this piece is about whether earning to give is the best way to be altruistic.
but I think a big issue is what altruism is. do most people mostly agree on what’s altruistic or good? have effective altruists tried to determine what real people or organizations want?
you don’t want to push “altruism given hidden assumptions X, Y and Z that most people don’t agree with.” for example, in Ben Kuhn’s critique he talks about a principle of egalitarianism. But I don’t think most people think of “altruism” as something that applies equally to the guy next door and to a person in Africa. Maybe smart idealistic Anglophone folks in the 2010s do. And some people think religion has equal or greater importance than physical human life does. So if you can convert a person to Christianity then you’ve done a huge good. And abortions and adultery are grave sins and so forth. Also, making political improvements is not a core part of EA.
maybe you should talk about apolitical egalitarian secular altruism.
but there is also another thing effective altruists favor that I think is clearly good: they use evidence. We do want evidence-based altruism. Kinda like evidence-based policy.
I think once you get beyond apolitical secular egalitarian altruism there are lots of different possibilities and it’s as hard to figure out where you stand as it is to maximize impact. so maybe we should add something like reflection-based altruism.
I wonder if you can have more political impact through “earning to give” to political causes or through direct political involvement. the answer may vary with the type of cause. We might include the three types of economically left (e.g. socialism), economically neutral (e.g. abortion) and economically right (e.g. abolish estate taxes)
I do find it disconcerting just how little I see EA talk about changing society. The charity sector’s budget in any given country is ridiculously smaller than the government budget; EA advocates talk about directed giving as the best way to change the world, but this appears to me to be deliberately ignoring systemic problems in favour of enshrining personal charity as a substitute for government.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” (Hélder Câmara)
(I realise Singer’s original ideas are all about systemic change.)
Some policy changes are hard to measure. Some are controversial to measure — you can measure them, but people will call you nasty names for doing so.
I expect that anyone who measured and forecast the health effects of reduction in lead pollution, back in the days of lead paint and leaded gasoline, was probably called “anti-business” or worse. Fortunately, they won anyway, and the effects are indeed measurable — in reduced cases of lead poisoning, and apparently in increased IQs of city residents.
I do not think EA is about things that are relatively easy to measure. It is about doing things with the highest expected value. It is just that due partly to regression to the mean things with measurably high values should have among the highest expected values. See Adam Caseys posts on 80 000 Hours.
Goodhart, of course: after a short time, only the metric counts.
The solution is obvious: I create enough simulations that are good enough to constitute sentient beings, and make them all happy, that this adds up to MUCH more goodness than my present day job running a highly profitable baby mulching operation to fund it all. Like buying “asshole offsets”.
Also, making political improvements is not a core part of EA.
The Swiss EA people did try to get a referenda passed. They engage with the political system.
Getting university cafeterias to be vegan is a political agenda.
It’s just not the classic political agenda that you find in the mainstream political debate.
21st century politics is strange. The story that TV news media tells is still so strong that young people
seem to think that politics is about fighting the battles of their parents instead of fighting their own battles.
maybe you should talk about apolitical egalitarian secular altruism.
That’s no effective catch phrase. You know, EAs actually care about effectiveness ;)
but there is also another thing effective altruists favor that I think is clearly good: they use evidence. We do want evidence-based altruism. Kinda like evidence-based policy.
This is kind of funny. At the Community Weekend in Berlin Jonas spoke about EA movement building and how one should use the label that most effective for a community. Calling it Effective Altruism is a PR move.
I wonder if you can have more political impact through “earning to give” to political causes or through direct political involvement.
I think that largely depends on your skill set. The core political goal should be to get decent people into positions of political power. Maybe some of the people who do today EA movement building also build the kind of skills in the process that they need to run political campaigns in 10 years. Of course at that point they need other EAs to fund their campaigns (at least in the US).
The Swiss folks may have done that. But I think the major organizations, like GiveWell, Giving What We Can, and 80,000 Hours, are focused on apolitical causes like global health, if you judge from their lists of recommended charities.
Also I don’t think there’s any getting around taking a position on mainstream political issues to optimally benefit society. Statistically your income is more influenced by which society you happen to be born in than anything you do. If you believe Acemoglu and Robinson, it’s the institutions that matter for economic growth.
At the Community Weekend in Berlin Jonas spoke about EA movement building and how one is
Huh?
I think that largely depends on your skill set.
It might. (Thank you for giving a data point.) I find myself drawn toward the earning to give route since then you can use your salary to kinda measure impact. You could measure too with seeking political office although that’s not my cup of tea. But with political activism I don’t really see how.
