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The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

economist.com

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Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#151

Post by margalabargala »

radu_floricica wrote: post #138

This provides good context: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/effective-altruism-as-... EA is a very very tempting horse to beat, to the point it's their own internal favorite sport. There are large quantities of ink spilled criticizing it, from inside and outside. But it is all pretty worthless without taking a look at the foundations of the movement.

That essay kind of straw-mans the whole thing. He uses EA to alternatively mean the foundational philosophy, or the specific organization and the choices the people running it make, interchangeably.

"I don't think AI is a risk, so I'm opposed to EA" charitably means that that person is opposed to EA, the organization headed by the people named in the article, and the choices they have made, who have made themselves the face of the movement with the same name. It doesn't mean they think that helping people is bad.

It's one of those fun language tricks groups get to play when there's a movement of some sort, and then a specific organization pops up with the exact same name. Black Lives Matter famously did the same thing; great movement, but the organization with the same name has done some questionable things with the money they were given.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#152

Post by JamesBarney »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #132
JamesBarney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface this with I know this is a mugging, I think community theater is great, and I don't think it's good to divert all societal resources to nets in Africa. But I just don't think it's as effective, and I don't think most people agree. If the only available labor was teenagers, rebuilding the community theater meant hiring them, and you knew that statistically there was a risk some might die from heat strok…

Sorry, I'm confused as to what you mean by a mugging? Genuinely not sure what you meant by that. Anyways, I never said any specifics about where this community theater is being built. I don't know where heat stroke came from. Sure, yeah, in the straw man situation of building a community theater in an extremely hot area, where the only labor is teenagers, I would...not enlist teenagers to build a community theater in…

The point is you wouldn't endanger the lives of teenagers to build a community theater because you believe the lives of teenagers are more valuable than a community theater.

But repairing a community theater could easily cost $100,000 which would save the lives of ~22 people in Guinea if donated to certain bed net charities. And even the most die hard theater fans probably wouldn't save a theater if to do so it would require risking 22 lives for.

So in this case quantification isn't failing, it's succeeding. It's correctly telling us which donations are more effective. And all our intuition agrees that the $100,000 theater is worth less than the 22 lives.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#153

Post by yanderekko »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #126
yanderekko wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The issue is when people take it to the extreme (like someone who literally argued that a person doing mere charity or volunteer work is bad, because they are wasting time and effort that they could've spent making money and recruiting to contribute more charity and volunteering) I mean, the concern here is that coming off as an asshole can be self-defeating, not that these views are actually incorrect, right? Seems…

1. Both of them are concerns. 2. In case you are really lacking that much self awareness, yes, you are coming off as one in this conversation. You may call me "sensitive" and feel better about yourself now.

>In case you are really lacking that much self awareness, yes, you are coming off as one in this conversation. You may call me "sensitive" and feel better about yourself now.

Isn't this just tone policing then?

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#154

Post by _yb2s »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #132
JamesBarney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface this with I know this is a mugging, I think community theater is great, and I don't think it's good to divert all societal resources to nets in Africa. But I just don't think it's as effective, and I don't think most people agree. If the only available labor was teenagers, rebuilding the community theater meant hiring them, and you knew that statistically there was a risk some might die from heat strok…

Sorry, I'm confused as to what you mean by a mugging? Genuinely not sure what you meant by that. Anyways, I never said any specifics about where this community theater is being built. I don't know where heat stroke came from. Sure, yeah, in the straw man situation of building a community theater in an extremely hot area, where the only labor is teenagers, I would...not enlist teenagers to build a community theater in…

Pascal’s mugging is a popular thought experiment amongst rationalists and EA people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#155

Post by yanderekko »

davidgay wrote: post #142
yanderekko wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Firstly, you can't predict the future so really you're working off your biases. Um, are you saying that this implies that people should just throw up their hands and donate to whatever causes since who knows? Surely not. Once we acknowledge that these questions can be tackled empirically, that's what EA tries to do. Is there room for bias in this process? Absolutely. Does that justify embracing some sort of epistemi…

> > Firstly, you can't predict the future so really you're working off your biases. > Um, are you saying that this implies that people should just throw up their hands and donate to whatever causes since who knows? No, it implies that you shouldn't lecture others that you have the one true answer as to the best path forwards. You are free to (and in fact should) use your best judgment in your own personal choices, ju…

I don't think EA institutions argue that they have the One True Answer. They just often give recommendations - "eg. if you care about maximizing QALY overall, we recommend charities X, Y, and Z." If I don't care about QALY maximization, fine. But if I do, why would I not listen to the recommendations?

