I think the Effective Altruism movement really belies its own values and cause with the fact that one of its own funds is for supporting: > organizations that work on improving long-term outcomes for humanity. Grants will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence. [1] Yes, an argument can be made that it's important to fund…
However, to consider artificial intelligence to be a potential global catastrophe at all, let alone the single one requiring extra funding, is mostly unfounded. We currently can barely even define what the actual risk is, let alone how to mitigate it. Although I happen agree with you personally, I don't think we should commit the fallacy of assuming that because their position seems absurd to us that it comes from a…
Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
101–110 of 220 posts
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are wealthy individuals and organizations that seek to make profit from charitable projects and the example presented is far from the worst; corruption as seen in the Red Cross is one such issue. However, I expect the proportion of those instances relative to genuinely good efforts is overblown thanks to media. The wealthy are wealthy generally because they look to make sustainable models where the goal is to a…
I cannot make much sense of your comment. But let me expand on my original comment and tell this. The only charitable work that I consider genuine is the one that you does not know about. When you read about the work of a person 'x' of a foundation in papers/media, their work cease to be charity. It is just that the person is gaining something, in return, other than "feeling good" you mention. Superficially, or in ot…
If the only genuine charity is invisible, how can we maintain a society with a culture of genuine charity? If charity is secret, it's too easy to simply not do charity, since there are no consequences, neither positive nor negative reinforcement.
I have my suspicions about the PR motives of https://givingpledge.org/ , but ultimately, doing good in exchange for positive PR (a form of "buying advertising") is a deal I'd take every day.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#103I think the Effective Altruism movement really belies its own values and cause with the fact that one of its own funds is for supporting: > organizations that work on improving long-term outcomes for humanity. Grants will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence. [1] Yes, an argument can be made that it's important to fund…
> However, to consider artificial intelligence to be a potential global catastrophe at all, let alone the single one requiring extra funding, is mostly unfounded. As another commenter points out, EA is not a single unified group, but rather a disparate set of people who are united by the belief that we should put money where it has the largest effect. Some , but not all, of them are convinced by the arguments in favo…
I assume that investing in AI risk is nonsense for one simple reason: I have yet to see a single study showing that a single undesired behavior has been stopped or even slowed down.
DDOS attacks are as stupid as you can get from an intelligence point of view, and yet not a single proponent for AI risk has come up with a way to stop even a single one AFAIK. I haven't heard either of a single military program that has been thwarted, and those computers are killing people right now. I also doubt that they could get a Pentagon official to stop doing anything.
Until the AI risk community show that they can do anything other than talk, no matter how small, I'll remain skeptic.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#104I think the Effective Altruism movement really belies its own values and cause with the fact that one of its own funds is for supporting: > organizations that work on improving long-term outcomes for humanity. Grants will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence. [1] Yes, an argument can be made that it's important to fund…
However, to consider artificial intelligence to be a potential global catastrophe at all, let alone the single one requiring extra funding, is mostly unfounded. We currently can barely even define what the actual risk is, let alone how to mitigate it. Although I happen agree with you personally, I don't think we should commit the fallacy of assuming that because their position seems absurd to us that it comes from a…
It's perfectly reasonable for them to hold that view. The unfortunate thing is to insist that it's the most rational and/or correct view. To say that they're biased isn't an insult. We all have biases, and it's useful to recognize and admit them.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#105I would recommend checking out the podcast ‘The 80,000 hours’ if you are interested in this kind of stuff. It’s hosted by Rob Wiblin who is the executive director at Effective Altruism. He talks to very interesting people (mostly academics) about “the world's most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them” (taken from his website).
Just to clarify, Rob is the Director of Research at the nonprofit, 80,000 Hours, whose aim is to help people have high impact careers. There is no organisation called Effective Altruism. Effective altruism is a social movement in the same way that environmentalism is a social movement, made up of many individuals, nonprofits and even for profits, working on different things, of which 80,000 Hours is just one. The pod…
Technically, there kinda is an EA foundation: https://ea-foundation.org/
Tho for me it's mostly an umbrella org, that allows to easily donate to orgs following the EA movement (since many of them are not registered in Europe, I wouldn't be able to get tax deductions otherwise).
