Thanks for reaching out! As a LW lurker, I've felt a bit of unease when I first heard about Intentional Insights or read the one HuffPo article, and it's taken me a while to discern where that unease came from.
One natural interpretation is that I'm not as comfortable with emotional appeals, and since that's expressly what you aim to give, it's going to rub someone like me the wrong way. If that's the case, InIn's community will just be a different subset of the population, probably bigger like you hope, and we should accept that.
A more concerning interpretation would assert that the style of LW content is also a big part of its identity, encouraging for instance long and deep reflection and high-quality discussion about difficult topics rather than instant-gratification social media responses. My own mindset while reading LW or SSC (or NYT, for that matter) is often very different from when I'm browsing Facebook or YouTube or ClickHole, and in the former, I feel that I'm more likely to take action based on what I've read.
Still, it's an interesting experiment, to see if the content of LW can be ported over to the BuzzFeed model without too much loss, and I'm glad someone's trying it. BTW, I don't have any contacts there or anything, but in the online Christian world, I would recommend trying RELEVANT Magazine as another place to publish.
Appreciate your insightful commentary!
I'm not comfortable with emotional appeal myself - that's not what I respond to personally. The same goes for the core participants of Intentional Insights. However, we're aware of the typical mind fallacy, and the large majority of the population is not like us. Like any science popularizers - think of Bill Nye or Neil DeGrasse Tyson - we're trying to speak to the broad population, and there's some evidence we are getting through (see the last sections of this document).
Regarding the style of LW, I hear what you're saying. I think it's important to note that the goal of InIn is not primarily to cultivate Less Wrongers, but to raise the sanity waterline broadly. If we can spread good memes from Less Wrong, then we've done our primary job. We do aim, as a secondary component of our work, to cultivate people into aspiring rationalists and effective altruists, and in fact we have already had some accomplishments there, with people starting to read the Sequences, donate effectively, etc.
Thanks for the suggestion on the magazine, will check it out!
Skeptical blogger PZ Myers is a bit skeptical of EAs working on X-Risk amelioration such as AI risks, as can be seen at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/03/are-these-people-for-real/ . I don't have enough time this eve to jump back into the fray there - anyone else here want to give it a go?
Thanks for catching that - I posted it to the LW Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/144017955332/permalink/10156330265450333/
Scratching the surface of motivation reveals a troubling catch-22.
Selflessness is a key element for altruism. Without selflessness the person would not be an altruist. They would be doing good for some personal reason. A truly selfless person would not promote their Effective Altruism since the status earned from others knowing would be a form of repayment for the EA.
What if you were a completely anonymous EA? A useful game might be to notice when you are tempted to mention your EA status. That is when the true motivation rears it head.
I've had the good fortune to spend a few years in Africa and met a lot of supposedly selfless souls. I realized that they are just playing the game at a higher level. The deeper they stash their motivations the more disastrous the unintended consequences of their good intentions.
Would you not want someone doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons? That's not very instrumentally rational, and is the antithesis of effective altruism, which is about doing the utmost we can to advance human flourishing. If our end goal is to improve human flourishing, then I very much want people to do things to contribute to that goal, regardless of their motivations.
altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons?
That's not what the word "altruistic" means.
Agreed. I was talking about what the Effective Altruism movement orients toward, not the semantic definition of altruism.
Words matter. It steals the positive cultural connotations of the word altruism without actually being altruistic.
It exploits the gray area between being vs. seeming to be. There is a word for that. It's called lying.
The name Effective >Altruism suggests that followers are somehow being altruistic. Both the common usage and dictionary definitions of altruism are clear. Wikipedia lists the word altruism as synonymous with selflessness. So to answer your first question, doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons is simply not altruism. It is the opposite.
It may be tempting to dismiss my argument as semantics. It is so much more. This gets to the core of what (I believe ) Less Wrong is all about. Human beings want to be good. Our culture tells us that selflessness is the highest form of good. So we act in ways that provide the charade of selflessness that fools not only those around us, it fool ourselves.
Who cares, right? What's important is people are doing good, right? Well, actually, no, that's not the most important thing. The first word in the EA is the most important thing. Effective. The problem is that the charade makes the process ineffective to the point of harmful. The charade encourages people to do things that are downright despicable while simultaneously providing a feeling of selflessness. The despicable results are five chess moves ahead and consequently for most they are hidden.
