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The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?

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

#221

Post by concordDance »

froggychairs wrote: post #218
devilsbabe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re your last sentence: why do you disapprove of funding research into AI safety

Not OP, but I do work in reducing harms of deployed AI systems at a big tech company When most EA/Rationalist folks discuss AI Safety. They’re talking about AGI, a hypothetical construct that we have no way of proving is even possible Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with funding research of that sort. The problem comes is that many EA/Rationalist folks begin downplaying legitimate tangible risks on the horizon (…

> I’ve had prominent EA folks tell me that Climate Change is not an existential risk

Have you seen anything to indicate otherwise? The IPCC reports don't contain even a whiff in that direction.

To the best of my knowledge zero people who know anything about climate change think its existential.

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

#222

Post by paganel »

civilized wrote: post #33
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…

Is there a term you would deem acceptable for seeking to give to others in a cost-effective manner? This seems to be a perfectly good idea. Doesn't it seem problematic that giving it a simple, straightforward name seems inherently arrogant and insufferable?

> Is there a term you would deem acceptable for seeking to give to others in a cost-effective manner?

Not the OP but State-imposed socialism might do the trick. Free housing, free decent education, free healthcare, what's there not to like?

The only thing is that you wouldn't be the one "doing" the giving as an individual, because that's not your job to do (again, as an individual).

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

#223

Post by concordDance »

raverbashing wrote: post #201
devilsbabe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re your last sentence: why do you disapprove of funding research into AI safety

At this point I think that giving $5 to a homeless person in SF (even if they go straight to doing another shot) might be more productive than this self-aggrandizing vapid BS about some theoretical risk that might come in the future Right now what's threatening the most people is war, famine and diseases. Climate change is a tangible future threat but I'd bet a couple $ that the JSO organizers are full EA proponents…

> BS about some theoretical risk that might come in the future

Like increased rate of hurricanes due to climate change?

One does need to seriously consider low probability, high impact events, like pandemics, in one's future planning and resource allocation.

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

#224

Post by didibus »

ALittleLight wrote: post #179
hardwaregeek wrote: post #93

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…

"saving a life" is kind of vacuous.

You need to contextualize the life saved, do we mean they went to live one more day, or a full long life of prosperity and comfort with a happy painless death from old age.

And did they themselves gain the means to save more lives in turn?

For example, I feel giving people the means of saving their own life, or other people's lives a much more efficient way to save lives than actually saving a life.

And finally you have to address the sacrifices you've made and the people you've hurt in pursuit of saving that life.

To me, it looks like a charade, because the claim that you can actually measure and quantify all of these complex systems to truly arrive at the real impact of all these things, I just don't believe it. It seems you've picked a simple metric to measure, because it's easy, but is it lasting impact, is really more meaningful impact, that's all all still up in the air.

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

#225

Post by concordDance »

tptacek wrote: post #137

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…

> 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.

As someone with multiple EA friends: this is precisely what it is.

> they have their own weird language, there's a hierarchy, and people on the inside operate under a constant threat of ostracism.

The first is true, the latter two are bullshit.

> Either way: when your logic has established that you can obtain moral superiority by literally buying indulgences

That's a gross mischaracterization. A better metaphor is Robin Hood, someone who steals from the rich to give to the poor. And who is widely regarded as a folk hero.

> tens of millions in donations to "AI safety" organizations.

If AGI has even a 1% chance of happening this century and those donations reduce the risk of it going wrong and killing everyone by 1% that's still money very well spent.

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

#226

Post by raverbashing »

concordDance wrote: post #223
raverbashing wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I think that giving $5 to a homeless person in SF (even if they go straight to doing another shot) might be more productive than this self-aggrandizing vapid BS about some theoretical risk that might come in the future Right now what's threatening the most people is war, famine and diseases. Climate change is a tangible future threat but I'd bet a couple $ that the JSO organizers are full EA proponents…

> BS about some theoretical risk that might come in the future Like increased rate of hurricanes due to climate change? One does need to seriously consider low probability, high impact events, like pandemics, in one's future planning and resource allocation.

