Dias

Cross-posted on my blog and the effective altruism forum with some minor tweaks; apologies if some of the formatting hasn't copied across. The article was written with an EA audience in mind but it is essentially one about rationality and consequentialism. Summary: People frequently compartmentalize their beliefs, and avoid addressing the implications between them. Ordinarily, this is perhaps innocuous, but when the both ideas are highly morally important, their interaction is in turn important – many standard arguments on both sides of moral issues like the permissibility of abortion are significantly undermined or otherwise effected by EA considerations, especially moral uncertainty. A long time ago, Will wrote an article about how a key part of rationality was taking ideas seriously: fully exploring ideas, seeing all their consequences, and then acting upon them. This is something most of us do not do! I for one certainly have trouble. He later partially redacted it, and Anna has an excellent article on the subject, but at the very least decompartmentalizing is a very standard part of effective altruism. Similarly, I think people selectively apply Effective Altruist (EA) principles. People are very willing to apply them in some cases, but when those principles would cut at a core part of the person’s identity – like requiring them to dress appropriately so they seem less weird – people are much less willing to take those EA ideas to their logical conclusion. Consider your personal views. I’ve certainly changed some of my opinions as a result of thinking about EA ideas. For example, my opinion of bednet distribution is now much higher than it once was. And I’ve learned a lot about how to think about some technical issues, like regression to the mean. Yet I realized that I had rarely done a full 180 – and I think this is true of many people: * Many think EA ideas argue for more foreign aid – but did anyone come to this conclusion who had previously been pass