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If you give 10% of your income, you're still keeping 90% for yourself. So it implies you consider yourself nine times as valuable as all other humans. I'm not on board with Effective Altruism, but 10% of your income seems like a reasonable amount to give to those less fortunate.
Yes. all other humans combined.
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…
Is that really the material argument? It seems obvious to this normie that the answer ought to be "hell no".
My "Effective Altruism Is Not A Cult" t-shirt is prompting a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. I've dug into this stuff over the last couple days, because I had previously understood Effective Altruism to be something akin to like a pledge drive for Charity Navigator's best-reviewed charities or something, and it turns out it's nothing of the sort. In fact, if you read some of the commentary from EA insi…
My "Effective Altruism Is Not A Cult" t-shirt is prompting a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. I've dug into this stuff over the last couple days, because I had previously understood Effective Altruism to be something akin to like a pledge drive for Charity Navigator's best-reviewed charities or something, and it turns out it's nothing of the sort. In fact, if you read some of the commentary from EA insi…
Depends what you mean by Rationalist. I would say that EA, the modern movement, is a hobby of people who belong to "rationalism", the modern movement. I'd be fairly comfortable calling them a cult. (Frequent exhortation: "Read the Sequences!") EA is the same thing, simply because the people who do EA and the people who do rationalism are the same people.
But from your comment, I can't tell whether Rationalist refers to that group or to some other thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Art in particular has a multiplicative effect that is essentially impossible to quantify. Once a work of art is out there, it can live forever and influence multiple generations. That seems like a pretty effective use of my money.
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…
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…
If by "capitalist", you mean the system that incentivized the most selfish assholes on the planet to accidentally lift billions of people out of poverty, then I agree.
> This also always felt very American. I'll get rich by paying workers poorly...
The median American gets paid more than their counterparts in all but a couple countries. When you account for the population size and diversity of America, it's a statistical miracle how well Americans get paid.
EA and capitalism focus on efficiency and not virtue. You can't substitute being unvirtuous with being hyper-efficient, and I don't think anyone is going to argue otherwise. There's an argument to be made that efficiency is crowding out virtue, especially when it comes to capitalism, but even then I think you're significantly overestimating this effect. I don't think this same argument can be applied to EA. Overall, I think it inspires rationalist-obsessing nerds to be more interested in virtuous behavior. One of them happens to be me. Another, happens to be a billionaire scam artist.
But: they haven't been caught actually doing anything remotely bad (they have some assholes as followers, some of whom are also crooks, but I struggle to blame EA for it) and perhaps, maybe, they really are donating tons of money to good causes?
Are there any estimates of how much money EA raised for the world? I mean, if each and every one of the donates 10% of their income, they are far ahead of me, and I'll shut up and put up.
My "Effective Altruism Is Not A Cult" t-shirt is prompting a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. I've dug into this stuff over the last couple days, because I had previously understood Effective Altruism to be something akin to like a pledge drive for Charity Navigator's best-reviewed charities or something, and it turns out it's nothing of the sort. In fact, if you read some of the commentary from EA insi…
re your last sentence: why do you disapprove of funding research into AI safety
Ergo at this point in time money spent to pay people to contemplate it is almost certainly entirely wasted.
There is a lot of scepticism about EA in this thread, and for the most part I share all of it. It feels like a cult with an ulterior motive. But: they haven't been caught actually doing anything remotely bad (they have some assholes as followers, some of whom are also crooks, but I struggle to blame EA for it) and perhaps, maybe, they really are donating tons of money to good causes? Are there any estimates of how mu…