Effective altruism is this century's biggest idea(economist.com) |
Effective altruism is this century's biggest idea(economist.com) |
Not everything is quantifiable, and even more, not any family of things (investments, in this case) admits a linear ordering (they may even not admit a total order).
There can be incomparable outcomes from actions, and they may be maximal in their suborder.
This is difficult until you stop measuring everything and dedicate a minute to think of ordered trees.
The main problem with the charity from the ultra-wealthy, of course, is that they first materially worsen the world in order to get that wealth, and then they use part of that wealth to partially undo the damage (breaking things is easier than fixing them, after all). Like trying to help to alleviate Africa's problems with clean water when your own mining megacorporation is one of the major drivers of the pollution in the first place.
If this new way of organizing is meant to address the problems of ivory-tower academia, why does it just seem to be reproducing it at (hyper)scale? All in the name of euphemized utilitarianism?
Is there any room here for healthy debate? For academic rigor? For looking to the past? Or is it all just vibes? Just imagining a world where they didn't happen to get all their money from like one guy, but still persevered in their thought. What could that look like? Is it even anything at all?
Iamverysmart tech nerds re-inventing wheels, because they did none of the reading? Say it ain't so!
It’s just last century’s Objectivism with an even more smoke-and-mirrors name.
Effective altruism should have been effectively killed by SBF’s take on consequentialism - that basically the ends justify the means, and the means are all fine because one has egotistically (and narcissistically) omnipotently computed the optimal end result therefore the steps between now and that end are all justified. The problem is the world is a complex messy place, and reason is the slave of the passions, so in the real world it just seems to result in fraud and manipulation and can justify basically any kind of behaviour while making the doer believe they’re acting morally.
It only looks that way because you don't live someplace where malaria is a major problem today and don't need a kidney donation.
Then AirBnB (Illegal hotel)
Then crypto (Money for criminals)
Then came AI (Plagiarism engine)
I'm sure Effective Altruism will find a usecase!
How to fix this problem?
One of the most effective (heh) programs of EA, predating the "EA" name itself, is an explicit halfway measure here, called "Giving What We Can", which advocates for people to donate less to charity than the maximum amount they could; specifically, 10% of their income: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
I didn't find anything that convinced me really, but I guess a more civilized phrasing of what I mean is this
> He also wrote that even from a purely consequentialist perspective, "naive calculations that justify some harmful action because it has good consequences are, in practice, almost never correct"
(Wikipedia quoting William MacAskill, I don't know who that is, I am not a philosopher)
To me all this invokes "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". But I question even whether the intentions are good with some arguments.
Arguing about longtermism and pretending to be able to predict how many humans might be alive very far into the future, to justify current actions: this is the type of argument that I consider grandiose.
We are not very successful at fixing global cooperation problems in the present so far, or ensuring the wellbeing of the next 1-2 generations of hunmans. This is why I feel like this whole philosophy/ethics sounds like a con.
But well, politics on HN, again. Should avoid it.
It's a bit like religion: you claim that all the good stuff is yours and all the bad stuff is the evil people and then you get people to give you lots of money to do more good stuff. But meanwhile you use that money in the first place to enrich yourself.
There are lots of these tech cults, EA, 'The Long Now', The Rationalists and the Freezer Fanatics, all of them have three central themes: gullible people, money and promises and concepts that are so far over the horizon that they can safely make claims in the knowledge they'll never be found out.
That's a very common theme in religion in general. And it works, lots of people fall for it. If you want effective altruism in your life go do something that is actually good or directly (and anonymously) give your money to people in need.
It's not a list of altruistic things that have been done by random people that the EA cult is trying to take credit for, as you seem to be implying; it's a list of specific things done by specific EA cultists and EA cult organizations, so you can credit them to EA. (EA is pretty much just a marketing name for the "rationalists". Although technically you may be able to find a few people who claim to belong to one but not the other, I found a Russian printed copy of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on a conference room coffee table at Mox.)
It seems fair to criticize EA for the harm done by its cult aspects, but not to claim that they aren't doing the beneficial things they are in fact doing. I'm not a big fan of the guilt-by-association switcheroo you're trying to get away with here, either.
The EAs have saved about 40 people's lives since your first comment in this thread. I sure haven't done that. How about you?
No, I did not, though pro-rata I've done my bit and then some. But I also did not commit any crimes. And you can't be equally sure about those associated with EA.
On average, each of those 13000 people have saved a dozen or two lives.
As for crimes, I can't be sure at all that you haven't committed any crimes. And neither can you! If you've ever been to the US, you almost certainly have!