- First, the limited version of effective altruism (best embodied by GiveWell) is obviously right. If you're going to give money away philanthropically or spend time on causes, make some effort to give it to those who can make the most of it or to work on causes that are going to do the most good. The idea that somehow SBF's failings somehow undermined this idea is silly.
- Second, that doesn't mean that you have to limit your money to supporting causes like GiveWell. It's wonderful to save lives, but there are other things that matter in the world too. A world where everyone focused only on saving lives' at the expense of the arts, cultivating community, etc. would be a lesser place. It's wonderful that the world had folks like Paul Farmer, and it would be a better place if there were many more like him. At the same time, a world made up of only Paul Farmers would not be such a wonderful world.
- Third, and this is point of Yascha's piece that I most agree with, it's important to know oneself. Spending money, time, and energy on pursuits that aren't philanthropic (or that don't maximize one's philanthropy) is not wrong. But it should be balanced that money, time, and energy that are spent on these causes (at least across societies), and we need to be careful lest this become a justification for hedonism and self-aggrandizement.
I agree. Few, if any, people will ever be purely altruistic, and pushing for the impossible always backfires. Best allow for quite a bit of self-interest.
One - The Shirky Principle: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” In other words, organizations, like parasites, must be careful not to destroy the very problems they were designed to solve, lest they find themselves without purpose, meaning and work. Related to this, activism is a thing for productive people to do temporarily as they take time off from their productive endeavors. Making a career out of it, or having nothing better to do, corrupts the social benefit which should always be to attempt to achieve some specific outcome and then be done.
Two - The two moral extremes: egalitarianism, and egoism – the view that the system either takes care of everyone or everyone should be free and expected to take care of themselves – have defined the primary ideological battles throughout most of modernity. However, what everyone seems to get wrong is that the design of this Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth that is described as a democratic capitalist constitutional republic is one that leveraged the realization in common human behavior that the latter best derives the former with only a bit of oversight to prevent too much consolidated control... and the resulting tyranny that always results from too much consolidated control.
In other words spending so much energy to engineer outcomes to meet some utopian vision of perfect egalitarianism is counter to both human nature and ultimately causes more egoism and resulting inequity. Actual beneficial activism if the honest goal is a more equal society (and I doubt that is the actual goal for many so committed to their activist identity) would be to advocate for more individual opportunity... paths to economic achievement and general self-sufficiency. A good example of how this might look is activism to retool the public education system to adopt a mission for preparing each and every student for his/her next step toward an economic self-sufficient life and the increased social status that derives from it. The problem with this for the activist is that achieving this goal means that the activist loses their own pursuit of status while also causing more competition having enabled more graduates to achieve at higher levels.
And then this gets us back full circle to the root cause of the problem... that activism is a career and industry and not a temporary endeavor to achieve a specific outcome.
I think what we need in this country is to force all non-profit corporations to establish a mission and goals that have to be adhered to and reported every year, and their non-profit status revoked if failing to both comply with their mission and/or materially fail to achieve their goals. This would prevent mission drift and the Shirky Principle and cause fewer people to defend their NGO career and seek productive work instead.
Your thought #1 is extremely important for analyzing the far left today. DEI comes to mind quickly. But Kendi etc. also spend a lot of time deprecating "respectability politics" by which they actually mean taking responsibility, which is how they themselves succeeded. This has actually been going on since 1965 when Johnson's most ambitious equality proposal was derailed by the, as yet unnamed, Black Power Movement. It might have put them out of job.
Thanks for another fascinating essay. I've completely agreed with your analysis since the late 1960s when I first thought about practicing effective altruism. However, I'd like to share a way in which it can still fail, and explain why this comment is part of a 20-year, last-ditch effort to succeed at it. Wish me luck.
As a senior at UC Berkeley studying math, I took a grad course in finite-state machines (the theory of computers, including AI). My professor, who awarded me an A+ for the course, suggested I go into software and earn a fortune. As was common then, I believed money would corrupt me, so I taught science at a rural middle school instead.
