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As Adam Becker shows in his book, EAs started out being reasonable "give to charity as much as you can, and research which charities do the most good" but have

As Adam Becker shows in his book, EAs started out being reasonable "give to charity as much as you can, and research which charities do the most good" but have gotten into absurdities like "it is more important to fund rockets than help starving people or prevent malaria because maybe an asteroid will hit the Earth, killing everyone, starving or not".

LargeWu 1y ago
It's also not a very big leap from "My purpose is to do whatever is the greatest good" to "It doesn't matter if I hurt people as long as the overall net result is good (by some arbitrary standard)"
- oh_my_goodness 1y ago
  I think this is the key comment so far.
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  99% of effective altruists and rationalists agree that you shouldn't hurt people as part of some complicated scheme to do good. For example, here is eliezer yudkowsky in 2008 saying exactly that, and explaining why it's true: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t-justify-means-among-humans https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t...
  - LargeWu 1y ago
    I believe they believe that, on its face. I also believe that idealistic people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that their desired outcome is, in fact, the moral one. It starts by saying things like, "Well, what is harm, actually..." and then constructing a definition that supports the conclusions they've already arrived at. I'm quite sure Sam Bankman-Fried did not believe he was harming anybody when he lost/stole/defrauded his investors and depositors' money.
    - Propelloni 1y ago
      Like an very old dude once said: "No one is willfully evil."
- m-ee 1y ago
  This isn’t a hypothetical leap either. This thinking directly lead to the murders committed by the zizians.
sfblah 1y ago
How do they escape the reality that the Earth will one day be destroyed, and that it's almost certainly impossible to ever colonize another planetary system? Just suicide out?
- wat10000 1y ago
  If you value maximizing the number of human lives that are lived, then even “almost certainly impossible” is enough to justify focusing a huge amount of effort on that. Maybe interstellar colonization is a one in a million shot, but it would multiply the number of human lives by billions or trillions or more.
  - ConspiracyFact 1y ago
    Is the argument that we should try to do things that will benefit our theoretical and theoretically multitudinous descendants? Or is it that just taking action to make their existence more likely is a moral good? Because the latter is just brain dead.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      Good question. I think it has to be the latter, given the immense time involved. You can make a connection between driving progress in certain areas today and increasing the odds that humanity eventually colonizes the stars. I don’t think you can make any connection with how well off those far-future humans will be.
      - ConspiracyFact 1y ago
        If that's what's meant, it's a hilarious perversion of utilitarianism.
Veedrac 1y ago
It seems very odd to criticize the group that most reliably and effectively funds global health and malaria prevention for this. What is your alternative? What's your framework that makes you contribute to malaria prevention more or more effectively than EAs do? Or is the claim instead that people should shut down conversation within EA that strays from the EA mode?
- jhbadger 1y ago
  The simple answer is you don't need a "framework" -- plain empathy for the less fortunate is good enough. But if the EA's actually want to do something about malaria (although the Gates Foundation does much, much more in that regard than the Centre for Effective Altruism), more power to them. But as Becker notes from his visits to the Centre, things like malaria and malnutrition are not the primary focus of the centre.
  - Veedrac 1y ago
    I wish it were, but it's clearly not enough. There are plenty of people with healthy emotional empathy in the world, and yet children still die of easily preventable diseases. I am plenty happy to simp for the Gates foundation, but I think it's important to acknowledge that becoming Bill Gates to support charity is not a strategy the average person can replicate. The question for me is how do I live my life to support the causes I care about, not who lives more impressive lives than me.
  - noname120 1y ago
    EA people gave a total of $817,276,989 to malaria initiatives through GiveWell[1][2]. How much more do they need to give before you will change your mind about whether “EA's actually want to do something about malaria”? [1] https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund [2] https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tblG72bMUu36lrWsr/viwJScgH8B6uRwJ8C?blocks=hide https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tbl...
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
TheAncientGeek 1y ago
There's a lot of weird ideas on the fringes of EA...but they are on the fringes. Everyone is eye rolling at shrimp guy. https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/5JB4dn7hEvZCYDvCe/a-very-simple-case-for-giving-to-shrimp https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/5JB4dn7hEvZCYDvCe/a-very-... https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/MHBJ436AiKyN83DCB/thinking-insect-suffering-is-the-biggest-deal-in-the-world https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/MHBJ436AiKyN83DCB/thinkin... https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/58ajesm2C38wi3WSJ/insect-suffering-is-the-biggest-issue-what-to-do-about-it https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/58ajesm2C38wi3WSJ/insect-...

