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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?

#211

Post by tamirzb »

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…

While I definitely think you have a point, I'm still not sure I have a better idea of how to do good. Perhaps you have though? (genuinely asking)

I work in tech and definitely make more than I need. I work for a small company (and don't even have any employees under me) so I'd at least like to think that I'm not that involved in exploiting people in order to make money.

Now the question that I have is what do I do with the excess money I'm making, especially since I do actually agree with you about the not accumulating wealth part. One option is of course spending a lot of time analysing charities to figure out which one I think would be the best to donate to, but while I'm still not completely ruling it out, I feel like that would make analysing charities almost a part time job. Since at least at the moment i don't want to do that, I still settled on donating based on GiveWell's recommendations, essentially outsourcing the charities analysis. I am aware that GiveWell and I probably don't share 100% of our values, but I truly don't see a better option.

So really, if you, or anyone else, has a better idea of what I can do with the excess money I'm making, I'd be more than happy to listen.

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

#212

Post by Tenoke »

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…

Sorry, scientology? This comes off as pretty bad faith.

Most EAs are people like me who read some essays, setup some recurring donations to GiveWell and call it a day. If that's how being a scientology member goes then it must be milder than I've been led to believe.

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

#213

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

JamesBarney wrote: post #152
hardwaregeek wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm confused as to what you mean by a mugging? Genuinely not sure what you meant by that. Anyways, I never said any specifics about where this community theater is being built. I don't know where heat stroke came from. Sure, yeah, in the straw man situation of building a community theater in an extremely hot area, where the only labor is teenagers, I would...not enlist teenagers to build a community theater in…

The point is you wouldn't endanger the lives of teenagers to build a community theater because you believe the lives of teenagers are more valuable than a community theater. But repairing a community theater could easily cost $100,000 which would save the lives of ~22 people in Guinea if donated to certain bed net charities. And even the most die hard theater fans probably wouldn't save a theater if to do so it would…

No. This ignores the effect of donating locally and helping local causes. Your comparison does not account for global differences in needs.

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

#214

Post by dagw »

zdragnar wrote: post #139
hardwaregeek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...when did this become an either/or? We can do both. In fact diversification of one's "ethics portfolio" seems like something an effective altruist would understand quite well.

People have a finite amount of money to give, so every dollar is an either/or decision. Every dollar you spend on a theater donation is a dollar less that you value human lives. Of course, the same logic applies to candy bars, internet, television, and all the things that being you joy in life.

But much like with investing in stock I don't know for sure a priori which investment will bring the highest return. If I'm 80% sure that charity A is better than charity B (for my definition of 'better) I'll give 80% of my investment to charity A and 20% to charity B.

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

#215

Post by didibus »

JamesBarney wrote: post #156
pavlov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This game can go on endlessly. What if hiring the teenagers mean they’re getting a salary, can help their families, and without the job they’d run off into the jungle to join the warlord who runs a murder cult army? Turns out the community theatre prevented a massacre and one of the kids wins the Nobel Prize for her plays in fifty years.

I don't understand the purpose of your what if. Mine was specifically to be an intuition pump to see how valuable the OP thinks a theater is when weighed against actual lives. It's easy to say x is important where x is saving sea turtles, teaching kids to read, or repairing a community theaters. It's harder to say x is more important than y charity when y charity saves lives effectively.

You did straw man the example though. It's very different to say that building the theater will kill the workers, as to say that the money could be used elsewhere to save someone in an immediately dire situation.

Building a community theater with good working conditions might have a big impact on the community around it and could go end up saving lives down the road, or dramatically improving the quality of life of many.

It's very hard to quantity the impact of the community theater against say feeding 100 people for one week. All these people could die the week after, was it really sustainable improvements or just temporary relief?

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

#216

Post by Aachen »

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 thought the idea was that, provided you want to achieve X in the world, it's likely suboptimal.

Not wrong or bad as people in this thread seem to universally interpret it, but if you want to optimize for animal welfare, you might be better off doing something about farm animals rather than donating to a local shelter. If that turns out to be too far removed from your personal situation to care about, okay then apparently that's not your priority and that is fine. But between the things you spend effort or money on, it's worth looking into what is the most effective means to your end.

I am not involved in this whole thing in any way but that's what I thought the underlying idea was. Not an explicit dig at those who already try to do good, not at all... (Edit: realization: and that method of making people feel bad wouldn't be very altruistic nor effective right?)

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

#217

Post by npteljes »

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…

>most altruism is not effective. Like oh your altruism is not that productive, but my altruism, well it's effective altruism.

I unironically think this. In Hungary where I live, if you don't care about these things much but still want to contribute somewhat to society by charity, the first lines of contact will mostly be crooks that feed on goodwill. There will be beggars, organized into groups, charities that don't exist or have such an overhead that only a single percent goes to the actual cause, corporations that take your donation and then boast with the amount as if they were the ones giving it, and charities that are popular but are actually fronts for ideologies, or churches, and frauds like people collecting clothes for the poor, only to sell them abroad. These entities grind up a large amount of goodwill, while producing little or negative value for mankind. So yes - the altruism of the people donating to entities like this does fuck-all, while I imagine that if someone researches a bit, they will be more likely to give to entities that contribute more.

With that being said, I don't like the EA people either. But the concept is valid.

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

#218

Post by froggychairs »

devilsbabe wrote: post #193
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…

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) or that many of these AI Safety researchers actively ignore how to reduce harms of the AI we have deployed today.

This existential measuring contest is just so odd and unnecessary. I really don’t care if you think AI Safety is a legitimate problem. I personally don’t but it’s when they begin to downplay others actual catastrophes that many of us take issue.

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

#219

Post by paganel »

> Nick Beckstead, the chief executive of the ftx Foundation, wrote in a PhD dissertation completed in 2013 that “It now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal.” Why? The former has the potential to create more long-term value and therefore save more lives.

Bringing racism and eugenics to a whole new "intellectual" and rationalist level. Sad that it took the swindling of $10-15 billions for all of this to come to light.

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

#220

Post by smallnamespace »

probably_wrong wrote: post #195
ALittleLight wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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