101–110 of 248 posts
Which isn’t what it sets out to do? EF is about the moral actions of the individual. This is pertinent whether you do everything or nothing in your power to ‘end global poverty’.
Personally I’m skeptical of the merits of a collective effort to end poverty. Has such an undertaking ever worked? How does one even begin?
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But the "effective" part means more than just that. From their site: > It is a research field which uses high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help others as much as possible. This assumes that reasoning and evidence are sufficient to determine what will be most effective. Compare this to the Buddhists, for example, who believe that the networks of causality are so complex and intricate that…
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…
Axiom 1: Human life has value, saving a life is thus positive utility.
Assumption 1: We know nothing of the people tied to the trolley -> All humans are probabilistically equal.
Thus, the utilitarian presses the button and saves 3 at the cost of 1.
This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change. Of course, we can just assume everything goes well, we agitate for political change, we get a change for the better, everything is great. But the risk of a different outcome never seems to be taken into consideration. For instance: We believe the conditions in our country are unfair…
> We start agitating and take down vital institutions in the name of change. Our movement gets hijacked by a military strongman who happens to be charismatic and liked by the people, and now we're under a brutal military dictatorship. This risk is inherent in any political action (or inaction), and it could happen just as easily with a citizenry of Effective Altruists as with a bunch of scrooges. Charity and authorit…
This risk is inherent in any political action (or inaction)
There is certainly a lot more risk of this when your charity is spending large sums of money in countries controlled by dictatorships, sums of money that in part go to taxes to fund those governments.
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It seems like if an NGO provided a UBI in a region that was controlled by a dictatorship, the dictatorship could simply take all the money. When taxes are not set democratically, giving money to individuals seems roughly equivalent to giving money straight to a dictator.
GiveDirectly has a lot of experience with cash transfers through M-Pesa and similar systems. I don't know exactly how much corruption they have to confront, but they might be better at cutting through it than you'd think.
I heard about EA from a person I respect, and so that really colored my perception of it because I think he, specifically, wouldn't do such a bad job. But having some time to think about it, that's really the problem with it: we have a need for altruism to begin with largely due to the concentration of resources (=> power) in the hands of a few to wield for everyone else. It's a cute example and certainly no substitu…
> EA claims that doing more of the thing that causes these huge problems like hunger and homelessness will actually somehow cause less of it. And if you think I'm being reductive, fine, but I would ask that you point out what I'm reducing and why it shouldn't have been. How is it "the thing", unless "the thing" is supposed to be, what, people using common sense? And how is it "the thing that causes these problems" wh…
How do you know it's not doing more of the things that currently leave 5% without food?
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> 2. Assumed to be more efficient than the individual joining the altruistic organization. Somehow the cap on good you can do is limited to marginal income, not about joining an organization and actually attempting to move the cause forward (whether through managerial efficiency, STEM work, or more). In most fields of endeavour markets and specialisation work better than trying to do something yourself. If someone wa…
How do you know this? The usual market assumptions involve perfect knowledge and efficient market clearing. It’s unclear to me that charitable initiatives have anything even close to perfect information, and the labor market is famous for being inefficient, especially given that careers are driven by many inelastic factors, and are often driven by Veblenian effects more than actual efficiency. Sure, assuming a perfec…
The whole point of EA efforts like GiveWell is to fix that.
> Sure, assuming a perfect market, this would be true, but I’d argue that charity labor is specifically a case where markets are far from perfect.
Why do you assume the market distortion is in the direction you'd like it to be? It's far more likely to go in the other direction - many people and organisations are willing to work for charities at below their normal cost, whereas people are unreasonably averse to giving money a charity (compared to how people do things where they actually care about the results), especially if we're talking about making donations that can be spent on things like improved organisational infrastructure that multiply effectiveness but aren't directly advancing the cause.
> There’s a reason most capitalist governments offer so many tax incentives for charitable firms.
Because they're vote-winners, there's no need to look for a deeper reason than that.
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I'd push back that a lot of the anti-political-activism stuff I see from EA people seems even more hand-wavy. Political activism has such enormous potential that any argument against it needs to be exceptionally strong. Now don't get me wrong, there are totally bits of conventional wisdom in political activism that I think are the exact kind of ineffective-but-makes-me-feel-good stuff that drive EA people nuts. I hav…
Political activism has such enormous potential For good and bad, and it's rarely obvious which policies are "correct". For example, it's possible for two entirely well-meaning people to come to opposite conclusions on issues like nuclear power or international trade. They could both spend their time and money trying to influence governments and end up with a net effect of zero (really negative after transaction costs…
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> Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means is more impactful than being poor and helping dozens. It's also more self-serving for the better part of it (as your focus is to become rich), and might never reach the second part (actually becoming rich and helping others). It's also bogus: not many can become rich, both for reasons for circumstance making from much harder to nigh impossible for bi…
Not to mention that becoming rich usually requires participaing in some kind of scheme that transfers money from vast number of people poorer than you into your pocket.
The modern world compared 1700 is a great example on joe wealth can (but doesn’t always, see Saudi Arabia) benefit all.
I heard about EA from a person I respect, and so that really colored my perception of it because I think he, specifically, wouldn't do such a bad job. But having some time to think about it, that's really the problem with it: we have a need for altruism to begin with largely due to the concentration of resources (=> power) in the hands of a few to wield for everyone else. It's a cute example and certainly no substitu…
People are poor because they're incapable of the value provision required to not be poor. This can come down to a number of causes: low intelligence (perhaps due to malnutrition as a child), discrimination, mental health issues, disabilities, geography, attitude, education, etc.
But it's scarcely a question of power. Centrally it's about capability to provide value to others who can reciprocate with money.
This is the premise of the EA proposal that you're missing. If I get a job as a software engineer, this in itself has value to society even if I don't wish to donate any of the money, since I'm being compensated for value provision to someone else (who is in turn being compensated for value provision). The EA on top is just a nice bonus.
Now, negative externalities are of course a real thing, and they need to be taxed so that payment for services is more correlated with true value provision to all stakeholders.
This reads like a strawman perspective on the concept of 'effective altruism.' The 'effective' part in the term is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the definition. It seems reasonable to focus on actually 'effective' actions with good outcomes, rather than comparatively ineffective virtual signalling or martyrdom. Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means is more impactful tha…