> why do you disapprove of funding research into AI safety

This is what I'm replying to. And yes Climate Change is a worrying problem, but it won't be solved by people throwing tantrums in museums

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

#227

Post by didibus »

smallnamespace wrote: post #220
probably_wrong wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue as I see it is that you cannot say that the first is ineffective unless you can quantify the ROI of the theater. If I knew that my donation will fund the next Romeo and Juliet, then I'd expect X to be really high before I deprive future generations of such an important work. Art in particular has a multiplicative effect that is essentially impossible to quantify. Once a work of art is out there, it can live…

I agree arts and culture are valuable. The obvious objection now is why not build 5 theatres in Africa? Obviously the local theatre benefits your own community, but if you live there then you are also benefiting yourself (via status and seeing plays), which seems less than altruistically pure, even if you could only build 1 theatre in Africa.

A theater won't have the same impact everywhere. You likely don't know anything about the neighborhoods in Africa, and how impactful a theater there could be.

You know a lot better what a theater could bring to a neighborhood you know well.

And then, there's the question of if altruism itself is most efficient at helping others. Some would argue that helping oneself but where it benefits others as well, win/win situations, in practice produces better outcomes. The idea of self-sacrifice, or having to lose or risk something personal to help others sounds noble, but might not be most effective.

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

#228

Post by ineedasername »

ineedasername wrote: post #90

> ”But if he established a well-paid private practice in Britain, he would be able to “earn to give”: he’d save “considerably more” lives and still be comfortable… …As the community has expanded, it has also become more exclusive. Conferences, seminars and even picnics held by the Centre for Effective Altruism are application-only. Yes, by application only. Because the near-intuitive next step in thinking is that, he…

And a brief addendum: it is vastly both telling and unsettling that the core movement 1) recognizes that their most brutal “calculations” would be looked on in horror and absurdity (rationalized no doubt as those who simply are not enlightened or intelligent enough to understand) and therefore 2) work to silence adherents who start to explore them in any type of open forum, necessitating 3) a PR campaign that blithely pays lips service to welcoming all ideas and open discussion at the same time that 4) it is clear there are aspects or implications of their philosophy that they are only willing to talk about behind closed doors.

It really, really, is not hard to see where applying quasi mathematical calculation will get you when you start weighing hypothetical future lives against the resources directed today towards various EA projects.

Anything can be justified when you’re trying to do mathematical ethics against vastly unlikely but catastrophically bad scenarios, all while ignoring the fact that if you don’t address the “right now” systemic and intractable problems we’ll get to much more likely existential crisis long before we have to worry about runaway ai-complete malevolent entities causing harm.

And that is actually an apt example— there is a certain amount of overlap between the EAS movement and the rational discussion communities that came up the idea of Roko’s Basilisk.

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

#229

Post by sooheon »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #49
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective altruism (EA) is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". [1] Seems like a good idea, if only just to have some sort of open-system for rating charities. I suspect the issue is everything that comes around the idea, specially... people. The problem is always people :-). Perhaps a "…

The problem with EA and other utilitarian systems of thought is two-fold. Firstly, you can't predict the future so really you're working off your biases. Secondly, unfettered by principles other than the end justifying the means, you can easily turn those aforementioned biases into justifications for committing horrible acts. Mass murder, or evidently, theft on a massive scale. For instance: "The technological revolu…

> "My altruism is more effective than anybody else's, so I'm going to steal everybody else's money so that I can put it to better use."

> How do you stop this shit?

If you ask yourself why you think "this shit" is bad, at root there will be a consequentialist reason. Deontological ethics is consequentialism by heuristics.

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

#230

Post by dchftcs »

nl wrote: post #180
unmole wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/?so…

potential risks of AI sounds the opposite of the position of someone who would think technology can solve everything. You're shifting goalposts to protect the initial narrative.
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