"Of course if you’re very skeptical of cryptocurrency you might not find this reassuring — a person running a cryptocurrency exchange for the larger purpose of saving all of humanity might actually be more ruthless in his lobbying practices than someone doing it for something as banal as money."
"This" the newsletter has aged just fine. It's a good introduction to the topic. Certainly not the final word on effective altruism and politics (wasn't trying to be) and Sam Bankman-Fried seemingly screwed over a lot of people but what's wrong with this piece?
I think from the day this was published it left a lot to be further examined and thought about. Which is to be expected. It's a short intro piece as far as I can tell.
Hmm. This the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is what comes to mind. This philosophy sounds extremely convenient. I see their ads in the Ivy League school in which I work. “Don’t be afraid to sell out kids, go work for a hedge fund *and* feel morally superior”. To me it smacks of a secularized prosperity gospel. Its globalist and worse still speculative-futurist outlook are particularly prpblematic. You save the kid in the pond because he, specifically needs you, specifically, here and now. It’s a fallacy to equate this to donation of money for statistically efficient causes across the world let alone speculative preventions of low probability disasters even as you dedicate your talent and energies to dubious career choices rather than say being a teacher a doctor etc and actually earning your living by doing something good and *being a part of your community* while at it. It’s also likely that this philosophy will lead to support for cutting taxes, shrinking the state etc. It may dangerously give people in these jobs a clear job to be even more ruthless and unscrupulous in their actual work, which often damages many many people. At the end of the day a young person may be tempted to choose a career path based on this (sounds like the best of all worlds after all) but that choice will have implications for decades long after the EA fashion goes away, long after their philanthropy may whither or change and in any case whose benefits to society are far more dubious than those of a serious progressive tax system that would have prevented the average financier from having so much spare money to donate in the first place.
If I were the only one around, I would jump in the pond and save the child because if I didn't, no one else would. If I don't donate money to save children thousands of miles away, tens of millions of other people might. That explains the difference, it seems to me.
Great article. One nit, I don’t think you need to be a consequentialist to discuss moral trade offs. Wouldn’t this also be possible in the context of virtue ethics? That’s still hot in academia, right?
I wouldn't describe myself as an Effective Altruist but I think that the movement is overall a very positive force. I have been to a few Rationalist house parties so I understand why some of the weirder aspects of EA may turn people off, but I think this is one of those things where some of the details obscure the big picture. Here is my simplified and steel-manned version of EA and some related topics. Some of these statements may not be true if taken the extreme but are very likely true compared to the status quo (on the margin):
*) (Human) suffering is very bad.
*) Most people don't think or know enough about what they can do to reduce (human) suffering or help others. It would be better if they did more.
*) Most people generally care about helping others to some degree.
*) Humans care most about what's in front of their eyes and people close to them. But all suffering is bad and we should care more about people far from us.
*) Trying to be smart and effective in how you try to reduce suffering is important.
*) It turns out that it's often far cheaper to help poor people in developing countries than those in developed countries.
*) It would be good if we encouraged and celebrated helping others more. It would also be good if we encouraged people to give more towards neglected causes that directly relieve suffering as opposed to e.g. giving more money to universities.
*) We don't think about the future enough.
*) Humanities existence is a good thing and should be protected. (This one may be more controversial, but I'd argue that at least anyone who has children implicitly believes this).
*) There are many things that could endanger the future of humanity or may kill many millions of people that we don't think about or spend money on.
*) AI may be such a thing.
*) We should spend more time thinking about and working on things that will have a large impact on millions of people compared to many of the things we currently think about. This includes people in the future.
I think that a lot of the discussion here has been about particular details (e.g. "Is well directed billionaire philantrophy a net good compared to taxing away all their money", or "Is charity just a fig leaf") and while I think there is a lot of value to some of that I would argue that it's orthogonal to the core principles.
I would argue that a world in which charity (and ideally effective charity) is more strongly emphasized would be a much better world. That's really all there is in the end.
Despite most of my posted comments on EA being critical (mainly centered around wanting the movement to show a bit more humility), I do agree that the sentiment behind it is very good, and we'd be better off if we had more similar sentiment in the world.
I think AGI being so prioritized is like a key for a fundamental flaw in EA reasoning. With AI risk, you really need to think about specifics. Who is using AI for what purpose. AI is not going to just be an entity in the world, doing it's own thing. It's going to be running on some gigantic server farm, owned by some company, and I doubt it's going to get the controls the heart of the sun. Aka it'll most likely be telling us what to do, instead of directly doing things. I find it hard to imagine scenarios where it's "out of control" or there's no off switch!
