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Effective altruism is not effective

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Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#61

Post by Uehreka »

pcstl wrote: post #43

This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change. Of course, we can just assume everything goes well, we agitate for political change, we get a change for the better, everything is great. But the risk of a different outcome never seems to be taken into consideration. For instance: We believe the conditions in our country are unfair…

I'd push back that a lot of the anti-political-activism stuff I see from EA people seems even more hand-wavy. Political activism has such enormous potential that any argument against it needs to be exceptionally strong. Now don't get me wrong, there are totally bits of conventional wisdom in political activism that I think are the exact kind of ineffective-but-makes-me-feel-good stuff that drive EA people nuts. I have hot takes about the oversaturation of phone-banking and door-knocking in presidential elections (although I'm searching for more evidence one way or the other before I make that argument in earnest).

But the problem with arguments like "there's a non-ignorable chance that a military strongman could hijack our movement" is that that's like, three orders off from the kinds of problems that actually happen when you try to do political activism. I'm sure some activists are worried about that in the abstract, but the way more salient issues have to do with things like fundraising, cultivating movements in places where they don't exist yet, vetting candidates (particularly in local races where people come out of nowhere), forming coalitions between groups that don't think they have much in common, etc.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#62

Post by pcstl »

mLuby wrote: post #51
pcstl wrote: post #43

This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change. Of course, we can just assume everything goes well, we agitate for political change, we get a change for the better, everything is great. But the risk of a different outcome never seems to be taken into consideration. For instance: We believe the conditions in our country are unfair…

> We start agitating and take down vital institutions in the name of change. Our movement gets hijacked by a military strongman who happens to be charismatic and liked by the people, and now we're under a brutal military dictatorship. This risk is inherent in any political action (or inaction), and it could happen just as easily with a citizenry of Effective Altruists as with a bunch of scrooges. Charity and authorit…

>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.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#63

Post by vecplane »

monktastic1 wrote: post #36
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…

But the "effective" part means more than just that. From their site: > It is a research field which uses high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help others as much as possible. This assumes that reasoning and evidence are sufficient to determine what will be most effective. Compare this to the Buddhists, for example, who believe that the networks of causality are so complex and intricate that…

My point is that you can have both, but rich people have the means to be more 'effective' with their altruism (EDIT: across a wider population).

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#64

Post by Robotbeat »

slibhb wrote: post #41

For a more interesting critique of Effective Altruism and Peter Singer see: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/05/21/how-and-how-not-... Effective Altruism is a particularly base version of utilitarianism. It cheerfully accepts situations where you would be required to eat your grandmother or allow your child to starve in order to feed a village of people you've never met in another country. Peter Singer argues th…

> Do you believe the earth is overpopulated? If so, and if you cannot live in such a way as to offset the damage caused by your existence, effective altruism calls for suicide.

I think that has a lot more to say about the belief the Earth is overpopulated (and the idea that living in a way to offset that damage is impossible) than EA. There are several pretty substantially misanthropic implications in this common belief that are not often well-examined, and (flaws with the EA approach aside) that a proper rational approach seems to point to a pretty drastic solution should cause us to re-examine these super commonly held (and flippantly repeated) ideas.

People say so flippantly that the Earth is overpopulated and there’s nothing I can individually do to offset my negative contribution, and that is just sort of jaw-dropping to me. I don’t think that realization is helpful, and I certainly don’t think you should blame effective altruism for pointing out the logical consequences.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#65

Post by pcstl »

Uehreka wrote: post #61
pcstl wrote: post #43

This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change. Of course, we can just assume everything goes well, we agitate for political change, we get a change for the better, everything is great. But the risk of a different outcome never seems to be taken into consideration. For instance: We believe the conditions in our country are unfair…

I'd push back that a lot of the anti-political-activism stuff I see from EA people seems even more hand-wavy. Political activism has such enormous potential that any argument against it needs to be exceptionally strong. Now don't get me wrong, there are totally bits of conventional wisdom in political activism that I think are the exact kind of ineffective-but-makes-me-feel-good stuff that drive EA people nuts. I hav…

>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-building just goes to show that the conditions you live in are exceptionally stable.

