351–360 of 417 posts
What? A bunch of autistic male nerds obsessed with how smart they are don't respect women? I'm so suprised. Anyway, I dismissed EA because I dismiss basically all forms of utilitarian ethics. When you try to use math and statistics to form your entire moral basis, you can kinda justify anything you want, and get to some weird contradictory judgements as well.
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That's the same problem as before. Outside of maybe fundamentalist religious people who think their religious text is the final word on everything, everybody agrees that "science" is the best way of finding out the truth. The trouble is that they disagree on what counts as science (ie. which scientists/institutions/studies to trust). When the disagreement is at that level, casually invoking "science" misses the point…
A big problem is we have gone from Feynman saying "science is the disbelief in experts" to "What experts say is true right now is the science".
Back in my day effective altruism was mainly about finding charities that aren't essentially scams (way harder than it looks). Scene has apparently moved on to other things since I followed it a decade or so ago.
This is a super-simplified summary, but I think it's generally accurate. The basic thesis of EA is "it is your duty to improve/save as many human lives as you can." At some point, a lot of EAs realized that there were many more future humans than present humans. Once you widen your scope in that way, you start realizing that long-term, catastrophic risks (climate change, nuclear disaster, misaligned AI) would affect…
Like, there exists some value to the entirety of the Amazon that is higher than that of a human life. Otherwise the terrible logic says that you should devastate the Amazon to just build slum housing and take away birth controls. I'm not arguing for any of this, just stating the premises.
I think we can all agree that the 'value' of the whole Amazon isn't worth bulldozing for slum housing.
So the problem is where you put these fuzzy lines. You've got some extremes that 99.9% of people agree on, where is the middle? Where do you put down a line?
From the VERY little I've read of the EA debates, there seems to be no real work on this? If someone else could synthesize this as a reply, I'd be quite grateful.
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> If there are less cases of abuse than among generic populace Where are you getting this?
They might be saying that this is a series of anecdotes, not a scientific study, so we don’t know.
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I am an EA (in the sense that I believe in the importance of some general principles of the movement, like trying to do the most good, and use data when available -- I don't participate in any organization directly). What I think is the most promising feature of EA is openness to criticism and trying to improve the movement itself. I think SBF was a wake up call and many people in the movement should take note that t…
What’s wrong with fraud if it has positive expected utility? At least if you’re an avowed act utilitarian like SBF.
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I suspect this is location specific though. In the UK my migraine medication was available over the counter, I still had to have a discussion with the pharmacist every time I bought it. Conversely when ever I've needed an actual prescription medication, in an emergency or whatever, that has always had to go through my doctor to get the prescription sorted.
/me also a brit. My go-to pain-relief used to be a product called Codis, which was soluble aspirin+codeine. It used to be available OTC, until about 8 years ago, then it disappeared. You can still buy paracetamol+codeine OTC ("Paracodol?). My understanding is that aspirin causes vasodilation, which causes more rapid absorption of codeine. Supposedly that's why Codis worked better than Paracodol. I don't know why they…
The worst thing about being smart is how easy it is to talk yourself into believing just about anything. After all, you make really good arguments. EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things. Once that happens, it can easily spiral out from there. Peopl…
My favorite aspect of EA is the transparency. Givewell and open phil publish white papers that go into excruciating detail about how they reached their conclusions. You don't have to trust them. Read what they publish and make your own conclusions about how to do good most effectively.
I've also enjoyed the writing of Julia Galef, especially The Scout Mindset, which many in the EA community have embraced as solutions to not only the "too smart for your own good" problem but general divisiveness/tribalism in society.
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The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions. Surely there are people with greater and lesser decision making abilities within that institution?
>The Centre for Effective Altruism has a turnover in the tens of millions Google says that their annual budget is $6M, so I think you're overestimating how much money can be siphoned off. Moreover, given how trendy effective altruism is with young professionals from elite universities, getting a high position will be difficult. Sure, an ivy league graduate could fight tooth and nail to get a position at the CEA that…
The worst thing about being smart is how easy it is to talk yourself into believing just about anything. After all, you make really good arguments. EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things. Once that happens, it can easily spiral out from there. Peopl…
I am out of the loop a bit, so I'll say that first. An acquaintance introduced me to the phrase effective altruism and talked about sending money to a place that's having problems rather than going there yourself, and I just thought, yah, that's a more effective way of being altruistic and went on with my day. I'm just learning that they made it into a cult. Who thought that was a good idea? Just be an effective altr…
EA has a lot of overlap with religion by its very nature. Any moralizing philosophy with dedicated followers will tend to become cultish.
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This is a super-simplified summary, but I think it's generally accurate. The basic thesis of EA is "it is your duty to improve/save as many human lives as you can." At some point, a lot of EAs realized that there were many more future humans than present humans. Once you widen your scope in that way, you start realizing that long-term, catastrophic risks (climate change, nuclear disaster, misaligned AI) would affect…
I forget where I heard it, but one of the issues brought up was that EA never really formalized the 'value' of a life relative to the 'value' of other stuff. Like, there exists some value to the entirety of the Amazon that is higher than that of a human life. Otherwise the terrible logic says that you should devastate the Amazon to just build slum housing and take away birth controls. I'm not arguing for any of this,…