[aschearer]

For someone who claims to read a lot it's odd that he would use a passage from an unrelated source to describe the motivation for EA. Why not just read some of the direct sources and their motivations? The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer is quite short and accessible. Maybe it's easier to attack straw men...

Having read Singer, I'd say that the motivation is to take the sense of "doing good in the world" and apply reason to it. There's a kid drowning in a pond in front of you and there's a kid drowning on the other side of the world. Why do we act differently, Singer asks? From there he goes on to build an ethical case that it's our _obligation_ to give significantly more to charity.

I don't recall Singer ever advocating for earning ever more money, nor certainly doing so at the expense of others. And I'm fairly certain Singer would strongly object to deferring giving to some uncertain future point.

Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from? Guilty consciences? Shouldn't we as a society celebrate and encourage giving? It seems the alternative more often then not is to accumulate.

[woodruffw]

I think my comment below[1] addresses parts of this: there are really (at least) two things called "EA," and adherents of the more ridiculous one (like SBF) will regularly use the less ridiculous one (Singer's) as moral cover. The post is pretty clearly about the former, not the latter.

I agree with your interpretation of Singer, for what it's worth: I don't recall him ever encouraging maximum personal income in any of his books; only observing that someone could do more good (in the Utils sense) with more resources.

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from? Guilty consciences? Shouldn't we as a society celebrate and encourage giving? It seems the alternative more often then not is to accumulate.

I don't think anybody really hates charity. What people (rightfully) identify is the "hazard" of motive in charitable giving, particularly public giving: when someone is known publicly to donate, it becomes impossible to distinguish truly benevolent motives from self-interested ones (even if those self-interested motives don't "really" matter from a Utils perspective).

Separately: charitable giving on the scale performed by billionaires demonstrates latent injustice. Even if not intended as such, it effectively represents the conversion of a just action (giving to the poor is right) into a whimsical or motive-driven one (I give to the poor because I want to).

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33708972

[tptacek]

Indeed, one of the many raps on, uh, modern? EA is that it's morally isomorphic to the practice of buying indulgences.

[gnramires]

I am committed to give all that I can -- living frugally as much as reasonable until I die. I think we should be more worried about people that simply haven't come to understanding that we need to help the world, and that other lives matter as our own, than about people giving significant part of their incomes to charity. Of course, the idea is you don't have to do that -- if everyone gave 10%, the world would be much, much better![1].

Heck, sometimes (see the war in Russia), people are actively doing the opposite and trying to destroy civilization.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtWINl3C

[physicles]

Btw the phrase "morally isomorphic" is a delightfully creative piece of language -- both intuitive and precise.

[ctoth]

Can you explain what this sentence means?

> when someone is known publicly to donate, it becomes impossible to distinguish truly benevolent motives from self-interested ones (even if those self-interested motives don't "really" matter from a Utils perspective).

Who cares why someone donates, as long as they donate? Is there some thing called "truly benevolent" donations which keep more people alive longer, or have some other measurable impact? I actively am having trouble parsing this. It seems like you realize how ridiculous this sounds, by adding the bit at the end about how it doesn't matter, but then why even bring it up? Like what is special about "truly benevolent" giving?

It's not as though these motives don't "really" matter, they ... just don't matter at all?

[woodruffw]

They matter to people who aren't Utilitarians (like me!). I'm much more interested in motive than I am in outcome (although I like Good Things, just like everyone else).

Here's a hopefully intuitive framing: actions are built on outcomes, while institutions are built on motives. It's hard to imagine a consequential derivation of fundamental and inviolable human rights, for example: there will always be cases and circumstances where a consequential view of morality enables you to engage in casuistry to suit the occasion. I'd much rather build (and live under) practical moral systems where things stay right and wrong.

(To be clear: motive itself is not the moral object, in my view. Motive is merely the thing being questioned. The moral object is the moral law.)

[JamesBarney]

So you think it's better to judge charities by what we think of their motives instead of how much they help people?

[woodruffw]

No. What I think is that ordering between charities is a morally insensible act.

[JamesBarney]

So you think all charities are equally good, and applying any ordinality to them is insane?

