in the strongest possible terms. (I'll retract this if it turns out that the downvoters were the exception and the EA community actually proceeds to demonstrate good citizenship in something like the manner I suggested, but I'm not holding my breath.)
• kazinator 4y ago
  • circular_lights 4y ago
    The philosophy of dead men walking
  • vzqx 4y ago
    If you give 10% of your income, you're still keeping 90% for yourself. So it implies you consider yourself nine times as valuable as all other humans. I'm not on board with Effective Altruism, but 10% of your income seems like a reasonable amount to give to those less fortunate.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • kazinator 4y ago
      > So it implies you consider yourself nine times as valuable as all other humans. Yes. all other humans combined.
      • bendbro 4y ago
        Based. Other people suck.
• macanchex 4y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/
• tptacek 4y ago
  My "Effective Altruism Is Not A Cult" t-shirt is prompting a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. I've dug into this stuff over the last couple days, because I had previously understood Effective Altruism to be something akin to like a pledge drive for Charity Navigator's best-reviewed charities or something, and it turns out it's nothing of the sort. In fact, if you read some of the commentary from EA insiders about Sam Bankman-Fried (these come up in stories where EA distances itself from SBF, or claims they knew he was up to no good all along), it's hard to shake the comparisons to Scientology: they have their own weird language, there's a hierarchy, and people on the inside operate under a constant threat of ostracism. To that, add that some of the ideas are clearly dementing. Take Scott Aaronson's recent post on SBF, which is shot through with EA-think; it includes this: And a traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally. This is logic straight out of the 16th century Medici papacy of Leo X. Maybe it's some kind of horrible drug interaction with Rationalism, or maybe EA is fundamentally Rationalist? Either way: when your logic has established that you can obtain moral superiority by literally buying indulgences, it has officially proven too much, and if you can't recognize that, something has gone terribly wrong in your thinking. Over and over I keep coming across EA arguments that could be used to justify almost literally any behavior, so long as you can tell yourself a story about having a long-term positive goal. Also: tens of millions in donations to "AI safety" organizations. Yes, to answer the Economist; this movement is irretrievable.
  • jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Been saying the same thing. EA functionally is the same pattern I grew up around among evangelical extremists. It's an all purpose source of self righteous authority based on theoretical virtue erasing actual harm.
    • simonh 4y ago
      Ah yes, but if there's an even 1% chance the good they do outweighs the harm and saves some portion of some humans in some amount of time... er... or something.
• radu_floricica 4y ago
  This provides good context: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/effective-altruism-as-a-tower-of https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/effective-altruism-as-... EA is a very very tempting horse to beat, to the point it's their own internal favorite sport. There are large quantities of ink spilled criticizing it, from inside and outside. But it is all pretty worthless without taking a look at the foundations of the movement.
  • margalabargala 4y ago
    That essay kind of straw-mans the whole thing. He uses EA to alternatively mean the foundational philosophy, or the specific organization and the choices the people running it make, interchangeably. "I don't think AI is a risk, so I'm opposed to EA" charitably means that that person is opposed to EA, the organization headed by the people named in the article, and the choices they have made, who have made themselves the face of the movement with the same name. It doesn't mean they think that helping people is bad. It's one of those fun language tricks groups get to play when there's a movement of some sort, and then a specific organization pops up with the exact same name. Black Lives Matter famously did the same thing; great movement, but the organization with the same name has done some questionable things with the money they were given.
    • radu_floricica 4y ago
      I don't have the feeling the criticism in this thread is directed at a specific organization. The top negative comment refers to the name "effective altruism", and most comments are pretty general.
  • blitzar 4y ago
    > to the point it's their own internal favorite sport. Surely this is a massive irony - the time wasted debating it is time where they could have been collectively earning millions or billions to donate to worthy causes.
    • concordDance 4y ago
• metta2uall 4y ago
  I would consider "Effective Altruism" to be a fairly broad abstract attitude of trying to effectively help living beings (oneself & others), as guided by one's own opinions. Self-examination, critical thinking & debate are core values, and as far as I can tell continue to be so. It's unfortunate that it's being defined by the rightly controversial opinions of famous people.. To balance this article, consider checking out one of the main EA websites https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-e... For example it indicates that longtermism is "a school of thinking within effective altruism". The popularity of such ideas will vary with time and they will be further refined with ongoing thinking & healthy debate. I for one fail to understand why it's important to maximise the number of future lives, which don't even exist - it seems very risky & unsustainable.
