If you decide to go to college so you can make more money, and then once you graduate you backslide, you never help anyone.
In a healthy system, incentives are roughly aligned for individuals and the group, and you get money because other people wanted to trade with you out of their own self-interest. Crudely, more money means more people thought it would benefit them to trade with you. There are diseased fields with net negative social balance (e.g. selling meth), but EA types probably wont’ stray into these areas anyway.
Most of the big banks where found to defraud people by US courts in the last years.
The for example rigged Libor exchange rates. Every employee of a big banks that participated in the rigging that made trades that depend on the Libor exchange rate and where the rigging was harmful to the client was effectively participating in defrauding the client.
Doesn’t it follow from this (and the fact that fraud is illegal but the authorities are not very effective at ferreting it out) that it would be a good thing for the public if people who were more constrained by ethics than by money took jobs at these banks, so that they can blow the whistle on the next fraud at an earlier stage?
Suppose Al is a would-be effective altruist. Al estimates that his charitable giving can “save a life” (i.e., do an amount of good that he judges equivalent to giving one person a reasonably full and happy life instead of dying very prematurely) for about $5k. Al is willing to give away half of what he earns above $40k/year, and everything above $150k/year. He can work for $50k/year as a librarian (giving $5k/year, 1 life/year) or for $250k/year as an investment banker (giving $155k/year, 31 lives/year).
The investment bank that’s offering Al a job was recently involved in a scandal that effectively defrauded a lot of its customers of a lot of money. Al doesn’t know of any similar frauds going on right now, and is fairly sure that the job he’s being offered doesn’t require him to defraud anyone. But of course it’s entirely possible that somewhere in the large i-bank he’d be working for, other equally nasty things are going on.
OK. So, if Al takes the i-banking job then he is “guilty by explicit participation”. That sounds bad. Should Al regard being “guilty by explicit participation” as more important than saving 30 extra lives per year? If I am introduced to Al and trying to work out what to think of him, should I think worse of him because he thought it more important to save an extra 30 lives/year than to avoid “guilt by explicit participation”?
Does “guilt by explicit participation” actually harm anyone? How?
How about: you never help anyone in the method you planned to. If you find that acting in your own self-interest helps more than activism, and that earning to give helps more than acting in your own self-interest, then I guess you wouldn’t need to worry about it so much.
That is, you wouldn’t need to worry about it when considering going into activism. You still need to worry about it when considering how to avoid backsliding, because not backsliding is still much better than backsliding.
There are diseased fields with net negative social balance (e.g. selling meth), but EA types probably wont’ stray into these areas anyway.
In a healthy system, incentives are roughly aligned for individuals and the group, and you get money because other people wanted to trade with you out of their own self-interest. Crudely, more money means more people thought it would benefit them to trade with you. There are diseased fields with net negative social balance (e.g. selling meth), but EA types probably wont’ stray into these areas anyway.
EA do consider working for banks who are guilty of defrauding their customers on multiple occasions.
Could you expand more? EAs clearly shouldn’t defraud people.
Most of the big banks where found to defraud people by US courts in the last years.
The for example rigged Libor exchange rates. Every employee of a big banks that participated in the rigging that made trades that depend on the Libor exchange rate and where the rigging was harmful to the client was effectively participating in defrauding the client.
A relevant Economist article.
Doesn’t it follow from this (and the fact that fraud is illegal but the authorities are not very effective at ferreting it out) that it would be a good thing for the public if people who were more constrained by ethics than by money took jobs at these banks, so that they can blow the whistle on the next fraud at an earlier stage?
Such people are a very limited resource and I’d rather they go into three-letter agencies, if it’s all the same to them X-D
It’s just guilt by association.
No, it’s guilt by explicit participation.
Perhaps you’d like to unpack that a bit.
Suppose Al is a would-be effective altruist. Al estimates that his charitable giving can “save a life” (i.e., do an amount of good that he judges equivalent to giving one person a reasonably full and happy life instead of dying very prematurely) for about $5k. Al is willing to give away half of what he earns above $40k/year, and everything above $150k/year. He can work for $50k/year as a librarian (giving $5k/year, 1 life/year) or for $250k/year as an investment banker (giving $155k/year, 31 lives/year).
The investment bank that’s offering Al a job was recently involved in a scandal that effectively defrauded a lot of its customers of a lot of money. Al doesn’t know of any similar frauds going on right now, and is fairly sure that the job he’s being offered doesn’t require him to defraud anyone. But of course it’s entirely possible that somewhere in the large i-bank he’d be working for, other equally nasty things are going on.
OK. So, if Al takes the i-banking job then he is “guilty by explicit participation”. That sounds bad. Should Al regard being “guilty by explicit participation” as more important than saving 30 extra lives per year? If I am introduced to Al and trying to work out what to think of him, should I think worse of him because he thought it more important to save an extra 30 lives/year than to avoid “guilt by explicit participation”?
Does “guilt by explicit participation” actually harm anyone? How?
How about: you never help anyone in the method you planned to. If you find that acting in your own self-interest helps more than activism, and that earning to give helps more than acting in your own self-interest, then I guess you wouldn’t need to worry about it so much.
That is, you wouldn’t need to worry about it when considering going into activism. You still need to worry about it when considering how to avoid backsliding, because not backsliding is still much better than backsliding.
It has been considered here: http://felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=472&p=3789