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#106I'm probably missing something, but I have some serious concerns about the effectiveness of this approach to charity. First of all, without some coordinated effort to spread out donations, won't some of the more effective charities still suffer? If everyone gives to the top 4 charities, for example, won't the 5th most effective one suffer? I don't believe this movement yet has the traction behind it to have this kind…
GiveWell actually uses this in their rankings; the charity needs to have the ability to scale up with more money.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#107I first heard of this movement in the book Strangers Drowning. The book is structured as a varied series of accounts of extreme altruism along with some philosophical discussion of cultural attitudes towards it. This movement appears in one chapter about members of Giving What We Can, an organization of individuals donating at least 10% of their income to charity. The chapter follows one woman who gives away almost all of her six-figure salary every year.
I'd highly recommend Strangers Drowning if this sort of thing interests you. It's a fairly short read and made me reconsider how I regard altruism by looking at the most extreme examples of this human impulse. One of the best points the book makes is the surprisingly cynical views towards altruism which prevail in the US.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#108I'm probably missing something, but I have some serious concerns about the effectiveness of this approach to charity. First of all, without some coordinated effort to spread out donations, won't some of the more effective charities still suffer? If everyone gives to the top 4 charities, for example, won't the 5th most effective one suffer? I don't believe this movement yet has the traction behind it to have this kind…
Your first paragraph is something I think about from time to time, but as you point out, we're not to the point where it's a problem.
Right now we're in a competitive market where we select for emotional impact and marketing prowess. EA, for me, is about moving to a market where we select for effectiveness. We should, once we have the resources as a movement, include funding for experimenting with new organizations.
FWIW, it's worth noting that Givewell.org (the EA organization I pay the most attention to) includes "room for more funding" as a major decision point in its recommendations. Funding is a constraint for most organizations, but they recognize that dropping a hundred million dollars on a small organization isn't always the best thing, even if that organization does the best work.
> The example they give - volunteering at a soup kitchen - is one such example. Say giving to the homeless is effective, but volunteering at a soup kitchen is not. Someone still needs to volunteer at the soup kitchen, even if it's not many people.
80000hours.org talks about this some, mostly in the consideration of working in direct service vs. earning to give. Part of this is what you're passionate about -- if high paying professions would make you miserable, working in direct service might be for you. Part of it is opportunity. Not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer/doctor/engineer.
I do disagree with "someone still needs to volunteer". Someone needs to volunteer or get paid to work at the soup kitchen. If the choice is between having a doctor spend their time volunteering, or having that doctor donate an extra $100k/year, and $40k of that paying someone to replace the missing volunteer time, the soup kitchen is still up $60k, and will probably get better results from having someone experienced doing the work.
In the way we traditionally evaluated charities, this would be a worse outcome, because the overhead just went way up. One of EA's main things is to stop worrying about overhead. When I buy a car, I want the best car per dollar, not the car from whoever pays the CEO the least. When I buy good, I want the most good I can get for my dollar.
I disagree with other EAs in a ton of areas, but what makes us EAs is that one principle.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#109I'm probably missing something, but I have some serious concerns about the effectiveness of this approach to charity. First of all, without some coordinated effort to spread out donations, won't some of the more effective charities still suffer? If everyone gives to the top 4 charities, for example, won't the 5th most effective one suffer? I don't believe this movement yet has the traction behind it to have this kind…
I suspect, but don't know for sure, that most charities experience diminishing marginal utility for each dollar received after some point. Therefore if people give too much to a single charity, it's rank will fall. If there is not diminishing utility, you would have a utility monster[1], which would cause the problem you pointed out. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
> I suspect, but don't know for sure, that most charities experience diminishing marginal utility for each dollar received after some point.
This is absolutely true. If you're a charity and your primary activity is distributing anti-malarial bed nets, once you have enough bed nets to meet demand, your going to have to move on to other activities that won't necessarily be exactly as effective as the bed nets.
In a contrived thought experiment with "perfect" information about the effectiveness of activities, EA would suggest a "Greedy" (algorithm) style of allocation. For each incoming dollar, you send it to whichever activity has the greatest utility per dollar give, and repeat that for as many dollars as you have.
Re: Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?
#110I first heard of this movement in the book Strangers Drowning . The book is structured as a varied series of accounts of extreme altruism along with some philosophical discussion of cultural attitudes towards it. This movement appears in one chapter about members of Giving What We Can, an organization of individuals donating at least 10% of their income to charity. The chapter follows one woman who gives away almost…
One of the best points the book makes is the surprisingly cynical views towards altruism which prevail in the US.
This comment echoes something I have felt for some time. I feel that aspects of the US economic development which root in 'self reliance' have encouraged this. Ayn Randian world views?