[polygamous_bat]

A lot of defense of EA on this thread follows the same chain of thought: "what's wrong with doing the most good? What's wrong with Peter Singer's philosophy of doing so? Have you read The Life You Can Save?"

It's like trying to defend against criticisms of religious fundamentalism by saying "What about the teachings of Love and Kindness by Jesus? Have you ever read the Bible?"

The literal words of the Bible doesn't matter as much when people who claim to follow it in the earnest are also doing the most harm. You need to have a conversation internally first to figure out what your ideology is, otherwise it just looks like avoiding responsibility to the "outsiders".

[eddsh1994]

There is a lot of conversation internally. You can see these debates here [0]. The guy credited with who got SBF into EA wrote a post [1] which was also debated heavily in the comments. A good introduction, or at least my introduction, was by the same guy's debate [2] which I recommend if people are interested in EA outside of the current media storm.

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/

[1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WdeiPrwgqW2wHAxgT/...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qslo4-DpzPs

[jasonwatkinspdx]

I've said this in most threads on this topic but will keep repeating it: EA functionally matches the exact same patterns I grew up around among evangelical extremists. It's an all purpose justification of moral righteousness, performed with false humility.

[zozbot234]

EA is about applying well-established social science to the problem of getting the most bang for the buck in charity. There's nothing else to it, and it's not "extremist" unless you hold that charity itself is extremist.

[tptacek]

That's sort of begging the argument proposed upthread. This is the standard line about EA, but it has clearly led some people --- people important to the movement, to "institutional" EA --- to some weird, dark places. And those dark ideas are in a sense dicta to parts of the wider EA community.

[zozbot234]

"EA" didn't do this. The EA-pursuing community in particular places may well be deeply flawed in all sorts of ways, but this has no bearing on the validity of EA principles more broadly.

[tptacek]

Then, if it helps you, just mentally substitute "EA-pursuing community" for "EA" in these discussions.

[onos]

I would accept the theme if you used “many of those claiming to follow EA”. But you don’t, you say “EA”. It’s on you to make your statements accurate.

[humanistbot]

And Jesus Christ didn't personally cause a lot of wars, the Jesus Christ fanclubs did that....

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yes, exactly. I have a purely secular worldview as an adult, but there are good things worth paying attention to in the bible, at least in the new testament. What's different about the evangelical extremists I grew up around is this complex of mutually buttressing beliefs/behaviors like biblical literalism, believing in direct communication of absolute truth from the holy spirit, that prayer can cause supernatural miracles, etc.

With EA I'd cite longtermerism, the rhetoric around coin flips and risk, and in particular how all of this becomes a normative standard: if you aren't maximizing your earning potential you are a moral failure!

As I said, many of these beliefs and behaviors functionally serve to give the believer an all purpose source of moral righteousness. No one has a problem with Jesus saying you should not just do no harm but have a burden to help those in need. The problem comes exactly in that institutionalization that adopts this as a banner while behaving in the complete opposite way in practice.

[polygamous_bat]

And some may claim Christianity is about loving your neighbor and following the love of Jesus all the way heaven... Yet you will see people camped outside planned parenthoods screaming and cursing at other humans who are 100% Christians by their own definition.

Seems like you're falling for the exact fallacy I pointed out upthread.

[zozbot234]

> Yet you will see people camped outside planned parenthoods screaming and cursing

These people think Planned Parenthood is literally murdering babies. You're free to politely disagree with that characterization of course, but it only takes a tiny bit of empathy to understand what the screaming and cursing is all about.

[ben_w]

So far as I can see, the important difference between EA and Christianity, is that all the EA types are looking at everything EA is doing wrong and asking themselves how to make it less wrong.

Perhaps early Christianity was like that too, before it became mandatory, but it’s certainly not what I remember from my Catholic childhood.

[polygamous_bat]

> the important difference between EA and Christianity, is that all the EA types are looking at everything EA is doing wrong and asking themselves how to make it less wrong.

Are they? Because I am meeting a lot of (admittedly self proclaimed) EAs that are busy evangelizing about what "True EA" is and is not, and how SBF was never "True EA". Maybe they are contemplating a lot in their free time, but on a broad stroke it looks like attempting to avoid responsibility to me.

[ben_w]

Fair enough; Nae True Scotsman is always annoying, and big-R Rationalists aren’t any better at avoiding such fallacies than anyone else (to their credit, the ones I pay attention to are also annoyed by this).

