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> 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 fund

by edanm 4y ago

> 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, I think you're missing the point of that paragraph, or at least misrepresenting it here. It's not saying that what SBF did was ok or that fraud is ok or any such thing. It's specifically trying to say that just because this happened with crypto, which might be a bubble, doesn't make it any different than normal everyday finance. You might or might not agree with that idea, or might or might agree that finance itself is good, but that's the point of this paragraph specifically. Here it is in full, note the first sentence: > Even if cryptocurrency remains just a modern-day tulip bulb or Beanie Baby, though, it seems morally hard to distinguish a cryptocurrency trader from the millions who deal in options, bonds, and all manner of other speculative assets. 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. Also, just a note on this: > Either way: when your logic has established that you can obtain moral superiority by literally buying indulgences, it has officially proven too much, The problem with indulgences wasn't just the idea of being able to offset moral harm with moral good. Firstly, that position itself is at odds with what most EA people say afaict. Secondly, the problem of indulgences is also that they are not real. I think even a religious person will agree that the indulgences of the 16th century was just a con. An atheist will dismiss the whole idea entirely. The underlying logic of someone who made and gave away billions being overall ahead of other people morally is sound, IMHO. That of course is not to say that this then "allows" them to go and do some evil or something - that's not at all what the EA movement is saying.

polygamous_bat 4y ago
> The underlying logic of someone who made and gave away billions being overall ahead of other people morally is sound. Do you hear yourself, not even asking how they "made" their billions? This is what "EA is indulgence for billionaires" people are talking about exactly. If you make your billions unethically, no amount of charity will make you a good person.
- edanm 4y ago
  > If you make your billions unethically, no amount of charity will make you a good person. I completely agree! I thought the context of the rest of my post made it clear that I assume they made it in an ethical way, but I guess it wasn't clear? I mean, if someone says they gave away billions to charity, my first question isn't immediately "but how did you make billions?". I just assume it's legit, because in most cases it's legit. And I thought I was pretty clear above that in cases it isn't legit, then that's not morally ok.
  - edanm 4y ago
    I also right after said that this doesn't allow them to then go do something bad. I mean this in both directions, obviously!
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      My problem with assumption that you make is that you assume the billionaires came to their billions through some divine magic, and thus "a very few bad apples" can't spoil the bunch. I start my line of thinking from the other end -- what kind of regulation and laws exist that can create exponential wealth for someone whose work output only ever scales linearly. The gap between single person's output produced and wealth generated is proof that our simple abstraction that "money is just a symbol proportional to one's contribution to society" breaks down at very large (and sometimes really tiny) scales. Effective altruism will never fix that because it presupposes the system where billionaires are created and exists comfortably. The alternative, of course, is taking a closer look at the system itself and making sure our abstraction of "money = effort given to society" functions properly at all scales.
      - edanm 4y ago
        > Effective altruism will never fix that because it presupposes the system where billionaires are created and exists comfortably. The alternative, of course, is taking a closer look at the system itself and making sure our abstraction of "money = effort given to society" functions properly at all scales. I disagree with a few things you say, but this is the biggest: what does this have to do with EA? Yeah, sure, EA will never fix the systemic problems of the system it's in. Neither will scientists working on new vaccines, but you're not criticizing them for it, I imagine. You can do plenty of good in the world within the "current system", without also trying to change that system, and the fact that you're not trying shouldn't be held against you. (Although, for the record, some