[massagedpelican]

Effective altruism. A lot of the folks working on AI at large tech companies are disproportionately represented in the movement. There's a lot of overlap between EA and the rationalist community as well. The wikipedia page is a good place to start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism

[paytonjjones]

I think it's also worth noting that EA is closely linked to utilitarianism. Most of the pitfalls that people see in EA are the same pitfalls that are classic to utilitarianism, a la "we're going to do this thing we know is locally-bad, because we have a lot of confidence in other effects that are universally-good".

[oncensher]

It's important to separate objections to utilitarianism from the obvious fact that it can very be hard to correctly apply the utilitarian calculus. It's partly because of this difficulty that most classical utilitarians thought that people should generally follow commonsense morality and not try to directly apply the utilitarian calculus (which then led to the charge of paternalism and teaching one morality to the masses and another to a supposed elite).

But there are also people who just oppose utilitarianism, like G.E.M. Anscombe. For instance, in https://integrityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/mr_t..., she seems to grant that dropping the nuclear bombs on Japan was probably good from a utilitarian perspective (because it saved lives overall) and also to grant that bombing campaigns that necessarily entail massive civilian deaths (including, apparently, area bombing German cities) are morally permissible but still to argue that dropping the nuclear bombs was impermissible because it constituted murder ("intentionally" killing the innocent). But this kind of distinction, which I think is what actual anti-utilitarianism must come to, is hard to even consistently maintain, and I suppose many HN readers would find the effort quixotic.

[mswphd]

The first half of your answer presupposes some platonic utilitarian calculus that, if it were applied correctly, would yield moral outcomes. This is very hard to believe. If I look at notable/well-known examples of EA-affiliated people, it is hard to skip by members such as SBF. Did he correctly apply the utilitarian calculus?

It is relatively easy to take the proceeds of a massive fraud, buy a relatively small (as a percentage of the fraud) $ amount of mosquito nets, and save more lives than the lives impacted by your massive theft. Is this a correct application of the utilitarian calculus? What sort of data would we need a priori to do this calculation "correctly"? Do you think he had a careful estimate of the suicide rate of victims of ponzi schemes before perpetuating the fraud, or would any suicide rate have made the decision net [pun intended] moral, as any such victim of fraud would lead to >> 1 net purchased (so you would almost always net save lives).

The above is of course snarky. It is also a best-effort way of analyzing a notable utilitarian's actions. I do not think it would be difficult at all to use this type of argument to argue that SBF's actions net raised utility in the world. If only we all would become fraudsters, then we could truly live in Omelas --- a notable utilitarian paradise.

[oncensher]

Yeah, I didn't mean to downplay how hard it is to apply the utilitarian calculus or even to suppose that the bare doctrine of utilitarianism resolves questions about what the ultimate good we should be trying to maximize is. I basically agree that utilitarianism is not a complete recipe for how to live. I just think that it probably gives the correct answer in cases where we can see clearly how to apply it because I'm skeptical of theories like Anscombe's. Which is to say that utilitarianism is a big tent.

Now if we look at EA, the basic tenet of EA seems obvious -- basically just utilitarianism. And from what I've seen, in practice also, EA is a pretty big tent. I don't know the specifics of SBF's case, but I think essentially no one thinks that he acted correctly. I don't know how many mosquito nets he bought, but I agree that if he bought enough, it might be that he net raised utility, and if that is so, it's something to be thankful for. But it doesn't make him some kind of utilitarian saint unless he couldn't have done even more good by some other course of action that wouldn't have hurt the ponzi scheme victims and brought opprobrium on the whole EA movement

[mswphd]

This kind of reasoning leads you to reasoning that if he was an ineffective fraudster, it would be less moral, as he would have bought less mosquito nets. So it’s not only moral to do fraud, but you most extremely competently do fraud.

I think this being a reasonable utilitarian point to make is not a point in utilitarianism’s favor.

[paytonjjones]

This point is very similar to the core plot of Watchmen

[whimsicalism]

EA essentially just is utilitarianism + a specific type of culture/community.

[8note]

not to mention all the theft and feeling good about yourself being rich

[iamacyborg]

They performed famously well at FTX.

[whimsicalism]

Guess FTX disproved the concept of giving to effective charities, time to start donating to my church again.

[notahacker]

What FTX decisively disproved was the idea that people's origin stories involving apparently sincere desire to do good in the world and them constantly broadcasting that should be used as a reason to unquestioningly trust them when their notion of greater good happens to align perfectly with them accumulating enormous quantities of wealth and power. (and Sam, bless him, originally wanted to help animals rather than own the machine god. And probably sincerely believed he was going to do great things for humanity from all the misappropriated funds he was definitely going to win back against a backdrop of EAs and VCs queueing up to glaze him and his commitment to the greater good)

I don't think people are objecting to the EA idea that some charities are more evidence based than others so much as the distinctly EA idea that it would be more effective still to donate to charities like OpenAI

[tancop]

todays EA is not about giving to charities, that was the original mission with 40k hours and ethereum (i think vitalik still believes in this version). then the yudkowsky xrisk/ai safety crowd took over lesswrong and turned it into a cult.

now its utilitarianism taken to the extreme. if you believe a skynet scenario killing everyone on earth is plausible then the "logical" thing to do is allow literally anything in the name of stopping it. that includes mass murder and dictatorship. the only thing that can balance the infinite negative value from an evil machine god is the infinite positive value from a good machine god.

thats the main difference today, one faction around sam and dario believes in creating the good ASI first and sacrificing all the world resources to do it before someone makes the bad one, the more pessimistic like yud want to stop all ai development to reduce the risk that an evil god is made to zero.

at this point its basically a religion.

[8note]

yudowski took over lesswrong?

isnt that literally his thing since the 90s or something?

[mrits]

If you ban women from driving you can eliminate around half the car accidents. Don't you want to reduce car related deaths??