Sometimes it is easier to see this charade in others than in ourselves so I encourage you to look to the American missionaries who have worked "tirelessly" for decades in Africa. Churches send first-aid certified volunteers to serve rural outposts. These volunteers are looking for an opportunity to emulate the life of Christ. That is their motivation. The locals come to these outposts for medical care rather than going to the locally trained physician. The locally trained physician can't makes ends meet so they accept the offer from the west to emigrate, leaving the community at the mercy of the amateur outsiders who eventually leave.
There was a statistic circulating in the international-aid community a few years ago that there were more Malawian trained physicians in the city of Manchester in the UK than in all of Malawi. While this turned out to be an overstatement, it is not far from the truth.
This motivation on the part of the missionaries to be selfless (an impossible task) is THE cause of the problem. While some believe it is possible to align dissimilar motivations to create good ends, there are plenty of Africans who say that contrasting motivations have tied the continent into thorny knots. (see Dambisa Moyo)
The desire to be (seen as) an altruist infects the process and creates massive unintended consequences. The only way to be a true altruist is to be anonymous.
This motivation on the part of the missionaries to be selfless (an impossible task) is THE cause of the problem. While some believe it is possible to align dissimilar motivations to create good ends, there are plenty of Africans who say that contrasting motivations have tied the continent into thorny knots. (see Dambisa Moyo)
We succeed to elimate small pox through Western inspired aid.
Africa is much better than it was 40 years ago. As hand Rosling says, most people on the West know less than chimpanzee of the success of helping Africa.
Western governments and governmental organizations did so. We had skin in the game. Same with Ebola.
Yes, I believe the government efforts with regard to ebola were more effective. I also believe that many government programs are terrible. We buy excess corn here and give it for free there, killing local markets.
We buy excess corn here and give it for free there, killing local markets.
That program is very effective of producing a robust way to feed Westerns that can still feed them when the production halves because of a crisis. It works to provide jobs to Western farmers.
It succeeds at the goals it's designed to fulfill.
It succeeds at the goals it's designed to fulfill.
Is that tongue in cheek?
The program takes our desire to be good and uses it as a tool for a particular special interest. Yes, it fulfills its goals.
If you look at the history of the New Deal it was't a program for feeding Africans. It was a program for making life better for farmers.
When there was a common agricultural policy in the EU the goal wasn't either feeding Africans. It was having a food system that still works in case of a war with the Soviets. The New Deal thought of supporting the lives of farmers and seeking political support of farming communities.
Once we had overproduction someone decided that shipping grain to Africa is better than burning it but the grain doesn't get produced to feed Africans. It get's produced for other reasons.
Once we had overproduction someone decided that shipping grain to Africa is better than burning it but the grain doesn't get produced to feed Africans. It get's produced for other reasons.
Absolutely. We agree.
I don't know your industry, but let's say you are a Water Engineer in an American city. Now imagine that suddenly the Swiss developed portable desalination processing ships that created clean water and supply it to the whole of the U.S. for free... for generations. You lose your job and we as Americans lose the skills to supply water ourselves.
We are at the mercy of the benevolent Swiss who have their own reasons for providing us water. Their benevolence makes us weaker.
Their benevolence makes us weaker.
Not necessarily, because it freed up resources we used to provide water and these resources can now be put to a different use.
Don't overstate your position -- or you'll end up arguing against all international trade.
Yes, but that's substantially different than what happens in Effective Altruism.
There no naitve betnet production in Africa. There's no native production of deworming tablets. Those interventions are driven by actual altruism as opposed to free grain that driven by other motivations.
GiveDirectly is even better in creating local markets by providing a community with money.
This motivation [...] to be selfless [...] is THE cause of the problem.
I don't see how. I'll assume, at least for the sake of argument, that your account of how these things work out is accurate; how would it go any better if the volunteers had different, less selfless, motivation? And why blame the situation on the volunteers' selflessness rather than on any of the other elements in the situation -- the locals' preference for cheaper but worse medical care, the offers for the physicians to emigrate, the fact that the local physicians are dependent on money from the locals rather than being paid by the government as in some Western countries, the fact that the volunteers eventually go away?