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#156

Post by JamesBarney »

pavlov wrote: post #148
JamesBarney wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me preface this with I know this is a mugging, I think community theater is great, and I don't think it's good to divert all societal resources to nets in Africa. But I just don't think it's as effective, and I don't think most people agree. If the only available labor was teenagers, rebuilding the community theater meant hiring them, and you knew that statistically there was a risk some might die from heat strok…

This game can go on endlessly. What if hiring the teenagers mean they’re getting a salary, can help their families, and without the job they’d run off into the jungle to join the warlord who runs a murder cult army? Turns out the community theatre prevented a massacre and one of the kids wins the Nobel Prize for her plays in fifty years.

I don't understand the purpose of your what if.

Mine was specifically to be an intuition pump to see how valuable the OP thinks a theater is when weighed against actual lives.

It's easy to say x is important where x is saving sea turtles, teaching kids to read, or repairing a community theaters.

It's harder to say x is more important than y charity when y charity saves lives effectively.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#157

Post by yanderekko »

circular_lights wrote: post #124
yanderekko wrote: post #89

I've seen this criticism a few times and figured it was just ambiguous.... while the FTX affair is obviously bad for the institutions that represent the modern EA movement, to me this doesn't represent a real critique of EA as a philosophy. "Most EA supporters are techbros and FTX reinforces the view that techbros are bad, therefore EA is bad" is not a real argument, it's a sneer. Is the implication that I should sta…

"but my _intentions_ were pure" lol who falls for that anymore

Not sure how this relates to my comment, unless you misread my point about "institutions" as being about "intentions"...

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#158

Post by asimpletune »

Self-Perfection wrote: post #131
onetimeusename wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's a good way of putting it. I kind of ignored a lot of what they said but again, just like the rationalists who pretty much were all of the EA people, they came with biases they refused to admit they had. like for example, if a family member of mine needed money for a cancer treatment that had a 50% chance of working versus giving that money to save the life of someone I don't know on the other side of the plane…

This take on EA notion replaces it with a straw man. Essentially EA tells not "let's save as many lives as possible" but "let's improve the world according to our values as much as possible". And values might differ among the people. In your example with cure for relative working with only X probability Vs definitely curing stranger on the other side of the world there should be value X for which you will prefer to c…

Ok but now I’m kind of lost. I genuinely don’t know anything about EA, so this is an honest question.

If EA is improving the world according to your values, is it really distinct as a concept? Like, to me, the reason why I think almost anything is because it improves the world according to my values.

Another way to put it is that to me it kind of sounds like someone is saying, “we believe in doing the best thing”, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I also hope everyone wants to do the best thing ;)

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#159

Post by nl »

losteric wrote: post #27
didibus wrote: post #21

I've always found EA to be the most capitalist way of trying to do good. Instead of like being humble, not accumulating wealth for yourself, not thinking of yourself as better, etc. EA is pushing for this weird self-centered egotistical philanthropic avenue. That's literally the least efficient way to help anyone. This also always felt very American. I'll get rich by paying workers poorly, finding any advantageous lo…

> This also always felt very American. I'll get rich by paying workers poorly, finding any advantageous loophole I can, screwing customers, but once I'm rich I'll donate some of that money to do good... That also feels very inaccurate and misrepresentative of the philosophy. Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus…

> Rather, I'd say: live mindfully in a broken system. Pick a job that meets your needs with minimal intentional side-effects, donate some surplus to bettering the world. Do not be a paperclip maximizer or "ends justify the means".

I think that is a very valid philosophy and one I would agree with.

However, EA has a large overlap with longtermism, which has some very paperclip maximizer like features:

> Providing we are capable of colonising the rest of our galaxy and nearby ones, a 1% reduction in the risk of extinction on such a time horizon would be the equivalent of saving 1032 lives. In such a perspective, nothing else matters.

> That year, Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, dedicated to mitigating risk. He elaborated on his theory of longtermism in a book in 2008, urging people to be “good ancestors” by practising “altruism toward our descendants”. He didn’t mean composting or stopping driving, but mitigating existential risks to humanity – “x-risks” in community parlance – from hazards such as advanced artificial intelligence and bio-hacking, that could potentially wipe out or severely deplete humankind.

(from the linked article).

I think this a very problematic view, because (as noted) almost everything is justifiable if you think you are avoiding extinction of the human race.

Re: The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

#160

Post by JamesBarney »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #121
JamesBarney wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What name is manipulative?

I assume the GP is talking about the name "effective altruism".

I don't know what else they should have picked? It seems like a fairly straightforward name for movement that focuses on charity effectiveness. I guess you could call it "effective giving" or something like that but caring about effectiveness is it core differentiating tenant and anything related to altruism/giving/charity is going to sound good.
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