[cycomanic]

I think you are mischaracterising the argument. His argument is that effective altruism can not eliminate poverty, it's inherent in the concept. You also dis not show that he is the one who mischaracterises the "believes" (maybe you mean arguments here?). I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong?

You have not actually engaged with the actual argument, you simply assert that change through political activism is not the "obvious most powerful tool we have". I think you need to back that up, I would say history at least tells us that the largest changes in wealth distributions have come through (often violent) political action.

Regarding the bednet argument, you are simply nitpicking on the numbers. The argument still stands at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns, i. e. When everyone has a net giving nets is not helping anyone.

[zucker42]

> I think he gave a reasonably accurate description of effective altruism, what in the description do you believe is wrong?

I disagree that this article give an accurate impression of the EA. The main point of effective altruism is that people should use evidence in choosing which charitable causes to devote their time to. I don't feel like the author sufficiently engages with this point; instead he attacks Singer for not coming up with a satisfactory standard for what percentage of one's wealth to donate, and laments that EA isn't political enough.

EA arose based partially based on the observation that people do most of their giving to, for example, local churches and schools than to truly desperate people in other parts of the world. People also tend donate their effort to local and relatable causes. The argument isn't that buying Malaria nets is going to eliminate all the evil in the world, the argument is it's a better use of money than other charities, and that we should use evidence to determine how to expend our resources.

[cycomanic]

Well, I disagree the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism".

Now if we are donating to charity should we follow the principles of EA? The answer to that is probably yes, but that's a different question and is not the point raised by the author.

[zucker42]

> the whole premise of Singer is that we can't change things through the political process so instead we should use "effective altruism".

(I'm assuming "I disagree" was meant to be a separate sentence)

I think Singer would say that it's often but not always hard to change things through the political process. But he hardly shuns politics entirely; he often speaks and writes about political issues, and he ran for Australian Senate in 1996.

But anyways Singer's beliefs about the effectiveness of political causes isn't the central point of Singer's EA advocacy, it's just one piece of his beliefs.

[riezebos]

I don't know how "at some point you end up in a position of diminishing returns" in this case is an argument against EA. In the book Doing Good Better one of the core ideas of EA is defined as investing in problems that are neglected, which prevents investing in diminishing returns. Whenever the malaria nets run into diminishing returns I am sure that GiveWell will start ranking AMF lower. If you are arguing that we should not invest in problems that have diminishing returns EA strongly agrees with you.

[TeMPOraL]

GiveWell is literally a priority queue of charities. The moment AMF starts getting diminishing returns, it'll drop down the list. If some other organization figures out an even cheaper way of saving lives, it'll overtake AMF on the list.

It's a simple and obvious system. I'd say the only two things to potentially quibble about is whether or not one likes their sorting function, and the lag time between resorting.

[Rastonbury]

His argument is that effective altruism (EA) is unable to eliminate poverty and therefore it is ineffective? I mean it's an pretty empty criticism, and can be used for any sort of altruistic philosophy given that poverty is a quite an intractable problem. Eg. "Your altruism is not effective unless you work to eliminate world poverty."

Effective altruism boiled down, is getting the most value out of altruistic work as I understand it. Obviously if every child in malaria endemic areas had a net, donating to malaria foundations would not be the most effective thing to do. If we discovered an asteroid that would destroy 20% of the population, EA would probably dictate channeling of all resources to that cause.

[solveit]

No, the burden of proof lies on the person claiming that something is "obvious".

And nitpicking the numbers is incredibly important if said nitpick happens to span orders of magnitude.

[cycomanic]

It does not fundamentally change the argument, so nitpicking does not change how valid an argument is.

[zozbot234]

> I would say history at least tells us that the largest changes in wealth distributions have come through (often violent) political action.

History shows just the opposite. The largest changes in wealth distribution in history have come about through industrialization, starting in Britain and then spreading to other parts of the world. Purposeful political action has most often been harmful to these developments, with limited exceptions (such as 19th-century Japan, and other East Asian countries in the 20th century).