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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?

#321

Post by FeepingCreature »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #284
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…

Been saying the same thing. EA functionally is the same pattern I grew up around among evangelical extremists. It's an all purpose source of self righteous authority based on theoretical virtue erasing actual harm.

Is it theoretical? In other words, are you making a positive assertion here that the benefit of EA is not actual, and if so, can you cite evidence?

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

#322

Post by FeepingCreature »

notahacker wrote: post #282
rcoveson wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you describing "giving virtually all of [your earnings] away to effective charities" as "literally buying indulgences"? That's literally the most cynical thing I've ever heard. I can understand having a negative opinion of the EA movement as it exists today. But your reaction to the charitable investor thing makes me think that you actually disagree with... altruism. Or at least the idea that being more altruisti…

> Are you describing "giving virtually all of [your earnings] away to effective charities" as "literally buying indulgences"? That's literally the most cynical thing I've ever heard....But your reaction to the charitable investor thing makes me think that you actually disagree with... altruism I don't think it's the idea of giving to charity that's being criticised here. Its the idea a rich person giving an absolute…

Virtue ethics is dead as an ethos. The stated goal of practically all modern morality is good outcomes. This doesn't seem offhand implausible to me.

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

#323

Post by smcl »

coldtea wrote: post #253
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…

"Effective Altruism Is Not A Cult" sounds like what a cult would say :) Sure sounds like a cult in practice, especially in the whole context ( https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children-chapte... the other 6 parts of the series are great reading too).

It's a reference to this tweet: https://twitter.com/shutupmikeginn/status/403359911481839617

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

#324

Post by concordDance »

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…

> EA is pushing for this weird self-centered egotistical philanthropic avenue. That's literally the least efficient way to help anyone.

What.

The stereotypical EA person is a banker who makes $150k/year after tax and donates $100k/year to the against malaria foundation. As opposed to the lawyer who quits working for corporate and becomes a gardner, which seems to be what you're advocating.

The former seems to do far more good in the world, saving hundreds of young lives.

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

#325

Post by notahacker »

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…

The other thing is that the actual standard of the "quantitative case" put forward is hugely variable anyway. With sufficiently inventive fantasy numbers, theatre enthusiasts could probably make an EA case of the form: "what if a person was so inspired by watching my amateur dramatic production of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that they solved all Unfriendly AI problems?". Sure, it's unlikely, but the rewards benefit an almost infinite number of people!

In practice, I think people coming from a starting point of "I'm going to focus on solving friendly AI because it fits with my interests and computer science background and I think I'll be able to help the process along a bit" are being more honest with themselves than people dressing up their preferences in magical utilitarian numbers which conclude they're more efficient than merely feeding people or giving them goats...

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

#326

Post by FeepingCreature »

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 (…

The atom bomb was once a hypothetical construct. The Einstein-Szilard letter was talking about a danger that they had no way of proving was even possible. Proof is irrelevant outside of mathematics; the only relevant question is cost to expected benefit - or expected harm.

With dangerous research, when a conclusive demonstration of possibility is achieved, it is usually too late to do much in the way of prevention. That's why we don't expect the FDA to "prove" that harm from a new medication "is even possible" before regulating it; rather, we expect the pharmaceutical company to provide evidence for its expected harmlessness before we even make the attempt. Think of the FDA what you like, this is certainly a better standard than putting the burden of proof on harmful outcomes.

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

#327

Post by kethinov »

rcoveson wrote: post #241
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…

Are you describing "giving virtually all of [your earnings] away to effective charities" as "literally buying indulgences"? That's literally the most cynical thing I've ever heard. I can understand having a negative opinion of the EA movement as it exists today. But your reaction to the charitable investor thing makes me think that you actually disagree with... altruism. Or at least the idea that being more altruisti…

There are principled reasons to be against charity, namely that charity redistributes money to causes arbitrarily and undemocratically rather than to causes decided by a majority of people voting on what causes to support. When the government runs these programs, we get to vote on how they're administered. When billionaires run them, who gets help and who doesn't is entirely at the mercy of King Tech Bro the First. And to the extent that society heaps boundless praise on billionaires for their altruism, we are complicit in their reputation laundering; allowing them to continue to enjoy undue status in society in perpetuity that would not persist if we simply taxed that wealth away from them and did something like massively expanding public housing to end homelessness or something instead.

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

#328

Post by FeepingCreature »

michaelmrose wrote: post #199
devilsbabe wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not the poster but there is no reason to believe that we possess the tools to contemplate AI safety worse it may be a fools errand to contemplate how to control something much smarter than you are. Ergo at this point in time money spent to pay people to contemplate it is almost certainly entirely wasted.

Maybe we should try to acquire the tools before we build systems much smarter than we are

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

#329

Post by pooper »

Tenoke wrote: post #316
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You describe all religions. Read some scripture, perform some simple devotions, and call it a day. I don’t mean to overstate the religiosity of EA but it’s not structurally different.

You can reduce everything to being religion if you do it this way to the point of the comparison being useless. HN? Religion. Weight lifting? Religion. Dental hygiene? Religion. Voting? Religion. Functional Programming? Religion. Punk? Religion.

> HN? Religion. Weight lifting? Religion. Dental hygiene? Religion. Voting? Religion. Functional Programming? Religion. Punk? Religion.

Well dental hygiene is definitely not a religion. I don't even floss (use a water pik now but flossing back teeth is difficult, parents never taught me to floss when I was a child). Leaving this aside, I have also noticed people call test-driven development / behavior driven development religions here. Are they using hyperboles?

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

#330

Post by FeepingCreature »

blitzar wrote: post #267
heavyset_go wrote: post #130

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. Then you will be delighted/horrified to find out that the effective altruism community doesn't feel the need to make quantifiable justifications for how they spend their own donations, as evidenced by this $20k grant they gave someon…

SBF gave $40 million - 800,000 mosquito nets to candidates in politcal races. Surely 800,000 mosquito nets is "more effective" than 800,000 robo calls and shitty campaign ads with a moron at the end saying "I'm Joe Blow, and I endorse this bullshit"

This doesn't seem evidence that EA is bad so much that SBF was a bad effective altruist?
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