Why do you think all charities are equally good?

[emodendroket]

Rich people give to charities to aggrandize themselves. Charities, needing donations, trim their sails to appease self-aggrandizing rich people. Not hard to see how this can lead to the charity in effect doing more to serve its patrons than the people it actually claims to help, and based on some up-close experience, I would say that is not an academic concern.

[JamesBarney]

The whole point of EA is to move toward a system where charities are judged by the good they do and not their marketing campaign.

AMF and other top givewell charities seem far more focused on the good they can do than more classic charities like WWF or Plan Parenthood.

[emodendroket]

I am rather skeptical of the notion that this can be meaningfully quantified.

[JamesBarney]

Surely you think between two charities, one that takes a $1,000 and buys caviar for starving children and one that feeds 1000x as many bread the second one does more good per $ than the first.

[woodruffw]

And what theory of Good determines how we do that judging? The different "schools" of EA seem to have radically different approaches ("longtermism" versus maximizing QALYs for living beings).

And even this punts on perceptive utility, the kind that Nozick warns us about[1]: it's entirely possible that Johnny in Country X gets more utility out of $100 in charitable giving than 50 others in Country Y. But this seems like a really bad logical consequence, the kind that the Internet Rationalist EA community uses to justify spending money on AGI research instead of donating to AMF.

Overall, it's much easier to live in a world where we can determine that some set of charities are worth giving to, and not try too hard to order between them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster

[JamesBarney]

Do you think it's good to donate to charities?

Do you think that some charities are more effective than other ones?

Do you think we should try to measure that to determine which ones are more effective?

[nonameiguess]

I make no claim at to where our current world is on this spectrum, but there is some point on it where a world full of some tiny number of extremely rich people who shower money on the poor, even to the point of material scarcity largely vanishing, but everyone in this world is a dickhead to each other, is a worse world than a world that still has material scarcity but is full of people who honestly and legitimately care for each other.

This is probably far more obvious at small units like families, where we are all well aware of the existence of absolutely miserable rich kids who might live short, drug-addicted lives that end in suicide, in spite of their parents giving them all the money in the world.

[jasmer]

1) We probably shouldn't take anything that can be used to manipulate at face value.

2) As far as I understand it, EA actually is a very, very simple concept that ultimately states that 'doing good in some ways is better than others' aka some things make us 'feel good' but may not be effective. Literally 'be effective'.

3) EA in practice can be a secular kind of moral signalling and personal brand washing. You can't use religion to be huckster anymore so much (FYI I support religion, it's just that it can be easily appropriated), or rather, the 'My Pillow Guy' does but that's to a more limited audience, so 'EA' can be used for the same purposes among the white collar culturally secular masses. Which is how it was used at FTX.

Like anything we should be thoughtful and skeptical about all of it, try to put things in context, don't accept wild claims at face value and be perennially wary of people who just 'talk' about things as opposed to 'doing' them.

Narratives, idol making, lack of skepticism are the problem here.

Incidentally, there's an individual who brought evidence to Bloomberg about FTX months ago and they avoided it partly due to fear of lack of access - and - a conflict of interest with advertising. Such is the power of money with tentacles. Same thing for major geopolitical powers with money and leverage.

[_jal]

> where's all the hate for giving to charity

You're misreading it.

EA, on its own terms, reads something like what you describe. But many people do not believe that it plays out that in the real world, and instead is something like "prosperity gospel for agnostics" - a thin rationalization for gobbling up as much as possible.

The hate isn't directed at "giving to charity", it is directed at rich people advancing their own interests while calling it charity. (For instance, SBF convincing Propublica to burn their reputation publishing weak, politicized studies for $5M.)

[tptacek]

I don't think it's reasonable to simply read Peter Singer and define the whole movement with his ideas, because EA-thought doesn't stop there.

[aschearer]

Well I've provided the basis of my understanding of EA, which is more than you or the author. If we're meant to have a conversation on the merits of EA then we need to be clear about our terms.

To try to mind read, if everyone's simply saying: "it's wrong for someone to do immoral things and justify them with the promise of future charity" then I suspect there's not much to say except, "Yes, duh."

