80,000 Hours - Effective Altruism

[jacob]

The temporarily wealthy ...

I wasn't gonna say anything. But, ...

It's weird how wealth achieved slowly tends to more durable. Perhaps there's a reason for that.
(wealth is more than one number ... wealth is complex, not simple)

[Ego]

Another example where using money conspicuously to do good provides the giver permission to do the thing they want to do but would be unable to otherwise, accumulate the money in bad ways.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moral_licensing

[Smashter]

One thing I wanted to highlight was how much money there is sloshing around the EA ecosystem right now....

The FTX Future Fund is the latest example — a crypto billionaire has allocated a lot of money to funding EA projects, mostly in AI, biorisk, and pandemic preparedness. They were accepting grant submissions recently and probably will do that again.

That didn't age well

I'm curious to see how this affects the EA movement as a whole. EA aspires for its ideology to one day guide all of humanity toward a better future. Their judgement is supposed to be the best of the best. They definitely failed this test.

Also, the whole incident has also made me way more wary of bullet-biting, extremist utilitarianism.

[Mister Imperceptible]

guide all of humanity

We may have isolated the variable while troubleshooting, sir!



Source of source: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future ... ilanthropy

[bostonimproper]

I don’t get the critique? If SBF had been a vocal vegetarian, FTX’s fall would still mean nothing about the merits of vegetarianism. Don’t see how his stance on Effective Altruism is any different.

[Scott 2]

He was the poster boy billionaire. I think it raises the question - given human nature, is this a sustainable strategy? What are people able to do vs. what will they claim to do? The emphasis on long termism removes a layer of accountability. It's nearly impossible to see the impact.

It never crossed my mind to use the strategy for ethical posturing. But that's one more reason I'll never be a billionaire.

Giving your best for hypothetical humans, hundreds or thousands of years in the future? That's an extreme ideological commitment. Especially when it comes at the cost of today's humans, including those close to you.

Living in a first world country, even donating for malaria nets feel abstract. Firing $$$$ into the ether doesn't carry many feels.

At what point is the strategy no longer realistic?

[Mister Imperceptible]

Ethical posturing to remove accountability has occurred throughout history, the words being used now are just different:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings

[Mister Imperceptible]

I think the constructive advice to give, with is of course a cliché, is to not allow one’s desire to do good deeds to be co-opted by a group running a confidence scheme, into a donation or submission to the big central thing, whatever the big central “thing” is, and instead to take out that desire to do good on those about you.

Some would suggest it is nihilistic to assume that every institution will default on their promises to be altruistic, but I think the nihilistic assumption is that altruism must be outsourced and centralized because humans cannot be trusted.

[Anesau]

I got really into EA a couple years ago. Read all of the EA classics, hung out on EA and LW forums, read most of the main 80,000 hours articles, and read a couple Peter Singer books. I also went to one EA Global conference.

I'm clearly biased, but I really like a lot of the core ideas — doing good matters, and when you're trying to do the most good in the world, giving it some serious thought & effort will probably gain massively better outcomes over just chasing whatever causes the most outrage or pity.

There are a lot of different subgroups of EA that care about different things — though existential risk in general and AI risk in particular seems to eat up the majority of the publicity nowadays. I would recommend approaching EA as a tool for thinking about doing good (for people who agree with arguments like those made in Against Empathy), and not as an answer in itself. It's useful for poking you to think about hard questions and the community is overall very friendly, but a lot of independent thought & work is necessary to apply the principles well.

I've backed off a bit from EA to to tinker with my own personal philosophy recently. Note that in some ways the philosophy behind Effective Altruism is fundamentally incompatible with ERE. Read for example A Duty to Work, then read about Singer-style utilitarianism (esp. the fact that giving is not considered supererogatory) and compare. There's obviously some overlap — ERE people are kind and 80k people have enjoyable personal lives — but overall they're pulling in opposite directions.