[telotortium]

In my view, EA generally means "taking utilitarian ethics ('the greatest good for the greatest number (of humans, or perhaps of other lifeforms)', with (premature) death as the worst outcome) literally and seriously in philanthropic work, usually to the exclusion of other philanthropic goals (aesthetic, religious, etc.)". Perhaps there is a form of EA that isn't at its core utilitarian, but then it's just reduced to technocratism and seems unlikely to inspire the almost religious devotion that EA current does.

[ineptech]

Religious devotion? No offense, but that sounds like more straw. I think there's an awful lot of people who read about EA, visit some charity ranking websites, rethink their giving, and then don't go on to start a blog.

I don't think EA is utilitarian. Or at least, not in any way that requires objective moral realism. EA doesn't say, "moral goodness is quantifiable and I can prove on graph paper that one life saved from malaria is equivalent to 137 meals delivered to hungry people." It says, "I don't know what goodness is or how to measure it, but I need some way to decide where to donate, so..."

In other words, EA demands that you actually think about where your money goes and whether that's the best place for it, rather than just donating to whichever charity has the most emotionally moving imagery and music in its TV commercials. Once you do that, it naturally follows that almost any system you use will give the same answer: "Sheesh, I should probably donate less to the animal shelter." And I think 99% of the hate EA gets is rooted from the fact that people like donating to their local animal shelter, but can't really justify it.

[schoen]

EA was definitely founded by reasonably orthodox utilitarian philosophers, like Peter Singer, Peter Unger, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill.

Formal EA organizations and conferences also have a lot of utilitarians heavily involved.

So I think it's fair to say that EA is rooted in utilitarianism, although those same utilitarians might say, for utilitarian reasons, that it's a good thing when people think carefully -- or at all! -- about how to be more effective and have a higher impact, regardless of what metaethical views (if any) those people subscribe to.

[ineptech]

I mean, fair, but does it follow that someone who dislikes utilitarianism or feels it's disprovable must consequently dislike EA? Because that seems to be the thesis of this essay.

I guess it comes down to this: when people argue with utilitarianism, in my experience it's specifically the part about treating strangers and friends equally, i.e. the idea that it might be better to save two drowning strangers than to save one drowning friend. I don't think EA relies on that or is based on it; you can have a value system that says it's better to save your drowning friend than to save ten or a hundred drowning strangers, and still find EA valuable.

[dale_glass]

If you dispense with realism, why couldn't you embrace the animal shelter?

Just bite the bullet. Say, "I've grown disenchanted with people, they suck. I'm going to dedicate myself to improve the lives of animals instead, who are mostly blameless victims of humanity, and are much cheaper to make happy than a human".

Utilitarianism doesn't really tell you how many dogs is a human worth, so you well can decide that you value dogs very highly, and that's all that's needed to make donating to an animal shelter very rational.

[ineptech]

That's the thing, I think you can. If everyone who donates to animal shelters felt as confident about it as you described, I don't think anyone would have a problem with EA. Certainly, no one is complaining about the idea of, between two charities who do the same thing, giving to the one who does it more effectively.

But there's a lot of complaining about the idea of comparing two different kinds of altruism. And the whole point of EA, I think, is that the fact that it's uncomfortable leads people not to do it at all, and prodding them to think about it feels like an attack.

[robertlagrant]

> but can't really justify it.

That assumes a tie-breaking morality that says objectively that animal shelters aren't a good enough cause. If that's your mindset, then no wonder people who donate to animal shelters don't like you talking about EA : - )

[darawk]

I think a more useful definition would be about instruments, not ends. It is up to each individual to define their utility function. If they want that utility function to be aesthetic or religious, that's up to them. EA as a philosophy doesn't determine what your utility function ought to be.

What it does say is: conditional on selecting a utility function, you should attempt to use the tools of rationality, statistics, etc to maximize it efficiently. The fact that particular groups of EAs have sufficiently similar utility functions to pool resources in determining how to maximize them does not mean that all EAs must agree on those utility functions.

If your utility function says the greatest good is converting non-believers to flat earthism, then EA says you ought to study how best to achieve that before devoting lots of resources blindly. It doesn't tell you that flat earthism is bad.

[astrange]

I think I've seen Mr. ACX say that this is wrong and the right way to do it is to be utilitarian, but just don't try very hard to calculate it ie don't be rational or maximize it.

This is probably correct; if you maximize anything hard enough you'll end up in a logic trap, turn the world into paperclips, and get eaten by a utility monster[0]. That's because rationality doesn't actually work in the real world[1]. Of course, "just don't try hard" isn't going to work for everyone.

I think if you do try to rationalize "utilitarianism but not calculating too hard", you end up at virtue ethics, but ironically I haven't thought about that hard enough to say.