[tptacek]

I think it's safe to assume that people talking about EA this month are thinking more in terms of MacAskill and longtermist EA; the EA of "earn to give" and AI defense.

[karpierz]

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from?

People don't hate when people give to charity.

People hate when people earn money in ways that have negative side-effects and justifying it by: promising to (at some point in the distant future) give (some portion of) their money to (select) charities.

[cauthon]

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from?

Nobody hates giving to charity. Some people are skeptical about the utility of donating millions of dollars to an anti-skynet foundation founded by a guy whose primary accomplishment is writing a Harry Potter fanfic.

[foobiekr]

Can you expand on the last bit?

[HideousKojima]

EA is heavily rooted in the rationalist movement, which was kickstarted by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky wrote some HP fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Yudkowsky now runs some sort of foundation about averting "AI risk," and AI risk seems to be a disproportionately (and dare I say irrationally) big concern for rationalists and EA advocates.

[JamesBarney]

Just for context AI is ~10% of EA donations.

I'm not a huge AI risk guy, but it doesn't seem irrational to me. It doesn't seem unreasonable that you'll have a 5% chance of > than human IQ in the next 100 years. Assuming a 5% risk of it going rogue you end could end up in a pretty terrible situation.

[HideousKojima]

Given how seriously mamy rationalists take certain things like Roko's Basilisk I have a hard time imagining that AI risk charities use their funds effectively (the E in EA, after all). That's assuming I agree with your 5% estimate (I don't).

[ben_w]

I have literally never encountered someone who really takes Roko's Basilisk seriously.

Other than the person who came up with it, I've not even heard of such people.

I don't doubt they exist — I've met people, people are dumb and believe dumb stuff even when they're smart — but I've never once encountered that.

[JamesBarney]

I spend a lot of time in EA adjacent spaces and I've read the Basilisk there once, but I've seen it in several popular magazines reporting about EA 4 times. I really don't think it's a top concern at Givewell.

I've never seen seen a survey of AI experts where less than 50% thought we wouldn't have AGI by 2100. Why are you so confident that AI is an order of magnitude less likely in the next 100 years then the vast majority of experts in the field?

https://nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf

[foobiekr]

Oh, MIRI. I didn’t know about the Harry Potter aspect. Everything I have seen out of MIRI, however, is completely ridiculous. So that makes sense.

[gnramires]

I consider myself close to rationality and EA, so maybe I have to explain myself here.

First, I call myself rationalist because of the culture around the blog SlateStarCodex (and r/<same name>[1]), by Scott Alexander (now at AstralCodexTen[2] for interesting reasons), and a bit less lesswrong.com , and also a few sources like Julia Galef (which is popular for the Scout Mindset[3]) and some people around this movement. The ideas are fairly tame and simple around encouraging clear thinking and avoiding biases -- but they go fairly deep into promoting an understanding how our brains and minds work (frequently discussed in SSC). I am partly defined by this now, I learned a lot about myself and in some ways improved my writing and why not thinking (yes, thinking more effective in general terms is not as well defined as it seems, and not nearly as effective as it seems either -- but in a certain sense I think it's good). I have not went through EY's extensive work to critique or embrace it. I think this movement is partly a response to the very damaging ideological war environment of the late 2010s and still ongoing that creates divided societies and not bringing us closer to a move charitable, loving, understanding, good future (instead lost in endless culture wars -- that in a way became very real wars with millions of affected). EA is a nice sort of consensus result from (part?) of the community as how one should approach charity and ethics (but none of the original EAs came from rationality I believe, they are largely academic philosophers from Oxford).

