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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?

#261

Post by bootsmann »

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…

> 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.

I have yet to see anyone who argues this point show sufficient knowledge of the current state of AI research to credibly make it. If you live in the fantasy world where AI is just an arbitrary construct that can do whatever task by itself it is an easy point to make but anyone who is down and getting their hands dirty in the pile of linear algebra that makes up current AI knows that there is not even a credible pathway to creating an AGI in current research (i.e. you cannot optimize for a task you don't know at train time and if you are optimizing for a specific task you are not creating a general AI).

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

#262

Post by astrange »

radu_floricica wrote: post #136
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…

Oh my god, it ENCOURAGES you to do something it believes is right and you don't. This is outright CRIMINAL. How do they dare do something so audacious? Sorry for the cringe, but really - you're actually saying that encouraging people to do what they think is right is a problem? Especially when they've actually read the books, done the numbers, and all you have is a feeling that they may be wrong in some cases? I can'…

“A feeling someone is wrong” can easily be more correct than “doing the numbers”.

Are eggplants fruits? Yes. Do you feel you should put them in a fruit cup? No.

This is called “the map is not the territory”.

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

#263

Post by pyb »

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.

Are EAs now patting themselves in the back for all the altruism that came before them? That's weird but on-brand. "We are responsible for all altruism, wherever it happened in space or time!"

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

#265

Post by Joeboy »

blitzar wrote: post #255
Joeboy wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are surely two separate issues here? One is whether it's bad to eg. take first world crypto investors' money and use it to stop hundreds of thousands of people dying of preventable diseases in developing countries. Personally, I think not really, or at least it'd be an odd thing to be upset about? Happy to hear the arguments in favour of huge numbers of preventable deaths. Where that narrative gets problematic…

One is whether it's bad to eg. take first world Professional software developers' money and use it to stop hundreds of thousands of people dying of preventable diseases in developing countries. Personally, I think not really, or at least it'd be an odd thing to be upset about?

I think you're making that comment with the idea that it's self-evidently wrong? Do I understand you correctly?

I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths" part. I don't get how on earth people weigh that as less important than the financial welfare of relatively well-off people in richer countries. Maybe this is some basic failure of humanity on my part.

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by blitzar »

heavyset_go wrote: post #130
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…

> 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"

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

#268

Post by nl »

dchftcs wrote: post #230
nl wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> potential risks of AI sounds the opposite of the position of someone who would think technology can solve everything.

Yes, that's a logical conclusion, but it's not right because of the weird "longtermist" logic. Their "AI risk research" is about AI alignment, which is a "longtermist" priority.

To repost my previous quote:

> Many longtermists reckon that the antidote to the threat from technology is more technology; mastering artificial intelligence will forestall a malevolent AI from enslaving us. They also believe that technological acceleration is morally good in its own right.

This is the "acceleratist view" of AI research, of which Nick Bostrom is a prominent proponent: basically he views progress as inevitable, so it's best to accelerate AI that is aligned with human values. See https://nickbostrom.com/papers/openness.pdf

He also values future lives equally to existing lives (the "longtermist" view) so any timme where we aren't expanding to the stars is morally repugnant:

> One recent paper speculates, using loose theoretical considerations based on the rate of increase of entropy, that the loss of potential human lives in our own galactic supercluster is at least ~10^46 per century of delayed colonization. [snip] The effect on total value, then, seems greater for actions that accelerate technological development than for practically any other possible action.

Let me requote that:

The effect on total value, then, seems greater for actions that accelerate technological development than for practically any other possible action.

https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste

I'd highly recommend you read the linked article this discussion is about. It goes into some depth about on these points.

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

#269

Post by bendbro »

kazinator wrote: post #191
vzqx wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give 10% of your income, you're still keeping 90% for yourself. So it implies you consider yourself nine times as valuable as all other humans. I'm not on board with Effective Altruism, but 10% of your income seems like a reasonable amount to give to those less fortunate.

> So it implies you consider yourself nine times as valuable as all other humans. Yes. all other humans combined .

Based. Other people suck.

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

#270

Post by blitzar »

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…

But the theatre has a chance of spawning a future movie star who also has a chance of being an EA advocate. Directly through their $50million movie paycheques they will be saving 10,000 lives at a future date.

Thus by chosing to repair the community theatre you are directly causing the death of 9,978 people.

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