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Effective altruism is not effective

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Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#211

Post by zozbot234 »

cycomanic wrote: post #135
benkuhn wrote: post #19

This article completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of most of the people quoted or referenced, then engages with those beliefs only via asserting the opposite without any supporting argument. I'm disappointed. For example: > The most charitable explanation of Singer’s dismissal of political action is that he is trying to sell being an altruist and he thinks a consumer -hero version is the one people are most likely…

I think you are mischaracterising the argument. His argument is that effective altruism can not eliminate poverty, it's inherent in the concept. You also dis not show that he is the one who mischaracterises the "believes" (maybe you mean arguments here?). I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong? You have not actually engaged with the act…

> I would say history at least tells us that the largest changes in wealth distributions have come through (often violent) political action.

History shows just the opposite. The largest changes in wealth distribution in history have come about through industrialization, starting in Britain and then spreading to other parts of the world. Purposeful political action has most often been harmful to these developments, with limited exceptions (such as 19th-century Japan, and other East Asian countries in the 20th century).

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#212

Post by notahacker »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #206
notahacker wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand what this means GiveWell founder Holden Karnofsky spent $30m of philanthropic cash buying a board seat on the charitable subsidiary of OpenAI Inc, an extremely well funded organization drawing on research to produce high value closed source software, much of it now exclusively licensed to Microsoft (and theoretically stopping AGI armageddon). No evidence of any AI risks mitigated has ever been pr…

> No evidence of any AI risks mitigated has ever been produced Of course, no evidence of any AI risks mitigated has ever been promised, nor could there be, since the best current estimate on the singularity is 40 years in the future. > GiveWell founder Holden Karnofsky spent $30m of philanthropic cash buying a board seat on the charitable subsidiary of OpenAI Inc OpenPhil and Givewell are not the same organization. O…

OpenPhil and Givewell are not the same organization and don't support the same causes, but Holden definitely is the same person. If you spend your career arguing that charities need to be more open and evidence-based and focus on cost-effectiveness and metrics, then the fact you sit on the board of a nonprofit which is considerably more opaque than any of them is relevant to the merits of those arguments.

(And OpenAI was unambiguously well funded and likely to become financially sustainable at the time as OPP acknowledged when they explained they put the money in for the board seat)

Sure, you can't prove you've prevented the Singularity from happening in 40 years (not even if you're talking about the one predicted in the 80s!), but if it's reasonable for EAs to insist that charities distributing food or drugs already widely proven to work conduct RCTs or at least put cost benefit analysis on their website, I don't think we can look past the fact that the web page for a tax-deductible cause they're actually responsible for the governance of is a marketing page for NLP tools with absolutely nothing about how their donor dollars are spent...

See, I can buy the argument that certain types of non-commercial AI research are going to be significant boons for humanity, but I can buy the argument that applies to lots of unproven development interventions too, and that directly undercuts the cost-effectiveness ethos

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#213

Post by yosito »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #45

As a general principle, you're going to achieve at best, small, dystopia-blunting effects by effectively redistributing the resources of the not-rich. Gofundme healthcare will save a few people. Giving to panhandlers might keep them out of a killing freeze. What it won't do is make the dystopia go away. What you need to do that is politics.

> What you need to do that is politics.

And/or technology. While politics is an important tool for getting things done, I'd say technology has far more potential to improve the world than pure politics.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#214

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

tsm_sf wrote: post #75
hotstickyballs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is purely a property rights issue that we can't connect more hungry mouths with more uneaten food. There's no R&D to be done, there's no unsolved problem with a bounty on it Yes, it's a property rights issue.. and more. The problem is motivating those who are holding on to the food to distribute it to those who need it. Clearly if those who need it are providing valuable service to food producers and distributor…

> The issue is really, how do we motivate the distribution of food (and other goods and services) to those who need it but can't justify to the producers and distributors and provide for it? People shouldn't have to justify their existence based on some other group's favorite economic model. That seems weird and needlessly cruel.

People need to justify their existence to the universe - that is, every morsel of food is the product of struggle against the physical laws of the universe. There is no free lunch.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#215

Post by monktastic1 »

medlyyy wrote: post #121
monktastic1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why the fuck are you worrying about "metaphysical frameworks?" The things EA mostly focuses on are people dying of easily preventable starvation and disease. There is no need to bring up highly abstract ideas about "metaphysics" (whatever you mean by that - morality isn't generally considered to be in the field of metaphysics) when the suffering is so blatantly concrete.