The Swiss folks may have done that. But I think the major organizations, like GiveWell, Giving What We Can, and 80,000 Hours, are focused on apolitical causes like global health, if you judge from their lists of recommended charities.
I don’t think 80,000 hours advice people who seek it’s guidance against going into politics.
GiveWell states that they focus on global health issues because those issues provide a good evidence base.
I think Giving What We Can says that it’s members can make donation to any charity of their choosing.
Statistically your income is more influenced by which society you happen to be born in than anything you do. If you believe Acemoglu and Robinson, it’s the institutions that matter for economic growth.
“Should we do liquid democracy?” is an import question when it comes to designing institutions. It’s not a question that left or right in the traditional sense of those words.
In software design a lot of thought went into structuring information and valuing simplicity. Getting that kind of thinking into law making would do a lot of good but it’s no mainstream topic.
Opposing corn subsidies isn’t a right or left issue. Especially if you do it on the ground that the subsidies make meat too cheap and you want people to eat less meat.
Fighting software patents and patents trolls isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Whether or not you have legal responsibility when you route traffic of other people over your own computer isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Pushing evidence-based policy making isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Ben Goldacre’s fight to get trial data out in the open is highly political in nature. You could label it “socialism” to force big pharma to release their knowledge into the commons but I think that heavily screws with the nature of the conflict. I think that even people who see themselves politically on the right are likely to support Goldacres agenda.
But with political activism I don’t really see how.
What do you mean with “political activism”. The term is frequently used by people who want to signal that they care about an issue but who aren’t willing to actually to something that has political effect.
Saul Alinsky would be someone who thought a lot about how to do political activism. It starts with doing community building. In the EA example that means at this point in time most of the activism resources should go towards internal affairs of the EA movement.
We might include the three types of economically left (e.g. socialism), economically neutral (e.g. abortion) and economically right (e.g. abolish estate taxes).
That the effects of abortion are economically neutral seems like an extraordinary claim. What kind of evidence did you have in mind? If those anti-abortion people that hang out on campus are right, then roughly 50 million abortions have taken place in America since Roe v. Wade. How could an extra 50 million people have a neutral effect on the economy?
That the effects of abortion are economically nertral[sic] seems like an extrodinary[sic] claim.
Not really. If I recall, legalizing abortion has almost no effect on the birth rate, accessible contraceptives are somewhat higher, but none come close to changing cultural norms.
roughly 50 million abortions have taken place in America since Roe v. Wade.
50 million mostly legal abortions, even if the figure is correct, does not translate to 50 million more adults, of course. It is not even clear whether the overall effect is increase or decrease in population.
Not really. If I recall, legalizing abortion has almost no effect on the birth rate, accessible contraceptives are somewhat higher, but none come close to changing cultural norms.
Well, this is what I found in < 5 minutes of searching:
...Klerman finds that legalization of abortion, particularly the broad access afforded by Roe, had some effect in reducing fertility.
-- Klerman, Jacob Alex. “US abortion policy and fertility.” (2000).
I find fairly strong evidence that young women’s birthrates dropped as a result of abortion access as well as evidence that birth control pill access led to a drop in birthrates among whites.
-- Guldi, Melanie. “Fertility effects of abortion and birth control pill access for minors.” Demography 45, no. 4 (2008): 817-827.
Our model estimates women ages 14 to 19 will see an 8.7% decline in birth rates, a 4.1% decline for women ages 20 to 24 and a 3% decline for women ages 25 to 29 due to abortion legalization. We predict that abortion legalization is correlated with a 10.2% decrease in the birth rates of black mothers and a 4.5% decrease in the birth rates of white mothers.
-- Coates, Brandi, Alejandro Companioni, and Zachary A. Bethune. “The Impact of Abortion Legalization on Birth Rates!.”
Okay, so a quick search for studies on the effects of abortion legalization on birth rates seems to confirm my priors, so...it still looks like an extraordinary claim.
50 million mostly legal abortions, even if the figure is correct, does not translate to 50 million more adults, of course.
Agreed, I shouldn’t have used that number, but according the first couple of studies I came across it definitely would be positive and over 40 years time it seems plausible that even some of those people that would have been born would have had kids by this point.
Interesting, thanks. Incidentally, the CDC data show that the abortions/life births ratio is pretty significant, though it’s declined from 36% in 1979 to 22% in 2010. This is surprisingly high. I don’t know what to make of it. My prior expectation was maybe a percent or two. Every 5th fetus is aborted? Or am I reading the data wrong? Canadian rates seem to be similar, with every 4th fetus being aborted.
