Effective altruism is not effective • Hacker News Board

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#231

Post by tylerhou » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #218

tylerhou wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? A collective, efforts-based, altruistic organization needs funding. If such a organization could demonstrate that their efforts lead to good outcomes (improve happiness, save lives), then effective altruists would donate to them. A legitimate argument is that not everyone can make tons of money and donate because someone has to do the work. But there are plenty of "effective" organizations that are not yet o…

The thing is that money without involvement is poison to collective movements, besides a certain point. Money and involvement is much better. If all you want is to distribute, then sure. Collective movements aren't even the best at straight distribution, so someone trying to maximize the marginal utility of their dollar probably won't even donate. But collective action is generally not just about distribution, and mo…

I agree that both money and involvement is necessary. But in our current world, nonprofits have a lack of money, not lack of involvement. Nonprofits talk all the time about how difficult it is to fundraise. And all the charities GiveWell recommends still have a lack of capital.

I think EA's would 100% want to fix the structure of society, if that method was resource efficient. If you believe that changing the structure of society is more resource efficient (in terms of time or money) than donating to AMF, GiveDirectly, or Deworm the World, please publish your analysis.

How much {money, time, etc.} would it take to convince a government or people to adopt a certain policy? What would the benefits of that policy be? How much pushback would you get from opponents? What are the risks? If you can successfully make an argument that changing a policy would be more resource efficient than current efficient charities, that would convince EAs to direct more resources to politics.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#232

Post by luckylion » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

vecplane wrote: post #4

This reads like a strawman perspective on the concept of 'effective altruism.' The 'effective' part in the term is doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the definition. It seems reasonable to focus on actually 'effective' actions with good outcomes, rather than comparatively ineffective virtual signalling or martyrdom. Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means is more impactful tha…

> Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means is more impactful than being poor and helping dozens.

Is it though? E.g. Bill Gates got insanely rich because his company engaged in anti-competitive behavior, thus causing lots of harm. You can easily make a point that often the damage that is caused to others if larger than the gain for the individual, so even if they spent 100% of their wealth, they couldn't make up for the damage they have caused.

In that case, maybe it's better to look at medicine and the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm.

When a hedge fund analyst meddles with food supply in Ethiopia and makes a killing while a few thousand starve, but then builds a school to educate a hundred kids in Ethiopia... how much good has he done?

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#233

Post by TaylorAlexander » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

Rastonbury wrote: post #165

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also stop requiring poor nations to follow intellectual property laws. If we didn’t make them pay high license fees for medications etc they wouldn’t be so destitute. Broadly speaking if local economies could develop producing and selling clones of important goods, they could grow their own economy more easily. Intellectual property restrictions are a completely human made notion that keeps the powerful wea…

Which particular medications are keeping these people destitute? Which producers of important goods in poor countries are enforcing IP restrictions? In practice, I don't think IP laws are keeping developing countries poor or harming their economic growth, causes of such issues are much more macro

Here’s two articles that discuss these points:

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/26/gates-foundati...

https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Vandana_Shiva_on_the_Contempo...

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#234

Post by pcstl » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #229

pcstl wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for many people the "worse outcome" is no worse than the status quo. Is it really, though? In most cases where the worse outcome did happen, people were convinced they had nothing to lose and went with whatever radical idea was being proposed, then when things went pear-shaped they found out they did have a lot to lose. An extreme example is the Khmer Rouge.

> Is it really, though? Yes, it is. If you're an unhoused diabetic living in the US without access to insulin, it literally doesn't matter if the country is run by Ivy League graduates or uncultured generalissimos. Note that I said "many", not "most". I'm not even making a claim about proportions but in the US alone there is a large quantity of people for whom the status quo is either a death sentence or at least ent…

Well, I'm pretty sure EA isn't really opposed to moderate change or stuff like organizing for, I don't know, people who need insulin or anything like that. The people who usually oppose EA are those who think that there is no solution to societal ills except fully restructuring society into something completely different, and who usually will oppose any kind of charity-based solution on grounds that it might make people tolerate the current conditions longer, thus delaying the necessary complete revolution.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#235

Post by pcstl » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #70

pcstl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's like, three orders off from the kinds of problems that actually happen when you try to do political activism I think this just goes to show how people who live in places with stable political institutions take them for granted and don't value what they have. That you believe that political agitators who aim to destabilize institutions will face no problem greater than issues with fundraising or movement-build…

So, political activism doesn't necessarily mean ending capitalism and demolishing the system. Like, granted, when you play with matches you risk getting burned. But a lot of effective political activism is more about getting petition signatures and pressuring the state legislature to pass an ordinance banning factories from pumping heavy metals into the water table. Stuff that makes a difference, but is monumentally…

Well, political activism doesn't have to be about that, but EA isn't opposed to activism per se. EA is just, by its very nature, opposed to political activism that believes the only way we might make things any better is demolishing the current system and somehow building the perfect one from scratch - because this kind of activism tends to entail the belief that any kind of charity-based solution is a bad thing because it might make people stay longer under the unacceptable system instead of revolting as they rightly should.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#236

Post by pcstl » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #72

pcstl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This risk is inherent in any political action (or inaction) Is your premise here that all actions have the same risk of hijacking by a malicious player? I reject this premise. Solid institutions are usually an effective safeguard against this sort of thing, and radical political action tends to have as its goal to destabilize institutions.