At the EA conference I attended, one of the talks that got people excited was about false vacuum decay of the universe (which would end all life everywhere), and why therefore QFT research was the most effective. Even if that's not their major focus now, it fit nicely into their framework.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#216

Post by wizzwizz4 »

losvedir wrote: post #196
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people seem to think that Bill Gates' influence is largely responsible for the Oxford vaccine being patent-encumbered.

A lot of people believe Q-anon. This is such a shitty, drive by way of asserting something. Do you believe it? If so then make the case, but the way you've dropped this steamy innuendo here without even taking a position on it yourself contributes less than nothing to the discussion.

I haven't looked into it enough; I just remember Cory Doctorow talking about it and thought it was relevant. https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#g... (citing https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine...).

The “a lot” came from the search results for “gates oxford covid patent” (I'd've expected people arguing against it if there was contention in opinion – this isn't the same as “it's fact”), though further investigation (the thing I didn't do; sorry) reveals that I only found two other articles: https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/02/09/patent-capital-... and https://criticallegalthinking.com/2021/02/09/patent-capital-...; the rest of the results are mirrors.

You're right that it's a rubbish thing to write; I'll put more effort into comments in future.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#217

Post by jimbokun »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #161
TeMPOraL wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that article is pretty weird. To add on your last point: > > One could spend at most a few tens of millions of dollars on anti-mosquito bed nets before returns start dramatically diminishing because everyone who can be helped by them already has one. That's a feature . It's half of what makes "effective" part of "effective" altruism effective. The fact that charities aren't infinite money sinks allows everyone…

Effectiveness of charities has exactly the same problems as efficient market hypothesis: markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Or in other words, charities can remain full of shit for longer than you have money for.

Now consider how long a government can remain irrational.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#218

Post by sudosysgen »

tylerhou wrote: post #100
sudosysgen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it doesn't fit into the traditional framework of "effective altruism". Collective efforts-based altruism is just very different in so many ways.

Why not? A collective, efforts-based, altruistic organization needs funding. If such a organization could demonstrate that their efforts lead to good outcomes (improve happiness, save lives), then effective altruists would donate to them. A legitimate argument is that not everyone can make tons of money and donate because someone has to do the work. But there are plenty of "effective" organizations that are not yet o…

The thing is that money without involvement is poison to collective movements, besides a certain point. Money and involvement is much better.

If all you want is to distribute, then sure. Collective movements aren't even the best at straight distribution, so someone trying to maximize the marginal utility of their dollar probably won't even donate. But collective action is generally not just about distribution, and moreso about fixing the structure of society to make distribution from rich donors unnecessary.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#219

Post by zucker42 »

cycomanic wrote: post #187
zucker42 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong? I disagree that this article give an accurate impression of the EA. The main point of effective altruism is that people should use evidence in choosing which charitable causes to devote their time to. I don't feel like the author sufficiently engages with this point; instead he attacks Singer fo…

Well, I disagree the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism". Now if we are donating to charity should we follow the principles of EA? The answer to that is probably yes, but that's a different question and is not the point raised by the author.

> the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism".

(I'm assuming "I disagree" was meant to be a separate sentence)

I think Singer would say that it's often but not always hard to change things through the political process. But he hardly shuns politics entirely; he often speaks and writes about political issues, and he ran for Australian Senate in 1996.

But anyways Singer's beliefs about the effectiveness of political causes isn't the central point of Singer's EA advocacy, it's just one piece of his beliefs.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#220

Post by Karrot_Kream »

lmm wrote: post #130
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of EA efforts like GiveWell is to fix that. I mean it doesn't seem like it is at all. Given the huge swath of political organizations it deems too complicated to analyze, I think GiveWell is far from perfect, and just adding information into an area with very little. It helps, sure, but I don't think we're even close to an EMH approximation. > Why do you assume the market distortion is in the direct…

> I don't assume anything here. Then on what grounds are you claiming that it's better for people to get directly involved in charitable organisations than get a high-paying job and give money? > The point is, without an efficient market you cannot achieve Pareto optimal outcomes. You can't assign directions here, I'm not sure what what a direction even means. If there was an efficient market, we could assume that th…

> There are two equal and opposite ways for that assumption to be false

Hm? There are many ways for pricing to occur if EMH is not true, not two equal and opposite ways (how are they opposite in magnitude?)

Anyway I think this is not going to be a fruitful conversation going forward since I'm not interested in showing all the way markets without pareto-optimal outcomes can fail, so cheers.

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