5 ms·

You claim OP's interpretation is inaccurate, while it tracks perfectly with many of EA's most notorious supporters. Given that contrast, I'd ask what evidence

You claim OP's interpretation is inaccurate, while it tracks perfectly with many of EA's most notorious supporters. Given that contrast, I'd ask what evidence do you have for why OP's interpretation is incorrect, and what evidence do you have that your interpretation is correct?

jandrese 10mo ago
It's like libertarianism. There is a massive gulf between the written goals and the actual actions of the proponents. It might be more accurately thought of as a vehicle for plausible deniability than an actual ethos.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  The problem is that creates a kind of epistemic closure around yourself where you can't encounter such a thing as a sincere expression of it. I actually think your charge against Libertarians is basically accurate. And I think it deserves a (limited) amount of time and attention directed at its core contentions for what they are worth. After all, Robert Nozick considered himself a libertarian and contributed some important thinking on things like justice and retribution and equality and any number of subjects, and the world wouldn't be bettered by dismissing him with twitter style ridicule. I do agree that things like EA and Libertarianism have to answer for the in-the-wild proponents they tend to attract but not to the point of epistemic closure in response to its subject matter.
  - Eisenstein 10mo ago
    When a term becomes loaded enough then people will stop using it when they don't want to be associated with the loaded aspects of the term. If they don't then they already know what the consequences are, because they will be dealing with them all the time. The first and most impactful consequence isn't 'people who are not X will think I am X' it is actually 'people who are X will think I am one of them'.
    - glenstein 10mo ago
      I think social dynamics are real and must be answered for but I don't think any self-correction or lacktherof has anything to do with subject matter which can be understood independently. I will never take a proponent of The Bell Curve seriously who tries to say they're "just following the data", because I do hold them and the book responsible for their social and cultural entanglements and they would have to be blind to ignore it. But the book is wrong for reasons intrinsic to its analysis and it would be catastrophic to treat that point as moot.
      - Eisenstein 10mo ago
        I am saying that those who actually believe something won't stick around and associate themselves with the original movement if that movement has taken on traits that they don't agree with.
        glenstein 10mo ago
        You risk catastrophe if you let social dynamics stand in for truth.
        Eisenstein 10mo ago
        You risk catastrophe if you ignore social indicators as a valid heuristic.
        glenstein 10mo ago
        Literally every comment of mine explicitly acknowledged social indicators, just not to the exclusion of facts. You're trying to treat your comments like they're the mirror image of mine, but they're not.
        Eisenstein 10mo ago
        The problem with your posture is that it cultivates a defensive self-regard which operates as a filter against substantive critique. If I wished to mirror your comment style with its performative weight and implied authority, then I would adopt a tone closer to this.
  - nyeah 10mo ago
    Sorry, the problem isn't "epistemic closure" by folks who are tired of bad behavior. The problem is the bad behavior.
RobinL 10mo ago
> many of EA's most notorious supporters. The fact they're notorious makes them a biased sample. My guess is for the majority of people interested in EA - the typical supporter who is not super wealthy or well known - the two central ideas are: - For people living in wealthy countries, giving some % of your income makes little difference to your life, but can potentially make a big difference to someone else's - We should carefully decide which charities to give to, because some are far more effective than others. That's pretty much it - essentially the message in Peter Singer's book: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/. I would describe myself as an EA, but all that means to me is really the two points above. It certainly isn't anything like an indulgence that morally offsets poor behaviour elsewhere
- Eddy_Viscosity2 10mo ago
  I would say the problem with EA is the "E". Saying you're doing 'effective' altruism is another way of saying that everyone else's altruism is wasteful and ineffective. Which of course isn't the case. The "E" might as well stand for "Elitist" in that's the vibe it gives off. All truly altruistic acts would aim to be effective, otherwise it wouldn't be altruism - it would just be waste. Not to say there is no waste in some altruism acts, but I'm not convinced its actually any worse than EA. Given the fraud associated with some purported EA advocates, I'd say EA might even be worse. The EA movement reeks of the optimize-everything mindset of people convinced they are smarter than everyone else who just say just gives money to a charity A when they could have been 13% more effective if they sent the money directly to this particular school in country B with the condition they only spend it on X. The origins of EA may not be that, but that's what it has evolved into.
