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What's the seductive-but-wrong part of EA? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the opposition to it boils down to "Maybe you shouldn't donate money to p

What's the seductive-but-wrong part of EA? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of the opposition to it boils down to "Maybe you shouldn't donate money to pet shelters when people are dying of preventable diseases" vs "But donating money to pet shelters feels better!"

Filligree 1y ago
Yes, but they’re smug about it, which means they’re wrong. Of course it sounds ridiculous when you spell it out this way.
- skinnymuch 1y ago
  Or something like focusing on high paying job and donating money does absolutely nothing to solve any root or structural problems which defeats the supposed purpose of caring about future people or being effective altruist in the first place Of course the way your comment is written makes criticism sound silly.
DowsingSpoon 1y ago
It might be the parts that lead a person to commit large scale fraud with the idea that the good they can do with the stolen money outweighs all the negatives. Or, at least, that’s the popular idea of what happened to Sam Bankman-Fried. I have no idea what was actually going through that man’s mind. In any case, EA smells strongly of “the ends justify the means” which most popular moral philosophies reject with strong arguments. One which resonates with me is that there are no “ends.” The path itself is the goal.
- com2kid 1y ago
  > the ends justify the means” which most popular moral philosophies reject with strong arguments. This is a false statement. Our entire modern world is built on the basis of the ends justify the means. Every time money is spent on long term infrastructure vs giving poor kids food right now, every time a war is fought, every time a doctor triages injuries at a disaster.
  - naasking 1y ago
    I don't think it's useful to conflate "the ends justify the means" with "cost-benefit analysis". You sometimes use the latter to justify certain means, but you don't have to, that's why they're different. When you believe that the ends justify the means, you can also just give no consideration at all to the ethics of the means. No doctor triaging patients would ever shoot a patient in the head so he could move onto one they thought was more important. Yes they might let patients die, but that's different than actively killing them.
    - aussiethebob 1y ago
      In the framework of modern civilian medicine sure. I'm sure exactly what you described was done plenty of times in ww1 and similar around that era, and seen as perfectly moral and rational.
- imtringued 1y ago
  I've noticed this with a lot of radical streamers on both sides. They don't care about principles, they care about "winning" by any means necessary. Winning at things that align with your principle is a principle. If you don't care about principles, you don't care about what you're winning at, thereby making every victory hollow and meaningless. That is how you turn into a loser at everything you do.
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  > there are no “ends.” The path itself is the goal. How does this apply to actual charity? "Curing malaria is not the goal. Our experiences during voluntourism are the true goal."
tsimionescu 1y ago
It's not all bad, some conclusions are ok. But it also has ideas like "don't donate to charity, it's better to invest that money in, like, an oil fund, and grow it 1000x, and then you can donate so much more! Bill Gates has done much more for humanity than some Red Cross doctor!". Which is basically just a way to make yourself feel good about becoming richer, much like "prosperity gospel" would for the religious.
- comp_throw7 1y ago
  This is not a commonly-held position in EA.
adastra22 1y ago
That hasn't defined EA for at least 10 years or so. EA started with "you should donate to NGOs distributing mosquito nets instead of the local pet shelter". It then moved into "you should work a soulless investment banking job so you can give more". More recently it was "you should excise all expensive fun things from your life, and give 100% of your disposable income to a weird poly sex cult and/or their fraudulent paper hedge fund because they're smarter than you."
- naasking 1y ago
  This is what some EAs believe, I don't think there was ever a broad consensus on those latter claims. As such, it doesn't seem like a fair criticism of EA.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    You can’t paint a broad brush of a whole movement, but it’s true if the leadership of the EA organization. Once they went all-in on “AI x-risk”, there ceased being a meaningful difference between them and the fringe of the LW ratsphere.
    - naasking 1y ago
      Which organization? https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/list-of-ea-related-organisations https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/...
      - adastra22 1y ago
        The people who run the forum you linked to.
        naasking 1y ago
        That same link puts AI risk under the "far future" category, basically the same category as "threats to global food security" and asteroid impact risks. What's unreasonable about that?
lupusreal 1y ago
Pet shelters is just the pretty facade. The same ideology would have you step over homeless elderly ladies and buy mosquito nets instead, because the elderly lady cannot have children so mosquito nets maximize the number of future humans more efficiently.

