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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?

#171

Post by unmole »

onetimeusename wrote: post #29
hardwaregeek wrote: post #15

Maybe this is superficial, but I was put off by the name "effective altruism". By naming it such, it felt like an implicit dig that most altruism is not effective. Like oh your altruism is not that productive, but my altruism, well it's effective altruism. Especially when that notion is pushed by people who overlap with the rationalist subculture, another arrogantly named group. In general I find it concerning when t…

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…

Is helping your family get through cancer considered altruistic?

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

#172

Post by telotortium »

I was sympathetic to the movement when I first heard about it in the early 2010s, but once it reoriented itself around "longtermism" and especially donating to politicians and NGOs, I knew that it had shed any objective sense of altruism and become just another way to increase the power and prestige of neoliberalism/the cathedral.

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

#173

Post by onetimeusename »

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…

Thanks, that might be true I have not seen in it.

I took this passage from effectivealtruism.org but I was mostly referring to the EA community online which seemed to mostly be the rationalists like the OP said. It's worth pointing out that Eliezer Yudkowsky was mentioned ITT.

Impartial altruism: We believe that all people count equally. Of course it's reasonable to have special concern for one's own family, friends and life. But, when trying to do as much good as possible, we aim to give everyone's interests equal weight, no matter where or when they live. Thi s means focusing on the groups who are most neglected, which usually means focusing on those who don’t have as much power to protect their own interests.

So this is not saying all EA people think the same thing or have the same values or are on that site but I do think this is a common viewpoint among them. I just question why that should be and whether or not a lot of EA people are even altruistic or just virtue signalling on the internet.

I toned down some of the language in this post. I am not being meticulous I am just freestyling my thoughts because it's fun and there is a dose of humor I am putting in here but usually it's not appreciated on HN. Anyways, I don't know if there is a counter criticism to EA officially by some philosopher, and I actually agree with some of what they say because I remember a lot of discussion about choosing charities wisely and not wasting charitable resources. So I don't want to write a formal argument but nevertheless I think what I wrote is a summary of why I am skeptical.

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

#174

Post by unmole »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #40
smallnamespace wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 planet, I will consistently try to save my family member. So would most people, and we wouldn’t call it altruism. Looking for an objective criterion (whether ‘number of lives saved per dollar’ or something else) i…

> So would most people, and we wouldn’t call it altruism. Most people would call helping a relative pay their medical bills altruism. It's also the selfish and rational choice. It's both simultaneously.

> Most people would call helping a relative pay their medical bills altruism.

Altruism is the disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Helping your family is not altruism.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

ketzo wrote: post #26
hardwaregeek wrote: post #15

Maybe this is superficial, but I was put off by the name "effective altruism". By naming it such, it felt like an implicit dig that most altruism is not effective. Like oh your altruism is not that productive, but my altruism, well it's effective altruism. Especially when that notion is pushed by people who overlap with the rationalist subculture, another arrogantly named group. In general I find it concerning when t…

I mean, I think it was a very explicit dig. The founding idea is that giving $10,000 to save, y’know, four ailing dogs with bad livers or whatever, or a community theater, as opposed to many human lives, is fundamentally wrong. “If you’re gonna give, you should maximize the impact as measured in human life” is fundamentally at odds with many common forms of giving, yes.

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by JetAlone »

Someone's commented saying "EA was basically Judas Iscariot's method" and it got flagged. I think that statement was inaccurate. A motive like EA ("that oil could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor") was the front for his real method, which in the Gospel is to sell out Jesus for money, so he can buy some land. His intentions were ultimately proven to not be altruistic. Knowing I'm guilty of some of this inappropriate judging myself, I think it's bad to judge people today who say they want to do EA by reaching for such a quick, easy "call them Judas" gambit.

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

#177

Post by unmole »

nl wrote: post #165
dchftcs wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Effective Altruism in itself is not technology focused. There's no evidence that list of people (many philosophers) think tech will solve everything.

