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Is it a bad thing that people can convince themselves that whatever they do to make a lot of money is ethical as long as they buy some mosquito nets afterward?

Is it a bad thing that people can convince themselves that whatever they do to make a lot of money is ethical as long as they buy some mosquito nets afterward? I can see some potential issues.

tfigment 4y ago
Felix Salmon on Slate Money podcast this past weekend suggest that its still net positive given alternative is those people don't even try to make world better. More nuanced than that but my take on the position.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Effective altruism sounds like choosing between destroying the enviroment and destroying the enviroment with some greenwashing on top. In my mind, the movement amounts to PR to make excessive riches and excessive political influence palatable.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  What if the alternative might be someone says “no, this is a bridge too far for me” and just doesn’t do something?
eddsh1994 4y ago
> whatever they do to make a lot of money is ethical as long as they buy some mosquito nets afterward EA doesn't support this. It's absolutely not okay to do immoral things to make money and even things like Earning to Give via legit quant roles is and was pretty hotly debated.
- p10jkle 4y ago
  But what in the philosophy of EA really disallows it? In a utilitarian model, if I can do a lot of good by doing some bad (eg, steal from crypto investors and give the money to AI safety research), what did I do wrong? I appreciate that this can discredit EA and hurt their efforts, but this is a short-termist concern; in the long run, the AI research might end up being more important than the transient reputational damage. Furthermore, what if there's only a 5% chance of being caught doing something immoral? Then, in expectation, the positive impact is even higher. It's all very well to pay lip service to 'common sense morality' but it doesn't seem to fit into the actual theology of EA, and this is what fanatics are most likely to follow.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    > But what in the philosophy of EA really disallows it Because most people who are willing to donate x% of their salary to charity tends to be decent people? Apart from that, there's tons of fundermental EA posts and writings that talk about how EA cannot be an 'ends justify the means' philosophy to donating. Sadly this SBF shit has really corrupted the core message which is to be skeptical of charities and view them like investments, picking the best one for QALY per $, and valuing all lives equally. I don't even like the futurist side of EA because I personally can't put the value of a hypothetical person above someone who's sick today and focus on global health & animal welfare. Honestly the core point of EA is imo very hard to discredit aside from longtermism.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      > There's tons of fundermental EA posts and writings that talk about how EA cannot be an 'ends justify the means' philosophy to donating. This is at odds with its core adoption of utilitarianism, which is the movement's fundamental justification. Utilitarianism is sort of textbook "sounds nice on paper, works crappy in practice" outcome.
      - eddsh1994 4y ago
        That's because they're not the same thing and all the press EA has recently received is completely butchering the much more nuanced message. It's covered briefly here https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs-criticism-objections https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs-criticism-objections
        tomrod 4y ago
        Pushback: the press has gotten this correct, and EA's attempts at distinguishing itself as something else have failed.
        eddsh1994 4y ago
        How can the press be correct about what something is, when that something has since its inception been both vocally and actively different? Even going back to Singers books that sort of kicked this all off its specifically said to be different to utilitarianism. Most advocates of EA say they're not utilitarian. I'm saying I'm not utilitarian. EA organizations actions are clearly not utilitarian in general. I don't really know how to defend EA as not Utilitarian beyond that, except saying take a look at some EA-based books or blog posts that aren't from the last month and decide for yourself!
- chrchang523 4y ago
  People are not forced to treat EA as an all-or-nothing package. If some of their claims are more convincing than others, and acceptance of only the more-convincing claims leads to SBF-like behavior with much-higher-than-background probability, it is important to strengthen some arguments, and/or withdraw community support for ideas that are currently too unsafe in practice.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    I agree with this. I think there are two sides of EA - the futurist utilitarian viewpoint and the rational QALY/$ viewpoint. I'm a believer of the latter, but do worry because this is boring (malaria nets and deworming) the former is the only one people hear of or see even if it's a minority group.
- zestyping 4y ago
  [This has been moved to a top-level comment.]
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    What enormous damage has it caused? I say this as someone who took the Earning to Give path from 80,000 hours and happily donate to healthcare charities suggested by Givewell via Giving What We Can. My wife took the other path and is a postdoc at Stanford working on medical research with an EA focus (both in her field and on replication crisis in medicine). I'm pretty in this space so to speak, albeit only in a small way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Tiktaalik 4y ago
Feels like the same logic all over again as when we had tyrant kings sending out their peasants to get killed in a field in order to win them more lands and wealth, then dumping their fortune into building a cathedral to try to buy their way into heaven.

