I believe EAs really do want to help people and improve the world. But even more than that they want to be (seen as) altruists who are helping people and improving the world. And/or they want that wonderful drug-like jolt of endorphins produced by doing a good deed. Most importantly, they don’t want to admit that they want to be seen as altruists and they consider it rude when someone points out the very obvious truth that the reason they are doing it is not to help people or improve the world, but to be seen helping people and to get the jolt of good feelings from it.
This is important because the disconnect between the stated desires and the true desires distort whatever help is being given. Those distortions seem irrelevant from the perspective of the giver. They are massive from the perspective of those being helped. Which perspective is more important?
My non-American wife frequently (and gently) mocks me by saying that we Americans (and Euros) are naive like children. And she’s right. We spend so much energy projecting how we want the world to be that we fail to see how it actually is. We think we can fix things without understanding the harsh realities. We easily confuse the appearance of virtuousness with actually being virtuous.
This is the reason the “effective” people don’t actually go into the aid business, they simply fund the aid business with the proceeds of their effectiveness. If they actually spent time on the ground they would see those distortions. Their handiwork would slowly dawn on them. And they would be appalled.
That doesn’t answer the question at all. How do you think the world would look differently when EAs put more value on helping then being seen as helping?
This is the reason the “effective” people don’t actually go into the aid business, they simply fund the aid business with the proceeds of their effectiveness.
GiveWell actually does on the ground investigation of the effects of the recommended charities and it’s certainly part of the EA movement. It seems like you are projecting something that isn’t true.
How do you think the world would look differently when EAs put more value on helping then being seen as helping?
Ahh. I didn’t understand the question.
EAs would help people very close to them with whom they can empathize. I mean empathize in the truest form of the word. They would be able to understand the plight of those they are helping, understand how they got there, and understand the complex consequences that flow from the administration of charity. Distortions occur with distance and differences.
But EAs are driven by a compulsion to do good so they are forced to reach further afield for problems to solve because they understand the complexities of the problems close to home (homelessness for instance or urban-education). They purposely blind themselves to this intractability by seeking problems far away and seeking solutions with layers of insulation from it. They hire professionals to deal with those frustrating details.
You understand intuitively what would happen if you went to a really bad neighborhood near you and simply gave out cash to poor people no questions asked. So you send it to Uganda with the naive belief that their problems are somehow easily solvable by the injection of cash. Your overwhelming desire to do good in the world blinds you to the fact that problems are as complex there as they are here.
So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying: We can tell that EAs really value looking and feeling good rather than genuinely doing good, because if they genuinely valued doing good then they would focus on those very close to themselves rather than people far away.
It looks to me as if you are assuming that EAs share some opinions of yours that I don’t think they generally do.
So let me ask a variant of my original question. How do you think the world would look, if EAs (1) were more interested in genuinely doing good than in looking and feeling good, and also (2) sincerely believed that they could do much more good per unit money spent in far-away places than “very close to themselves”?
Because it seems to me that the simplest interpretation of the available evidence is that #2 really is what most EAs believe; that it’s not an obviously unreasonable thing for them to believe; and that, if they believe it, it explains their preference for sending money to (say) sub-Saharan Africa just as well as your hypothesis that what, deep down, matters to them most is looking and feeling good.
I guess you will reiterate that “they understand the complexities of the problems close to home”, so “they purposely blind themselves [...] by seeking problems far away”, etc. For sure, that’s possible, but to me it’s far from obviously true, which is why I am asking: what’s your evidence? How would you expect the world to look different if they weren’t doing that but were genuinely motivated by a desire to do as much good as possible?