people in EA do think political activism is important and spend a lot of effort there.) > I start my line of thinking from the other end -- what kind of regulation and laws exist that can create exponential wealth for someone whose work output only ever scales linearly. The gap between single person's output produced and wealth generated is proof that our simple abstraction that "money is just a symbol proportional to one's contribution to society" breaks down at very large (and sometimes really tiny) scales. I don't think that's how anyone should view money. And I don't think someone's output only scales linearly. I mean, that's clearly not the case. Stephen King has written lots of books that many people enjoyed. The value he has created in the world is far larger than the value I've created, or will likely create, and it's not a linear difference. There are lots of examples like that. In general, regulations and laws don't "allow" for creation of exponential wealth, they just don't prevent something that happens completely naturally. We can certainly decide to "tax more" or something as a society, but that comes with its own problems.
tptacek 4y ago
The underlying logic of someone who made and gave away billions being overall ahead of other people morally is sound, IMHO I'm not sure what to do with this. It is, obviously, not sound. There are a variety of ways in which such a person could be less moral than the pitifully ineffective non-billionaires. I'm not kidding when I say that we worked a lot of these problems out in the 16th century.
- edanm 4y ago
  > There are a variety of ways in which such a person could be less moral than the pitifully ineffective non-billionaires. I think we might be talking past each other a bit. I'm saying, given no other information, someone who has given away billions, effectively, as in saved lives, is "morally ahead" of someone who hasn't similarly done so. Of course they could've done other things that make them morally worse. Of course the way they donated money could be net-negative, if they caused negative things in the world. But in the absence of other information, if I told you someone had donated a billion dollars to, I don't know, give food to hungry people, do you really think that is a morally neutral act? Like, if someone is a firefighter that has saved hundreds of lives by their heroism, do you think they are literally morally the same as other people who haven't? If that's not what you're talking about, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Btw, I don't think morality is just an issue of summing up all your good versus bad deeds. I'm not exactly sure how to even define "ahead morally". A firefighter who has saved lives but also abused their kids - how do you even deal with a case like that? I think people are complex, they can do both good and bad, and the good that firefighter did is good, while the bad is bad, period. I think one thing you might be objecting to is the idea that you can say something like "person X did 100 good deeds, and 99 bad deeds, therefore they are net good" or even "it's worth giving money to a cause that causes 99 bad deeds and 100 good deeds cause it's net positive." And I agree, that's a valid criticism and a wrong way to think about things.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I'm saying, given no other information, someone who has given away billions, effectively, as in saved lives, is "morally ahead" of someone who hasn't similarly done so. We're not talking past each other. This is false. Your problem is that you're using the concept of incomplete information, rather than that of ceteris paribus. Compare two billionaires, identical in every respect other than that one donated more than the other. The more charitable billionaire is morally superior (or, many reasonable people, myself included, would say so). But that's as far as it goes. And in reality there are never identical billionaires to compare. One billionaire doesn't give enough; the other pledges all their money to GiveWell or EA or AGI, but also keeps hobos locked up in their basement. And, in the main, who gives a shit about the relative value of billionaires? The logic is shot completely to shit as soon as we're trying to compare the marginal sacrifice of a billionaire's giving pledge to the moral decisions people make every day of their life. And yet that's exactly what Scott Aaronson does. I feel embarrassed just typing this stuff out. This is, like, philosophy 101 stuff? The logic I'm arguing against here is on its face one of the cases moral philosophers make against Bentham's naive utilitarianism --- that it leads people to believe stuff like this.