Actually, I'm a bit confused by the description of the process. So, the problem is that the volunteers turn up, provide cheap medical care thus putting the local physician out of business, and then go away. If the volunteers stayed around, the locals would have cheap medical care all the time and presumably that's a good outcome. Now, why does the local physician emigrate to the West rather than just moving down the road to another village that doesn't have western volunteers? Is it because there's more money to be made by emigrating? (In that case, surely the temptation is there even without the western volunteers.) Is it because the village down the road also has volunteers undercutting the physician? (If that's commonly the case, then a large fraction of the country must be getting free medical care from these volunteers -- so are you sure they aren't doing more good than harm overall?) Is it because the village down the road has its own physician? (If that's commonly the case, then the country isn't so desperately short of physicians as you describe.) I dunno -- I'm just having trouble seeing how your account fits together. Is it actually well founded on evidence?
The only way to be a true altruist is to be anonymous.
Would those African rural outposts have been better off if their first-aid volunteers had all been wearing masks and keeping their identities secret?
If the volunteers stayed around, the locals would have cheap medical care all the time and presumably that's a good outcome.
No, that's a terrible outcome. Long-term solutions to persistent, difficult problems come about when capable people with skin in the game take action. Malawian doctors have skin in the African game but are sidelined when Milwaukeean dairy farmers fill in for free.
Further, when we look closer to home we understand that there are many problems for which the best possible solution is to do nothing. That misfit brother who has to learn to stand on his own two feet would be much better off if mom and dad would let him fail a few times. We understand the nuance of the situation because we are part of the culture and part of the family. The further we are removed from the person needing help the harder it becomes to understand that nuance.
Eric Sevareid's had a wonderful saying, "The chief cause of problems is solutions."
How very convenient that the best thing for millions of desperately poor people is for comfortable Westerners like us to do nothing to help them.
(It may well be true in some cases, but I do find it striking how very little evidence seems to be needed to convince some people that the best charity is no charity.)
How very convenient that the best thing for millions of desperately poor people is for comfortable Westerners like us to do nothing to help them.
To the contrary, it is very inconvenient.
We naturally want to help. I want to help. More than you could ever know. After being on the ground in Africa for a while I just realized that:
Most of the things I could do are more harmful than allowing those desperately poor people to solve their problems themselves.
There is an upward spiral of confidence, strength and capability when someone solves their own problems and a downward spiral of dependence when problems are solved for them.
It is nearly impossible for my comfortable Westerner eyes to distinguish between those problems I can solve without doing harm and those where I would wreak havoc.
My comfortable Western mind is biased toward action. Action makes me feel good. Refraining from action makes me feel bad. This action-bias causes me to do great harm.
My presence enables and permits dysfunction in the one organization that could solve these problems: government.
For those trying to solve persistent problems closer to home, look at those points and see how many apply to your pet project.
I want to help. More than you could ever know.
OK; in that case it sounds as if I have misjudged your motivations (and perhaps also how broadly you are claiming that the best charity is no charity; that's still not altogether clear to me). It is possible that your choice of username influenced me in the direction of thinking you more likely to be advocating something like egoism :-).
How do you feel about charitable activity that only supplies its beneficiaries with useful resources? For instance, two of GiveWell's current recommendations are:
These seem to me like they don't get in the way of anything the beneficiaries could have done for themselves, and the available evidence seems to suggest that in fact they do substantially more good than harm.
Dambisa Moyo specifically addresses the bednet issue in her excellent book Dead Aid.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They'll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Privileging a hypothesis, lump of labor fallacy / ignoring comparative advantage, cherrypicking consequences, and not thinking on the margin, to boot.
Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa.
That's the first stage at which I am most doubtful about Moyo's argument. Sure, one can postulate situations in which sending a lot of mosquito nets to Africa does a lot of damage by putting a lot of local mosquito-net makers out of business. But is that actually happening? (Or, failing that, is there good reason to think it would be happening if it weren't for charitable mosquito-net provision?)
The other point at which I am doubtful: let's suppose that supplying mosquito nets puts N people out of work per year. That's bad (unless N=0). But it also stops M people getting malaria per year. How do those effects balance out? Does Moyo make any attempt at such a calculation, or is she doing a cost-benefit analysis that completely ignores the benefits?
Sure, one can postulate situations in which sending a lot of mosquito nets to Africa does a lot of damage by putting a lot of local mosquito-net makers out of business. But is that actually happening?