• ShroudedNight 4y ago
  Does the effectiveness of various forms of altruism actually form a total order? I've yet to see any kind of rigorous argument in favour, yet seems like a fundamental requirement if one is going to expend such incredible resources into attempts to maximise this value. The reason I ask is that, when I first discovered Effective Altruism, finding the premise to be deeply compelling, I ended up staying up all night watching videos trying to reconcile / assimilate it into my world view. In one video, various trolley problem scenarios were enumerated, and the EA guests were advocating sparing a lamborghini to the detriment of a child's life so that the car could be sold off and the money donated to saving multiple children in the developing world. Furthermore, there was some suggestion of a threshold where the altruism of sparing X domesticated animals was 'higher' than sparing Y humans, which definitely felt like it fell into [citation needed] territory.
  • karlkeefer 4y ago
    It seems like suggesting there is _no such threshold_ is even more in need of citation. Boundlessness means that X could be all domesticated animals, and Y=1 human. Surely that seems like not the right call, given that it would ultimately kill even more humans.
    • ShroudedNight 4y ago
      There are definitely scenarios where an X big enough to cause broad ecological consequences would encounter little rhetorical friction to overwhelm Y=1. [Admittedly this is all error-prone hazy recollection, but] From what I understood, the original scenario in question was about a case where X was large, but not of critical strategic consequence to the availability of the animal(s) in question
  • concordDance 4y ago
    > Does the effectiveness of various forms of altruism actually form a total order? Given a moral compass, yes. EA is about not just looking at the immediate and the definite, the relative value of animals and humans is out of scope (though of course many individuals there will have opinions on it).
• AussieWog93 4y ago
  Man, I miss good puns in article headlines!
• Bukhmanizer 4y ago
  Admittedly the SBF debacle is the first time I’ve heard of EA, but I don’t think it’s surprising that it’s attracted such characters. Frankly it strikes me as just sketchy moral accounting, where you can be as greedy or exploitative as you want to be as long as you’re contributing to something that you can justify as having a higher “moral score”, but in the end you’re doing all the calculations and all the numbers are made up.
  • ithkuil 4y ago
    ... and that's bad for the actual altruistic causes because? Yes there are such people. I don't think they would be less greedy and exploitative if they didn't have a way to feel better about it. They would find another way to feel better, perhaps one that doesn't have the side effect of actually help out random people that would benefit from that help.
    • Bukhmanizer 4y ago
      > and that's bad for the actual altruistic causes because Because if all the numbers are made up, you don’t actually know what is an “altruistic” choice. You can say, gamble with other peoples money, and justify it by donating 10% of the returns to charity. And if the math works out in your head, it’s all good. > Yes there are such people. I don't think they would be less greedy and exploitative if they didn't have a way to feel better about it. Lol, we’re arguing about a moral philosophy here, and your argument is that anything bad that people do, keeping in line with the philosophy is irrelevant? It’s also not that “there are such people”. I’m saying that EA will disproportionately attract the greedy because fundamentally it argues that you can buy your way into altruism. It’s the Catholic Church selling indulgences for the 21st century.
      • ithkuil 4y ago
        are you saying that if it weren't for EA, the greedy people who it attracts would behave better because they wouldn't have a way to wash their sins?
• telotortium 4y ago
  I was sympathetic to the movement when I first heard about it in the early 2010s, but once it reoriented itself around "longtermism" and especially donating to politicians and NGOs, I knew that it had shed any objective sense of altruism and become just another way to increase the power and prestige of neoliberalism/the cathedral.
• JetAlone 4y ago
  Someone's commented saying "EA was basically Judas Iscariot's method" and it got flagged. I think that statement was inaccurate. A motive like EA ("that oil could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor") was the front for his real method, which in the Gospel is to sell out Jesus for money, so he can buy some land. His intentions were ultimately proven to not be altruistic. Knowing I'm guilty of some of this inappropriate judging myself, I think it's bad to judge people today who say they want to do EA by reaching for such a quick, easy "call them Judas" gambit.
