So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying: We can tell that EAs really value looking and feeling good rather than genuinely doing good, because if they genuinely valued doing good then they would focus on those very close to themselves rather than people far away.
It looks to me as if you are assuming that EAs share some opinions of yours that I don't think they generally do.
So let me ask a variant of my original question. How do you think the world would look, if EAs (1) were more interested in genuinely doing good than in looking and feeling good, and also (2) sincerely believed that they could do much more good per unit money spent in far-away places than "very close to themselves"?
Because it seems to me that the simplest interpretation of the available evidence is that #2 really is what most EAs believe; that it's not an obviously unreasonable thing for them to believe; and that, if they believe it, it explains their preference for sending money to (say) sub-Saharan Africa just as well as your hypothesis that what, deep down, matters to them most is looking and feeling good.
I guess you will reiterate that "they understand the complexities of the problems close to home", so "they purposely blind themselves [...] by seeking problems far away", etc. For sure, that's possible, but to me it's far from obviously true, which is why I am asking: what's your evidence? How would you expect the world to look different if they weren't doing that but were genuinely motivated by a desire to do as much good as possible?
(Let me say a few words about your last paragraph, restraining my temptation to get cross at your cack-handed attempts at psychoanalysing people you haven't met. There aren't actually any really bad neighbourhoods very near me, and AIUI what characterizes "really bad neighbourhoods" is not just extreme poverty but violence and criminality; if you go to a "really bad neighbourhood" the chances are that a lot of the people you see are criminals. Handing out money to them would not send it to the best places. But my guess is that a programme of going to very poor places near me -- in so far as they exist -- and trying to identify people in need of money and give it to them would, despite various obvious difficulties, probably do a fair bit of good. However, not only is there a shortage of really "bad" places near where I live; in the whole country where I live there is scarcely any poverty as extreme as is found all over the place in some parts of the world. The effectiveness of money in relieving the ills of poverty is, very crudely, proportional to how severe the poverty is; I therefore expect a given amount of money to do more good in poorer places. This will be counterbalanced somewhat by the greater difficulties in getting the money to effective places at a distance, but I see no reason to expect the latter to outweigh the former. I don't, of course, think that sending money to these very poor places will solve all their problems. In fact, if it were going to then we could almost certainly do better by sending some of the money somewhere else. And I don't, of course, think that the mere fact of sending money somewhere guarantees doing good; you have to find interventions that actually help, and look at the evidence that they do; there is in fact some fairly decent evidence for this in the case of the interventions performed by e.g. GiveWell's preferred charities. -- Now, of course I may be wrong about any of that. But please explain to me why I'm so obviously wrong that you can be confident that my actual reason for liking these interventions is that I want to look good and feel good and deliberately blind myself to their complexities.)
A significant part of human communication is non-verbal. Body language and gestures often have the capacity to convey and signal a great detail and wealth of information about a person. Furthermore, historically, various organizations, ranging from secret societies to religions to militaries have sought to utilize very specific physical gestures as a way of communicating affiliation covertly or overtly for various purposes.
I would like to propose then that we within the Effective Altruist movement devise our own particular salute, to help us identify each other and also for the positive psychological effects that deliberate symbolism can entail.
Before I go on, I will emphasize here that I am aware of the potential for misuse that such methods can also cause, and that I am familiar with the very well-known failure state that was historical fascism’s “Roman salute”. In fact, the particular choice of gesture I will be advocating is deliberately in opposition to that example.
My proposal consists of two gestures, one which I will refer to as the “Light” gesture, as it is open, transparent, and obvious in its symbolism. The other I shall refer to as the “Dark” gesture, as it is more covert and plausibly deniable.
The Light gesture consists of:
The Dark gesture consists of:
Explanation of Symbolism
In both cases the left hand is placed behind the back. This is, for those of you familiar with it, a reference to the Christian scripture of “When you give, do not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.” I know the majority of Effective Altruists are probably not religious, but I think that the symbolism of this reference from our cultural history remains a useful signal.
In the case of the Light gesture, placing the right hand on the forehand first before then placing it on the heart and then extending this in the universal gesture of giving/receiving/cooperation is indicative of “reason to compassion”, which I hope we can all agree sums up Effective Altruism quite nicely in a nutshell.
I need to emphasize again that the upward facing palm and open fingers are essential. It is admittedly a more submissive gesture, but it is also the exact opposite of the “Roman salute” position, which was symbolically chosen by the fascists because it represented emotional power and dominance and superiority. We are trying to be in essence, the opposite of that, to represent reason, equality, and compassion. The upward direction of the palm also symbolizes that we have a higher ideal we aspire to.
The Dark gesture is less obvious. It is for when you can’t be so open about your affiliation, for whatever reason. Symbolically, the palm facing sideways and thumb upwards symbolize moral equality and having a higher purpose respectively.
Proper Responses
The proper response to the Light gesture is not as pop culture would assume, some kind of high five slap down. Rather, the respectful symbolic response is to in turn, grasp the gesturer’s wrist and raise the gesturer’s hand up even further, which suggests a mutual understanding of Effective Altruism.
The proper response to the Dark gesture is not a handshake, as would be normally assumed, but to return the gesture identically if possible, or to make the handshake more of an equally measured clasp if there is a need to be covert about it. If the situation is one that demands pretending not to be allies, then perhaps returning just a thumbs up without a handshake can appear as such to outsiders, while signifying that you got the message.
Obviously, none of this will fool careful observers and as rationalists, you should be avoiding the use of deception and championing truth as much as possible, but I leave the Dark gesture proposal as something to consider for particular circumstances. Personally I would prefer that we publicly use the Light gesture proposal for most normal circumstances.
I’m curious what people think of these ideas. Thank you for reading and considering!