[0] ie you can increase happiness temporarily by giving everyone drugs, they'll just die after

[1] https://metarationality.com, also see Taleb on why you shouldn't always "maximize"

[mst]

A reasonable short (so necessarily lossy) version of what I've ended up believing is:

- policy decisions should be made on a consequentialist basis (which can involve utiliarianism like calculations but is to me most about considering second and third order consequences, with attempts at calculation as merely one mechanism through which to do so)

- personal decisions should be made on a virtue ethics basis

I'm not going to claim this as a Right Answer but this model has proven to be the least wrong / most useful one I've encountered in practice, at least for me.

[telotortium]

IMO that's a very reasonable approach with two caveats:

- Consequentialism has real issues with ethics in the very large to infinite scale (time, numbers of people, etc.). Most theories of ethics have issues in this limit as well, but Macaskill accepts the repugnant conclusion and advocates for "longtermism", which I think is undeveloped in anything more than a vague "we should think about the future" sense.

- It's perfectly valid for a human society to decide to have some non-consequentialist bright lines they won't cross.

[dale_glass]

Why what way, and what do you understand by "virtue ethics"? It doesn't seem to be a very common approach, so I'm not very familiar with it.

[mst]

I ... ok, so the late reply is because I know inside my head what I mean, but expressing it is hard (sorry about that, hopefully you'll see this anyway.)

Virtue ethics is ... about trying to reach for the Good. People of faith regularly have a similar outlook except perhaps without one of the 'o's.

Caring about people in general, trying to be trustworthy, trying to be honourable, trying to look after your friends.

I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

It's very fuzzy, but also very human, and I'm conscious that I've not given you a solid meta-ethical grounding for it ... but then again, I'm not convinced there -is- one, and yet it seems to work for me.

Sorry for the massive vagueness, but realistically it cashes out to "try to do the right thing", which is necessarily vague and dependent on your own perception of what is morally correct ... which is why it's a terrible way to make policy (IMO) but works well on an individual basis, at least for me.

[dale_glass]

> Virtue ethics is ... about trying to reach for the Good.

I guess the issue I have with virtue ethics in concept is that it's fuzzy enough that I'm not clear on how it sets itself apart against deontology and consequentialism. The way you put it, it seems deontology-lite.

> Caring about people in general, trying to be trustworthy, trying to be honourable, trying to look after your friends.

So it works out to sort of deontology, except less rigid maybe? Rather than a flat command of "tell the truth", you have a fuzzy idea of "try to be trustworthy"?

Do consequences matter? That is, what is important in the end, that you did the work of trying to look after a friend, even if in the end your effort made their lives worse, or whether your friends are happy?

I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

> I guess you could say it's characterised by trying to come away from a situation feeling like you've done the morally virtuous thing (I am very aware of the tautology there) rather than necessarily the utility maximising thing.

I think any utilitarian has to recognize that utility can't be predicted very far. Eg, the utility of a backup generator is highly dependent on whether you ever end up needing one, which highly depends on the local weather. So it makes no sense to obsess over it like a robot, you can't get there anyway.

The way I see it is that the split is about what matters in the end.

In consequentialist frameworks, it's the consequences. If everyone is happy, then there's no problem to be solved. On the other hand, if something horrible happened when somebody tried their best, they still did a bad thing in the end.

In deontology, it's the reverse. If you followed the rules, your conscience can be clear even if something bad did result. If you didn't, then you failed in your duties even if disaster was averted.

[pmyteh]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a characteristically good (and easy to follow) overview:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/

[dale_glass]

That's all well and good, but I'm more interested in the practical example of how this particular person approaches it.

The Stanford Encyclopedia gives several forms for instance. It seems probable any given person will pick one form to subscribe to, and then have some particular interpretation of what that means to them. That's what I'm curious about.

[Psyonic]

So Thanos was an effective altruist?

[dale_glass]

Movie Thanos' plan is to kill half the universe to solve the resource problem. This seems obviously stupid to me, since the world population can double in about no time at all, and will create a huge incentive for growth. Imagine half of the housing in the world being empty. Great time to start a new family!

Comic book Thanos wants to kill half the universe to woo Death, as in the female deity representing death. No altruism in that as far as I can tell, just the world's most brutal romantic gesture.

[darawk]

I don't know enough about the Marvel (or whichever) universe to answer that question.

[tunesmith]

EA adherents can use rigorous reasoning to reach different conclusions, just from having different values that they start with. Case in point: One person might want to maximize quality of current lives; another might want to maximize quality of future lives. Reasoning validly from there, they can reach wildly different conclusions on how to most effectively give.

[JamesBarney]

I don't think you need strict utilitarianism.

I think you just need to believe two believe the following to be mostly an effective altruist.

1. Helping two people is better than helping one

2. Helping one person a lot is better than helping another person a little.