I was surprised by the weakness of this article, regardless the potential absurdities of parts of EA.
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
Why would a movement which started as nerds buying mosquito nets to stop malaria be "a bunch [of] post hoc justifications for bad behaviour"? You say this like it's an established fact or at least a common argument, yet I've never heard it before.
I don't know. Lots of movements lose their way. I just know that every time it comes up, the story is that some nerd with a lot of big ideas ended up getting carried away and causing a bunch of harm. The article brings up Sam Bankman-Fried, for instance. But you could also look at the obvious scam that WorldCoin was. Or look at all of the preventable respiratory illnesses which are being caused by the datacenter buildout, and the corresponding mantra re: we have to go fast so AI is smart enough to cure diseases.
If you wanna do good in the world, you can't just aim a bunch of money at a goal and expect the good to happen, you gotta get your hands dirty and course correct when your original plan turns out to be more harmful than helpful. I'm sure there are a lot of good intentions in there, but from the outside it's looking like the supposed rationality has been compromised by greed at the expense of the supposed altruism. As expressions of altruism go, EA just doesn't seem very effective.
A big part of EA is earning to give, i.e. making the big bucks at Torture Nexus, Inc. so you can buy more mosquito nets than you could as an EMT or whatever. It’s not hard to see how this can excuse some pretty terrible behavior, especially if you never actually get around to the buying mosquito nets part.
> especially if you never actually get around to the buying mosquito nets part
Or instead get brain-wormed into giving all your torment nexus dollars to "ai safety" cult that tells you that you're helping to prevent the endless torture of all sentient minds that could ever exist in the entire universe.
Hubbard proved that you can create an effective cult out of bad science fiction-- perhaps it should be surprising that it took so long for someone to improve on the design...
Also, all the bad things you did at Torment Nexus Inc... They get a head start on whatever good things you do with the money. Even if the cult is effective, it's playing catch-up.
Not to disagree about the dangers of dangling large amounts of money in front of people that happen to be earmarked for good causes, because that is exactly what went wrong in the case of Sam Bankman-Fried, but:
In the past, the community made the mistake of becoming too closely associated with “earning to give”. Many people involved in effective altruism still think this is a good strategy for some people, particularly those who have a good personal fit for high-paying careers. But donating to charity is not the only way to have a large impact. Many people can do even better by using their careers to help others more directly. Many people in the community do both.
I can't answer your question as to why, but the only person that has ever tried to convince me to consider effective altruism was in charge of marketing for the New Zealand Taxpayer's Union (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Taxpayers%27_Union" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Taxpayers%27_Union). Even at the time (without knowing much about EA) it seemed immediately clear that this person was essentially 'ethics washing'.
I am not familiar with their beliefs (open to learning). But what circulates is troubling. E.g. statistically optimising for future even if it means harming current can be bad dressed in an excuse. Assigning value e.g. to lives (from prawns to humans) can also be a statistical way to do harm with an excuse. Overall, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…
The smear campaign will work if that’s all that’s out there. Are they public with their beliefs/principles or does someone need to go through levels of billions valuation to know the truth.
The article here pretty much debunks itself given the over-the-top absurdity and irrationality of its "arguments". But of course only when read critically in the first place.
When two opposing forces meet, you don’t get truth from either side, you get it by critically looking at what’s left between the lines. And it doesn’t look good for EA if I go by the discussion here. Lots of pushing problematic to crazies and anecdotal altruism that is not in any way related to EA principles specifically. I don’t judge. Everyone is entitled to do what they think is best. But we can also be concerned on our side on the impact EAs actions can have on us who are not in agreement with the vagueness of it. And we can say that it is looking as much about altruism as Scientology is about science.
> I am not familiar with their beliefs (open to learning)
That much is clear. No one "owns" or "leads" EA, it's not a monolith; people have their own beliefs and co-opt it, including crazies. The only common tenet is in the name.
Notwithstanding that "shrimp welfare" and the like is in the margins, it does not preclude the overwhelmingly anthropocentric charitable giving by most members.