• ShredKazoo 4y ago
  Reading this blog post caused me to believe that EA was not a big contributor: https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175 https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175 Seems like it was more gross mismanagement and excessive stimulant consumption.
• rich_sasha 4y ago
  There is a lot of scepticism about EA in this thread, and for the most part I share all of it. It feels like a cult with an ulterior motive. But: they haven't been caught actually doing anything remotely bad (they have some assholes as followers, some of whom are also crooks, but I struggle to blame EA for it) and perhaps, maybe, they really are donating tons of money to good causes? Are there any estimates of how much money EA raised for the world? I mean, if each and every one of the donates 10% of their income, they are far ahead of me, and I'll shut up and put up.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• aaron695 4y ago
• c7b 4y ago
  It's interesting that the article notes the similarity of EA to a religion. I don't just mean the 'cultist' element of people afraid to speak out, message control,... but on a more fundamental level: the sort of practical ethics where elite university professors tell you they've figured out what you ought to do with seemingly impenetrable analytical rigour, honed in countless seminars. It really struck me about Peter Singer already, who seems to be the spiritual ancestor to EA and all of this.
• paganel 4y ago
  > Nick Beckstead, the chief executive of the ftx Foundation, wrote in a PhD dissertation completed in 2013 that “It now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal.” Why? The former has the potential to create more long-term value and therefore save more lives. Bringing racism and eugenics to a whole new "intellectual" and rationalist level. Sad that it took the swindling of $10-15 billions for all of this to come to light.
  • trabant00 4y ago
    While I find the statement in bad taste and guilty of classism I can't find the racist and/or eugenics aspects anywhere. He talks about rich and poor, not race or genetics.
    • paganel 4y ago
      > He talks about rich and poor Looking at the current distribution of wealthy vs poor countries and people is kind of disingenuous and rationalistic to ignore the racist undertones. More exactly saying "we'll choose the wealthy people vs the poor ones if it will come to that" while ignoring that most of the wealthy people across the globe are of one "race", while the other peoples are of other "races", is, yes, racist. About eugenics, whenever cold numbers only come into play in decisions like these I think it's safe to call it that, i.e. eugenics. Choosing wealthy people against poor people based on numbers alone is eugenics. You're choosing the more "worthy" ones, as that Beckstead guy explicitly said. More to the point, saying that people A should have more chances to live compared to people B, because people A is more worthy ("has the potential to create more long-term value"), is the definition of eugenics.
• jopsen 4y ago
  Wow, I took EA to mean try donating using analysis like givewell does. Judging by the article and comments, it looks as if people are living by a creed to be effectively altruistic. In general any philosophy where you think there is an optimal answer suffers from the risk that the answer could be wrong. In the case of givewell, one limitation is that you only support causes that demonstrate impact -- you don't support causes that take risks. I'm sure there is many other reasons not think that everything can be solved through the application of logic :)
  • medstrom 4y ago
    You weren't wrong, EA is basically the mindset of donating using analysis. As you fear, at the start the movement suffered from overemphasis on causes that can demonstrate impact. But it's not incompatible with risk-taking, if you personally deem the potential payoff as more than enough. Lately the movement is more nuanced, allowing room for harder-to-measure, "softer" causes like moral circle expansion, even if they're riskier, and even if you outsource part of your judgment to people closer to the cause: https://guerrillafoundation.org/additional-thoughts-on-effective-altruism/ https://guerrillafoundation.org/additional-thoughts-on-effec...
• gadders 4y ago
  I thought this was a good article on Effective Altruism by a blogger that has been featured here previously: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/im-trying-to-figure-out-why-i-dont https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/im-trying-to-figure-out...
• concordDance 4y ago
  One thing a lot of people miss is that effective altruism has worked! The idea of donating to distant causes that do the most good (which is what EA is and this notion long predates the 21st century) has massively reduced the number of deaths of malaria. Bill Gate's efforts to eradicate polio have done a world of good.
  • pyb 4y ago
    Are EAs now patting themselves in the back for all the altruism that came before them? That's weird but on-brand. "We are responsible for all altruism, wherever it happened in space or time!"
