In retrospect, my reading of the post (and my reply) were more uncharitable than I would’ve liked. To clarify where I’m coming from, it pattern-matched to two things I’ve grown frustrated with over time: Firstly, it gave me the impression of an outside critique of a field without engaging with its strongest arguments, as happens a lot to the rationality community as well (e.g. here’s an old SSC post on the general problem).
And secondly, the final sentence pattern-matched to the ubiquitous “we need systemic change” criticism of effective altruism (subjectively, it appears in every single news article on EA), which doesn’t seem particularly fair when everyone in the field is aware that of course systemic change would be better in principle, but it’s incredibly unclear how to handle such problems in a tractable manner. (Not to mention that tons of interventions intended to effect systemic change actually perform significantly worse than e.g. cash transfers.)
Finally, when I mentioned you hadn’t added an arbitrary number of students to the analogy, I meant that in your modified analogy a single individual seemingly has to save the entire world, whereas once you allow for many students, one way to resolve such a world would be to promote altruism more widely or even help build a community of effective altruism, as Peter Singer has done. Isn’t that the kind of systematic approach you were calling for?
I totally get the frustration, that’s why I felt the disclaimer in the beginning was necessary!
As for the question of many students—yes, absolutely. Promoting EA is a smart and valuable goal, and will definitely produce more effect (“or you raise awareness in town, and try to explain to others that there are children drowning in some ponds nearby”). And, as you say, it’s precisely what Singer is doing.
Regarding systemic change: I think that’s a conversation stopper in many cases. People say “X is cool and everything, but what we REALLY need is systemic change”. But that’s, like, a really big task, and it seems to me that it just breeds inaction, as opposed to interventions. I wasn’t going for an applause light, only a very narrow criticism of one specific analogy/argument.
In retrospect, my reading of the post (and my reply) were more uncharitable than I would’ve liked. To clarify where I’m coming from, it pattern-matched to two things I’ve grown frustrated with over time: Firstly, it gave me the impression of an outside critique of a field without engaging with its strongest arguments, as happens a lot to the rationality community as well (e.g. here’s an old SSC post on the general problem).
And secondly, the final sentence pattern-matched to the ubiquitous “we need systemic change” criticism of effective altruism (subjectively, it appears in every single news article on EA), which doesn’t seem particularly fair when everyone in the field is aware that of course systemic change would be better in principle, but it’s incredibly unclear how to handle such problems in a tractable manner. (Not to mention that tons of interventions intended to effect systemic change actually perform significantly worse than e.g. cash transfers.)
Finally, when I mentioned you hadn’t added an arbitrary number of students to the analogy, I meant that in your modified analogy a single individual seemingly has to save the entire world, whereas once you allow for many students, one way to resolve such a world would be to promote altruism more widely or even help build a community of effective altruism, as Peter Singer has done. Isn’t that the kind of systematic approach you were calling for?
I totally get the frustration, that’s why I felt the disclaimer in the beginning was necessary!
As for the question of many students—yes, absolutely. Promoting EA is a smart and valuable goal, and will definitely produce more effect (“or you raise awareness in town, and try to explain to others that there are children drowning in some ponds nearby”). And, as you say, it’s precisely what Singer is doing.
Regarding systemic change: I think that’s a conversation stopper in many cases. People say “X is cool and everything, but what we REALLY need is systemic change”. But that’s, like, a really big task, and it seems to me that it just breeds inaction, as opposed to interventions. I wasn’t going for an applause light, only a very narrow criticism of one specific analogy/argument.