Institutions, like laws, solidify existing power structures, whatever they may be. Though ideologically antipathetic toward each other, the bureaucracies of the U.S. Library of Congress and IngSoc's Ministry of Truth would be more similar than you might think. I think we're disagreeing about the implied premise that trying to solve a charity problem (e.g. ending homelessness) necessitates radical political action, an…

The thing is that, if you don't propose radical political action, there is little to no reason to be opposed to EA. The only reason I can think someone might be opposed to EA is that they believe the only way society might be improved is through revolt and total reform, and therefore any kind of charity-based solution would just be stopping The People from rising up as they rightly should.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#237

Post by FeepingCreature » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #212

FeepingCreature wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No evidence of any AI risks mitigated has ever been produced Of course, no evidence of any AI risks mitigated has ever been promised, nor could there be, since the best current estimate on the singularity is 40 years in the future. > GiveWell founder Holden Karnofsky spent $30m of philanthropic cash buying a board seat on the charitable subsidiary of OpenAI Inc OpenPhil and Givewell are not the same organization. O…

OpenPhil and Givewell are not the same organization and don't support the same causes, but Holden definitely is the same person. If you spend your career arguing that charities need to be more open and evidence-based and focus on cost-effectiveness and metrics, then the fact you sit on the board of a nonprofit which is considerably more opaque than any of them is relevant to the merits of those arguments. (And OpenAI…

> if it's reasonable for EAs to insist that charities distributing food or drugs already widely proven to work conduct RCTs

"Already widely proven to work" seems the stretch here. Lots of things were believed to obviously work that turned out not to.

> See, I can buy the argument that certain types of non-commercial AI research are going to be significant boons for humanity, but I can buy the argument that applies to lots of unproven development interventions too, and that directly undercuts the cost-effectiveness ethos

Sure, but I think the argument isn't "we should only fund things that are proven cost-effective" so much as "we should find out if the things we are funding are cost-effective if possible". I don't think the position here is that only things that are cost-effective should be funded; I think it's more that it's silly that cost-effectiveness seems to be irrelevant to what gets funded. It's not that we need to always gather data and perform trials, it's that we don't do it even if we could.

I think part of what is happening is that effective charity is based primarily on arguments. For instance, a bunch of people got convinced by the argument that a certain charity (bed nets) was the most cost effective; this argument was based on cost-benefit analysis. Then a bunch of people got convinced by the argument that a certain charity (AI safety) was the most cost effective; this argument was based on what seemed to them a plausible forecast of absurd benefits. It's likely to me these people already believed that an AI singularity was coming, they just had a bunch of diffuse thoughts on whether it would be beneficial, and the arguments involved (such as Bostrom's Superintelligence) convinced them that the effort being put into making it beneficial was currently enormously underscaled. So I think the EA field is more "people convinced by logical arguments" than "people convinced by RCTs"; in that the people convinced by RCTs are convinced because RCTs meet their standard for an argument, but are not necessarily the only thing that does.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#238

Post by scotty79 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #173

cycomanic wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The miracle drug is a good example. Sure everyone benefits if it is not expensive. Take the Covid vaccines for example, there are many locations (e.g. In India) that could produce vaccines, however the companies (and the Western countries) do not want to open up the patents, even though we would all (even us in the 1st world) benefit, because eliminating covid as quick as possible would reduce the chance of mutations…

A lot of people seem to think that Bill Gates' influence is largely responsible for the Oxford vaccine being patent-encumbered.

I can't imagine why. Maybe be because Melinda Gates said it herself that they advised Oxford to find strong commercial partner for their vaccine instead not patenting it?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2021/02/...

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#239

Post by scotty79 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 8:17 AM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #216

losvedir wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people believe Q-anon. This is such a shitty, drive by way of asserting something. Do you believe it? If so then make the case, but the way you've dropped this steamy innuendo here without even taking a position on it yourself contributes less than nothing to the discussion.

I haven't looked into it enough; I just remember Cory Doctorow talking about it and thought it was relevant. https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#g... (citing https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine... ). The “a lot” came from the search results for “gates oxford covid patent” (I'd've expected people arguing against it if there was contention in opinion – this isn't the same…

How about this source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2021/02/...

MS. GATES: Well, we, along with many other partners, supported Oxford in saying what really needs to have happened there, they had incredible science, but they had never brought a vaccine to market. And so, they needed to partner with a pharmaceutical company who had expertise bringing a vaccine to market. And so, it was us and many partners that said that's a partnership that ought to happen. Ultimately, Oxford made that decision.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#240

Post by okintheory » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #97

coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means is more impactful than being poor and helping dozens. It's also more self-serving for the better part of it (as your focus is to become rich), and might never reach the second part (actually becoming rich and helping others). It's also bogus: not many can become rich, both for reasons for circumstance making from much harder to nigh impossible for bi…

Sure. So it's possible to focus on getting rich and then never give back. There's a solution to that, which is continuing to give a percentage of your income. Some people are quite charitable and give 10%. I'm a little more selfish and give 1.5%, but this is already currently helping people. Is it really pie in the sky idealism if (statistically) I've saved around 6 lives to far, (and helped many more). Still early i…

Imagine you could make people give 30 % of their income... almost like a tax... but that would be political, not effective.