I'm an EA and I'm not sure where I stand on the AI debate. I personally have embraced the philosophy (although reluctantly, I try to follow Scout Mindset principles, which is I try to stay open to changing my mind), but I mostly give to GiveWell and to GiveDirectly. I also give to a few local charities in my quite poor country (written about here[4] -- I believe donating locally can be effective), volunteer and to many open source projects (some public seen here[5]). I made a commitment with myself to live frugally and give all that I can reasonably give, without unreasonable excesses (largely consumerism, luxury goods, things I don't need to work, etc.). I really believe in the potential of the movement, and rationality does help, because in the end it invites you to embrace the value of other lives, which I've become convinced with by many angles (from a metaphysical perspective, to a logical, social and economic ones): that's the foundation of my giving. Recently, Scott A. wrote that EAs really believe in the movement/philsophy, and the recently criticisms haven't really shaken my belief in the fundamentals (although I'm saddened by SBF and his statements, which I find deeply misguided and unethical, more here[6]). I also subscribe to Jane Goodall's (and Singer's) observation that we need to make the Head (reason) and the Heart (love and humanity) work in harmony to thrive as a society and as individuals -- most people have good will, but if you don't use reason and solid ethics to guide your good will we often fall short, sometimes tragically and spectacularly.

I believe other people matter, and I'm committed to trying to make the world a better place with whatever tools I find most appropriate (statistics, economics, social sciences, art, philosophy, technology, math ...): It's very simple, very robust, and very necessary for our collective future as well :)

(which is to say: Hack the Planet!!!)

[1] https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex

[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/yrhl3g/l...

[5] https://liberapay.com/gustavonramires/ see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/v7ma0d/w...

[6] https://mastodon.social/@gnramires/109337319931759374

[mc32]

Part of the problem is that con-men and con-women will take advantage of the surface level adornments and people's propensity to trust people who prop up their ego and run with the idea to con people out of both easy and hard earned money. It's not all that different from alt-medicine quacks who give people false hopes of cures. One offers moral salvation, the other a cure to medical ailments.

You can see the contempt he has for people in this report: https://www.gawker.com/money/sam-bankman-fried-is-so-stupid-...

[Barrin92]

>Why not just read some of the direct sources and their motivations?

Because, and this may not come as a shock after the SBF revelations, those people may not be sincere and honest, to others, themselves or both.

With something like EA the interesting part isn't what's being said out loud, it's what philosophic and in particular aesthetic goals aren't literally spelled out. This is the case for almost any form of activism, ideology or lifestyle. The interesting parts are never the banal things people advertise.

For example take an adjacent belief, also practiced by the EA folks. Veganism. Now superficially they will tell you this is all about animal welfare, but what they won't tell, they may not even be aware of it, is also that it's an upper class signal of purity, their own modern recreation of the Brahmin class. When you look at things that way it suddenly becomes less surprising why a 28 year old effective-altruist Potterhead also seems weirdly fascinated with Indian caste systems and imperial Chinese social dynamics.

[grebulon]

1. I don't know about 'unrelated source.' I find that H2g2 is relevant in most aspects of life, one way or another. 2. I'll accept your recommendation, and read Peter Singer. Happy to. 3. "Don't recall Singer advocating earning at the expense of others." Now we go into complicated territory. Do we decide this based on theory or practice? Where did we land on how we see the Church, or the catholic priests who're guilty of child abuse? Admittedly EA is different because the movement doesn't certify or induct or employ people officially, but ultimately how people evaluate these things will depend on the practitioners they see. 4. No hate for giving to charities. But I do think there's a few more layers to unpack here.

[polygamous_bat]

This is going strongly into the regime of "no true scotsman" fallacy. Imagine someone advocating for women's bodily autonomy by criticizing the fundamentalist Christian movement in the US, and someone else popping up saying "Have you read the bible? What about Jesus's teachings about love and kindness?"

Really, the person you should be preaching Peter Singer to are the people inside of EA who might be misguided with promises of fat stacks of cash. Criticizing atheists for not knowing "the true teachings of Jesus" really doesn't do you much good, just makes you look defensive and responsibility-avoiding.

[rout39574]

I wouldn't characterize it as hate for charity. I'd characterize it as hate for "Here's the handbook for what words to say, so that when you make scads of money doing evil things, you can maximize the amount of good reputation your dollars buy".

I'm confident that there are lots of people who are part of EA for the reasons the EA community advocates. My expectation is that the dollar weighted average of participants motivations would be more cynical. I think the parallel to religious participation kind of writes itself.