Did Vassar argue that existing EA organizations weren’t doing the work they said they were doing, or that EA as such was a bad idea? Or maybe that it was too hard to get organizations to do it?
(a) EA orgs aren’t doing what they say they’re doing (e.g. cost effectiveness estimates are wildly biased, reflecting bad procedures being used internally), and it’s hard to get organizations to do what they say they do
(b) Utilitarianism isn’t a form of ethics, it’s still necessary to have principles, as in deontology or two-level consequentialism
(c) Given how hard it is to predict the effects of your actions on far-away parts of the world (e.g. international charity requiring multiple intermediaries working in a domain that isn’t well-understood), focusing on helping people you have more information about makes sense unless this problem can be solved
(d) It usually makes more sense to focus on ways of helping others that also build capacities, including gathering more information, to increase long-term positive impact
If you for example want the critcism on GiveWell, Ben Hoffman was employed at GiveWell and made experiences that suggest that the process based on which their reports are made has epistemic problems. If you want the details talk to him.
The general model would be that between actual intervention and the top there are a bunch of maze levels. GiveWell then hired normal corporatist people who behave in the dynamics that the immoral maze sequence describes play themselves out.
Vassar’s action themselves are about doing altruistic actions more directly by looking for who are most powerless who need help and working to help them. In the COVID case he identified prisoners and then worked on making PPE available for them.
You might see his thesis is that “effective” in EA is about adding a management layer for directing interventions and that management layer has the problems that the immoral maze sequence describes. According to Vassar someone who wants to be altrustic shouldn’t delegate his judgements of what’s effective and thus warrents support to other people.
Did Vassar argue that existing EA organizations weren’t doing the work they said they were doing, or that EA as such was a bad idea? Or maybe that it was too hard to get organizations to do it?
He argued
(a) EA orgs aren’t doing what they say they’re doing (e.g. cost effectiveness estimates are wildly biased, reflecting bad procedures being used internally), and it’s hard to get organizations to do what they say they do
(b) Utilitarianism isn’t a form of ethics, it’s still necessary to have principles, as in deontology or two-level consequentialism
(c) Given how hard it is to predict the effects of your actions on far-away parts of the world (e.g. international charity requiring multiple intermediaries working in a domain that isn’t well-understood), focusing on helping people you have more information about makes sense unless this problem can be solved
(d) It usually makes more sense to focus on ways of helping others that also build capacities, including gathering more information, to increase long-term positive impact
If you for example want the critcism on GiveWell, Ben Hoffman was employed at GiveWell and made experiences that suggest that the process based on which their reports are made has epistemic problems. If you want the details talk to him.
The general model would be that between actual intervention and the top there are a bunch of maze levels. GiveWell then hired normal corporatist people who behave in the dynamics that the immoral maze sequence describes play themselves out.
Vassar’s action themselves are about doing altruistic actions more directly by looking for who are most powerless who need help and working to help them. In the COVID case he identified prisoners and then worked on making PPE available for them.
You might see his thesis is that “effective” in EA is about adding a management layer for directing interventions and that management layer has the problems that the immoral maze sequence describes. According to Vassar someone who wants to be altrustic shouldn’t delegate his judgements of what’s effective and thus warrents support to other people.