My Critique of Effective Altruism
6Brendan Long
1Dylan Price
2Brendan Long
2Dylan Price
3Oliver Kuperman
1Dylan Price
1Dylan Price
1Giordano Rogers
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I'm only vaguely connected to EA in the sense of donating more-than-usual amounts of money in effective ways (❤️ GiveDirectly), but this feels like a strawman. I don't think the average EA would recommend charities that hurt other people as side effects, work actively-harmful jobs to make money[1], or generally Utilitarian-maxxing.
The EA trolley problem is that there are thousands (or millions) of trolleys that have varying difficult of stopping, barreling toward varying groups of people. The problem isn't that stopping them hurts other people (it doesn't), it's just that you can't stop them all. You don't need to be a utilitarian to think that if it's raining planes, Superman should start by catching the 747's.
- ^
For example, high-paying finance jobs are high-stress and many people don't like working them, but they're not actually bad for the world.
❤️ thanks!
For example, high-paying finance jobs are high-stress and many people don't like working them, but they're not actually bad for the world.
That is debatable.
I think trying to be Superman is the problem, but I'm ok if that line of thinking doesn't work for you.
I think trying to be Superman is the problem, but I'm ok if that line of thinking doesn't work for you.
Do you mean in the sense that people who aren't Superman should stop beating themselves up about it (a real problem in EA), or that even if you are (financial) Superman, born in the red-white-and-blue light of a distant star, you shouldn't save people in other countries because that's bad somehow?
The latter. Superman's powers are magical, but our powers are intimately connected to the state of life for the less fortunate. We know that our economic prosperity is based on a mix of innovation and domination, and the more we reduce our involvement in the domination side of it, the more we address the real root of the problem.
1As a full throated defender of pulling the lever (given traditional assumptions such as a lack of an audience, complete knowledge of each outcomes, productivity of the people on the tracks) , there are numerous issues with your proposals:
1.) Vague alternative: You seem to be pushing towards some form of virtue ethics/basic intuitionism, but there are numerous problems with this approach. Besides determining whose basic intuitions count and whose don't, or which virtues are important, there is very real problems when these virtues conflict. For instance, imagine you are walking at night, and are trying to cross a street. The sign says red, but no cars are around. Do you jaywalk? In this circumstance, one is forced to make a decision which pits two virtues/ intuitions against each other. The beauty of utilitarianism is that it allows us to choose in these circumstances.
2.) Subjective Morality: Yes, utilitarianism may not be "objective" in the sense that there is no intrinsic reason to value human flourishing, but I believe utilitarianism to be the viewpoint which closest conforms to what most people value. To illustrate why this matters, I take an example from Alex O'Connor. Image you need to decide what color to paint a room. Nobody has very strong opinions, but most people in your household prefer the color blue. Yes, blue might not be "objectively" the best, but if most of the people in your household like the color blue the most, there is little reason not to. We are all individually going to seek what we value, so we might as well collectively agree to a system which reflects the preferences of most people.
3.) Altruism in Disguise:
Another thing to notice is that virtue ethics can be a form of effective altruism when practiced in specific ways. In general, bettering yourself as a person by becoming more rational, less biased, etc, will in fact make the world a better place, and giving time to form meaningful relationships, engage in leisure, etc. can actually increase productivity in the long run.
You also seem advocate for fundamental changes in society, changes I am not sure I would agree with, but if your proposed changes are indeed the best way to increase the general happiness of the population, it would be, by definition, the goal of the EA movement. I think a lot of people look at the recent stuff with SBF and AI research and come to think the EA movement is only concerned with lofty existential risk scenarios, but there is a lot more to it then that.
Edit:
Almost forgot this, but citation: Alex O'Connor(in this video) formulated the blue room example. We use it differently (he uses it to argue against objective morality), but he verbalized it.
We are all individually going to seek what we value, so we might as well collectively agree to a system which reflects the preferences of most people.
Completely agree!
Hmm maybe I spoke too soon. There have been times in different societies when the majority of people would say slavery was good, and times (even before the modern age) when the majority of people would say slavery was bad. But slavery is bad, and according to my argument it's because it feels bad, even if you are mostly unconscious of it.
So my theory of social change is that we individually learn to feel and understand our emotions better, because emotions are the only reason we care about anything at all. The way emotions feel in my body is certainly very objective to me, and the more I understand them the more I can recognize them in other people. I'm not sure I'm willing to claim that recognizing other people's emotions is entirely objective, but when we see an angy politician ranting and raving, no one disagrees that they are angry.
So I would say we should collectively agree to a system which reflects the true preferences of most people, but there is a process of understanding what those preferences really are.
I agree that we can't "derive values from a purely logical standpoint". But I disagree that we can’t meaningfully say “5 > 1” mathematically when talking about individual lives.
“We know that we value life, but we don’t really know what that means as a mathematical statement.”
But if we take 'life has value' as an axiom, then five lives are better than one, all else being equal.
I also disagree with your grounding of “good” and “bad.” You argue morality is derived from emotional states:
Our values are derived from the physical sensations in our body that we call emotion, which arises automatically in response to whatever is happening right now. Healthy values fulfill our emotional needs, and unhealthy values do not.
In my view, fundamentally we map our perceptions, distinct from the emotions which they may evoke, onto the concepts of "good" and "bad": positive experiences (pleasure, well-being) are the origin of the notion of good; negative experiences (pain, suffering) are that of bad.
So, if one unit of my displeasure results in five units of others’ pleasure, we can reasonably call that outcome objectively good—all else held equal.
But to be clear, I'm not claiming that people are obliged to always do the good thing. And I'm not a utilitarian. I don't think suffering ought to be minimized. I think some level of suffering, both in the individual and in the society, is desirable for the wisdom it confers.
I respect your attempt to give an honest critique of the EA ideology on its home turf. But your conclusion about “letting go of the lever and walking away” seems naïve.
“What’s actually going on here is that we have completely forgotten how to let go of the lever and walk away.”
This isn’t truly a step outside the bounds of the moral game—it’s choosing inaction. Walking away still places you within the moral plane of the trolley problem, not above it. Part of the power of the trolley problem is the realization that you can't absolve yourself from guilt.
The reality is that people suffer now, and if you’re capable of reducing that suffering, in my view, it’s objectively good to do so.
I don't consider myself an effective altruist, but it's reductive to characterize EA as merely about maximizing income for charity. In my view, its essence can't be accurately decompressed from the name itself. As soon as you attempt to unpack what it really means, you move away from the actual thing that binds the community together—trying to be altruistic effectively.
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