by edanm 4y ago

polygamous_bat 4y ago

> The underlying logic of someone who made and gave away billions being overall ahead of other people morally is sound. Do you hear yourself, not even asking how they "made" their billions? This is what "EA is indulgence for billionaires" people are talking about exactly. If you make your billions unethically, no amount of charity will make you a good person.

edanm 4y ago
> If you make your billions unethically, no amount of charity will make you a good person. I completely agree! I thought the context of the rest of my post made it clear that I assume they made it in an ethical way, but I guess it wasn't clear? I mean, if someone says they gave away billions to charity, my first question isn't immediately "but how did you make billions?". I just assume it's legit, because in most cases it's legit. And I thought I was pretty clear above that in cases it isn't legit, then that's not morally ok.
- edanm 4y ago
  I also right after said that this doesn't allow them to then go do something bad. I mean this in both directions, obviously!
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    My problem with assumption that you make is that you assume the billionaires came to their billions through some divine magic, and thus "a very few bad apples" can't spoil the bunch. I start my line of thinking from the other end -- what kind of regulation and laws exist that can create exponential wealth for someone whose work output only ever scales linearly. The gap between single person's output produced and wealth generated is proof that our simple abstraction that "money is just a symbol proportional to one's contribution to society" breaks down at very large (and sometimes really tiny) scales. Effective altruism will never fix that because it presupposes the system where billionaires are created and exists comfortably. The alternative, of course, is taking a closer look at the system itself and making sure our abstraction of "money = effort given to society" functions properly at all scales.
    - edanm 4y ago
      > Effective altruism will never fix that because it presupposes the system where billionaires are created and exists comfortably. The alternative, of course, is taking a closer look at the system itself and making sure our abstraction of "money = effort given to society" functions properly at all scales. I disagree with a few things you say, but this is the biggest: what does this have to do with EA? Yeah, sure, EA will never fix the systemic problems of the system it's in. Neither will scientists working on new vaccines, but you're not criticizing them for it, I imagine. You can do plenty of good in the world within the "current system", without also trying to change that system, and the fact that you're not trying shouldn't be held against you. (Although, for the record, some people in EA do think political activism is important and spend a lot of effort there.) > I start my line of thinking from the other end -- what kind of regulation and laws exist that can create exponential wealth for someone whose work output only ever scales linearly. The gap between single person's output produced and wealth generated is proof that our simple abstraction that "money is just a symbol proportional to one's contribution to society" breaks down at very large (and sometimes really tiny) scales. I don't think that's how anyone should view money. And I don't think someone's output only scales linearly. I mean, that's clearly not the case. Stephen King has written lots of books that many people enjoyed. The value he has created in the world is far larger than the value I've created, or will likely create, and it's not a linear difference. There are lots of examples like that. In general, regulations and laws don't "allow" for creation of exponential wealth, they just don't prevent something that happens completely naturally. We can certainly decide to "tax more" or something as a society, but that comes with its own problems.

tptacek 4y ago

The underlying logic of someone who made and gave away billions being overall ahead of other people morally is sound, IMHO I'm not sure what to do with this. It is, obviously, not sound. There are a variety of ways in which such a person could be less moral than the pitifully ineffective non-billionaires. I'm not kidding when I say that we worked a lot of these problems out in the 16th century.

edanm 4y ago
> There are a variety of ways in which such a person could be less moral than the pitifully ineffective non-billionaires. I think we might be talking past each other a bit. I'm saying, given no other information, someone who has given away billions, effectively, as in saved lives, is "morally ahead" of someone who hasn't similarly done so. Of course they could've done other things that make them morally worse. Of course the way they donated money could be net-negative, if they caused negative things in the world. But in the absence of other information, if I told you someone had donated a billion dollars to, I don't know, give food to hungry people, do you really think that is a morally neutral act? Like, if someone is a firefighter that has saved hundreds of lives by their heroism, do you think they are literally morally the same as other people who haven't? If that's not what you're talking about, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Btw, I don't think morality is just an issue of summing up all your good versus bad deeds. I'm not exactly sure how to even define "ahead morally". A firefighter who has saved lives but also abused their kids - how do you even deal with a case like that? I think people are complex, they can do both good and bad, and the good that firefighter did is good, while the bad is bad, period. I think one thing you might be objecting to is the idea that you can say something like "person X did 100 good deeds, and 99 bad deeds, therefore they are net good" or even "it's worth giving money to a cause that causes 99 bad deeds and 100 good deeds cause it's net positive." And I agree, that's a valid criticism and a wrong way to think about things.
- tptacek 4y ago
  I'm saying, given no other information, someone who has given away billions, effectively, as in saved lives, is "morally ahead" of someone who hasn't similarly done so. We're not talking past each other. This is false. Your problem is that you're using the concept of incomplete information, rather than that of ceteris paribus. Compare two billionaires, identical in every respect other than that one donated more than the other. The more charitable billionaire is morally superior (or, many reasonable people, myself included, would say so). But that's as far as it goes. And in reality there are never identical billionaires to compare. One billionaire doesn't give enough; the other pledges all their money to GiveWell or EA or AGI, but also keeps hobos locked up in their basement. And, in the main, who gives a shit about the relative value of billionaires? The logic is shot completely to shit as soon as we're trying to compare the marginal sacrifice of a billionaire's giving pledge to the moral decisions people make every day of their life. And yet that's exactly what Scott Aaronson does. I feel embarrassed just typing this stuff out. This is, like, philosophy 101 stuff? The logic I'm arguing against here is on its face one of the cases moral philosophers make against Bentham's naive utilitarianism --- that it leads people to believe stuff like this.