Longtermism explicitly is technology focused though: > Many longtermists reckon that the antidote to the threat from technology is more technology; mastering artificial intelligence will forestall a malevolent AI from enslaving us. They also believe that technological acceleration is morally good in its own right, as it enables the universe to sustain more people. Bostrom laments the lives lost every second that tech…

> And longtermism has taken over much of the EA movement

Show me the money. Sci-Fi/Fantasy longtermst nerd concerns get a disproportionate amount of attention. But from what I can tell, most donations still go to charities dealing with malaria, deficiencies and vaccines: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2021-allocation-to...

Sure, some people are getting paid thousands of dollars for navel gazing. But more than a billion dollars was donated to directly improve global health.

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

#178

Post by zozbot234 »

ketzo wrote: post #26
hardwaregeek wrote: post #15

Maybe this is superficial, but I was put off by the name "effective altruism". By naming it such, it felt like an implicit dig that most altruism is not effective. Like oh your altruism is not that productive, but my altruism, well it's effective altruism. Especially when that notion is pushed by people who overlap with the rationalist subculture, another arrogantly named group. In general I find it concerning when t…

I mean, I think it was a very explicit dig. The founding idea is that giving $10,000 to save, y’know, four ailing dogs with bad livers or whatever, or a community theater, as opposed to many human lives, is fundamentally wrong. “If you’re gonna give, you should maximize the impact as measured in human life” is fundamentally at odds with many common forms of giving, yes.

I mean, it's not fundamentally wrong. It's better than wasting $10,000 on, e.g. luxuries for yourself that probably won't even make you happier. But it's literally orders of magnitude worse than what you could do, even if you only ever care about your fellow citizens (not people in distant poor countries) in a generation near to your own (as opposed to mankind's long-term progeny).

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

#179

Post by ALittleLight »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #93
ketzo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I think it was a very explicit dig. The founding idea is that giving $10,000 to save, y’know, four ailing dogs with bad livers or whatever, or a community theater, as opposed to many human lives, is fundamentally wrong. “If you’re gonna give, you should maximize the impact as measured in human life” is fundamentally at odds with many common forms of giving, yes.

The example of a community theater highlights another issue I have with effective altruism. It effectively encourages you to only donate to things you can make a quantifiable case for. And in a lot of situations, quantification fails. The arts have an immense value in developing philosophical, emotional, empathetic values. A theater may not show up in a balance sheet but it can have a massive effect. And it does conc…

So, if you had to choose between funding community theater and saving X lives, how large would X need to be before you'd abandon the theater?

It's fine to spend money on the theater, everyone spends money and time on themselves and their interests. If you consider community theater altruism though, I think it makes sense to acknowledge that it is ineffective altruism - that is, you're doing a little bit of good with your money, but not nearly as much as you might be doing.

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

#180

Post by nl »

unmole wrote: post #177
nl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longtermism explicitly is technology focused though: > Many longtermists reckon that the antidote to the threat from technology is more technology; mastering artificial intelligence will forestall a malevolent AI from enslaving us. They also believe that technological acceleration is morally good in its own right, as it enables the universe to sustain more people. Bostrom laments the lives lost every second that tech…

> And longtermism has taken over much of the EA movement Show me the money. Sci-Fi/Fantasy longtermst nerd concerns get a disproportionate amount of attention. But from what I can tell, most donations still go to charities dealing with malaria, deficiencies and vaccines: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2021-allocation-to... Sure, some people are getting paid thousands of dollars for navel gazing. But more t…

It's great that over $1B was donated now for global health!

But the highest ever grant was $55M for "potential risks from AI". The 4th and 6th highest grants were similar.[1]

More recently[2] the highest ($10.7M) grant was for "Potential Risks from Advanced AI" and third highest grant ($2.3M) was for "longtermism" and there were 4 other similar grants on the first page.

[1] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/?sort=high-to-low#ca...

[2] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/?sort=recent#categor...

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