  - estearum 10mo ago
    A lot of altruism is quite literally wasteful and ineffective, in which case it's pretty hard to call it altruism. > they could have been 13% more effective If you think the difference between ineffective and effective altruism is a 13% spread, I fear you have not looked deeply enough into either standard altruistic endeavors nor EA enough to have an informed opinion. The gaps are actually astonishingly large and trivial to capitalize on (i.e. difference between clicking one Donate Here button versus a different Donate Here button). The sheer scale of the spread is the impetus behind the entire train of thought.
btilly 10mo ago
The OP's interpretation is an inaccurate summary of the philosophy. But it is an excellent summary of the trap that people who try to follow EA can easily fall into. Any attempt to rationally evaluate charity work, can instead wind up rationalizing what they want to do. Settling for the convenient and self-aggrandizing "analysis", rather than a rigorous one. An even worse trap is to prioritize a future utopia. Utopian ideals are dangerous. They push people towards "the ends justify the means". If the ends are infinitely good, there is no bound on how bad the "justified means" can be. But history shows that imagined utopias seldom materialize. By contrast the damage from the attempted means is all too real. That's why all of the worst tragedies of the 20th century started with someone who was trying to create a utopia. EA circles have shown an alarming receptiveness to shysters who are trying to paint a picture of utopia. For example look at how influential someone like Samuel Bankman-Fried was able to be, before his fraud imploded.
cortesoft 10mo ago
Well, in order to be a notorious supporter of EA, you have to have enough money for your charity to be noticed, which means you are very rich. If you are very rich, it means you have to have made money from a capitalistic venture, and those are inherently exploitive. So basically everyone who has a lot of money to donate has questionable morals already. The question is, are the large donators to EA groups more or less 'morally suspect' than large donors to other charity types? In other words, everyone with a lot of money is morally questionable, and EA donors are just a subset of that.
- nl 10mo ago
  > you have to have made money from a capitalistic venture, and those are inherently exploitive. You say this like it's fact beyond dispute, but I for one strongly disagree. Not a fan of EA at all though!
  - tovej 10mo ago
    For very much money, as in, let's say, more than 1000x the median person in the wealth distribution, I'd say it's obviously true. You cannot make 1000x the average persons wealth by acting morally. Except possibly winning the lottery. A person is not capable of creating that wealth. A group of people have created that wealth, and the 1000x individual has hoarded it to themselves instead of sharing it with the people who contributed. If you are a billionaire, you own at least 5000x the median (200000k in the US). If you're a big tech CEO, you own somewhere around 50-100,000x the median. These are the biggest proponents of EA. The bottom 50% only own about 2% of the wealth anymore, the top 10% own two thirds of the wealth, the top 1% owns a whole third and it's only getting worse. Who is responsible for the wealth inequality? The people at the right edge of the Lorenz curve. They could fix it, but don't, in fact they benefit more from their workers being poorer and more desperate for a job. I hope that explains the exploitation.
    - zozbot234 10mo ago
      > You cannot make 1000x the average persons wealth by acting morally. Except possibly winning the lottery. The risk profile of early startup founders looks a lot like "winning the lottery", except that the initial investment (in terms of time, effort and lost opportunities elsewhere as well as pure monetary ones) is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of a lottery ticket. There's only a handful of successful unicorns vs. a whole lot of failed startups. Other contributors generally have a choice of sharing into the risk vs. playing it safe, and they usually pick the safe option because they know what the odds are. Nothing has been taken away from them.
socalgal2 10mo ago
this feels like “the most notorious atheists/jews/blacks/whites/christian/muslims are bad therefore all atheists/jews/blacks/whites/christian/muslims are bad
stickfigure 10mo ago
> tracks perfectly with many of EA's most notorious supporters Just wait until you find out about vegetarianism's most notorious supporter.