What I’m seeing is mostly online rather than in person meetings; these discussions are “could we have spotted this nonsense sooner?” (general consensus: “probably not, his investors and auditors didn’t and that’s not our skillset”), and “hang on, wasn’t this[0] a red flag?” (which generally gets left unresolved as they get nerd-sniped on the actual discussion rather than staying focused on if it should’ve been a warning sign).

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mdbSL9o8H2Z5mjKaj/...

[cwillu]

This is why I really dislike identifying with the name of a movement or idea or whatever. It doesn't matter how much the term was just a convenient label for a bunch of ideas, labels gain lives of their own and what they Really Mean™ becomes uncontrollable and inconsistent and eventually incoherent.

[haberman]

A key part of religious extremism is trying to impose one's own morality on others. Where are the effective altruists trying to control the actions of others in the name of EA?

[polygamous_bat]

Another key part of religious extremism is offering indemnity for henious acts, like crusades or honor killings. I have definitely seen high priests of "radical EA" acting similarly.

[rcoveson]

I've read the Bible. It is mostly not about "teachings of Love and Kindness". It's mostly about faith in and obedience to God. The fundamentals of Christianity are bad. The fundamentals of EA are good.

You can't assess a philosphy by its worst adherents. However, you could attempt to quantify the net good/bad done by its adherents and make an argument about the effect the philosophy has on human personality. But then you'd be doing science and statistics in pursuit of understanding how to make humanity the best it can be, and you'd find yourself in trouble: You don't want to be associated with EA, but they keep emailing you to hear about your findings. :)

Earning to Give is to EA like Copyleft is to Free Software. It's on the more radical side of the philosphy, and it definitely leads to some internal contradictions. It is, at times, contentious within the movement. There are a lot of people who care more about harm minimization who may oppose Copyleft and Earning to Give, and there are people who are more focused on net-good-maximization who may argue in favor of both. There's no getting around those arguments because there's no getting around complexity when it comes to broad new philosophies.

[ElevenLathe]

Not to sidestep the discussion because of your metaphor, but I just don't understand it. What Free Software is there that doesn't rely on copyleft? Just public domain stuff? If so, you're talking about such a fringe part of the Free Software movement that it basically doesn't exist except by accident (when people forget to license their software) and is even more extreme than RMS, who is usually considered the absolute far "left" of Free Software as a movement. Is that really the analogy you're trying to draw with Earning to Give?

[rcoveson]

Copyleft[0] accounts for a significant but minority fraction of free software. The GPL is a Copyleft licesense, but the MIT and Apache licenses (which together might account for a majority of free software) are not. Copyleft refers to the restriction that derivative works also be subject to the same Copyleft terms; it's the "infectious" nature of the license.

Having any license requirements at all, e.g. attribution, inclusion of license alongside distributed copies, etc. does not make the license Copyleft.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

[thethirdone]

The MIT license is probably the most notable non-copyleft open source license. There is a ton of MIT licensed code out there so it is not a fringe part of Free Software.

[leereeves]

Copyleft is the requirement that derivative works carry the same license ("share-alike"). There's a lot of Free Software that doesn't have that requirement.

[ElevenLathe]

Can you name one? A sibling comment says the MIT license is one, but that requires derivative works to include the license, so it seems also to be copyleft under this definition. What is the point of releasing software with a license that says you can strip the license off of it and do whatever you want? This is effectively the same as releasing it to the public domain.

[leereeves]

The MIT license requires attribution (in the form of the copyright notice and the license file) for the MIT licensed code.

But it doesn't require that other code in the project be released under the MIT license (or even released at all), which is what copyleft would do.

It's pretty close to releasing it to the public domain, and the point of that is that it's actually really hard to release something to the public domain worldwide. Just saying something like "I release this code to the public domain" doesn't have the same effect in every country.

[ElevenLathe]

Interesting, I've never encountered this extremely narrow definition of copyleft. Thanks for explaining.

[ben_w]

MIT isn’t copyleft.

If you want to include an MIT licensed work in your project, your obligation is to say “I am using $foo, here is a copy of the MIT licence: $text”, and that’s it.

If you want to include a GPL licensed work in your project, your project is now also GPL licensed, and you are obliged to make the source available.

(I’m not a lawyer etc.)

[constantcrying]

>But then you'd be doing science and statistics in pursuit of understanding how to make humanity the best it can be

I can not possibly imagine an idea which has done more harm to humanity than that one.

[ben_w]

That’s a failure of imagination.