(Let me say a few words about your last paragraph, restraining my temptation to get cross at your cack-handed attempts at psychoanalysing people you haven’t met. There aren’t actually any really bad neighbourhoods very near me, and AIUI what characterizes “really bad neighbourhoods” is not just extreme poverty but violence and criminality; if you go to a “really bad neighbourhood” the chances are that a lot of the people you see are criminals. Handing out money to them would not send it to the best places. But my guess is that a programme of going to very poor places near me—in so far as they exist—and trying to identify people in need of money and give it to them would, despite various obvious difficulties, probably do a fair bit of good. However, not only is there a shortage of really “bad” places near where I live; in the whole country where I live there is scarcely any poverty as extreme as is found all over the place in some parts of the world. The effectiveness of money in relieving the ills of poverty is, very crudely, proportional to how severe the poverty is; I therefore expect a given amount of money to do more good in poorer places. This will be counterbalanced somewhat by the greater difficulties in getting the money to effective places at a distance, but I see no reason to expect the latter to outweigh the former. I don’t, of course, think that sending money to these very poor places will solve all their problems. In fact, if it were going to then we could almost certainly do better by sending some of the money somewhere else. And I don’t, of course, think that the mere fact of sending money somewhere guarantees doing good; you have to find interventions that actually help, and look at the evidence that they do; there is in fact some fairly decent evidence for this in the case of the interventions performed by e.g. GiveWell’s preferred charities. -- Now, of course I may be wrong about any of that. But please explain to me why I’m so obviously wrong that you can be confident that my actual reason for liking these interventions is that I want to look good and feel good and deliberately blind myself to their complexities.)
I like studies and think they are useful. I think EAs are motivated to do good and are motivated to believe that money will solve problems that are further away when they know that it does not solve them close to home.
Also, I think it is impossible to measure certain metrics. For instance, in Africa group interdependence is extremely important. Everyone helps everyone. It is known as Ubuntu in Southern Africa but is common throughout sub-Saharan Africa
Cash injections from outsiders harm this. But how could you possibly measure it? How could you measure the interdependency of a community? How could you measure the harm done to that critical interdependency?
Capitalist societies thrive on, even require, mobility—social, economic, geographical. They require risk-taking and creative destruction. They require greed (or at least the desire to maximize something).
Interdependent societies of the Sub-Saharan Africa type provide some safety and support, but they pay for it with stagnation. They provide less degrees of freedom, less tolerance of the weird and the unusual, less capability to absorb (or generate) social and economic shocks.
A web of ties to others supports you, but it also binds you.
EAs focus on eliminating (or mitigating) suffering. The devil is in the definition of suffering.
You would have to change the entire culture of the continent to change their version of interdependence. This is a massive change. African culture has proven to be rather persistent so you would have an uphill battle. Is it possible that the imposition of a capitalist culture might create more suffering (from the African perspective) than relief?
I’m a capitalist. But I was born in a capitalist society and reared by those who shoved me out of the nest to encourage my ability to fly. Imposition of a very different culture on Africa could be tantamount to shoving a flightless bird from the nest at the top of the tree then referring to the resulting splat on the ground as creative destruction. One man’s creative destruction is another man’s disaster. Who gets to decide?
From our perspective a government official who helps his family while being in the role of being a burocrat is corrupt. From the African practice his actions are commandable because he’s practicing ubuntu.
The amount of that kind of interdependence in Western society isn’t zero but it’s a lot less than it’s in Africa.
Western society needs the prime loyality of a burocrat to be to the state. It needs the prime loyality of an employee in his role as employee to his company.
Why do you think that GiveDirectly style donations hurt this? What kind of real world effect to do expect to see in a world where it hurts it compared to a possible world where it doesn’t hurt?
As ChristianKI says, you haven’t actually answered the question.
the very obvious truth that the reason they are doing it is not to help [...] but to be seen helping [...] and to get the jolt of good feelings
Why is this “very obvious”? It isn’t very obvious to me. (It looks to me as if there’s a variety of different motivations, and at least some EAs seem clearly to be losing more personal utility by their donations than they could plausibly be gaining from being seen helping and from jolts of good feelings.)
Is what’s very obvious to you specifically that EAs have those motivations, or that everyone does?
[...] we [...] We [...] we [...] we [...] We [...] we [...] We [...]
I have the impression that you keep saying “we” and meaning “you”.
