The evolution of effective altruism

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Added above. Thanks!

Maybe if you consider the wealth of the in group vs out group. It makes more sense to me that way. Scary how few people it might need to keep the world from moving forward.

It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

Social movements come in all sizes. Its a bunch of people who all agree on something. That is a social movement.

A better term would be an 'order'

It’s another bubble that a handful of people invented for themselves to insulate them from the reality of the effect on the world. It’s one of the most genuinely pathetic “movements” I’ve ever seen.

I think it's got two components - first, people don't actually understand the tenants of mainstream EA. For instance, some people think that one of the core principles of EA is "make as much money as possible at any cost", which is incorrect.

Second, EA is a small movement with an above average amount of crazy people (IE someone who does think you should make as much money as possible at any cost), who then basically monopolize the media attention. This then feeds into the first component.

EA is in a fairly bad spot where nobody seems to be really attempting to understand it or meaningfully engage with it's ideas, instead just parroting the same few talking points (SBF anyone?)

That's how I understand it: a movement encouraging people to donate their wealth to good causes which save and improve lives.

However, there's some who predict an existential future risk such as an AI apocalypse. If that's the case, why save a child's life today when we'll all be killed by AI tomorrow? Critics would call this funding pet projects rather than altruism.

But you can even further down this line of thinking. If you're a billionaire and see yourself as the only hope of saving humanity from extinction, why donate any of your wealth? You should be doing the opposite, gathering as much wealth and power as possible. Taxes and laws that get in your way are impediments to the salvation of humanity.

I'm pretty sure most of the criticism is for folks in the latter groups. I wish there were different words to distinguish them better, because I like the idea of encouraging charity but somehow a handful of billionaires have poisoned the word altruism.

I can't speak to anyone else's sneers and disdain, but mine come from all the motivated reasoning surrounding them. One example:

'The Effective Ventures Foundation (EVF), which defines effective altruism as “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible”, decided £14.9m of its cash would be best spent buying Wytham Abbey, a 15th-century Grade-I listed manor house near Oxford.'

There were a lot of explanations about why that was the most effective use of funds, but every single one reads like motivated reasoning to me.

Examples like this abound.

I think a possible explanation is, they support billionaires giving away money. So you get a rare alignment of people who'd rather see poor people die than see support for billionaires, and people who'd rather see poor people die than see billionaires have fewer superyachts. United they're a powerful force.

Edit: Also weird nerds.

It’s one of those things that sounds fantastic on the surface. Then you dig.

Cause they produced Dam Bankman Friedman and people like him.

Cause somehow their idea of best altruism ends up amounting to "earn as much money and power with little regard to how, because so that you can use them for good in the future in a very top down way".

Effectively, it is very swlf serving.

When people talk about ineffective altruism, they're generally talking about organizations like the American Heart Association, which spends over half of annual donations on payroll (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/135...). I don't think many people in the effective altruist movement would complain about a targeted trust that successfully and reliably achieves some niche goal.

We will use our big brains to draw bold conclusions about the most effective use of money, without the burden of conventional wisdom.

For our first bold conclusion we have determined that all of the world's money should be in the hands of people with big brains who intend to draw bold conclusions about the most effective use of money, without the burden of conventional wisdom.

This concludes the planning phase. There will be an additional planning phase once we've collected all of the money, we promise.

That's the take away I get. It's a philosophical justification to being as greedy and heartless as possible because in the future the money you got from burning down the world could potentially be used to reverse that damage.

"Can I have a dollar mister?"

"Sorry I can't it's unethical to give more to you just because you are closer to me, I need to do some excel sheets and maximize my mosquito net donations to africa."

They define "altruism" as "don't actually do anything about the problems of today, so that you can do more about them tomorrow". But does tomorrow ever come?

Bluntly, I trust Jesus more than them. And in Luke 16:10, Jesus said, "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much."

The purpose of the government is to serve the people, not "absolute power", unless you enjoy kings and fiefdoms.

No, in a system of limited government, the government should not want absolute power. If it wants it, it should absolutely not get it.

Mind you, I don't want the effective altruists to have the kind of power they seem to want, either...

I've unconquered the title above and replaced it with something bland. Hopefully that will reduce the rush to inflammation in the thread.

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The title alone is comical. "Here are ten reasons to continue to be greedy...".

Meh, they have some beliefs i disagree with, but ultimately they are spending money on things like feeding the hungry.

I feel like there is this weird thing where people will criticize people who do charity work in not quite the right way (from the criticizers perspective), but are totally fine with people who just use their money to buy a yacht.

I'd much rather have people spend their money on feeding the hungry, even imperfectly then spending it on other pursuits.

I sometimes wonder what the critics of EA are doing to eradicate the ills of the world or even their local community. Is it more than what EA is doing? If not, i'd say those in glass houses should be wary of throwing stones.

You might benefit from thinking critically about who and what you consider to be greedy. If you don't, it's easy to be tricked by various kinds of shell games, where certain kinds of work are never considered "greedy" or certain kinds of charity make the donor appear disproportionately generous. One game that's become pretty well known is how many "donations" to well-funded schools are in fact admissions payments for wealthy kids.

probably the best description of EA that I've read so far.

Genuinely curious why you feel that way?

You are conflating "important" with "good", which I don't think the author was intending.