Three of the most iconically evil world leaders of the previous century tried (if I’m feeling generous) to make humanity better by their own definition, but without allowing the science and the statistics tell them they were wrong about the basics.

[constantcrying]

"This time we learned from the mistakes of the past."

"... the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted: he flailed with bare arms, but losing his oar-like wings, could not ride the air. Even as his mouth was crying his father’s name, it vanished into the dark blue sea ..." - Ovid

[gnramires]

I understand the worry, but what's the alternative? Doing nothing? Every day, we are confronted with the facts, and we have to make a decision. Doing nothing could be one of them. I am highly convinced doing something is better than nothing, and the somethings I've found (not all the things, but some things) are Effective altruism.

If you have better proposals, name them, let us discuss and maybe we can do even better!

(the movement is really open about this -- which is one of the reasons some people have seemingly weird beliefs -- simply because some people said 'You should be instead doing X!!', where X was saving humanity from existential risks; maybe you should be shouting at us 'You should be instead doing Y!!', where Y is your idea, and if you're right we sincerely, truly hope you can change our minds)

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/

[constantcrying]

>Doing nothing?

Doing nothing would have been better than doing scientific socialism.

>I understand the worry, but what's the alternative?

Obviously the hardest question. The first and most important issue is the truth. The second most important issue is what are the limits of truth. For me the idea of utilitarianism (and all variations on the idea of a purely rational/mathematical based morality) is an "anti truth", it isn't just false, it false and makes confident truth claims about the unknowable. Of course this an entirely negative claim, but there is one korrolary: People can be fulfilled without me understanding why and completely in despair with me not having any idea how to fix this.

I think nobody should be asking "how can I fix the world" before they have asked themselves if they are the person they think they should be. And whether there is someone there right now close to them, who could maybe really need some help. Of course the world isn't saved by that, but is there any hope if we ignore the people closest to us in favor of vain dreams?

[ben_w]

I have no idea what rhetorical point you’re trying to make with a reference to… Icarus? Especially as small-r rationality (i.e. science and statistics) is how we went from manned flight being only a myth, to walking on the moon.

[matthewdgreen]

I was just skimming the thread and I understood the point. A little heavyhanded maybe, but not hard to parse.

[constantcrying]

>I have no idea what rhetorical point you’re trying to make with a reference to… Icarus?

Deadalus was a great inventor and scientist. When imprisoned he devises a means for him and his son to escape, in fact he realizes one of mans greatest achievements, flight. While he is able to control his invention and makes good use out of it (making sure to avoid both extremes), his son can neither control himself nor the technology given to him. In the desire to reach ever greater heights he is ultimately destroyed.

The point is (or at least the one which is so easily read into the story) that all technology is dangerous and that great care needs to be put into how we make use of it.

The idea of using statistics and quantitative methods of the social sciences to devise the best way for humans to live is Icarus grasping at the sun. Very smart people have found new ideas, novel methods and all the mathematics to answer one of mankinds greatest question, if we let them use it a great future awaits. This already was the folly of "scientific socialism", and your new attempt at it will land you in the Icarian see, just like last time.

[rcoveson]

Take a step back even further and it becomes "thinking really hard about how to make humanity the best it can be". Another step back and it's just "thinking really hard". Which, admittedly, has caused a lot of harm!

So is the solution to stop thinking? Or just to stop quantifying and analyzing? Or maybe it's the motivation, humanism, that's at fault, and we should all just worry about ourselves?

[constantcrying]

Mathematics is a far more cruel tool than any other means of thought.

When I was in 10th grade I was a utilitarian, in the philosophy class I assigned numerical values to suffering/happiness and calculated averages to solve moral dilemmas.

I have been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but that idea I certainly was the wrongest about.

Statistics knows absolutely nothing of kindness and hapiness can not be assigned a numerical value. Which didn't stop people from trying and creating unimaginable suffering.

[rcoveson]

Assuming you have even semi-common answers to questions like "what is an example of a great government", "what is an example of a great charity", or "what is an example of a great organization", you'll find it's an entity that makes extensive use of quantification and statistical analysis. Yes, they're as "unkind" as a sword, hammer, or pen. Yes, they have been used for evil. And sure, you can get by without them when you're making family-scale/tribal-scale moral decisions. But when you're chosing who to vote for (at, say, the federal level), or who to donate to (among worldwide charities), you're going to get better results if you quantify, or follow people who you trust to quantify.