So what's the key missing insight from EA? It may just be a lack of specificity in thinking. Maybe a lack of listening to experts, few of whom are concerned about EA. Maybe it's an attachment to an image of being smart, when the smartest thing might be more to be like Socrates and be willing to say "I don't know"
“the way that [longtermism] has impacted me most personally is trying to get people to think more seriously about asteroid or comet collisions or supervolcano eruptions.”
Matt, have you read Toby Ord’s The Precipice? Natural risks like these are orders of magnitudes less likely than anthropogenic risks: https://res.cloudinary.com/dwbqmbkdb/image/upload/v1586225593/Table_6.1_td3bzd.png. Getting people to take bio, AI (if you buy the arguments here), or nuclear risks more seriously seems much more pressing.
If everyone just "earned to give", who would actually make the mosquito nets? Isn't there a supply side argument where you're better off doing good things, even if they're valued lower by the market?
You could argue that by creating demand for mosquito nets, you're attracting more productivity into that industry. I don't buy it. It's more effective to just go do the important thing, be it clean energy, pandemic prevention, or education. Maybe this is me tempted to be on the frontlines instead of in an office.
80,000 Hours, the EA career advice site, has discussion about this. You should try to figure out your own comparative advantage. Do you have skills that transfer well to the hedge fund world, or that transfer better to manufacturing bed nets, or something else? Is the hedge fund world paying a lot because they feel like they are lacking people with certain skills, or are they offering lower salaries because they've got plenty? Are the bed net manufacturers desperate for warm bodies to work in the factory, or are they limited by lack of capital?
I was going to point out that I recently heard a good critique on the whole "harvesting organs" critique but then I remembered it was actually Matt on the "80,000 hours" podcast which was an excellent episode.
As with consequentialism in general, Effective Altruism seems primed to fall afoul legit slippery slopes, and descend into either abhorrent and/or absurd territory.
I think that individuals willingly engaging with EA and giving a bunch of their own money away to high-impact charities is definitely a net good in the world.
...but having EA successfully wade into the realms of politics (and the coercion inherent with politics) is frankly kind of terrifying.
Maybe it's that I'm just too old but this column made hardly any sense at all (and yes, I did read Max Weber back in my 1960s college days. My only take is that anyone who is an Effective Altruist should not be funding political campaigns. I have no idea what the political aims of Mr. Bankman-Fried's PAC 'Protect Our Future' are as I disdain PACs in general and believe them to be a pox on politics. If, in fact, millions of $$$ were spent on the losing candidate in this Oregon primary, that money arguably was wasted and in violation of what I perceive to be Effective Altruism.
The opposing view to the above is that Mr. Bankman-Fried engages in politics for the power of it all and is not an Effective Altruist. This is a more disturbing meme, if true. Of course, there is no reason why this type of pattern, so often seen in the Republican Party, would not easily transition over to the Democratic side.
My problem with Give Well and EA in general is the skew toward what can be measured with confidence. I think this steers focus toward straightforward solutions, the sort that can be handled as an engineering problem (e.g. mosquito nets), and away from thornier issues of social change. In those contexts, EA proponents just start to sound obtuse.
Which also makes me skeptical of their impact in politics.
I think with respect to thornier issues of social change, everyone is obtuse because we don't really know how to affect systemic change. If someone has a compelling solution to fix systemic issues, then I would hope EA folks would be on board but if that solution doesn't exist then I'm not sure what tradeoff there actually is in focusing on concrete issues like availability of malaria bed nets. Should we not provide the bed nets because it doesn't fix every systemic issue?
I think the point I'm trying to make is that there are many things worth investing in that don't yet offer clear bang for the buck, and EA not only tends to shy away from them, but at times seems to be arguing that it's morally dubious to invest in a messy process of trying to address them. In order to come up with 'a compelling solution to fix systemic issues' one needs to apply resource into a messy and cost-inefficient space with a high degree of uncertainty. Should we not take on any new R&D effort because each dollar could have bought another net or vaccine vial?
EA's strong bias toward the problems that have already been worked out leaves it unhelpful on the frontiers of difficult problems as yet unsolved. And I'd submit the latter is the bulk of politics.
"Of course if you’re very skeptical of cryptocurrency you might not find this reassuring — a person running a cryptocurrency exchange for the larger purpose of saving all of humanity might actually be more ruthless in his lobbying practices than someone doing it for something as banal as money."