I believe EAs really do want to help people and improve the world. But even more than that they want to be (seen as) altruists who are helping people and improving the world. And/or they want that wonderful drug-like jolt of endorphins produced by doing a good deed. Most importantly, they don’t want to admit that they want to be seen as altruists and they consider it rude when someone points out the very obvious truth that the reason they are doing it is not to help people or improve the world, but to be seen helping people and to get the jolt of good feelings from it.
This is important because the disconnect between the stated desires and the true desires distort whatever help is being given. Those distortions seem irrelevant from the perspective of the giver. They are massive from the perspective of those being helped. Which perspective is more important?
My non-American wife frequently (and gently) mocks me by saying that we Americans (and Euros) are naive like children. And she’s right. We spend so much energy projecting how we want the world to be that we fail to see how it actually is. We think we can fix things without understanding the harsh realities. We easily confuse the appearance of virtuousness with actually being virtuous.
This is the reason the “effective” people don’t actually go into the aid business, they simply fund the aid business with the proceeds of their effectiveness. If they actually spent time on the ground they would see those distortions. Their handiwork would slowly dawn on them. And they would be appalled.
That doesn’t answer the question at all. How do you think the world would look differently when EAs put more value on helping then being seen as helping?
GiveWell actually does on the ground investigation of the effects of the recommended charities and it’s certainly part of the EA movement. It seems like you are projecting something that isn’t true.
Ahh. I didn’t understand the question.
EAs would help people very close to them with whom they can empathize. I mean empathize in the truest form of the word. They would be able to understand the plight of those they are helping, understand how they got there, and understand the complex consequences that flow from the administration of charity. Distortions occur with distance and differences.
But EAs are driven by a compulsion to do good so they are forced to reach further afield for problems to solve because they understand the complexities of the problems close to home (homelessness for instance or urban-education). They purposely blind themselves to this intractability by seeking problems far away and seeking solutions with layers of insulation from it. They hire professionals to deal with those frustrating details.
You understand intuitively what would happen if you went to a really bad neighborhood near you and simply gave out cash to poor people no questions asked. So you send it to Uganda with the naive belief that their problems are somehow easily solvable by the injection of cash. Your overwhelming desire to do good in the world blinds you to the fact that problems are as complex there as they are here.
So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying: We can tell that EAs really value looking and feeling good rather than genuinely doing good, because if they genuinely valued doing good then they would focus on those very close to themselves rather than people far away.
It looks to me as if you are assuming that EAs share some opinions of yours that I don’t think they generally do.
So let me ask a variant of my original question. How do you think the world would look, if EAs (1) were more interested in genuinely doing good than in looking and feeling good, and also (2) sincerely believed that they could do much more good per unit money spent in far-away places than “very close to themselves”?
Because it seems to me that the simplest interpretation of the available evidence is that #2 really is what most EAs believe; that it’s not an obviously unreasonable thing for them to believe; and that, if they believe it, it explains their preference for sending money to (say) sub-Saharan Africa just as well as your hypothesis that what, deep down, matters to them most is looking and feeling good.
I guess you will reiterate that “they understand the complexities of the problems close to home”, so “they purposely blind themselves [...] by seeking problems far away”, etc. For sure, that’s possible, but to me it’s far from obviously true, which is why I am asking: what’s your evidence? How would you expect the world to look different if they weren’t doing that but were genuinely motivated by a desire to do as much good as possible?