I suggested this division of causes because, first, people who earn to give may join the upper or at least upper middle class. It seems harder to advocate for things like socialism when your peer group is rich. Your opinions aren’t going to earn you praise or friends and friends and connections are really important for making money. It’s also hard to devote time and energy to maintaining odd views when you’re focused on a career that isn’t directly involved with acting on those opinions. You’re losing some potential synergy. It also possible that, second, the usefulness of cash donations varies with whether the cause has support among the rich or poor, although this might work the other way in that I would expect causes that favor the poor to need money more.
But with a topic like abortion this all seems unclear—although opinions on abortion do correlate some with income, I don’t think that correlation is a strong as with outright economic redistribution. What do you think?
If you want to suggest a more clearly neutral topic than abortion I would be interested to hear it.
this piece is about whether earning to give is the best way to be altruistic.
but I think a big issue is what altruism is. do most people mostly agree on what’s altruistic or good? have effective altruists tried to determine what real people or organizations want?
you don’t want to push “altruism given hidden assumptions X, Y and Z that most people don’t agree with.” for example, in Ben Kuhn’s critique he talks about a principle of egalitarianism. But I don’t think most people think of “altruism” as something that applies equally to the guy next door and to a person in Africa. Maybe smart idealistic Anglophone folks in the 2010s do. And some people think religion has equal or greater importance than physical human life does. So if you can convert a person to Christianity then you’ve done a huge good. And abortions and adultery are grave sins and so forth. Also, making political improvements is not a core part of EA.
maybe you should talk about apolitical egalitarian secular altruism.
but there is also another thing effective altruists favor that I think is clearly good: they use evidence. We do want evidence-based altruism. Kinda like evidence-based policy.
I think once you get beyond apolitical secular egalitarian altruism there are lots of different possibilities and it’s as hard to figure out where you stand as it is to maximize impact. so maybe we should add something like reflection-based altruism.
I wonder if you can have more political impact through “earning to give” to political causes or through direct political involvement. the answer may vary with the type of cause. We might include the three types of economically left (e.g. socialism), economically neutral (e.g. abortion) and economically right (e.g. abolish estate taxes)
I do find it disconcerting just how little I see EA talk about changing society. The charity sector’s budget in any given country is ridiculously smaller than the government budget; EA advocates talk about directed giving as the best way to change the world, but this appears to me to be deliberately ignoring systemic problems in favour of enshrining personal charity as a substitute for government.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” (Hélder Câmara)
(I realise Singer’s original ideas are all about systemic change.)
EA is about things that are relatively easy to measure, and causing political change is hard to measure.
Some policy changes are hard to measure. Some are controversial to measure — you can measure them, but people will call you nasty names for doing so.
I expect that anyone who measured and forecast the health effects of reduction in lead pollution, back in the days of lead paint and leaded gasoline, was probably called “anti-business” or worse. Fortunately, they won anyway, and the effects are indeed measurable — in reduced cases of lead poisoning, and apparently in increased IQs of city residents.
I do not think EA is about things that are relatively easy to measure. It is about doing things with the highest expected value. It is just that due partly to regression to the mean things with measurably high values should have among the highest expected values. See Adam Caseys posts on 80 000 Hours.
Goodhart, of course: after a short time, only the metric counts.
The solution is obvious: I create enough simulations that are good enough to constitute sentient beings, and make them all happy, that this adds up to MUCH more goodness than my present day job running a highly profitable baby mulching operation to fund it all. Like buying “asshole offsets”.
The Swiss EA people did try to get a referenda passed. They engage with the political system. Getting university cafeterias to be vegan is a political agenda.
It’s just not the classic political agenda that you find in the mainstream political debate. 21st century politics is strange. The story that TV news media tells is still so strong that young people seem to think that politics is about fighting the battles of their parents instead of fighting their own battles.
That’s no effective catch phrase. You know, EAs actually care about effectiveness ;)
This is kind of funny. At the Community Weekend in Berlin Jonas spoke about EA movement building and how one should use the label that most effective for a community. Calling it Effective Altruism is a PR move.
I think that largely depends on your skill set. The core political goal should be to get decent people into positions of political power. Maybe some of the people who do today EA movement building also build the kind of skills in the process that they need to run political campaigns in 10 years. Of course at that point they need other EAs to fund their campaigns (at least in the US).
The Swiss folks may have done that. But I think the major organizations, like GiveWell, Giving What We Can, and 80,000 Hours, are focused on apolitical causes like global health, if you judge from their lists of recommended charities.