jandrese 10mo ago

It's like libertarianism. There is a massive gulf between the written goals and the actual actions of the proponents. It might be more accurately thought of as a vehicle for plausible deniability than an actual ethos.

glenstein 10mo ago
The problem is that creates a kind of epistemic closure around yourself where you can't encounter such a thing as a sincere expression of it. I actually think your charge against Libertarians is basically accurate. And I think it deserves a (limited) amount of time and attention directed at its core contentions for what they are worth. After all, Robert Nozick considered himself a libertarian and contributed some important thinking on things like justice and retribution and equality and any number of subjects, and the world wouldn't be bettered by dismissing him with twitter style ridicule. I do agree that things like EA and Libertarianism have to answer for the in-the-wild proponents they tend to attract but not to the point of epistemic closure in response to its subject matter.
- Eisenstein 10mo ago
  When a term becomes loaded enough then people will stop using it when they don't want to be associated with the loaded aspects of the term. If they don't then they already know what the consequences are, because they will be dealing with them all the time. The first and most impactful consequence isn't 'people who are not X will think I am X' it is actually 'people who are X will think I am one of them'.
  - glenstein 10mo ago
    I think social dynamics are real and must be answered for but I don't think any self-correction or lacktherof has anything to do with subject matter which can be understood independently. I will never take a proponent of The Bell Curve seriously who tries to say they're "just following the data", because I do hold them and the book responsible for their social and cultural entanglements and they would have to be blind to ignore it. But the book is wrong for reasons intrinsic to its analysis and it would be catastrophic to treat that point as moot.
    - Eisenstein 10mo ago
      I am saying that those who actually believe something won't stick around and associate themselves with the original movement if that movement has taken on traits that they don't agree with.
      - glenstein 10mo ago
        You risk catastrophe if you let social dynamics stand in for truth.
        Eisenstein 10mo ago
        You risk catastrophe if you ignore social indicators as a valid heuristic.
        glenstein 10mo ago
        Literally every comment of mine explicitly acknowledged social indicators, just not to the exclusion of facts. You're trying to treat your comments like they're the mirror image of mine, but they're not.
        Eisenstein 10mo ago
        The problem with your posture is that it cultivates a defensive self-regard which operates as a filter against substantive critique. If I wished to mirror your comment style with its performative weight and implied authority, then I would adopt a tone closer to this.
- nyeah 10mo ago
  Sorry, the problem isn't "epistemic closure" by folks who are tired of bad behavior. The problem is the bad behavior.

RobinL 10mo ago

> many of EA's most notorious supporters. The fact they're notorious makes them a biased sample. My guess is for the majority of people interested in EA - the typical supporter who is not super wealthy or well known - the two central ideas are: - For people living in wealthy countries, giving some % of your income makes little difference to your life, but can potentially make a big difference to someone else's - We should carefully decide which charities to give to, because some are far more effective than others. That's pretty much it - essentially the message in Peter Singer's book: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/. I would describe myself as an EA, but all that means to me is really the two points above. It certainly isn't anything like an indulgence that morally offsets poor behaviour elsewhere

