Sarah’s post highlights some of the essential tensions at the heart of Effective Altruism.
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.
And please don’t say that “we do the most good that we can by being as transparent and honest as we can” or that “being as transparent and honest as we can” is best in the long term. Just don’t. You’re simply lying to yourself and to everyone else if you say that. If you can’t imagine a scenario where “doing the most good that we can” or “being as transparent and honest as we can” are opposed, you’ve just suffered from a failure mode by flinching away from the truth.
So when push comes to shove, which one do we prioritize? When we have to throw the switch and have the trolley crush either “doing the most good” or “being as transparent and honest as we can,” which do we choose?
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, given that no one else would find out about this situation? What about if you know that other family members are standing in the wings and ready to use all sorts of lies to advocate for their favorite charities?
If you do not lie, that’s fine, but don’t pretend that you care about doing the most good, please. Just don’t. You care about being as transparent and honest as possible over doing the most good.
If you do lie to your uncle, then you do care about doing the most good. However, you should consider at what price point you will not lie—at this point, we’re just haggling.
The people quoted in Sarah’s post all highlight how doing the most good sometimes involves not being as transparent and honest as we can (including myself). Different people have different price points, that’s all. We’re all willing to bite the bullet and sometimes send that trolley over transparency and honesty, whether questioning the value of public criticism such as Ben or appealing to emotions such as Rob or using intuition as evidence such as Jacy, for the sake of what we believe is the most good.
As a movement, EA has a big problem with believing that ends never justify the means. Yes, sometimes ends do justify the means—at least if we care about doing the most good. We can debate whether we are mistaken about the ends not justifying the means, but using insufficient means to accomplish the ends is just as bad as using excessive means to get to the ends. If we are truly serious about doing the most good as possible, we should let our end goal be the North Star, and work backward from there, as opposed to hobbling ourselves by preconceived notions of “intellectual rigor” at the cost of doing the most good.
You seem to be suggesting that I had previously advocated being as transparent as possible. On the contrary—I have long advocated for the most effective communication techniques to achieve EA ends.
Since to you the ends justify the means, why should we accept that your ends are EA ends? You might well be lying about it and by your set of criteria that’s fine.
Let’s consider the hypothesis that what you want is money and social status. These ends would justify the means of setting up an “EA” charity and collecting donations from gullible people, wouldn’t they? It’s just what you believe to be an effective method of reaching your goals. Since things like integrity and honesty are subservient to reaching your goals, there is no problem here, is there?
To figure out the truth, we must not punish people for advocating a position, or we might end up in a situation where everyone sees a taboo truth and is afraid to speak it.
That someone advocates lying is evidence that they would lie and should be excluded. Now take that evidence and throw it out the window, because we need to figure out whether lying is actually the right thing to do, and for that we need to listen to all the sides. In fact, Gleb should be rewarded as compensation for the subconscious trust of his peers that he sacrificed to help this discussion.
This is wholly irrelevant, because we’ve already caught Gleb lying many times. His comment sacrifices nothing, and in fact he’s likely posting it to excuse his crimes (the smart money says he’s lying about something in the process).
Your point does apply to the OP trying to smear her first example for practicing radical honesty. This is one of the points I tried to make earlier.
Then it’s a question whether this speech is efficient or not, not if lying is or is not? Everyone involved should be focused on effective actions with a positive expected value. I’m not very well read in this area. But if I understand correctly, the end justifies the means but it might be an inefficient action to say it publicly? Thus some other people might react to it because it is an effective action to do so.
I have plenty of social status, and sufficient money, as a professor. I don’t need any more personally. In fact, I’ve donated about $38K to charity over the last 2 years. My goal is EA ends. You can choose to believe me or not :-)
“Would you do so, whether lying by omission or in any other way, in order to get much more money for AMF, given that no one else would find out about this situation?”
No, I would not. Because if I would, they would find out about the situation, not by investigating those facts, but by checking my comments on Less Wrong when I said I would do that. Or in other words, if you ever are talking to a billionaire uncle in real life, they may well have read your comments, and so there will be no chance of persuading them to do what you want even if you refrain from lying.
You are very, very wrong here, and it should be evident that by your own standards, if you right, you should keep your opinions to yourself and pretend to be in favor of transparency and honesty.
I don’t believe I am wrong here. My rich uncle doesn’t read Less Wrong. However, those who have rich uncles do read Less Wrong. If I can sway even a single individual to communicate effectively, as opposed to maximizing transparency, in swaying people to give money effectively, I’ll be glad to have done so.
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!
Sarah’s post highlights some of the essential tensions at the heart of Effective Altruism.
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.