I mean, the most popular writer associated with that world, Scott Alexander, donated his kidney just to help others. Knowing the good people are trying to do, it's unseemly to me for EA not only to be discarded but viciously attacked because of "vibes" and weirdos who associate themselves with it.
You used the term "an excuse" twice; for what, a hidden motive to do harm? I think some types like Bentham's Bulldog are wrong or misguided in some respects, that doesn't mean you can leap to some notion that they want to harm humanity in the most stupid way possible: donating a meagre sum to shrimp welfare.
I wouldn’t be against the co opt interpretation and I do believe people will be co opting something both with good and bad or crazy intentions. The thing is, if a fraction that co opts is so overwhelmingly outranks everyone else, then the original intent may end up the fringe. From my perspective the issue starts with the name. Why effective? The moment you introduce an optimisation problem you open the back door to biases. I would suggest blind altruism. Engineers can accept readily that random processes can optimise. Let the randomness optimise blindly and just be altruistic. You don’t have to publish an altruism balance sheet.
A definition is a lot to ask for. If you truly need somebody to define "bad" for you, you're asking in the wrong place.
But we don't need to define it to know it when we see it. Here are some examples of bad behavior which is encouraged by the way we currently practice economics:
- Operating generators in violation of local regulation such that the neighborhood around your new data center now has a smattering of new respiratory illnesses is bad behavior. The economic system we've built encouraged that outcome by focusing only on the consent of whatever banker granted the loan and not on the consent of the nearby community (relevant because the loan created the money which then bought the illegal generators). We further encourage abuses of this kind by letting irrational markets determine that it's admirable, because if the stock price went up then surly it must be so, and by doing so we subsequently increase the operator's ability to take out more loans of this kind. People are dying of lung cancer and economic indicators are saying "all systems go."
- Sending weapons to terrorists with the understanding that once they destabilize the regional government, they'll give you a favorable deal re: making off with whatever local resources you're after is bad behavior. That's basically US foreign policy in South America in the 80's, and we provided teams of economists to help draft the new dictators' constitutions to ensure that we could continue to exploit those countries long after.
- Charging $80k for enough Sovaldi to treat a Hepatitis C infection is bad behavior. It's not difficult to synthesize (people have done it in their garages for <$500), and the risk of spreading further infection because you can't afford to treat yourself is high. Society bears a tremendous cost because Gilead has decided that the economics of the situation justify the price they're setting.
Economists tell people that these bad things are unfortunate consequences of a system that for the most part is a good thing. But when they're pressed to support that claim they always do so against a meaningless background, something having to do with barter, as if it's not obvious that if we didn't have a system with this broken design, we wouldn't go back to the stone ages, we'd instead have a different system with a potentially less broken design.
Despite resting on such a feeble value proposition re: the current status quo, economists don't seem at all motivated to explore alternatives either. They appear to be rather happily at work for powerful men who are hurting people, where they manufacture for those men justifications about why the pain is in fact an unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics, and no something that they should feel guilty about.
I realize that, like effective altruists, there are probably a lot of good intentions among economists. It's just hard to look at history and come to any conclusion besides that they're not very good at resisting to attempts to corrupt those intentions.
wodow · · focus · HN ↗
Why does The Economist consider this the most important issue this week, in a world of complex problems, to splash its first leader on (and more than one page long too)?
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
> Actually, if you think real hard about it, we're the good guys
--the bad guys
The economist likes it because it resembles what their target audience tells themselves so they can sleep at night.
strken · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
If you wanna do good in the world, you can't just aim a bunch of money at a goal and expect the good to happen, you gotta get your hands dirty and course correct when your original plan turns out to be more harmful than helpful. I'm sure there are a lot of good intentions in there, but from the outside it's looking like the supposed rationality has been compromised by greed at the expense of the supposed altruism. As expressions of altruism go, EA just doesn't seem very effective.
