Do we care about “doing the most good that we can” or “being as transparent and honest as we can”? These are two different value sets. They will sometimes overlap, and in other cases will not.
The EA movement does not really have to be “as transparent and honest as we can”—that’s an unrealistic standard from any real-world organization, for reasons that have very little to do with any sort of ‘lying’ or ‘dishonesty’. It only has to be markedly better than the bulk of the charitable-aid industry, which is not a very high bar at all. That still does not justify many of the things reported about in Sarah’s article (I’ve tried to explain my view about these in a different comment to this post). It may be true that “we’re just haggling over the price” at this point, but I think I can tell when something is a bad deal.
For a toy example, say you are talking to your billionaire uncle on his deathbed and trying to convince him to leave money to AMF instead of his current favorite charity, the local art museum. You know he would respond better if you exaggerate the impact of AMF. Would you do so, whether lying by omission or in any other way, in order to get much more money for AMF
I would lie, because my billionaire uncle is smart enough to discount some things I say as exaggerations, and to do anything else might just be too confusing given the short timeframe. :-P If you think the EA movement is in a similar position, by all means feel free to advocate for the same choice!
The EA movement does not really have to be “as transparent and honest as we can”—that’s an unrealistic standard from any real-world organization, for reasons that have very little to do with any sort of ‘lying’ or ‘dishonesty’. It only has to be markedly better than the bulk of the charitable-aid industry, which is not a very high bar at all. That still does not justify many of the things reported about in Sarah’s article (I’ve tried to explain my view about these in a different comment to this post). It may be true that “we’re just haggling over the price” at this point, but I think I can tell when something is a bad deal.
I would lie, because my billionaire uncle is smart enough to discount some things I say as exaggerations, and to do anything else might just be too confusing given the short timeframe. :-P If you think the EA movement is in a similar position, by all means feel free to advocate for the same choice!