Pick an industry that is thriving in, say, South Africa and compare it to the same industry in a high-aid country like Uganda. Inevitably you will find that the more sector-aid they receive, the worse their industries produce. It is hard to out-compete free. I gave the Malawi-medical example below but they are everywhere.
I was there this time last year and saw that the rhino horn crisis was actually being encouraged by officials who had positioned family and friends as the ready solution for the deep pockets aid organizations to buy.
How about orphans. Who could be against helping them? There are the countless orphan scandals across Africa and South Asia where parents rent or sell their children to the orphanage. https://www.zammagazine.com/chronicle/chronicle-12/217-child-abuse-in-the-name-of-voluntourism
Chances are, if you live in a U.S. city you will walk past a homeless person today. You can continue walking without dropping a coin in their cup because you have empathy (you understand the complexities of his/her plight) and realize that by giving the quarter you will do more harm than good. But we want to be good so we pick people far away with whom we cannot empathize (in the truest sense of the word.... able to walk in their shoes) and then send them money.
This idea is objectionable to your mind (and mine) because we desperately want to help people. So we become good at ignoring the fact that our help actually hurts.
Google Moyo and watch a few of her interviews.
compare it to the same industry in a high-aid country like Uganda
How do you distinguish between the following two hypotheses?
Who could be against helping [orphans]?
I think you are arguing with a straw man. Of course there will be cases where something looks like a good idea but is actually a terrible idea. The question that actually matters is about what's best overall.
So we become good at ignoring the fact that our help actually hurts.
Well, that's one possibility. Another possibility is that "the fact that our help actually hurts" is not readily apparent, and wouldn't be even if we didn't care about helping people. Another is that it isn't actually a fact.
For what it's worth, both of those seem more likely to me right now than your proposal that if someone doesn't agree that aid's harmful it's because they "want to be good" and "cannot empathize" with the people on the receiving end.
Google Moyo and watch a few of her interviews.
"Beware the man of one study". Yes, Moyo argues that aid is harmful. It's not as if everyone familiar with the area agrees with her, though. Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says?
Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says
You should not uncritically accept anything. But you should recognize that there is a point of view (not limited to Moyo) which claims that many (or most) forms of aid have net negative consequences. Many people would be surprised to learn that this point of view exists.
It's also worth pointing out that the usual bias mechanisms will push you towards believing that aid really helps.
you should recognize that there is a point of view [...]
So recognized. (And, as it happens, already known.)
the usual bias mechanisms will push you towards believing that aid really helps
Some will. Some will push the other way. (I don't know about you, but I like having money, and anything that has the consequence that the best thing for the world happens to involve me having more money is going to get at least a bit of a boost from that. I don't think I'm unusual in this respect.)
Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says?
In the end she is giving her opinion. I am giving mine. I am telling you what I saw and how I came to my conclusions. You can do with them as you choose.
The thing I find deeply troubling is that I know good people would not do what they are doing if they knew the consequences. They would not toss the quarter into the cup of the homeless guy.
It is very common for those outsiders who work on the front lines of aid/charity to talk (to rage!!!) about the fubar consequences while they are there together in the muck. But the moment they come home they sing a different tune. It is very frustrating to see that when they are back home and faced with their own deep investment in it, they forget the lessons. Very frustrating.
Would those African rural outposts have been better off if their first-aid volunteers had all been wearing masks and keeping their identities secret?
They would have to believe that they could obscure their actions from their all-seeing, all-knowing god since their motivations were driven by the belief that they were gaining status toward a day of ultimate reckoning.
Those outposts would have been better had the amateurs stayed home.
EA doesn't do that kind of thing. The currently popular idea is buying malaria nets. I don't think there's a large indigenous malaria net industry that is being displaced by this.
You're actually right--giving Africans free things can destroy the indigenous economy by making it hard for natives to make money--but not right about EA.
EA doesn't do that kind of thing.
Ipse dixit and motivated reasoning.
Why not just be absolutely anonymous?
Accountability matters.
Being public does not provide accountability. Is Zuckerberg being held accountable for the Newark schools debacle? No. People are saying, "At least he tried."
Here's the thing.... We understand the idea of creative destruction in other realms but fail to see it when our attention is attracted, like a bull to the red cape, to the people who are suffering in the destruction phase. Propping up a dysfunctional system is worse than letting it fail and rebuilding entirely.