Teaching, given my introversion, proved too difficult. So, I pursued a Ph.D. in economics as a way to apply math to politics. However, I only found a highly ineffective environmentalist job at Berkeley’s lab. Out of the blue, I received a consulting offer that more than tripled my income, and I discovered that money did not corrupt me — my car is 23 years old, and I still find it difficult to spend money. Perhaps your psychology rule should be: Those who think they won't be corrupted, will be, and vice versa.
Now: Why is this comment my attempt at effective altruism?
Since 2003, I’ve studied what’s going wrong with left politics and experimented online with how to fix it. Then on June 30, 2020 I discovered Persuasion:
“... This is why I have grown convinced that we need to build a new community of thinkers, activists, and citizens that is committed to defending and reinvigorating the values of a free and fair society. That is the goal of Persuasion.” —Yascha Mounk
Seeing that you were an effective activist and, very surprisingly, also analyzed things scientifically, I decided Persuasion was my best hope. As a political activist and as a consultant, I’ve always been willing to do whatever was needed (e.g. buying a mimeograph machine and producing thousands of leaflets for the fledgling Berkeley Citizens Action), so I naively thought there would be some way to help out at Persuasion.
After all, its goal was to build a “community of thinkers, activists, and citizens … “ I had the skills, the motivation, time, and a willingness to do whatever was necessary. And I still do.
Despite having consulted for major institutions like the World Bank and the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change, as well as medium-sized corporations (while never once hanging out my shingle to let it be known that I was available) I've found the bureaucracy within the realm of political altruism to be surprisingly perplexing. It seems that even with your profound insights, achieving success in effective political altruism remains a challenge.
I assure you, I've explored every avenue I can imagine. My strongest suspicion is that my lack of journalistic experience is the obstacle. Regardless, I'm enthusiastic about your new weekly essay blog, and I'm hopeful it might provide a way to connect.
Each week I download and carefully study your essay, striving to contribute a constructive comment. I also try to encourage others in the hopes of inspiring some sense of community. We seem to think about things almost identically, and I’m sure there must be some small way in which I could help the Persuasion community succeed.
In fact, I still believe, as you wrote on July 5, 2020, that “a bunch of us … really [could] make a difference to the future of free societies in the United States and around the world,” if we form a community.
Well reasoned, but I fail to see much difference between a version of Effective Altruism stripped of its many flashy fallacies down to just its insightful core and... plain old fashioned altruism? Maybe there is some aspect of being pickier about what projects you support but that concept is just like good governance, it doesn't need a whole name brand movement.
Great piece, both in recognizing things we should keep and areas where EA goes astray.
I'm a little emotionally reactive about EA (and utilitarianism in general); I feel like the movement is basically a continual mantra of "you're not good enough" which tends to upset me. So take what I say below with that in mind.
One of my biggest frustrations is that I feel like EA smuggles in the idea of *what is moral* under the idea that they are simply talking about how *effective* one's altruism is. It's not "Effective [Altruism as Defined by You]." It's "Effective [Altruism as Defined by Us]." So it seems innocuous; who could argue with the idea that we should try to avoid inefficiency in our giving?
But by "efficient" they mean achieving quantitatively more good of the type they favor. If I favor donating to a local music school that provides scholarships for poor students who couldn't afford either lessons or instruments, they don't really care if I do that effectively or not; the goal itself is a waste because I could "so much more good" by donating the same amount of money to, say, mosquito nets. Go mind your own business I don't have to do *your* idea of good. It's not *immoral* for me to decide to give in a different manner, any more than it's immoral for me to decide that there *is* a difference between a child drowning as I walk by and a child dying of hunger 10,000 miles away (there is a difference, and it has to do with knowledge of the context and the solution, the extremely short timeframe over which the intervention takes place, the total lack of intermediation...and on and on; there's a difference and it's not small, and the fact that an EA thinks there's not simply indicates to me how distorted their premises are).
" He was 27 when he founded his crypto exchange, started to get seriously rich, and became accustomed to his lavish lifestyle. He was 31 on the day he was apprehended for stealing from his customers at a massive scale."
Did he "start to get seriously rich" before he started stealing at a massive scale, or is stealing at a massive scale how he got seriously rich? My impression was it's the latter, but I'm not certain.