Eddy_Viscosity2 10mo ago
I would say the problem with EA is the "E". Saying you're doing 'effective' altruism is another way of saying that everyone else's altruism is wasteful and ineffective. Which of course isn't the case. The "E" might as well stand for "Elitist" in that's the vibe it gives off. All truly altruistic acts would aim to be effective, otherwise it wouldn't be altruism - it would just be waste. Not to say there is no waste in some altruism acts, but I'm not convinced its actually any worse than EA. Given the fraud associated with some purported EA advocates, I'd say EA might even be worse. The EA movement reeks of the optimize-everything mindset of people convinced they are smarter than everyone else who just say just gives money to a charity A when they could have been 13% more effective if they sent the money directly to this particular school in country B with the condition they only spend it on X. The origins of EA may not be that, but that's what it has evolved into.
- estearum 10mo ago
  A lot of altruism is quite literally wasteful and ineffective, in which case it's pretty hard to call it altruism. > they could have been 13% more effective If you think the difference between ineffective and effective altruism is a 13% spread, I fear you have not looked deeply enough into either standard altruistic endeavors nor EA enough to have an informed opinion. The gaps are actually astonishingly large and trivial to capitalize on (i.e. difference between clicking one Donate Here button versus a different Donate Here button). The sheer scale of the spread is the impetus behind the entire train of thought.

btilly 10mo ago

The OP's interpretation is an inaccurate summary of the philosophy. But it is an excellent summary of the trap that people who try to follow EA can easily fall into. Any attempt to rationally evaluate charity work, can instead wind up rationalizing what they want to do. Settling for the convenient and self-aggrandizing "analysis", rather than a rigorous one. An even worse trap is to prioritize a future utopia. Utopian ideals are dangerous. They push people towards "the ends justify the means". If the ends are infinitely good, there is no bound on how bad the "justified means" can be. But history shows that imagined utopias seldom materialize. By contrast the damage from the attempted means is all too real. That's why all of the worst tragedies of the 20th century started with someone who was trying to create a utopia. EA circles have shown an alarming receptiveness to shysters who are trying to paint a picture of utopia. For example look at how influential someone like Samuel Bankman-Fried was able to be, before his fraud imploded.

cortesoft 10mo ago

Well, in order to be a notorious supporter of EA, you have to have enough money for your charity to be noticed, which means you are very rich. If you are very rich, it means you have to have made money from a capitalistic venture, and those are inherently exploitive. So basically everyone who has a lot of money to donate has questionable morals already. The question is, are the large donators to EA groups more or less 'morally suspect' than large donors to other charity types? In other words, everyone with a lot of money is morally questionable, and EA donors are just a subset of that.

nl 10mo ago
> you have to have made money from a capitalistic venture, and those are inherently exploitive. You say this like it's fact beyond dispute, but I for one strongly disagree. Not a fan of EA at all though!
- tovej 10mo ago
  For very much money, as in, let's say, more than 1000x the median person in the wealth distribution, I'd say it's obviously true. You cannot make 1000x the average persons wealth by acting morally. Except possibly winning the lottery. A person is not capable of creating that wealth. A group of people have created that wealth, and the 1000x individual has hoarded it to themselves instead of sharing it with the people who contributed. If you are a billionaire, you own at least 5000x the median (200000k in the US). If you're a big tech CEO, you own somewhere around 50-100,000x the median. These are the biggest proponents of EA. The bottom 50% only own about 2% of the wealth anymore, the top 10% own two thirds of the wealth, the top 1% owns a whole third and it's only getting worse. Who is responsible for the wealth inequality? The people at the right edge of the Lorenz curve. They could fix it, but don't, in fact they benefit more from their workers being poorer and more desperate for a job. I hope that explains the exploitation.
  - zozbot234 10mo ago
    > You cannot make 1000x the average persons wealth by acting morally. Except possibly winning the lottery. The risk profile of early startup founders looks a lot like "winning the lottery", except that the initial investment (in terms of time, effort and lost opportunities elsewhere as well as pure monetary ones) is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of a lottery ticket. There's only a handful of successful unicorns vs. a whole lot of failed startups. Other contributors generally have a choice of sharing into the risk vs. playing it safe, and they usually pick the safe option because they know what the odds are. Nothing has been taken away from them.

socalgal2 10mo ago

this feels like “the most notorious atheists/jews/blacks/whites/christian/muslims are bad therefore all atheists/jews/blacks/whites/christian/muslims are bad

stickfigure 10mo ago

> tracks perfectly with many of EA's most notorious supporters Just wait until you find out about vegetarianism's most notorious supporter.