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
The claims made there are beyond absurd and based on a remarkable absence of anything resembling reason.
That's echoed by a surprising amount of people here.
lux-lux-lux · · focus · HN ↗
nullc · · focus · HN ↗
Or instead get brain-wormed into giving all your torment nexus dollars to "ai safety" cult that tells you that you're helping to prevent the endless torture of all sentient minds that could ever exist in the entire universe.
Hubbard proved that you can create an effective cult out of bad science fiction-- perhaps it should be surprising that it took so long for someone to improve on the design...
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
abathologist · · focus · HN ↗
tmnvix · · focus · HN ↗
lanfeust6 · · focus · HN ↗
cgio · · focus · HN ↗
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
cgio · · focus · HN ↗
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
cgio · · focus · HN ↗
lanfeust6 · · focus · HN ↗
That much is clear. No one "owns" or "leads" EA, it's not a monolith; people have their own beliefs and co-opt it, including crazies. The only common tenet is in the name.
Notwithstanding that "shrimp welfare" and the like is in the margins, it does not preclude the overwhelmingly anthropocentric charitable giving by most members.
I mean, the most popular writer associated with that world, Scott Alexander, donated his kidney just to help others. Knowing the good people are trying to do, it's unseemly to me for EA not only to be discarded but viciously attacked because of "vibes" and weirdos who associate themselves with it.
You used the term "an excuse" twice; for what, a hidden motive to do harm? I think some types like Bentham's Bulldog are wrong or misguided in some respects, that doesn't mean you can leap to some notion that they want to harm humanity in the most stupid way possible: donating a meagre sum to shrimp welfare.
cgio · · focus · HN ↗
lux-lux-lux · · focus · HN ↗
abathologist · · focus · HN ↗
fsckboy · · focus · HN ↗
and your definitions of bad behavior are therefore not post hoc, so let me hear your definitions.
__MatrixMan__ · · focus · HN ↗
But we don't need to define it to know it when we see it. Here are some examples of bad behavior which is encouraged by the way we currently practice economics:
- Operating generators in violation of local regulation such that the neighborhood around your new data center now has a smattering of new respiratory illnesses is bad behavior. The economic system we've built encouraged that outcome by focusing only on the consent of whatever banker granted the loan and not on the consent of the nearby community (relevant because the loan created the money which then bought the illegal generators). We further encourage abuses of this kind by letting irrational markets determine that it's admirable, because if the stock price went up then surly it must be so, and by doing so we subsequently increase the operator's ability to take out more loans of this kind. People are dying of lung cancer and economic indicators are saying "all systems go."
- Sending weapons to terrorists with the understanding that once they destabilize the regional government, they'll give you a favorable deal re: making off with whatever local resources you're after is bad behavior. That's basically US foreign policy in South America in the 80's, and we provided teams of economists to help draft the new dictators' constitutions to ensure that we could continue to exploit those countries long after.
- Charging $80k for enough Sovaldi to treat a Hepatitis C infection is bad behavior. It's not difficult to synthesize (people have done it in their garages for <$500), and the risk of spreading further infection because you can't afford to treat yourself is high. Society bears a tremendous cost because Gilead has decided that the economics of the situation justify the price they're setting.
Economists tell people that these bad things are unfortunate consequences of a system that for the most part is a good thing. But when they're pressed to support that claim they always do so against a meaningless background, something having to do with barter, as if it's not obvious that if we didn't have a system with this broken design, we wouldn't go back to the stone ages, we'd instead have a different system with a potentially less broken design.
Despite resting on such a feeble value proposition re: the current status quo, economists don't seem at all motivated to explore alternatives either. They appear to be rather happily at work for powerful men who are hurting people, where they manufacture for those men justifications about why the pain is in fact an unavoidable consequence of the laws of physics, and no something that they should feel guilty about.
I realize that, like effective altruists, there are probably a lot of good intentions among economists. It's just hard to look at history and come to any conclusion besides that they're not very good at resisting to attempts to corrupt those intentions.