[gnramires]

I think I understand you -- just a single number can never capture the richness and complexity of a life. But it's not about just using numbers, it's about doing all the useful stuff, including putting numbers (which is indeed often very important). We can't feel the pain of a billion people -- we can only look at statistics in disbelief that so many beings are suffering so much, and try to make their lives better if we can (and indeed we can :) ).

> Which didn't stop people from trying and creating unimaginable suffering.

Aren't we already creating immense amounts of suffering by the conditions of animals (which often have terrible living conditions), preventable diseases and poverty? Why putting a number on it is more evil than doing nothing?

[constantcrying]

The problem arises if the number does not actually represent the suffering (which it will not). In the end your policy will be about manipulating the system which outputs the number.

The incentives will not be to reduce any actual suffering or solve any real problems, since those might only be loosely correlated with the number. It is extremely easy to reduce the number of crimes, or the amount of people needing psychiatric care. It is extremely hard to increase safety and social cohesion or the mental wellbeing of the population.

[gonehome]

It's a little different - I don't personally identify as part of the EA movement because of the associated baggage, but the ideas around trying to do the most good, extending empathy beyond kin/culture to other people suffering that you cannot see, and reasoning about the effectiveness of charity make sense to me.

Without getting into a flame war not fit for HN, the same cannot be said for the supernatural foundations and epistemic claims of religions - the foundational ideas of EA are not the problem in this case.

I think Sam Harris breaks it down decently here: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/303... though that's a little out of date with how fast news on the topic is moving.

It's also another reminder why it's good to keep your identity small [0] and deal with the ideas directly.

Said another way:

"Go three-quarters of the way from deontology to utilitarianism and then stop. You are now in the right place. Stay there at least until you have become a god."[1]

[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

[1]: https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1497157447219232768?s...

[HideousKojima]

Especially strange since Peter Singer supports infanticide:

"You have been quoted as saying: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." Is that quote accurate?"

"I did write that, in the 1979 edition of Practical Ethics. Today the term “defective infant” is considered offensive, and I no longer use it, but it was standard usage then. The quote is misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics). I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her or his parents."

"Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, but only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support — which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection — but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely."

[the-printer]

It’s always interesting to watch people wantonly spin up new definitions of things as quick as you could deploy a Docker container to justify their queer and inhumane philosophies.

[Aunche]

The difference is that EA is nothing like religious fundamentalism. No one is pressuring you to work in HFT or donate to AI risk if you don't want to.

[ben_w]

You say that, but I literally just listend to a podcast of someone talking about their efforts to convince people to work on AI risk.

[Aunche]

So they're a bad person because they are trying to convince people to allocate their resources in a way that you think is sub-optimal? By that logic, most of the people on HN are bad people because they work at ad-tech companies.

[ben_w]

?

I didn’t say “bad”. But they are trying to convince people to work in AI risk who otherwise wouldn’t have chosen to.

Pressure? Perhaps not. But then again, pressure can be an irregular verb: “I encourage, you persuade, he pressures” ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

[boxed]

This is why you need to do what the Catholic Church does:

- Own your name

- Excommunicate those who claim to be of your movement that you don't like

Otherwise you will lose control over the term you invented and it goes to hell. Witness Buddhism (Pure Land is basically anti-buddhism), Christianity (where to even begin with all the splitting?), Islam (two big sects trying to murder eachother), communism (pol pot, mao, stalin).

Protect your brand or see your name be dragged through the mud.

[tptacek]

Just for what it's worth: it's a lot easier to get excommunicated from EA than from the Catholic Church, where it is more or less impossible to accomplish that. I think this comes up a lot because Catholics "own" the term "excommunication", but if you've got the sense that it's an ordinary thing that happens in the church, well, no. Sinéad O'Connor had to beg for it, and still didn't get it. (Has anyone in the world ever been as thoroughly vindicated as Sinéad, though?)

[boxed]

The threat and the ownership of the trademark is the point though.

[zozbot234]

Pure Land simply preserves the tradition of what Buddhism was like prior to the Western-influenced revitalization of it in the 19th century. It's the closest analog to the Catholic church with its long history, whereas what most people think of as Buddhism is relatively recent.

[boxed]

Pure Land rejects lots of stuff in the tripitaka. It's clearly BS. Replacing all of Buddhas teaching with "some god will save you if you say these magic words" is very similar to how the Catholic Church rejected the teachings of Jesus with indulgences. "Never mind what Jesus said, pay us some money and you'll go to heaven even if you're a mass murderer". Pure land is basically the same type of crazy.