LargeWu 1y ago

It's also not a very big leap from "My purpose is to do whatever is the greatest good" to "It doesn't matter if I hurt people as long as the overall net result is good (by some arbitrary standard)"

oh_my_goodness 1y ago
I think this is the key comment so far.
ChadNauseam 1y ago
99% of effective altruists and rationalists agree that you shouldn't hurt people as part of some complicated scheme to do good. For example, here is eliezer yudkowsky in 2008 saying exactly that, and explaining why it's true: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t-justify-means-among-humans https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9ZaZXDnL3SEmYZqB/ends-don-t...
- LargeWu 1y ago
  I believe they believe that, on its face. I also believe that idealistic people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that their desired outcome is, in fact, the moral one. It starts by saying things like, "Well, what is harm, actually..." and then constructing a definition that supports the conclusions they've already arrived at. I'm quite sure Sam Bankman-Fried did not believe he was harming anybody when he lost/stole/defrauded his investors and depositors' money.
  - Propelloni 1y ago
    Like an very old dude once said: "No one is willfully evil."
m-ee 1y ago
This isn’t a hypothetical leap either. This thinking directly lead to the murders committed by the zizians.

sfblah 1y ago

How do they escape the reality that the Earth will one day be destroyed, and that it's almost certainly impossible to ever colonize another planetary system? Just suicide out?

wat10000 1y ago
If you value maximizing the number of human lives that are lived, then even “almost certainly impossible” is enough to justify focusing a huge amount of effort on that. Maybe interstellar colonization is a one in a million shot, but it would multiply the number of human lives by billions or trillions or more.
- ConspiracyFact 1y ago
  Is the argument that we should try to do things that will benefit our theoretical and theoretically multitudinous descendants? Or is it that just taking action to make their existence more likely is a moral good? Because the latter is just brain dead.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    Good question. I think it has to be the latter, given the immense time involved. You can make a connection between driving progress in certain areas today and increasing the odds that humanity eventually colonizes the stars. I don’t think you can make any connection with how well off those far-future humans will be.
    - ConspiracyFact 1y ago
      If that's what's meant, it's a hilarious perversion of utilitarianism.

Veedrac 1y ago

It seems very odd to criticize the group that most reliably and effectively funds global health and malaria prevention for this. What is your alternative? What's your framework that makes you contribute to malaria prevention more or more effectively than EAs do? Or is the claim instead that people should shut down conversation within EA that strays from the EA mode?

jhbadger 1y ago
The simple answer is you don't need a "framework" -- plain empathy for the less fortunate is good enough. But if the EA's actually want to do something about malaria (although the Gates Foundation does much, much more in that regard than the Centre for Effective Altruism), more power to them. But as Becker notes from his visits to the Centre, things like malaria and malnutrition are not the primary focus of the centre.
- Veedrac 1y ago
  I wish it were, but it's clearly not enough. There are plenty of people with healthy emotional empathy in the world, and yet children still die of easily preventable diseases. I am plenty happy to simp for the Gates foundation, but I think it's important to acknowledge that becoming Bill Gates to support charity is not a strategy the average person can replicate. The question for me is how do I live my life to support the causes I care about, not who lives more impressive lives than me.
- noname120 1y ago
  EA people gave a total of $817,276,989 to malaria initiatives through GiveWell[1][2]. How much more do they need to give before you will change your mind about whether “EA's actually want to do something about malaria”? [1] https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund [2] https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tblG72bMUu36lrWsr/viwJScgH8B6uRwJ8C?blocks=hide https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tbl...
  - UncleMeat 1y ago

TheAncientGeek 1y ago

There's a lot of weird ideas on the fringes of EA...but they are on the fringes. Everyone is eye rolling at shrimp guy. https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/5JB4dn7hEvZCYDvCe/a-very-simple-case-for-giving-to-shrimp https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/5JB4dn7hEvZCYDvCe/a-very-... https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/MHBJ436AiKyN83DCB/thinking-insect-suffering-is-the-biggest-deal-in-the-world https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/MHBJ436AiKyN83DCB/thinkin... https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/58ajesm2C38wi3WSJ/insect-suffering-is-the-biggest-issue-what-to-do-about-it https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/58ajesm2C38wi3WSJ/insect-...