Also I don’t think there’s any getting around taking a position on mainstream political issues to optimally benefit society. Statistically your income is more influenced by which society you happen to be born in than anything you do. If you believe Acemoglu and Robinson, it’s the institutions that matter for economic growth.
Huh?
It might. (Thank you for giving a data point.) I find myself drawn toward the earning to give route since then you can use your salary to kinda measure impact. You could measure too with seeking political office although that’s not my cup of tea. But with political activism I don’t really see how.
I don’t think 80,000 hours advice people who seek it’s guidance against going into politics.
GiveWell states that they focus on global health issues because those issues provide a good evidence base.
I think Giving What We Can says that it’s members can make donation to any charity of their choosing.
“Should we do liquid democracy?” is an import question when it comes to designing institutions. It’s not a question that left or right in the traditional sense of those words.
In software design a lot of thought went into structuring information and valuing simplicity. Getting that kind of thinking into law making would do a lot of good but it’s no mainstream topic.
Opposing corn subsidies isn’t a right or left issue. Especially if you do it on the ground that the subsidies make meat too cheap and you want people to eat less meat.
Fighting software patents and patents trolls isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Whether or not you have legal responsibility when you route traffic of other people over your own computer isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Pushing evidence-based policy making isn’t a right vs. left issue.
Ben Goldacre’s fight to get trial data out in the open is highly political in nature. You could label it “socialism” to force big pharma to release their knowledge into the commons but I think that heavily screws with the nature of the conflict. I think that even people who see themselves politically on the right are likely to support Goldacres agenda.
What do you mean with “political activism”. The term is frequently used by people who want to signal that they care about an issue but who aren’t willing to actually to something that has political effect.
Saul Alinsky would be someone who thought a lot about how to do political activism. It starts with doing community building. In the EA example that means at this point in time most of the activism resources should go towards internal affairs of the EA movement.
Mainstream political issues are often about what does “optimally benefit society” mean.
I finished that paragraph via editing.
That the effects of abortion are economically neutral seems like an extraordinary claim. What kind of evidence did you have in mind? If those anti-abortion people that hang out on campus are right, then roughly 50 million abortions have taken place in America since Roe v. Wade. How could an extra 50 million people have a neutral effect on the economy?
Not really. If I recall, legalizing abortion has almost no effect on the birth rate, accessible contraceptives are somewhat higher, but none come close to changing cultural norms.
50 million mostly legal abortions, even if the figure is correct, does not translate to 50 million more adults, of course. It is not even clear whether the overall effect is increase or decrease in population.
Well, this is what I found in < 5 minutes of searching:
-- Klerman, Jacob Alex. “US abortion policy and fertility.” (2000).
-- Guldi, Melanie. “Fertility effects of abortion and birth control pill access for minors.” Demography 45, no. 4 (2008): 817-827.
-- Coates, Brandi, Alejandro Companioni, and Zachary A. Bethune. “The Impact of Abortion Legalization on Birth Rates!.”
Okay, so a quick search for studies on the effects of abortion legalization on birth rates seems to confirm my priors, so...it still looks like an extraordinary claim.
Agreed, I shouldn’t have used that number, but according the first couple of studies I came across it definitely would be positive and over 40 years time it seems plausible that even some of those people that would have been born would have had kids by this point.
Interesting, thanks. Incidentally, the CDC data show that the abortions/life births ratio is pretty significant, though it’s declined from 36% in 1979 to 22% in 2010. This is surprisingly high. I don’t know what to make of it. My prior expectation was maybe a percent or two. Every 5th fetus is aborted? Or am I reading the data wrong? Canadian rates seem to be similar, with every 4th fetus being aborted.
I suggested this division of causes because, first, people who earn to give may join the upper or at least upper middle class. It seems harder to advocate for things like socialism when your peer group is rich. Your opinions aren’t going to earn you praise or friends and friends and connections are really important for making money. It’s also hard to devote time and energy to maintaining odd views when you’re focused on a career that isn’t directly involved with acting on those opinions. You’re losing some potential synergy. It also possible that, second, the usefulness of cash donations varies with whether the cause has support among the rich or poor, although this might work the other way in that I would expect causes that favor the poor to need money more.
But with a topic like abortion this all seems unclear—although opinions on abortion do correlate some with income, I don’t think that correlation is a strong as with outright economic redistribution. What do you think?
If you want to suggest a more clearly neutral topic than abortion I would be interested to hear it.
Um, there a lot of rich people who at least profess socialist views, the common somewhat dismissive term for them is champagne socialist.
What do you mean exactly when you say socialism?
As far as the numbers on abortion go, for 75k