Effective altruism is not effective

This simulation about altruism seems interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goePYJ74Ydg

publication is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41910312_Altruism_S...

> I think the EA advice regarding donations is more of a common lower denominator sort of thing. Not everyone can do research and policy work, but a lot of people have at least some disposable income.

I think this is where my opprobrium lies. A surprising amount of charitable work is very similar to the standard, non-charitable work folks do for themselves. It's about managing logistics, managing organizations of people, and tracking and accounting for donations. Actual on-the-ground work (like distribution of materials or soup kitchen work) and high-level research and policy work is a minority of the work to be done. Much like a corporation, most of the work lies in middle management, and this much is obvious if you've ever spent a long stint volunteering for an organization. And then there's the idea that one may actually discover that they are better at the kind of work involved in charitable work than they thought, since most charitable work in individualist Western countries has very little public information associated. This is what I want to challenge among EA believers; much like a market with imperfect information, alignment with charitable work may also be a case of imperfect information.

> As with Dada, altruism doesn't survive intellectual evaluation.

Sure and I'm not as interested in discussing the philosophical ideal of altruism. My interest in charitable work, as I suspect many interested in EA feel, stems from trying to do the greatest good with my limited allocation of resources, be that money, time, knowledge, manual labor, or otherwise. In that regard I'm unconcerned about the usual moral philosophical questions about motive and goodness.

This is a common philosophical problem. EA fits in a philosophical framework broadly known as utilitarianism (which is also popular among rationalists, a group known to be fans of EA). Buddhism's ideas of moral philosophy often lie in a mixture of what is commonly known as Divine Will Ethics and Virtue Ethics. Utilitarianism is quite popular among modern STEM discourse, but there are moral alternatives out there that have been sufficiently explored. The idea that decision making may just be too complex to be effectively optimized is one of Utilitarianism's long-standing critiques (e.g., in the trolley problem, what happens if you save the 3 people over the 1 person, but one of those 3 people ends up becoming (or is) a dictator who orchestrates a genocide.)

1. It is difficult to have these sorts of discussions without first giving a reason for helping or giving at all. What is the reason for charity? Why should I give anything to anyone in need? (E.g., [0] and [1].) No bromides. You can't really offer any deep answers to the question of charity without a deep grasp of human nature. We are essentially eating machines. These are basic needs, not ultimate ends.

2. I do not believe poverty can be "solved". This would seem to view the satisfaction of need and elimination of unfavorable circumstances as things which could be satisfied and remedied permanently, but no such guarantee can be made. This is not to say government cannot play a role, only that we should not view government as a substitute.

3. Charity, while good for the other and aimed at the good of the other, is also good for the giver. That is, in giving I become better myself in a very objective and intrinsic way, which is to say, regardless of whether someone else witnesses my charity or not (or rather, especially when no one witnesses it or knows about it). Really, the kind of socialistic programs that I see many promoting only reinforces consumerism: the responsibility is outsourced to government who forcefully takes part of my income and "takes care of the problem" so that I can carry on uninterrupted with my consumerist lifestyle. But charity offers a way of breaking the cycle.

4. It is a false dichotomy to pit the moral growth charity produces against the good of the other. A true charitable act is characterized both by sacrifice and producing objective good. This requires knowledge. Without knowledge, there can be no love because you cannot love what you do not know.

5. Charity is always an individual act (groups aren't agents), but this doesn't mean that people cannot cooperate toward a charitable end. That's what charitable organizations do. The organized individual sacrifices of each person contributes to some good.

6. The notion that charity must consist of some grandiose or glamorous, but ultimately distant, concern for some people on the other side of the planet is misguided. We could use more charity in our daily lives and interactions and relationships.

7. The notion of the common good is omitted in the article. It is good for a society that people are not starving, for example.

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3023.htm [1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03592a.htm