A few thoughts:
- First, the limited version of effective altruism (best embodied by GiveWell) is obviously right. If you're going to give money away philanthropically or spend time on causes, make some effort to give it to those who can make the most of it or to work on causes that are going to do the most good. The idea that somehow SBF's failings somehow undermined this idea is silly.
- Second, that doesn't mean that you have to limit your money to supporting causes like GiveWell. It's wonderful to save lives, but there are other things that matter in the world too. A world where everyone focused only on saving lives' at the expense of the arts, cultivating community, etc. would be a lesser place. It's wonderful that the world had folks like Paul Farmer, and it would be a better place if there were many more like him. At the same time, a world made up of only Paul Farmers would not be such a wonderful world.
- Third, and this is point of Yascha's piece that I most agree with, it's important to know oneself. Spending money, time, and energy on pursuits that aren't philanthropic (or that don't maximize one's philanthropy) is not wrong. But it should be balanced that money, time, and energy that are spent on these causes (at least across societies), and we need to be careful lest this become a justification for hedonism and self-aggrandizement.
I agree. Few, if any, people will ever be purely altruistic, and pushing for the impossible always backfires. Best allow for quite a bit of self-interest.
Two thoughts related to this.
One - The Shirky Principle: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” In other words, organizations, like parasites, must be careful not to destroy the very problems they were designed to solve, lest they find themselves without purpose, meaning and work. Related to this, activism is a thing for productive people to do temporarily as they take time off from their productive endeavors. Making a career out of it, or having nothing better to do, corrupts the social benefit which should always be to attempt to achieve some specific outcome and then be done.
Two - The two moral extremes: egalitarianism, and egoism – the view that the system either takes care of everyone or everyone should be free and expected to take care of themselves – have defined the primary ideological battles throughout most of modernity. However, what everyone seems to get wrong is that the design of this Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth that is described as a democratic capitalist constitutional republic is one that leveraged the realization in common human behavior that the latter best derives the former with only a bit of oversight to prevent too much consolidated control... and the resulting tyranny that always results from too much consolidated control.
In other words spending so much energy to engineer outcomes to meet some utopian vision of perfect egalitarianism is counter to both human nature and ultimately causes more egoism and resulting inequity. Actual beneficial activism if the honest goal is a more equal society (and I doubt that is the actual goal for many so committed to their activist identity) would be to advocate for more individual opportunity... paths to economic achievement and general self-sufficiency. A good example of how this might look is activism to retool the public education system to adopt a mission for preparing each and every student for his/her next step toward an economic self-sufficient life and the increased social status that derives from it. The problem with this for the activist is that achieving this goal means that the activist loses their own pursuit of status while also causing more competition having enabled more graduates to achieve at higher levels.
And then this gets us back full circle to the root cause of the problem... that activism is a career and industry and not a temporary endeavor to achieve a specific outcome.
I think what we need in this country is to force all non-profit corporations to establish a mission and goals that have to be adhered to and reported every year, and their non-profit status revoked if failing to both comply with their mission and/or materially fail to achieve their goals. This would prevent mission drift and the Shirky Principle and cause fewer people to defend their NGO career and seek productive work instead.
Your thought #1 is extremely important for analyzing the far left today. DEI comes to mind quickly. But Kendi etc. also spend a lot of time deprecating "respectability politics" by which they actually mean taking responsibility, which is how they themselves succeeded. This has actually been going on since 1965 when Johnson's most ambitious equality proposal was derailed by the, as yet unnamed, Black Power Movement. It might have put them out of job.
Nice! So many nuggets in that comment that I shall cut and paste it to remember them all.
Thanks for another fascinating essay. I've completely agreed with your analysis since the late 1960s when I first thought about practicing effective altruism. However, I'd like to share a way in which it can still fail, and explain why this comment is part of a 20-year, last-ditch effort to succeed at it. Wish me luck.
As a senior at UC Berkeley studying math, I took a grad course in finite-state machines (the theory of computers, including AI). My professor, who awarded me an A+ for the course, suggested I go into software and earn a fortune. As was common then, I believed money would corrupt me, so I taught science at a rural middle school instead.