In most of the world, movements for change being taken over by malicious, self-interested players is a very real, very serious risk.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#66

Post by seoaeu »

skybrian wrote: post #38
seoaeu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can individually choose to donate to political causes. Obviously anyone but the wealthiest can't single handedly influence large scale policy making, but lobbying and advocacy can have an outsized influence. Edit: Consider that lobbying has an ROI of something like 1000x. If you can be anywhere close to that effective at directing government spending towards foreign aid, poverty reduction, public health, etc. the…

This is true, but the problem is that you rarely know if political advocacy will work until after it succeeds, and even afterwards, it may take a while to study the impact of the change. GiveWell did study some political advocacy groups, but apparently it’s just hard to know what to recommend with confidence. There is a spin-off organization (Open Philanthropy) that uses funds from rich philanthropists to do more exp…

You don't need to know whether a specific advocacy effort will work, only to estimate whether the overall expected value is high enough. And we know that when advocacy succeeds it can have upsides many many times the cost put in (and there aren't that many advocacy movements) so there is at least some hint that the expected value is large.

It feels kind of like a cop-out to say that you shouldn't pursue political change because you can't quantify how much good you'll do.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#67

Post by Karrot_Kream »

pcstl wrote: post #43

This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change. Of course, we can just assume everything goes well, we agitate for political change, we get a change for the better, everything is great. But the risk of a different outcome never seems to be taken into consideration. For instance: We believe the conditions in our country are unfair…

> This article illustrates a big issue with people opposed to EA - they severely underestimate the risks associated with political change.

I think there is very little risk associated with political change, but the risk associated increases with the magnitude of political change. The fact that this even comes up makes me feel like most folks haven't actually tried to organize for a political cause. Yes, there are hot-button issues of our time, such as housing, healthcare, and UBI. But the vast majority of issues, from Celiac's sufferers to folks with nut allergies, are often a case of lack of awareness and resources rather than anything else.

There's also ways to derisk political participation, but that's a separate conversation.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#68

Post by gatlin »

I heard about EA from a person I respect, and so that really colored my perception of it because I think he, specifically, wouldn't do such a bad job. But having some time to think about it, that's really the problem with it: we have a need for altruism to begin with largely due to the concentration of resources (=> power) in the hands of a few to wield for everyone else. It's a cute example and certainly no substitute for a more comprehensive argument, but: we have enough food for everyone on Earth - it is purely a property rights issue that we can't connect more hungry mouths with more uneaten food. There's no R&D to be done, there's no unsolved problem with a bounty on it: the commodification of food has guaranteed a huge amount of waste we can do nothing about because the market over-produces for big brained logistics reasons; and a bizarre web of property and tort law means it's even illegal to go diving into a dumpster for some of this wasted food, even if you're starving, because that's trespassing. And we wouldn't want a _lawless society_, would we? /s

The problem is is ultimately the concentration of power (in whatever form it takes, money or otherwise) in the hands of a few. EA claims that doing more of the thing that causes these huge problems like hunger and homelessness will actually somehow cause less of it. And if you think I'm being reductive, fine, but I would ask that you point out what I'm reducing and why it shouldn't have been.

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#69

Post by benkuhn »

dundarious wrote: post #30
benkuhn wrote: post #19

This article completely mischaracterizes the beliefs of most of the people quoted or referenced, then engages with those beliefs only via asserting the opposite without any supporting argument. I'm disappointed. For example: > The most charitable explanation of Singer’s dismissal of political action is that he is trying to sell being an altruist and he thinks a consumer -hero version is the one people are most likely…

> Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change. That’s not a universally true statement about 80,000 hours. I took their career choice questionna…

For more concrete data: If you look at their current "key ideas" page,[1] they go over 4 categories of high-impact careers (notably including government/policy) and then say "if you think none of the categories above are a great fit for you, we’d encourage you to consider earning to give. It’s also worth considering this option if you have an unusually good fit for a very high-earning career."

This post[2] suggests 80k's key researchers think about 15% of people interested in EA would be the best fit for earning to give, while 10% of people attending an EA-themed conference were perfectly planning to.

I don't think criticizing effective altruism based on the assertion that it's mostly about earning-to-give is reasonable given those numbers or the framing in 80k's "key ideas" post.

[1]: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories [2]: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/...

Re: Effective altruism is not effective

#70

Post by Uehreka »

pcstl wrote: post #65
Uehreka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd push back that a lot of the anti-political-activism stuff I see from EA people seems even more hand-wavy. Political activism has such enormous potential that any argument against it needs to be exceptionally strong. Now don't get me wrong, there are totally bits of conventional wisdom in political activism that I think are the exact kind of ineffective-but-makes-me-feel-good stuff that drive EA people nuts. I hav…

>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 boring (and admittedly, stuff I personally haven't done enough of).

[Edit - And before someone makes a dig about environmentalism-for-its-own-sake: In the above hypothetical, the factories are near an aquifer and there are concerns about drinking water.]

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