Correct!
This didn't age well 😂.
"This" the newsletter has aged just fine. It's a good introduction to the topic. Certainly not the final word on effective altruism and politics (wasn't trying to be) and Sam Bankman-Fried seemingly screwed over a lot of people but what's wrong with this piece?
I think from the day this was published it left a lot to be further examined and thought about. Which is to be expected. It's a short intro piece as far as I can tell.
ah come on, I was just having a little fun. But I do think Matt is/was too trusting of SBF and the whole EA movement in general.
Lol.
Hmm. This the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is what comes to mind. This philosophy sounds extremely convenient. I see their ads in the Ivy League school in which I work. “Don’t be afraid to sell out kids, go work for a hedge fund *and* feel morally superior”. To me it smacks of a secularized prosperity gospel. Its globalist and worse still speculative-futurist outlook are particularly prpblematic. You save the kid in the pond because he, specifically needs you, specifically, here and now. It’s a fallacy to equate this to donation of money for statistically efficient causes across the world let alone speculative preventions of low probability disasters even as you dedicate your talent and energies to dubious career choices rather than say being a teacher a doctor etc and actually earning your living by doing something good and *being a part of your community* while at it. It’s also likely that this philosophy will lead to support for cutting taxes, shrinking the state etc. It may dangerously give people in these jobs a clear job to be even more ruthless and unscrupulous in their actual work, which often damages many many people. At the end of the day a young person may be tempted to choose a career path based on this (sounds like the best of all worlds after all) but that choice will have implications for decades long after the EA fashion goes away, long after their philanthropy may whither or change and in any case whose benefits to society are far more dubious than those of a serious progressive tax system that would have prevented the average financier from having so much spare money to donate in the first place.
If I were the only one around, I would jump in the pond and save the child because if I didn't, no one else would. If I don't donate money to save children thousands of miles away, tens of millions of other people might. That explains the difference, it seems to me.
Great article. One nit, I don’t think you need to be a consequentialist to discuss moral trade offs. Wouldn’t this also be possible in the context of virtue ethics? That’s still hot in academia, right?
"I have never met the guy"
Why? He would probably talk to you.
I wouldn't describe myself as an Effective Altruist but I think that the movement is overall a very positive force. I have been to a few Rationalist house parties so I understand why some of the weirder aspects of EA may turn people off, but I think this is one of those things where some of the details obscure the big picture. Here is my simplified and steel-manned version of EA and some related topics. Some of these statements may not be true if taken the extreme but are very likely true compared to the status quo (on the margin):
*) (Human) suffering is very bad.
*) Most people don't think or know enough about what they can do to reduce (human) suffering or help others. It would be better if they did more.
*) Most people generally care about helping others to some degree.
*) Humans care most about what's in front of their eyes and people close to them. But all suffering is bad and we should care more about people far from us.
*) Trying to be smart and effective in how you try to reduce suffering is important.
*) It turns out that it's often far cheaper to help poor people in developing countries than those in developed countries.
*) It would be good if we encouraged and celebrated helping others more. It would also be good if we encouraged people to give more towards neglected causes that directly relieve suffering as opposed to e.g. giving more money to universities.
*) We don't think about the future enough.
*) Humanities existence is a good thing and should be protected. (This one may be more controversial, but I'd argue that at least anyone who has children implicitly believes this).
*) There are many things that could endanger the future of humanity or may kill many millions of people that we don't think about or spend money on.
*) AI may be such a thing.
*) We should spend more time thinking about and working on things that will have a large impact on millions of people compared to many of the things we currently think about. This includes people in the future.
I think that a lot of the discussion here has been about particular details (e.g. "Is well directed billionaire philantrophy a net good compared to taxing away all their money", or "Is charity just a fig leaf") and while I think there is a lot of value to some of that I would argue that it's orthogonal to the core principles.
I would argue that a world in which charity (and ideally effective charity) is more strongly emphasized would be a much better world. That's really all there is in the end.
Despite most of my posted comments on EA being critical (mainly centered around wanting the movement to show a bit more humility), I do agree that the sentiment behind it is very good, and we'd be better off if we had more similar sentiment in the world.
I think AGI being so prioritized is like a key for a fundamental flaw in EA reasoning. With AI risk, you really need to think about specifics. Who is using AI for what purpose. AI is not going to just be an entity in the world, doing it's own thing. It's going to be running on some gigantic server farm, owned by some company, and I doubt it's going to get the controls the heart of the sun. Aka it'll most likely be telling us what to do, instead of directly doing things. I find it hard to imagine scenarios where it's "out of control" or there's no off switch!
