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Yeah if they were so committed to doing good, you'd think the billions of dollars they have spent would bear some evidence of that by now.
by ertgbnm 2mo ago
Yeah if they were so committed to doing good, you'd think the billions of dollars they have spent would bear some evidence of that by now.
- vrganj 2mo agoThey must be "effective" "altruists". The only way to do good is to first do all the bad and consolidate power, so you can then use all that power to do good, pinkie promise!
- watwut 2mo agoI noticed the same thing about effective altruism. Its fans are really good at convincing themselves the most self-serving action amd goals are noble pursuits.
- tclancy 2mo agoI’ve yet to hear of effective altruism from anyone less wealthy me. Seems to be weirdly lumped among the rich.
- nickff 2mo agoTo be fair to its adherents (of which I am not one), the so-called philosophy espouses maximizing income, so that one can later allocate that wealth efficiently. Working in a low-earning field which directly provides aid to those in need would seem to violate a core precept of 'Effective Altruism'.
- salawat 2mo agoIntending to do good is a completely different beast to doing good. The promise of good later should always be discounted.
- estearum 2mo ago> the so-called philosophy espouses maximizing income, so that one can later allocate that wealth efficiently No it doesn't. This is a thing that some EAs believe, but is definitely not a "core precept."
- godelski 2mo agoI think that's the point. No one wants to be the villain in their own story. We all tell ourselves stories to paint ourselves as good. I don't think most people are evil, but I think most evil is created by people who have convinced themselves they are good. So I see EA as a popular one of those stories. One that people can reinforce. Makes the world simpler than it actually is: climb the ladder, make money at whatever cost, there's no harm that you can do that can't be offset by giving it all away at the end. It is a vast over simplification and is inconsistent logic. If they used their own logic then they'd recognize helping people now also results in compounding effects. You fix the problems now, while they are small and manageable, rather than kicking the can down the road. Maintenance is a lot easier and cheaper than repair. But it also requires us to be nuanced and reflect on ourselves [0] [0] there seems to be a great irony that those leading these big AI companies are not themselves able to deeply reflect on their own actions, yet ask the AI to. How can you design something that you aren't intimately familiar with?
- munk-a 2mo agoIt suffers from an ends-justify-the-means trap where bad actions in the short term with the long term goal of good actions are justified by the fact that you, the actor, know your philosophy is the best way to enact positive change. I'm happy to try and get already wealthy individuals on the train of effective altruism but it has been used to justify wealth concentration far too much and, to be honest, spreading money around is one of the most effective ways to enact real positive changes in the world since individuals know their own situations the best.
- estearum 2mo agoImagine thinking that EA could actually cause people to concentrate more wealth than they would've otherwise lmao
- scoring1774 2mo agoEA is probably too broad of an umbrella. I think there's a distinction to be made between trying to find the best per dollar donation (givewell etc) and people who use it as justification to amass wealth. That said, most of the people I know who declare themselves effective altruists also openly state that the world would be better off if all the wealth and decision making power were concentrated in a small group of hundreds of people who are "smarter" than everyone else. They tend to think that they would belong that group. Anecdotal, but it does make me skeptical whenever I meet someone who uses EA to describe themselves.
- mcmcmc 2mo agoSeems you’ve rustled some jimmies. I’ve always thought effective altruism was a nice way to rationalize insatiable greed.
- cortesoft 2mo agoIt has the exact same appeal and pitfalls as utilitarianism
- consumer451 2mo agoIsn't EA an offshoot of utilitarianism? Honest question. I always thought it was.
- noir_lord 2mo agoConsequentialism and to an extent Utilitarianism (since one is a subset of the other, it sometimes feels like philosophy is more concerned with naming things than explaining them but from the bit I've read those are the two biggest precursors). AKA It's fine if I do locally horrible things if in aggregate I do more good than bad* * by whatever metric of good I self select for - terms & conditions apply, much CO2 may be released.
- consumer451 2mo agoIt's funny, because as far as consequentialism, I feel like single-issue voters on all sides could use a bit more of that. Of course, anything taken to extremes tends to get distorted.
- noir_lord 2mo agoFPTP results in a two party system where the sane response is often holding your nose and voting for the least worst candidate. It's frustrating to vote for the person you disagree with least (by a little or a lot).
- Centigonal 2mo agoEffective Altruism isn't very different from Randian objectivism.
- williamcotton 2mo agoI've been to one EA meetup and it wasn't my thing but this seems nothing like the discussions I had. It's where I found out about GiveDirectly. The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...
- estearum 2mo agoHey buddy, you're up against people who've only "learned about EA" as a third- or fourth-hand vibecloud around FTX. Don't bring any of that firsthand knowledge here. You're also not allowed to reference any of the actual writing or pledges or organizations actually in the EA ecosystem. It's Twitter vibes or nothing, mmkay?
- jmknoll 2mo agoYeah, just like Stalin!