Teaching, given my introversion, proved too difficult. So, I pursued a Ph.D. in economics as a way to apply math to politics. However, I only found a highly ineffective environmentalist job at Berkeley’s lab. Out of the blue, I received a consulting offer that more than tripled my income, and I discovered that money did not corrupt me — my car is 23 years old, and I still find it difficult to spend money. Perhaps your psychology rule should be: Those who think they won't be corrupted, will be, and vice versa.
Now: Why is this comment my attempt at effective altruism?
Since 2003, I’ve studied what’s going wrong with left politics and experimented online with how to fix it. Then on June 30, 2020 I discovered Persuasion:
“... This is why I have grown convinced that we need to build a new community of thinkers, activists, and citizens that is committed to defending and reinvigorating the values of a free and fair society. That is the goal of Persuasion.” —Yascha Mounk
Seeing that you were an effective activist and, very surprisingly, also analyzed things scientifically, I decided Persuasion was my best hope. As a political activist and as a consultant, I’ve always been willing to do whatever was needed (e.g. buying a mimeograph machine and producing thousands of leaflets for the fledgling Berkeley Citizens Action), so I naively thought there would be some way to help out at Persuasion.
After all, its goal was to build a “community of thinkers, activists, and citizens … “ I had the skills, the motivation, time, and a willingness to do whatever was necessary. And I still do.
Despite having consulted for major institutions like the World Bank and the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change, as well as medium-sized corporations (while never once hanging out my shingle to let it be known that I was available) I've found the bureaucracy within the realm of political altruism to be surprisingly perplexing. It seems that even with your profound insights, achieving success in effective political altruism remains a challenge.
I assure you, I've explored every avenue I can imagine. My strongest suspicion is that my lack of journalistic experience is the obstacle. Regardless, I'm enthusiastic about your new weekly essay blog, and I'm hopeful it might provide a way to connect.
Each week I download and carefully study your essay, striving to contribute a constructive comment. I also try to encourage others in the hopes of inspiring some sense of community. We seem to think about things almost identically, and I’m sure there must be some small way in which I could help the Persuasion community succeed.
In fact, I still believe, as you wrote on July 5, 2020, that “a bunch of us … really [could] make a difference to the future of free societies in the United States and around the world,” if we form a community.
Well reasoned, but I fail to see much difference between a version of Effective Altruism stripped of its many flashy fallacies down to just its insightful core and... plain old fashioned altruism? Maybe there is some aspect of being pickier about what projects you support but that concept is just like good governance, it doesn't need a whole name brand movement.
Great piece, both in recognizing things we should keep and areas where EA goes astray.
I'm a little emotionally reactive about EA (and utilitarianism in general); I feel like the movement is basically a continual mantra of "you're not good enough" which tends to upset me. So take what I say below with that in mind.
One of my biggest frustrations is that I feel like EA smuggles in the idea of *what is moral* under the idea that they are simply talking about how *effective* one's altruism is. It's not "Effective [Altruism as Defined by You]." It's "Effective [Altruism as Defined by Us]." So it seems innocuous; who could argue with the idea that we should try to avoid inefficiency in our giving?
But by "efficient" they mean achieving quantitatively more good of the type they favor. If I favor donating to a local music school that provides scholarships for poor students who couldn't afford either lessons or instruments, they don't really care if I do that effectively or not; the goal itself is a waste because I could "so much more good" by donating the same amount of money to, say, mosquito nets. Go mind your own business I don't have to do *your* idea of good. It's not *immoral* for me to decide to give in a different manner, any more than it's immoral for me to decide that there *is* a difference between a child drowning as I walk by and a child dying of hunger 10,000 miles away (there is a difference, and it has to do with knowledge of the context and the solution, the extremely short timeframe over which the intervention takes place, the total lack of intermediation...and on and on; there's a difference and it's not small, and the fact that an EA thinks there's not simply indicates to me how distorted their premises are).
" He was 27 when he founded his crypto exchange, started to get seriously rich, and became accustomed to his lavish lifestyle. He was 31 on the day he was apprehended for stealing from his customers at a massive scale."
Did he "start to get seriously rich" before he started stealing at a massive scale, or is stealing at a massive scale how he got seriously rich? My impression was it's the latter, but I'm not certain.