This is an old problem :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
41–50 of 149 posts
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#42You’ll never get anything done if you give in to this sort of analysis paralysis.
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#43I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
I have the same feeling. It concerns me because I'm not sure how to differentiate between my subconscious conservatism and my instinctive backlash against cultishness and/or over-complication. The only thing I can put my finger on is this: those organisations - and this article - present themselves as being above-average rational and insightful. At least that's my impression. Yet many of these suggestions seem to be…
Ask yourself this, do you disagree with the basic premise of the article, that the law of unintended consequences applies to charitable endeavors? If not, do you disagree with the ways they say it can manifest itself?
Now, ask yourself, if you don't disagree, why did you write this?
I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#44Well I read a bit, then thought "things like being verbose, generic, and over-guarded in offering advice and so wasting lots of readers time without making an impact on their behaviour"? If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ... "So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners wil…
I think 80000 hours targets a fairly specific audience. Their style is in general to be in depth and long winded.
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#45There is a German word for this: verschlimmbessern. This roughly translates in English to "imworsenprove". :)
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who criticize tone police are technically right that the content of an argument is what should matter, but that smacks of ignorance of how humans engage in conversation. If someone is screaming at me and ending every sentence with, "you fucking moron!", there is approximately a 0% chance I'm going to take them seriously and I'm going to assume emotional outbursts will be sent in return to any responses I care…
How many pro-choice people do you think are persuaded by Symmetrically, how many pro-life people do you think are persuaded by the people screaming "woman-hater/sexist/misogynist" outside of Planned Parenthood? If you can't explain your argument in a calm, rational manner, You overestimate the efficacy of explaining in a calm, rational manner. As a university teacher with > 10 years experience, I can tell you with ex…
100% agree, and I'd like to draw out a thread that is highly relevant to the original title. Most damage is done by large groups of people who want simple solutions to complex situations (like, eg, characterising a debate as having precisely two well defined sides).
There are some situations in life that are genuinely complicated (eg, running the logistic system that gets food from farms to houses). I think it might be flat-out impossible to communicate a complicated solution to a large crowd. The best I've ever seen a large crowd do is pick someone who looks like they might be able to tackle the problem and then the collective accepts whatever they get - good or bad.
Realistically, people piping up with some variant of "this simple solution will fix the problem", on topics where they have no actual skin in the game, are the problem. They undermine complicated efforts to resolve situations. Moderation, balance, compromise and attempting to deal with the complexity forthrightly come together to give much better results than using silver bullets.
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have the same feeling. It concerns me because I'm not sure how to differentiate between my subconscious conservatism and my instinctive backlash against cultishness and/or over-complication. The only thing I can put my finger on is this: those organisations - and this article - present themselves as being above-average rational and insightful. At least that's my impression. Yet many of these suggestions seem to be…
Ask yourself this, do you disagree with the basic premise of the article, that the law of unintended consequences applies to charitable endeavors? If not, do you disagree with the ways they say it can manifest itself? Now, ask yourself, if you don't disagree, why did you write this? I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wis…
It should be clear from my post that I don't directly disagree with the premises of the article. I'm questioning its significance, novelty, effectiveness, and interest.
> why did you write this?
I was exploring a shared, unexplained feeling of discomfort. This is an intellectually and emotionally fulfilling thing to do.
> I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
In my experience those people are not the same types that would read this article, nor do they seem to be the target audience. The target audience appears to be leaders and employers in "fragile fields".
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No... I, for one, would really like to know what the actual (measurable, practical) effect of effective altruism is. I definitely hope that it's not just like, we do nothing but more effectively . I likewise question the efficacy of efforts like eradicating malaria. I can't help but feel all that money would be better spent on technology (not startups, but like fusion and other energy research, nanotech, space indust…
Ultimately this can all be boiled down to the idea if working smarter not harder. Unfortunately mankinds definition of smart varies as as wildly as their actual intelligence
> working smarter not harder
Not even. I think it's more about, what to work towards - i.e. the goal. I mean, feeding hungry people is definitely a worthwhile goal, but... you have to do it again, tomorrow. It's not a scalable solution.
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ultimately this can all be boiled down to the idea if working smarter not harder. Unfortunately mankinds definition of smart varies as as wildly as their actual intelligence
> working smarter not harder Not even. I think it's more about, what to work towards - i.e. the goal. I mean, feeding hungry people is definitely a worthwhile goal, but... you have to do it again, tomorrow. It's not a scalable solution.
The point I was trying to make is that the order of operations matters. But we can only judge the outcomes of our efforts based on their effects not their original intent
Re: Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
#50Well I read a bit, then thought "things like being verbose, generic, and over-guarded in offering advice and so wasting lots of readers time without making an impact on their behaviour"? If they'd given one direct piece of easily actionable advice the actual impact might have been far larger ... "So what?" - a Church sermon I heard well over decade ago, the speaker said basically if there's nothing that listeners wil…
I think 80000 hours targets a fairly specific audience. Their style is in general to be in depth and long winded.
I’m a long-time follower of 80000 Hours. I agree with your comment, but still found this particular post to be far too verbose. The advice borders on non-actionable far-mode thinking.