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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?

#331

Post by deebosong »

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.

I don't disagree with you. Whatever you put your hope into, coupled with whatever you believe is true about existence – like even nihilism or solipsism or Darwinism or syncretism, etc. etc.), and however those hopes and beliefs lead to actions that consistently point back to said hopes and beliefs, pretty much reveals what we put our faith into.

Again, not saying I disagree in the slightest. Just reiterating.

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

#332

Post by FeepingCreature »

imgabe wrote: post #76
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 idea that you can precisely plan out the exact optimal path is arrogant and fundamentally wrong. What if the friendships made at a community theater help a troubled kid through a rough patch and instead of committing suicide they go on to cure cancer? Not funding the theater would have been very sub-optimal. Even without far-fetched hypotheticals what’s the point of saving everyone’s life if they’re just going to…

What if when jumping off a roof, I spontaneously developed the ability to fly? And yet I will not attempt it, and worse, strongly evangelize that roofhopping should be avoided by everyone. How arrogant of me, how presumptuous!

Though we cannot tell in every case what the outcome will be, that is no excuse to not consider the odds.

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

#333

Post by nl »

concordDance wrote: post #239
nl wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that longtermism (mentioned in the article) is bad though, both as a concept and in practice.

What counts as longtermism though? Preserving archaeological sites rather than bulldozing them? Fighting CO2 emissions? Trying to avoid AGI risk you think will happen in less than a century?

The longtermism as thought of by Bostrom etc is a view that (potential) future lives are as valuable as lives now.

Part of the danger is the name. I support long term thinking! I love things like the Long Now project! But this specific viewpoint is very wrong.

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

#334

Post by einpoklum »

pooper wrote: post #329
Tenoke wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 developm…

Do you even floss?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-even-lift

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

#335

Post by FeepingCreature »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #302
concordDance wrote: post #245

One thing a lot of people miss is that effective altruism has worked! The idea of donating to distant causes that do the most good (which is what EA is and this notion long predates the 21st century) has massively reduced the number of deaths of malaria. Bill Gate's efforts to eradicate polio have done a world of good.

You're making assumptions bigger than the pacific tectonic plate here. While I absolutely applaud Bill Gate's philanthropy, and have no doubt he's one of the most effective charity donors on this planet, you cannot simply use that as a ledger entry in some karmic balance. Bill at the peak of of his business career wielded enormous power and played a pivotal role in the IP regime that now rules the world, one that pla…

Bill Gates' effective charitable giving should be commended.

Because the outcome of arguing against Bill giving charitably is Bill not giving charitably, not Bill not engaging in predatory business practices. Microsoft was cheating competitors and pursuing lock-in long before Bill founded the Gates Foundation.

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

#336

Post by notahacker »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #322
notahacker wrote: post #282

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....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.

The position that the virtue of SBF's actions are irrelevant, and he should be judged better than all of us because he could afford to give more money to give away to good outcomes sounds exactly like "buying indulgences" to me.

Especially in Scott Aaronson's phrasing where it's the SBF's gross donation spend being ahead of all of ours that we should be impressed by, not the net impact of his actions (which I find difficult to believe is positive even on pure utilitarian grounds, given that he's not exactly inspiring others to "earn to give" right now, he's shrunk the world's balance sheet and I consider some of his [notionally] philanthropic spend pretty dubious)

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

#337

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #321
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No post body was provided.

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

#338

Post by imgabe »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #332
imgabe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that you can precisely plan out the exact optimal path is arrogant and fundamentally wrong. What if the friendships made at a community theater help a troubled kid through a rough patch and instead of committing suicide they go on to cure cancer? Not funding the theater would have been very sub-optimal. Even without far-fetched hypotheticals what’s the point of saving everyone’s life if they’re just going to…

What if when jumping off a roof, I spontaneously developed the ability to fly? And yet I will not attempt it, and worse, strongly evangelize that roofhopping should be avoided by everyone. How arrogant of me, how presumptuous! Though we cannot tell in every case what the outcome will be, that is no excuse to not consider the odds.

But lots of people did jump off of things with various contraptions and we did eventually develop the ability to fly that way.

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

#339

Post by FeepingCreature »

notahacker wrote: post #336
FeepingCreature wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The position that the virtue of SBF's actions are irrelevant, and he should be judged better than all of us because he could afford to give more money to give away to good outcomes sounds exactly like "buying indulgences" to me. Especially in Scott Aaronson's phrasing where it's the SBF's gross donation spend being ahead of all of ours that we should be impressed by, not the net impact of his actions (which I find di…

Sure, but then the argument is "SBF was bad actually". I agree with this take - this is going to lead to bad outcomes. But note that saying so already embraces a consequentialist framework. This is a common argument for "rules utilitarianism", which is that given human psychology, getting humans to pursue (particular) virtues leads to better outcomes in the real world than getting humans to engage in first-order outcome maximization.

A true virtue-ethics take would be that SBF was inherently ennobled by good behavior or blemished by bad behavior, and the outcomes would have no relevance to this consideration. That's why I said virtue ethics is dead - approximately nobody argues like that today.

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

#340

Post by jmull »

concordDance wrote: post #225
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 und…

Both those 1%s are very unlikely to be anywhere close to being true.

The sci-fi version of AGI that people are imaging now will never exist. No one has any idea how to create AGI now, and therefore, no one knows what it might actually look like if it ever does. Any “solutions” people come up with now will have nothing to do with the problems a real AGI might pose.

If people want to get together and talk about this stuff, that’s great. But if someone wants you to give money to fund research into this, you’re being scammed.

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