    • concordDance 4y ago
      Eh? That seems entirely unrelated to the comment you are replying to.
      • NateEag 4y ago
        Bill G's anti-malarial efforts predate the EA movement.
  • jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    You're making assumptions bigger than the pacific tectonic plate here. While I absolutely applaud Bill Gate's philanthropy, and have no doubt he's one of the most effective charity donors on this planet, you cannot simply use that as a ledger entry in some karmic balance. Bill at the peak of of his business career wielded enormous power and played a pivotal role in the IP regime that now rules the world, one that places low income nations at huge disadvantage in life or death industries like medicine. When you say "effective altruism worked" with Bill as an example, what you're actually saying is "we should welcome abusive or even illegal behavior from people like Bill if they give away money later" which is absurd. There's nothing about philanthropy that requires you to do business like a sociopath as a prequel.
    • 4y ago
• shaftoe444 4y ago
  This was prior to _recent events_ but there was a very good EconTalk episode about EA recently that's worth listening to again - https://simplecast.econtalk.org/episodes/erik-hoel-on-effective-altruism-utilitarianism-and-the-repugnant-conclusion https://simplecast.econtalk.org/episodes/erik-hoel-on-effect...
• Devasta 4y ago
  As an Effective Altruist I want to cure cancer, so I maximize my income by selling cigarettes to children outside playgrounds. The money will eventually be donated to the cause in my will, and in the meantime the prevalence of lung cancer in teens will incentivise the Free Market™ to find a cure. No need to thank me, really.
  • peteradio 4y ago
    Wow! Bless this man. Now minimize harm by targeting demographics of children who are less likely to grow up to be effectively altruistic!
  • medstrom 4y ago
    You jest, but that would absolutely make sense if you were a psychopath with the singular goal of finding a cure for cancer. Now use this same mindset but change the goal for something saner along the lines of "maximize healthy+happy lifespan for everyone", and then you won't sell cigarettes in playgrounds, since that harms the goal.
    • AlexandrB 4y ago
      > "maximize healthy+happy lifespan for everyone" Okay, so then I fund pro-life groups to protect the lives/happiness of fetuses. And the EA activist down the street funds pro-choice groups to protect the lives/happiness of mothers. And we keep escalating such donations while having little net effect. IMHO EA has more than a hint of authoritarian (or at least anti-democratic) tendencies. What gives some rich guy the right to decide what would maximize happiness for others? Why not just leave that money with the people who are best positioned to make those decisions for themselves my minimizing wealth inequality instead?
      • riezebos 4y ago
        > Why not just leave that money with the people who are best positioned to make those decisions for themselves my minimizing wealth inequality instead? Great idea! Unsurprisingly, pro-choice and pro-life groups are not in the EA top recommended charities. GiveDirectly, which leaves money with the people who are best positioned to make decisions for themselves, is. There might be a lot of authoritarian EAs on forums promoting AI safety, but please don't judge the whole group by a vocal minority.
• navane 4y ago
  Their quality-of-life points combined with long-term-ism reminds me of that simcity build that maximized the population to absurd levels. If you get 'points' for each life, past and future, than maximizing the number of future life is the easiest way to maximize your high score. > Bostrom calculates that 10E29 potential lives are lost for every second that we fail to colonise the supercluster of galaxies containing the Milky Way. I think an easy solution would be to normalize the score, as I think the sum of human hapiness would be "better" if there was only ever one human who gave his life a 10/10, than two humans who gave their life a 9/10.
  • q-big 4y ago
    There exists another solution that is "obvious" to "everybody" who has worked in life insurance (or long-term investments in finance): the concept of present value (PV): > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value Without giving a derivation (which you can find easily on the web), the idea is that a gain of 1 USD that you get in 1 year has to be discounted with a factor of (1+i), where i is the (long-term stable) interest rate. For 3 years, the discount factor is, of course, (1+i)^3, i.e. - a gain of 1 USD that materializes in 1 year is worth 1/(1+i) USD today - a gain of 1 USD that materializes in 3 years is worth 1/(1+i)^3 USD today Thus, including this discount factor for a future monetary flow (as in the PV calculation) makes gains that materialize in, say, 1000 years worth less today than those of the same monetary value that materialize (much) earlier.