So what's the key missing insight from EA? It may just be a lack of specificity in thinking. Maybe a lack of listening to experts, few of whom are concerned about EA. Maybe it's an attachment to an image of being smart, when the smartest thing might be more to be like Socrates and be willing to say "I don't know"
“the way that [longtermism] has impacted me most personally is trying to get people to think more seriously about asteroid or comet collisions or supervolcano eruptions.”
Matt, have you read Toby Ord’s The Precipice? Natural risks like these are orders of magnitudes less likely than anthropogenic risks: https://res.cloudinary.com/dwbqmbkdb/image/upload/v1586225593/Table_6.1_td3bzd.png. Getting people to take bio, AI (if you buy the arguments here), or nuclear risks more seriously seems much more pressing.
If everyone just "earned to give", who would actually make the mosquito nets? Isn't there a supply side argument where you're better off doing good things, even if they're valued lower by the market?
You could argue that by creating demand for mosquito nets, you're attracting more productivity into that industry. I don't buy it. It's more effective to just go do the important thing, be it clean energy, pandemic prevention, or education. Maybe this is me tempted to be on the frontlines instead of in an office.
80,000 Hours, the EA career advice site, has discussion about this. You should try to figure out your own comparative advantage. Do you have skills that transfer well to the hedge fund world, or that transfer better to manufacturing bed nets, or something else? Is the hedge fund world paying a lot because they feel like they are lacking people with certain skills, or are they offering lower salaries because they've got plenty? Are the bed net manufacturers desperate for warm bodies to work in the factory, or are they limited by lack of capital?
I was going to point out that I recently heard a good critique on the whole "harvesting organs" critique but then I remembered it was actually Matt on the "80,000 hours" podcast which was an excellent episode.
As with consequentialism in general, Effective Altruism seems primed to fall afoul legit slippery slopes, and descend into either abhorrent and/or absurd territory.
I think that individuals willingly engaging with EA and giving a bunch of their own money away to high-impact charities is definitely a net good in the world.
...but having EA successfully wade into the realms of politics (and the coercion inherent with politics) is frankly kind of terrifying.
Maybe it's that I'm just too old but this column made hardly any sense at all (and yes, I did read Max Weber back in my 1960s college days. My only take is that anyone who is an Effective Altruist should not be funding political campaigns. I have no idea what the political aims of Mr. Bankman-Fried's PAC 'Protect Our Future' are as I disdain PACs in general and believe them to be a pox on politics. If, in fact, millions of $$$ were spent on the losing candidate in this Oregon primary, that money arguably was wasted and in violation of what I perceive to be Effective Altruism.
The opposing view to the above is that Mr. Bankman-Fried engages in politics for the power of it all and is not an Effective Altruist. This is a more disturbing meme, if true. Of course, there is no reason why this type of pattern, so often seen in the Republican Party, would not easily transition over to the Democratic side.
Honest question: In what sense can it be considered "effective" to put $12 million into a House primary race?
Really useful and interesting post. I hope you present this material to wider audiences.
Looks like this one is unpaywalled so that alone will present this to wider audiences.
My problem with Give Well and EA in general is the skew toward what can be measured with confidence. I think this steers focus toward straightforward solutions, the sort that can be handled as an engineering problem (e.g. mosquito nets), and away from thornier issues of social change. In those contexts, EA proponents just start to sound obtuse.
Which also makes me skeptical of their impact in politics.
I think with respect to thornier issues of social change, everyone is obtuse because we don't really know how to affect systemic change. If someone has a compelling solution to fix systemic issues, then I would hope EA folks would be on board but if that solution doesn't exist then I'm not sure what tradeoff there actually is in focusing on concrete issues like availability of malaria bed nets. Should we not provide the bed nets because it doesn't fix every systemic issue?
I think the point I'm trying to make is that there are many things worth investing in that don't yet offer clear bang for the buck, and EA not only tends to shy away from them, but at times seems to be arguing that it's morally dubious to invest in a messy process of trying to address them. In order to come up with 'a compelling solution to fix systemic issues' one needs to apply resource into a messy and cost-inefficient space with a high degree of uncertainty. Should we not take on any new R&D effort because each dollar could have bought another net or vaccine vial?
EA's strong bias toward the problems that have already been worked out leaves it unhelpful on the frontiers of difficult problems as yet unsolved. And I'd submit the latter is the bulk of politics.