I confess that I get the impression that the real purpose of the thread is Clarity's own comment, but here FWIW are my own opinions.
My underlying assumptions are consequentialist (approximately preference-utilitarian) as to ethics, and rationalist/empiricist as to epistemology.
"Effective altruism" can mean at least two things.
I very strongly approve of effective altruism in...
Effective Altruism is a well-intentioned but flawed philosophy. This is a critique of typical EA approaches, but it might not apply to all EAs, or to alternative EA approaches.
Edit: In a follow up comment, I clarify that this critique is primarily directed at GiveWell and Peter Singer's styles of EA, which are the dominant EA approaches, but are not universal.
There is no good philosophical reason to hold EA's axiomatic style of utilitarianism. EA seems to value lives equally, but this is implausible from psychology (which values relatives and friends more), and also implausible from non-naive consequentialism, which values people based on their contributions, not just their needs.
Even if you agree with EA's utilitarianism, it is unclear that EA is actually effective at optimizing for it over a longer time horizon. EA focuses on maximizing lives saved in the present, but it has never been shown that this approach is optimal for human welfare over the long-run. The existential risk strand of EA gets this better, but it is too far off.
If EA is true, then moral philosophy is a solved problem. I don't think moral philosophy works that way. Values are much harder than EA gives cred
Okay, a summary of my attitude towards EA is that EA rationally follows from a set of weird premises that are not shared by most people and certainly not by me. I do not have any desire to maximize utility in a way that considers utility for every human being equally. I prefer increasing utility for myself, my family, friends, countrymen, and people like me. Every time I pay for electricity for my computer rather than sending the money to a third world peasant is, according to EA, a failure to maximize utility.
Also, I believe that most cases of EA producing very counterintuitive results are just examples of cases where the weirdness of EA becomes obvious.
Every time I pay for electricity for my computer rather than sending the money to a third world peasant is, according to EA, a failure to maximize utility.
I'm sad that people still think EAers endorse such a naive and short-time-horizon type of optimizing utility. It would obviously not optimize any reasonable utility function over a reasonable timeframe for you to stop paying for electricity for your computer.
More generally, I think most EAers have a much more sophisticated understanding of their values, and the psychology of optimizing them, than you give them credit for. As far as I know, nobody who identifies with EA routinely makes individual decisions between personal purchases and donating. Instead, most people allocate a "charity budget" periodically and make sure they feel ok about both the charity budget and the amount they spend on themselves. Very few people, if any, cut personal spending to the point where they have to worry about, e.g., electricity bills.
Effective Altruism says that all humans have roughly equal intrinsic value and takes necessary steps to gather evidence and quantify the degree to which humans are helped.
Short, but pretty much summarizes the entirety of the appeal for me. Is there even a name for the two perspectives contained in that sentence?
I like Effective Altruism a lot - I follow a lot of effective altrusim blogs, I adopt a lot of mental models and tools, I think the idea is great for a lot of people.
I'm highly interested in how to be effective, and I'm highly interested in how to do good, and EA gives some great ideas on both concepts.
That being said, what I'm not interested in as my sole aim is to be maximally effective at doing good. I'm more interested in expressing my values in as large and impactful a way as possible - and in allowing others to do the same. This happens to coincide ...
Could charity distorts market signals which cripples the ability of sponsored economies to develop sustainability, leading to negative utility in the long term
Hikma and Norbrook are examples of ethical UK/worldwide pharmaceutical companies. I've worked for and can vouch for both.
I'm sorry to say that this all seems rather muddled. I don't know how much of the muddle is actually in my brain.
You say "Effective Altruism isn't utilitarian" and then link to an LW post whose central complaint is that EA is too utilitarian. Then you say "EA is prioritarian" by which I guess you mean it says "pick the most important cause and give only to it" and link to an LW post that doesn't say anything remotely like that (it just says: here is one particular cause, see how much good you can do by giving to it).
You say GiveWell doesn't see market efficiency as inherently valuable. I am not aware of any evidence for that; what there is evidence for is that they don't see market efficiency as something worth throwing money at, and I have to say this seems very obviously correct; am I missing something here?
You say GiveWell's "theory of value relates to health status", by which I think you mean that they assess benefit as increase in QALYs. That seems pretty reasonable to me and I don't understand your objections. (I'm sure there are ways one can help people that don't show up in a QALY measurement, but when evaluating charities that aim to...
I confess that I have not read much of what has been written on the subject, so what I am about to say may be dreadfully naive.
A. One should separate the concept of effective altruism from the mode-of-operation of the various organizations which currently take it as their motto.
A.i. Can anyone seriously oppose effective altruism in principle? I find it difficult to imagine someone supporting ineffective altruism. Surely, we should let our charity be guided by evidence, randomized experiments, hard thinking about tradeoffs, etc etc.
A.ii. On the other han...
Form my previous comment on the issue:
Personally, I'm indifferent to EA. It seems to me a result of decompartmentalizing and taking utilitarianism overly seriously.
I love EA as a concept, I've proselytized for it, but I've never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part.
My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.
The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer workers. That has made them complacent, and they do not seriously compete with each ...
I'm a fan of EA. They are spot on with attempting to help people make better decisions, rather than saying "this is what you should do, because our particular form of Utilitarianism is the best, and if you don't agree you are simply wrong". [EDIT: bolded for visibility, because based on the other comments in this thread that point isn't well advertised. Apparently that's something they need to work on.]
If I were to make a nitpick, however, it would be this sort of thing:
I'd like to see more numbers, and a framework grounded more in math. Good d
I suggest there are two mindsets at play.
I take effectiveness to mean; assume you have a rational goal (one that has been analysed as being the right goal and a right goal), what is the most effective way to get there (fastest, cheapest, smartest, most sustaining solution to the problem)?
The only argument I can think of against effectiveness is to do with the journey not travelled, (if you choose to shortcut the journey you don't gain the experiences along the way that might help you when encountering future problems or the benefi...
I love EA as a concept, I've proselytized for it, but I've never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part but I'm comfortable calling myself not EA because I do have a problem with it.
My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.
The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer worker...
In this thread, I would like to invite people to summarize their attitude to Effective Altruism and to summarise their justification for their attitude while identifying the framework or perspective their using.
Initially I prepared an article for a discussion post (that got rather long) and I realised it was from a starkly utilitarian value system with capitalistic economic assumptions. I'm interested in exploring the possibility that I'm unjustly mindkilling EA.
I've posted my write-up as a comment to this thread so it doesn't get more air time than anyone else's summarise and they can be benefit equally from the contrasting views.
I encourage anyone who participates to write up their summary and identify their perspective BEFORE they read the others, so that the contrast can be most plain.