Is it a bad thing that people can convince themselves that whatever they do to make a lot of money is ethical as long as they buy some mosquito nets afterward? I can see some potential issues.

tfigment 4y ago

Felix Salmon on Slate Money podcast this past weekend suggest that its still net positive given alternative is those people don't even try to make world better. More nuanced than that but my take on the position.

HarryHirsch 4y ago
Effective altruism sounds like choosing between destroying the enviroment and destroying the enviroment with some greenwashing on top. In my mind, the movement amounts to PR to make excessive riches and excessive political influence palatable.
emodendroket 4y ago
What if the alternative might be someone says “no, this is a bridge too far for me” and just doesn’t do something?

eddsh1994 4y ago

> whatever they do to make a lot of money is ethical as long as they buy some mosquito nets afterward EA doesn't support this. It's absolutely not okay to do immoral things to make money and even things like Earning to Give via legit quant roles is and was pretty hotly debated.

p10jkle 4y ago
But what in the philosophy of EA really disallows it? In a utilitarian model, if I can do a lot of good by doing some bad (eg, steal from crypto investors and give the money to AI safety research), what did I do wrong? I appreciate that this can discredit EA and hurt their efforts, but this is a short-termist concern; in the long run, the AI research might end up being more important than the transient reputational damage. Furthermore, what if there's only a 5% chance of being caught doing something immoral? Then, in expectation, the positive impact is even higher. It's all very well to pay lip service to 'common sense morality' but it doesn't seem to fit into the actual theology of EA, and this is what fanatics are most likely to follow.
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  > But what in the philosophy of EA really disallows it Because most people who are willing to donate x% of their salary to charity tends to be decent people? Apart from that, there's tons of fundermental EA posts and writings that talk about how EA cannot be an 'ends justify the means' philosophy to donating. Sadly this SBF shit has really corrupted the core message which is to be skeptical of charities and view them like investments, picking the best one for QALY per $, and valuing all lives equally. I don't even like the futurist side of EA because I personally can't put the value of a hypothetical person above someone who's sick today and focus on global health & animal welfare. Honestly the core point of EA is imo very hard to discredit aside from longtermism.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    > There's tons of fundermental EA posts and writings that talk about how EA cannot be an 'ends justify the means' philosophy to donating. This is at odds with its core adoption of utilitarianism, which is the movement's fundamental justification. Utilitarianism is sort of textbook "sounds nice on paper, works crappy in practice" outcome.
    - eddsh1994 4y ago
      That's because they're not the same thing and all the press EA has recently received is completely butchering the much more nuanced message. It's covered briefly here https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs-criticism-objections https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs-criticism-objections
      - tomrod 4y ago
        Pushback: the press has gotten this correct, and EA's attempts at distinguishing itself as something else have failed.
        eddsh1994 4y ago
        How can the press be correct about what something is, when that something has since its inception been both vocally and actively different? Even going back to Singers books that sort of kicked this all off its specifically said to be different to utilitarianism. Most advocates of EA say they're not utilitarian. I'm saying I'm not utilitarian. EA organizations actions are clearly not utilitarian in general. I don't really know how to defend EA as not Utilitarian beyond that, except saying take a look at some EA-based books or blog posts that aren't from the last month and decide for yourself!
chrchang523 4y ago
People are not forced to treat EA as an all-or-nothing package. If some of their claims are more convincing than others, and acceptance of only the more-convincing claims leads to SBF-like behavior with much-higher-than-background probability, it is important to strengthen some arguments, and/or withdraw community support for ideas that are currently too unsafe in practice.
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  I agree with this. I think there are two sides of EA - the futurist utilitarian viewpoint and the rational QALY/$ viewpoint. I'm a believer of the latter, but do worry because this is boring (malaria nets and deworming) the former is the only one people hear of or see even if it's a minority group.
zestyping 4y ago
[This has been moved to a top-level comment.]
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  What enormous damage has it caused? I say this as someone who took the Earning to Give path from 80,000 hours and happily donate to healthcare charities suggested by Givewell via Giving What We Can. My wife took the other path and is a postdoc at Stanford working on medical research with an EA focus (both in her field and on replication crisis in medicine). I'm pretty in this space so to speak, albeit only in a small way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Tiktaalik 4y ago

Feels like the same logic all over again as when we had tyrant kings sending out their peasants to get killed in a field in order to win them more lands and wealth, then dumping their fortune into building a cathedral to try to buy their way into heaven.