Thanks for letting me know that CEV is obsolete. I'll have to look into the details. However, I don't think our disagreement is in that area.

it's easy to say we should increase happiness, all else being equal. It's not so obvious that we should increase it at the expense of other things

Agreed, but the argument works just as well for decreasing happiness as for possible increases. Even someone who valued their own happiness 1000x more than that of others would still prefer to suffer than for 1001 people to suffer. If they also value their own life 1000x as much as other people's lives, they would be willing to die to prevent 1001+ deaths. If you added up the total number of utils of happiness, according to his or her utility function, 99.9999% of the happiness they value would be happiness in other people, assuming there are on the order of billions of people and that they bite the bullet on the repugnant conclusion. (For simplicity's sake.)

But all that's really just to argue that there are things worth dying for, in the case of many people. My central argument looks something like this:

There are things worth dying for. Loosing something valuable, like by suppressing a biased emotion, is less bad than dying. If suppressing emotional empathy boosts the impact of cognitive empathy (I'm not sure it does) enough to achieve something worth dying for, then one should do so.

But I'm not sure things are so dire. The argument gets more charitable when re-framed as boosting cognitive empathy instead. In reality, I think what's actually going on is empathy either triggers something like near-mode thinking or far-mode, and these two possibilities are what leads to "emotional empathy" and "cognitive empathy". If so, then "discarding [emotional] empathy" seems far less worrying. It's just a cognitive habit. In principle though, if sacrificing something more actually was necessary for the greater good, then that would outweigh personal loss.

Perhaps I should have been more specific than to use a vague term like "morality". Replace it with CEV, since that should be the sum total of all your values.

Most people value happiness, so let me use that as an example. Even if I value own happiness 1000x more than other people's happiness, if there are more than 1000 people in the word, then the vast majority of my concern for happiness is still external to myself. One could do this same calculation for all other values, and add them up to get CEV, which is likely to be weighted toward others for the same reason that happiness is.

Of course, perhaps some people legitimately would prefer 3^^^3 dust specs in people's eyes to their own death. And perhaps some people's values aren't coherent, such as preferring A to B, B to C, and C to A. But if neither of these is the case, then replacing one's self with a more efficient agent maximizing the same values should be a net gain in most cases.

Maybe your point is that emotional empathy feels morally significant and when we act on it, we can feel that we fulfilled our moral obligations.

This actually has a name. It's called moral licensing.

Yes, emotional empathy does not optimize effective altruism, or your moral idea of good. But this is true of lots of emotions, desires and behaviors, including morally significant ones. You're singling out emotional empathy, but what makes it special?

I agree with you that nothing makes them special. But you seem to view this as a reductio ad absurdum. Doing the same for all other emotions which might bias us or get in the way of doing what’s moral would not lead to a balanced lifestyle, to say the least.

But we could just as easily bite that bullet. Why should we expect optimizing purely for morality to lead to a balanced lifestyle? Why wouldn’t the 80/20 rule apply to moral concerns? Under this view, one would do best to amputate most parts of one’s mind that made them human, and add parts to become a morality maximizer.

Obviously this would cause serious problems in reality, and may not actually be the best way to maximize morality even if it was possible. This is just a sort of spherical cow in a vacuum level concept.

So, if the emotional empathy should be discarded, why should I help all those strangers? The only answer that the link suggests is "social propriety".

But social propriety is a fickle thing. Sometimes it asks you to forgive the debts of the destitute, and sometimes it asks you to burn the witches. Without empathy, why shouldn't you cheer at the flames licking the evil witch's body? Without empathy, if there are some kulaks or Juden standing in the way of the perfect society, why shouldn't you kill them in the most efficient manner at your disposal?

I think this article is something that people outside of this community really ought to read.

Interesting. Why people outside of this community? I find it is actually the LW and EA communities that place an exorbitant amount of emphasis on empathy. Most of those I know outside of the rationalist community understand the healthy tradeoff between charitable action and looking out for oneself.

I'm confused by this post, and don't quite understand what its argument is.

Yes, emotional empathy does not optimize effective altruism, or your moral idea of good. But this is true of lots of emotions, desires and behaviors, including morally significant ones. You're singling out emotional empathy, but what makes it special?

If I buy an expensive gift for my father's birthday because I feel that fulfills my filial duty, you probably wouldn't tell me to de-emphasize filial piety and focus more on cognitive empathy for distant strangers. In general, I don't expect you to suggest people should spend all their resources on EA. Usually people designate a donation amount and then optimize the donation target, and it doesn't much matter what fuzzies you're spending your non-donation money on. So why de-fund emotional empathy in particular? Why not purchase fuzzies by spending money on buying treats for kittens, rather than reducing farm meat consumption?

Maybe your point is that emotional empathy feels morally significant and when we act on it, we can feel that we fulfilled our moral obligations. And then we would spend less "moral capital" on doing good. If so, you should want to de-fund all moral emotions, as long as this doesn't compromise your motivations for doing good, or your resources. Starting with most forms of love, loyalty, cleanliness and so on. Someone who genuinely feels doing good is their biggest moral concern would be a more effective altruist! But I don't think you're really suggesting e.g. not loving your family any more than distant strangers.

Maybe your main point is that empathy is a bias relative to your conscious goals:

When choosing a course of action that will make the world a better place, the strength of your empathy for victims is more likely to lead you astray that to lead you truly.

But the same can be said of pretty much any strong, morally entangled emotion. Maybe you don't want to help people who committed what you view as a moral crime, or who if helped will go on to do things you view as bad, or helping whom would send a signal to a third party that you don't want to be sent. Discounting such emotions may well match your idea of doing good. But why single out emotional empathy?

If people have an explicit definition of the good they want to accomplish, they can ignore all emotions equally. If they don't have an explicit definition, then it's just a matter of which emotions they follow in the moment, and I don't see why this one is worse than the others.

This is a tangent, but:

You know that “four delicious tiny round brown glazed Italian chocolate cookies” is the only proper way to order these adjectives.

There are definitely some ordering rules, but I am not convinced they are nearly as universal or as complex as this suggests. See the Language Log on this subject.

Don't regulate efficiency. Regulate consistency of formulation, at most.

There are plenty of actors interested in efficacy. Really, everyone else involved.

The Chinese used to be very lax about approving medicine. They changed and decided to have higher standards that declare 80% of the medicine to be bad. This means that in the future Chinese companies that want to get new drugs on the market have to do things differently.

But if you declare >80% of local medicine bad

They are declare >80% of "1,622 clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs currently awaiting approval" to be bad. That doesn't mean that they take existing drugs off the market.

I'm confused, and I don't think I'm seeing the whole picture.

It's difficult to see the whole picture because the "journalists" don't really care to investigate what's happening and the information is only available between the lines. Currently there's likely strong back-door fighting going on in China.

I'm not sure to what extend this affects the approval of Big Pharma drugs that have FDA approvals. The article unfortunately doesn't speak about it.

Over the long-term it's likely a goal of the Chinese government to raise their quality standards in a way that China can export drugs to the West.

The article misses the point. It doesn't talk about the significance of the story.

A better headline might be "The Chinese government decided that it's in their interest to be public about data fabrication by Chinese scientists."

Given that this comes right after the Chinese government decides that it makes sense to reduce red meat consumption in China, it's a sign of progress and good Chinese leadership.