(Let me say a few words about your last paragraph, restraining my temptation to get cross at your cack-handed attempts at psychoanalysing people you haven’t met. There aren’t actually any really bad neighbourhoods very near me, and AIUI what characterizes “really bad neighbourhoods” is not just extreme poverty but violence and criminality; if you go to a “really bad neighbourhood” the chances are that a lot of the people you see are criminals. Handing out money to them would not send it to the best places. But my guess is that a programme of going to very poor places near me—in so far as they exist—and trying to identify people in need of money and give it to them would, despite various obvious difficulties, probably do a fair bit of good. However, not only is there a shortage of really “bad” places near where I live; in the whole country where I live there is scarcely any poverty as extreme as is found all over the place in some parts of the world. The effectiveness of money in relieving the ills of poverty is, very crudely, proportional to how severe the poverty is; I therefore expect a given amount of money to do more good in poorer places. This will be counterbalanced somewhat by the greater difficulties in getting the money to effective places at a distance, but I see no reason to expect the latter to outweigh the former. I don’t, of course, think that sending money to these very poor places will solve all their problems. In fact, if it were going to then we could almost certainly do better by sending some of the money somewhere else. And I don’t, of course, think that the mere fact of sending money somewhere guarantees doing good; you have to find interventions that actually help, and look at the evidence that they do; there is in fact some fairly decent evidence for this in the case of the interventions performed by e.g. GiveWell’s preferred charities. -- Now, of course I may be wrong about any of that. But please explain to me why I’m so obviously wrong that you can be confident that my actual reason for liking these interventions is that I want to look good and feel good and deliberately blind myself to their complexities.)
Do you believe anecdotal evidence is generally superior to systematic evidence gathered in studies?
Even if that’s what you believe, why do you believe taht people who believe the opposite, do so because of signaling concerns?
I like studies and think they are useful. I think EAs are motivated to do good and are motivated to believe that money will solve problems that are further away when they know that it does not solve them close to home.
Also, I think it is impossible to measure certain metrics. For instance, in Africa group interdependence is extremely important. Everyone helps everyone. It is known as Ubuntu in Southern Africa but is common throughout sub-Saharan Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_%28philosophy%29
Cash injections from outsiders harm this. But how could you possibly measure it? How could you measure the interdependency of a community? How could you measure the harm done to that critical interdependency?
It’s not obvious that this interdependency is a good thing. It’s characteristic of pre-capitalist societies.
How are capitalistic societies not interdependent?
Capitalist societies thrive on, even require, mobility—social, economic, geographical. They require risk-taking and creative destruction. They require greed (or at least the desire to maximize something).
Interdependent societies of the Sub-Saharan Africa type provide some safety and support, but they pay for it with stagnation. They provide less degrees of freedom, less tolerance of the weird and the unusual, less capability to absorb (or generate) social and economic shocks.
A web of ties to others supports you, but it also binds you.
Spot on analysis.
EAs focus on eliminating (or mitigating) suffering. The devil is in the definition of suffering.
You would have to change the entire culture of the continent to change their version of interdependence. This is a massive change. African culture has proven to be rather persistent so you would have an uphill battle. Is it possible that the imposition of a capitalist culture might create more suffering (from the African perspective) than relief?
I’m a capitalist. But I was born in a capitalist society and reared by those who shoved me out of the nest to encourage my ability to fly. Imposition of a very different culture on Africa could be tantamount to shoving a flightless bird from the nest at the top of the tree then referring to the resulting splat on the ground as creative destruction. One man’s creative destruction is another man’s disaster. Who gets to decide?
A flightless bird at the top of a tree is screwed, anyway :-/
If you’re interested in the topic, I believe it was extensively discussed with respect to post-Soviet Russia.
Spit my tea on the keyboard.
From our perspective a government official who helps his family while being in the role of being a burocrat is corrupt. From the African practice his actions are commandable because he’s practicing ubuntu.
The amount of that kind of interdependence in Western society isn’t zero but it’s a lot less than it’s in Africa. Western society needs the prime loyality of a burocrat to be to the state. It needs the prime loyality of an employee in his role as employee to his company.
Why do you think that GiveDirectly style donations hurt this? What kind of real world effect to do expect to see in a world where it hurts it compared to a possible world where it doesn’t hurt?
As ChristianKI says, you haven’t actually answered the question.
Why is this “very obvious”? It isn’t very obvious to me. (It looks to me as if there’s a variety of different motivations, and at least some EAs seem clearly to be losing more personal utility by their donations than they could plausibly be gaining from being seen helping and from jolts of good feelings.)
Is what’s very obvious to you specifically that EAs have those motivations, or that everyone does?
I have the impression that you keep saying “we” and meaning “you”.