Filligree 1y ago

Yes, but they’re smug about it, which means they’re wrong. Of course it sounds ridiculous when you spell it out this way.

skinnymuch 1y ago
Or something like focusing on high paying job and donating money does absolutely nothing to solve any root or structural problems which defeats the supposed purpose of caring about future people or being effective altruist in the first place Of course the way your comment is written makes criticism sound silly.

DowsingSpoon 1y ago

It might be the parts that lead a person to commit large scale fraud with the idea that the good they can do with the stolen money outweighs all the negatives. Or, at least, that’s the popular idea of what happened to Sam Bankman-Fried. I have no idea what was actually going through that man’s mind. In any case, EA smells strongly of “the ends justify the means” which most popular moral philosophies reject with strong arguments. One which resonates with me is that there are no “ends.” The path itself is the goal.

com2kid 1y ago
> the ends justify the means” which most popular moral philosophies reject with strong arguments. This is a false statement. Our entire modern world is built on the basis of the ends justify the means. Every time money is spent on long term infrastructure vs giving poor kids food right now, every time a war is fought, every time a doctor triages injuries at a disaster.
- naasking 1y ago
  I don't think it's useful to conflate "the ends justify the means" with "cost-benefit analysis". You sometimes use the latter to justify certain means, but you don't have to, that's why they're different. When you believe that the ends justify the means, you can also just give no consideration at all to the ethics of the means. No doctor triaging patients would ever shoot a patient in the head so he could move onto one they thought was more important. Yes they might let patients die, but that's different than actively killing them.
  - aussiethebob 1y ago
    In the framework of modern civilian medicine sure. I'm sure exactly what you described was done plenty of times in ww1 and similar around that era, and seen as perfectly moral and rational.
imtringued 1y ago
I've noticed this with a lot of radical streamers on both sides. They don't care about principles, they care about "winning" by any means necessary. Winning at things that align with your principle is a principle. If you don't care about principles, you don't care about what you're winning at, thereby making every victory hollow and meaningless. That is how you turn into a loser at everything you do.
Viliam1234 1y ago
> there are no “ends.” The path itself is the goal. How does this apply to actual charity? "Curing malaria is not the goal. Our experiences during voluntourism are the true goal."

tsimionescu 1y ago

It's not all bad, some conclusions are ok. But it also has ideas like "don't donate to charity, it's better to invest that money in, like, an oil fund, and grow it 1000x, and then you can donate so much more! Bill Gates has done much more for humanity than some Red Cross doctor!". Which is basically just a way to make yourself feel good about becoming richer, much like "prosperity gospel" would for the religious.

comp_throw7 1y ago
This is not a commonly-held position in EA.

adastra22 1y ago

That hasn't defined EA for at least 10 years or so. EA started with "you should donate to NGOs distributing mosquito nets instead of the local pet shelter". It then moved into "you should work a soulless investment banking job so you can give more". More recently it was "you should excise all expensive fun things from your life, and give 100% of your disposable income to a weird poly sex cult and/or their fraudulent paper hedge fund because they're smarter than you."

naasking 1y ago
This is what some EAs believe, I don't think there was ever a broad consensus on those latter claims. As such, it doesn't seem like a fair criticism of EA.
- adastra22 1y ago
  You can’t paint a broad brush of a whole movement, but it’s true if the leadership of the EA organization. Once they went all-in on “AI x-risk”, there ceased being a meaningful difference between them and the fringe of the LW ratsphere.
  - naasking 1y ago
    Which organization? https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/list-of-ea-related-organisations https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/f6kg8T2Lp6rDqxWwG/...
    - adastra22 1y ago
      The people who run the forum you linked to.
      - naasking 1y ago
        That same link puts AI risk under the "far future" category, basically the same category as "threats to global food security" and asteroid impact risks. What's unreasonable about that?

lupusreal 1y ago

Pet shelters is just the pretty facade. The same ideology would have you step over homeless elderly ladies and buy mosquito nets instead, because the elderly lady cannot have children so mosquito nets maximize the number of future humans more efficiently.