This post is cross-posted on the EA forum and is mainly of interest to EAs. It focuses on the engagement of Intentional Insights with the EA movement, and does not address the engagement of InIn with promoting rationality-informed strategies, which is a hotly-debated issue.
Introduction
I wanted to share InIn’s background and goals and where we see ourselves as fitting within the EA movement. I also wanted to allow all of you a chance to share your opinions about the benefits and drawbacks of what InIn is doing, put forth any reservations, concerns, and risks, and provide suggestions for optimization.
Background
InIn began in January 2014, when my wife and I decided to create an organization dedicated to marketing rational, evidence-based thinking in all areas of our lives, especially charitable giving, to a broad audience. We decided to do so because we looked around for organizations that would provide marketing resources for our own local activism in Columbus, OH, trying to convey these ideas to a broad public and found no such organizations. So we decided – if not us, then who? If not now, then when? My wife would use her experience in nonprofits to run the organisation, while I would use my experience as a professor to work on content and research.
We gathered together a group of local aspiring rationalists and Effective Altruists interested in the project, and launched the organization publicly in 9/2014. We got our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, began running various content marketing experiments, and established the internal infrastructure. We also built up a solid audience in the secular and skeptical market, who we saw as the easiest-to-reach audience with promoting effective giving and rational thinking. By the early fall of 2015, we had established some connections and reputation, a solid social media following, and our articles began to be accepted in prominent venues that reach a broad audience, such as The Huffington Post and Lifehack. At that point, we felt comfortable enough to begin our active engagement with the EA movement, as we felt we could provide added value.
Fit in EA Movement
As an Effective Altruist, I have long seen opportunities of optimization in the marketing of EA ideas using research-based, modern content marketing strategies. I did not feel comfortable speaking out about that until I had built up InIn enough to be able to speak from a position of some expertise in the early fall of 2015, and to demonstrate right away the benefit we could bring through publishing widely-shared articles that promoted EA messages.
Looking back, I wish I had started engaging with the EA Forum sooner. It was a big mistake on my part that caused some EAs to treat InIn as a sudden outsider that burst on the scene. Also, our early posts were perceived as too self-promotional. I guess this is not surprising, looking back – although the goal was simply to demonstrate our value, the content marketing nature of our work does show through. Ah well, lessons learned and something to update on for the future.
As InIn has become more engaged in various projects within the EA movement, we have begun to settle on how to add value to the EA community and have formulated our plans for future work.
1) We are promoting EA-themed effective giving ideas to a broad audience through publishing shareable articles in prominent venues.
1A) Note: we focus on spreading ideas like effective giving without associating them overtly with the movement of Effective Altruism, though leaving buried hooks to EA in the articles. This approach has the benefit minimizing the risk of diluting the movement with less value-aligned members, while leaving opportunities for those who are more value-aligned to find the EA movement. Likewise, we don’t emphasize EA as we believe that overt uses of labels can lead some people to perceive our messages as ideological, which would undermine our ability to build rapport with them.
2) We are specifically promoting effective giving to the secular and skeptic community, as we see this audience as more likely to be value aligned, and also have strong existing connections with this audience.
3) We are providing content and social media marketing consulting to the EA movement, both EA meta-charities and prominent direct-action charities.
4) We are collaborating with EA meta-charities in boosting the marketing capacities of the EA movement as a whole being.
5) We are helping build EA capacity around effective decision-making and goal achievement through providing foundational rationality knowledge.
6) By using content marketing to promote rationality to a broad audience, we are aiming to help people be more clear-thinking, long-term oriented, empathetic, and utilitarian. This not only increases their own flourishing, but also expands their circles of caring beyond biases based on geographical location (drowning child problem), species (non-human animals), and temporal distance (existential risk).
Conclusion
InIn is engaged in both EA capacity-building and movement-building, but movement-building of a new type, not oriented toward directing people into the EA movement, but getting EA habits of thinking into the broader world. I specifically chose not to include our achievements in doing so in this post, as I had previously fallen into the trap of including too much and being perceived as self-promotional as a result. However, if you wish, you can learn more about the organization and its activities at this link.
What are your impressions on the value of this fit of InIn within the EA movement and our plans, including advantages and disadvantages, as well as suggestions for improvement? We are always eager to learn and improve based on feedback from the community.