  • nonameiguess 4y ago
    Seems like Bostrom isn't thinking big enough. If we could invent time travel and seed life earlier in the universe, figure out a way to slow down entropy and star death and make the current universe last longer, or create new universes wholesale, we can get far bigger total life numbers than that. Alternatively, since what we really care about is QALYs, not lives, making even just one person truly immortal gives us a literal infinity that outweighs the value of all mortal sentient creatures that can ever exist. This also implies every fictional supervillain who ever tried to achieve immortality was the morally best possible person, no matter what evil they performed in the attempt, even if they failed. Since no probability is ever 0, and any small number multiplied by infinity is still infinity, trying to achieve immortality is the maximally good thing any person can do.
• VieEnCode 4y ago
  Apart from the already financially secure, who can possibly afford to be an effective altruist in the current climate (in the sense of donating a significant proportion of one's income). Similarly, who can afford to work for these EA foundations and charities on lowish salaries based in major cities but trustafarians?
• headsoup 4y ago
  In my view it's a movement for people making excuses for themselves. You don't need movements to be altruistic, you just do it or not. Of course they end up getting tied up in knots because they're trying to project altruism through continuously more complex justifications.
  • medstrom 4y ago
    Yes, that would make the movement suspect. But if you'd read MacAskill or other sources, you'd know the original motivation was pretty much the opposite. The were aghast that lots of people currently donate to charities that ensure e.g. 4 livers to save 4 lives for the same amount of money that could've saved 1000 lives in another country. To reiterate, all these donors are already altruistic, and the original EAs were horrified at the 996 lives lost through the altruists' lack of thought. The emphasis is not on the altruism but on the effectiveness. The altruism is a given: if it wasn't, you'd not be moved by any of the material anyway.
    • headsoup 4y ago
      I get that, but I find that kind of thinking achieves nothing practical because it's endlessly scalable, and hence the tie in knots problem because it starts justifying "well I just need to extract another 500% profit because then I can really start helping." and as soon as an immoral justification is accepted it's very conflicting. Obviously this is not a blanked outcome, but it seems to be where the wealthy SBF types wander into, especially if their wealth is not entirely 'clean' in the first place. Reminds me of arguments like, say, the Sacklers' opioid crisis isn't all bad because they donated to charity, we should appreciate the good that came.
      • medstrom 4y ago
        An interesting discussion to be sure. But can't "net good" be a satisfactory judge for the Sacklers' crisis?
• seanc 4y ago
  Humans have devised many, many institutions and philosophies for helping each other grow into powerful moral people. Uncountable religions, self help movements, mind-body wellness systems, the list goes on and on. Every single one, without exception, has examples of people at the top of the institution, widely regarded as masters of the system, who are miserable destructive human beings. This makes me profoundly sad. I could understand if every single group of people had members who are toxic, but the fact that the selection systems for progression are so predictably bad... IME, the best you can do is to find a small local scene that practices the system in a way that is healthy and nurturing for the members and live with the cognitive dissonance caused by the rot at the top. Whether it's your small neighborhood church, a martial arts dojo or your toastmasters club, these things can be great in the small even if they're awful in the large.
  • MomoXenosaga 4y ago
    The solution is to tax the shit out of rich people and hand it over to the rest of society. I mean the maths has been done: whatever the rich give out in charity is always less than what they would pay in taxes. The whole effective altruism thing is an ego trip experience. Wow I get my name on a hospital wing!
    • nisegami 4y ago
      Taxation creates its own set of perverse incentives, I suggest we use a money pit: https://www.theonion.com/in-the-know-should-the-government-stop-dumping-money-i-1819594755 https://www.theonion.com/in-the-know-should-the-government-s...
    • seanc 4y ago
      It's worse than that; wealth aside it seems like every time people come together they can't seem to reliably reform or reject the bad actors. That said, systems for routinely rotating the top of the hierarchy (such as taxation or term limits) are helpful to be sure.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
• shswkna 4y ago
  At its root lies our desire to make our lives maximally meaningful, to the point where the existence of billions of people in the future can be traced back to one maximally effective decision or act. At once the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s new song makes so much more sense: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism”