I’ve read Yvain’s article, and reread it just now. It has the same underlying problem, which is: to the extent that it’s obviously true, it’s trivial[1]; to the extent that it’s nontrivial, it’s not obviously true.
Yvain talks about how we should be effective in the charity we choose to engage in (no big revelation here), then seems almost imperceptibly to slide into an assumed worldview where we’re all utilitarians, where saving children is, of course, what we care about most, where the best charity is the one that saves the most children, etc.
To what extent are all of these things part of what “effective altruism” is? For instance (and this is just one possible example), let’s say I really care about paintings more than dead children, and think that £550,000 paid to keep one mediocre painting in a UK museum is money quite well spent, even when the matter of sanitation in African villages is put to me as bluntly as you like; but I aspire to rationality, and want to purchase my artwork-retention-by-local-museums as cost-effectively as I can. Am I an effective altruist?
To put this another way: if “effective altruism” is really just “we should be effective in our altruistic actions”, then it seems frankly ridiculous that less than one-third of Less Wrong readers should identify as EA-ers. What do the other 71.4% think? That we should be ineffective altruists?? That altruism in general is just a bad idea? Do those two views really account for over seventy percent of the LW readership, do you think? Surely, in this case, the effective altruist movement just really needs to get better at explaining itself, and its obvious and uncontroversial nature, to the Less Wrong audience.
But effective altruism isn’t just about that, yes? As a movement, as a philosophy, it’s got all sorts of baggage, in the form of fairly specific values and ethical systems (that are assumed, and never really argued for, by EA-ers), like (a specific form of) utilitarianism, belief in things like the moral value of animals, and certain other things. Or, at least — such is the perception of people around here (myself included); and that, I think, is what’s behind that 28.6% statistic.
[1] Well, trivial given the background that we, as Lesswrongians who have read and understood the Sequences, are assumed to have.
I haven’t watched that TED talk (though I’ve read some of Peter Singer’s writings); I will do that tomorrow.
I’ve read Yvain’s article, and reread it just now. It has the same underlying problem, which is: to the extent that it’s obviously true, it’s trivial[1]; to the extent that it’s nontrivial, it’s not obviously true.
Yvain talks about how we should be effective in the charity we choose to engage in (no big revelation here), then seems almost imperceptibly to slide into an assumed worldview where we’re all utilitarians, where saving children is, of course, what we care about most, where the best charity is the one that saves the most children, etc.
To what extent are all of these things part of what “effective altruism” is? For instance (and this is just one possible example), let’s say I really care about paintings more than dead children, and think that £550,000 paid to keep one mediocre painting in a UK museum is money quite well spent, even when the matter of sanitation in African villages is put to me as bluntly as you like; but I aspire to rationality, and want to purchase my artwork-retention-by-local-museums as cost-effectively as I can. Am I an effective altruist?
To put this another way: if “effective altruism” is really just “we should be effective in our altruistic actions”, then it seems frankly ridiculous that less than one-third of Less Wrong readers should identify as EA-ers. What do the other 71.4% think? That we should be ineffective altruists?? That altruism in general is just a bad idea? Do those two views really account for over seventy percent of the LW readership, do you think? Surely, in this case, the effective altruist movement just really needs to get better at explaining itself, and its obvious and uncontroversial nature, to the Less Wrong audience.
But effective altruism isn’t just about that, yes? As a movement, as a philosophy, it’s got all sorts of baggage, in the form of fairly specific values and ethical systems (that are assumed, and never really argued for, by EA-ers), like (a specific form of) utilitarianism, belief in things like the moral value of animals, and certain other things. Or, at least — such is the perception of people around here (myself included); and that, I think, is what’s behind that 28.6% statistic.
[1] Well, trivial given the background that we, as Lesswrongians who have read and understood the Sequences, are assumed to have.
I haven’t watched that TED talk (though I’ve read some of Peter Singer’s writings); I will do that tomorrow.