jsteinhardt comments on Another Critique of Effective Altruism - Less Wrong

19 Post author: jsteinhardt 05 January 2014 09:51AM

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Comment author: pianoforte611 06 January 2014 02:24:55AM *  3 points [-]

This still feels like a "we need fifty Stalins" critique.

For me the biggest problems with the effective altruism movement are:

1: Most people aren't utilitarians.

2: Maximizing QALY's isn't even the correct course of action under utilitarianism - its short sighted and silly. Which is worse under utilitarianism: Louis Pasteur dying in his childhood or 100,000 children in a third world country dying? I would argue that the death of Louis Pasteur is a far greater tragedy since his contributions to human knowledge have saved a lot more than 100,000 lives and have advanced society in other ways. But a QALY approach does not capture this. That's extreme obviously, but my issue is that all lives are not equal. People in developed countries matter way more than people in developing countries in terms of advancing technology and society in general.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 06 January 2014 08:24:40AM 1 point [-]

I thought it was clear from the "Over-reliance on a small set of tools" section that I am strongly against relying on DALYs or similar metrics. Although I disagree with the framing of the solution being to weight different people differently. I'd prefer to move beyond the "maximize weighted sum of happiness" framing entirely (although still retain it as one of many reasoning tools).

Comment author: pianoforte611 06 January 2014 01:38:52PM 0 points [-]

Good point sorry, what criteria would you use?