And please don’t say that “we do the most good that we can by being as transparent and honest as we can” or that “being as transparent and honest as we can” is best in the long term. Just don’t. You’re simply lying to yourself and to everyone else if you say that. If you can’t imagine a scenario where “doing the most good that we can” or “being as transparent and honest as we can” are opposed, you’ve just suffered from a failure mode by flinching away from the truth.
So when push comes to shove, which one do we prioritize? When we have to throw the switch and have the trolley crush either “doing the most good” or “being as transparent and honest as we can,” which do we choose?
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, given that no one else would find out about this situation? What about if you know that other family members are standing in the wings and ready to use all sorts of lies to advocate for their favorite charities?
If you do not lie, that’s fine, but don’t pretend that you care about doing the most good, please. Just don’t. You care about being as transparent and honest as possible over doing the most good.
If you do lie to your uncle, then you do care about doing the most good. However, you should consider at what price point you will not lie—at this point, we’re just haggling.
The people quoted in Sarah’s post all highlight how doing the most good sometimes involves not being as transparent and honest as we can (including myself). Different people have different price points, that’s all. We’re all willing to bite the bullet and sometimes send that trolley over transparency and honesty, whether questioning the value of public criticism such as Ben or appealing to emotions such as Rob or using intuition as evidence such as Jacy, for the sake of what we believe is the most good.
As a movement, EA has a big problem with believing that ends never justify the means. Yes, sometimes ends do justify the means—at least if we care about doing the most good. We can debate whether we are mistaken about the ends not justifying the means, but using insufficient means to accomplish the ends is just as bad as using excessive means to get to the ends. If we are truly serious about doing the most good as possible, we should let our end goal be the North Star, and work backward from there, as opposed to hobbling ourselves by preconceived notions of “intellectual rigor” at the cost of doing the most good.
“I got caught lying — again — so now I’m going to tell you why lying is actually better than telling the truth.”
Seriously … just stop already.
You seem to be suggesting that I had previously advocated being as transparent as possible. On the contrary—I have long advocated for the most effective communication techniques to achieve EA ends.
Why should anyone believe you?
Since to you the ends justify the means, why should we accept that your ends are EA ends? You might well be lying about it and by your set of criteria that’s fine.
Let’s consider the hypothesis that what you want is money and social status. These ends would justify the means of setting up an “EA” charity and collecting donations from gullible people, wouldn’t they? It’s just what you believe to be an effective method of reaching your goals. Since things like integrity and honesty are subservient to reaching your goals, there is no problem here, is there?
To figure out the truth, we must not punish people for advocating a position, or we might end up in a situation where everyone sees a taboo truth and is afraid to speak it.
That someone advocates lying is evidence that they would lie and should be excluded. Now take that evidence and throw it out the window, because we need to figure out whether lying is actually the right thing to do, and for that we need to listen to all the sides. In fact, Gleb should be rewarded as compensation for the
subconscioustrust of his peers that he sacrificed to help this discussion.This is wholly irrelevant, because we’ve already caught Gleb lying many times. His comment sacrifices nothing, and in fact he’s likely posting it to excuse his crimes (the smart money says he’s lying about something in the process).
Your point does apply to the OP trying to smear her first example for practicing radical honesty. This is one of the points I tried to make earlier.
I don’t think anyone here is in position to “punish” Gleb.
However speech has consequences. In particular, consequences with respect to reputation, credibility, and trust. This is as it should be.
Then it’s a question whether this speech is efficient or not, not if lying is or is not? Everyone involved should be focused on effective actions with a positive expected value. I’m not very well read in this area. But if I understand correctly, the end justifies the means but it might be an inefficient action to say it publicly? Thus some other people might react to it because it is an effective action to do so.
I have plenty of social status, and sufficient money, as a professor. I don’t need any more personally. In fact, I’ve donated about $38K to charity over the last 2 years. My goal is EA ends. You can choose to believe me or not :-)
“Would you do so, whether lying by omission or in any other way, in order to get much more money for AMF, given that no one else would find out about this situation?”
No, I would not. Because if I would, they would find out about the situation, not by investigating those facts, but by checking my comments on Less Wrong when I said I would do that. Or in other words, if you ever are talking to a billionaire uncle in real life, they may well have read your comments, and so there will be no chance of persuading them to do what you want even if you refrain from lying.
You are very, very wrong here, and it should be evident that by your own standards, if you right, you should keep your opinions to yourself and pretend to be in favor of transparency and honesty.
I think in Gleb’s case it may be rather too late for him to get anyone to believe that he is in favour of transparency and honesty.
Never claimed to be—I have long argued for the most effective communication techniques to promote EA ends.
I don’t believe I am wrong here. My rich uncle doesn’t read Less Wrong. However, those who have rich uncles do read Less Wrong. If I can sway even a single individual to communicate effectively, as opposed to maximizing transparency, in swaying people to give money effectively, I’ll be glad to have done so.
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!