Is Effective Altruism just a giant meme?

[Red]

As someone who strongly advocates for the principles and ideas of effective altruism, I have no shortage of criticisms of the movement. Here are a couple (may add more later).

The "most effective charities" probably aren't very effective to begin with.
Wanna guess how much it costs to save a life with the most effective charities? Right now, the top charities on EA Charity Evaluator GiveWell can save a life for about five grand a piece.

Let's not act like that isn't a lot of money for a majority of people. I think where a lot of EA members go wrong is that they sort of downplay that and try to make it as though it isn't much money (It only costs a few thousand dollars!) which frankly is pretty tone-deaf because to the average person that's a small fuckin' fortune. I've noticed that a lot of EA members are kind of confused when people are baffled by that number, as if to think

The main reason why it costs so much is mainly because of diminishing returns; Looking at GiveWell reports from 2010 via the Wayback Machine, these charities (and similar ones no longer listed) were able to save lives for a few hundred bucks (and yes, I accounted for inflation). The low hanging fruit for this was picked a long time ago, and it's getting more and more expensive to save lives with these charities.

Of course it's still good to fund them, but I do question the usefulness of funding charities that deal with things like Mosquito Netting (most notably the Against Malaria Foundation), when really it would very likely be more effective to just cut out the middle man and exterminate mosquitoes as a whole, which not only would free up a lot of donation money but would also remove all the other issues that come with mosquitoes. CRISPR technology should be on the EA agenda brah brah.

It's also an opportunity cost. Effective Altruism is all about doing the most good, and taking into consideration such opportunity costs. The opportunity cost here of focusing too much on human related issues consequentially leads to...

Not focusing much on animal rights issues.
As much funding as human charities get to the point of being well beyond diminishing returns, effective animal charities get comparatively little funding. These charities could benefit hugely from millions of dollars of funding, which would help immensely with the reduction of animal suffering, which one of the largest causes of suffering on the planet, and one of the most overlooked (and most importantly, one we can very easily do something about).

Yes, folks in the EA community do often bring up animal welfare as a serious concern, but it often seems to get overlooked despite how much good someone can do simply by donating a thousand bucks a year and being a casual advocate. I theorize that the reason why it isn't promoted much is because discussing animal rights issues personally troubles people with their own actions (whereas no one is necessarily personally responsible for children getting malaria) and they don't wannt turn off potential converts. But think of it this way, you're mostly going to be appealing to people in the "rational" community, and if somone who claims to be rational is turned off by the notion of considering his or her day to day actions may not be ethical, that person probably isn't rational to begin with. And let's not even get started on climate change.

"Earning to give" is not only morally dubious, but kind of stupid.
Of course it depends on your career. If you're in a lucrative but useful career like in STEM or Medicine, and donate a large amount of your income that's perfectly fine, and in fact I encourage it, and really should be the main method of attack for the movement. But alas, a large pillar of Effective Altruism is taking on morally grey but highly lucrative jobs such as those in banking and finance and donating the vast majority of the income to charity.

It's probably to do with the fact that being in finance (banker, consultant, whatever) is pretty much something any jackass can do. Pushing money around, dealing with people, risk assessment, you can pretty much just turn your brain off really, especially compared to technical fields. But banking is not only not a very useful job, it's also incredibly morally dubious to work for companies that do fuck all for the world aside from scam customers and invest the money in fossil fuel industries and terrorist organizations. Like OK, yeah, better you have the job than some schmuck who wouldn't donate anything and would spend the money on cars and luxury homes, but there are other jobs you can get that are not only useful, but comparative in their income.

There's also the idea that if you're in the bank or whatever you can influence it more to be less shitty, but I have my doubts about that. First of all, the reason why these banks are so rich is because they do shady shit (leaving you with less to give), so it's probably counterproductive in a sense, and secondly, the chances of you making a change like that in an evil as fuck industry are ridiculously tiny it's not even worth considering. Really, it's easier and more effective to encourage people to use local/community banks if possible instead of one of the big names (even the least shitty giant bank is still incredibly shitty).

Another element to consider is that finance is one of the few fields where your alma mater is relevant. With STEM or Med School, alma mater isn't particularly relevant (as long as it's accredited), since the licensing is what really matters, and anyone with enough intelligence and hard work can achieve it. But there isn't any sort of licensing or certifications in the financial fields, so employers have to sift through tons of applications quickly, and just use top schools as a sort of shorthand (whether or not a more "prestigious" education is actually meaningful). I'm bringing this up because it's pretty absurd how the EA community just pushes this aside and just sort of operates under the assumption that Ivy League education is a given. Yeah sorry, not everyone is in a position like that. Again, the tone deafness.

But I reiterate, if we're talking about a person who is seeking a university level education, STEM and Med school are the best options. In STEM, you could engage in things like green infrastructure and research, and Medicine, obviously you''ll be saving and improving lives. Both of these are potentially highly lucrative, and you're actually doing something good and useful, effectively doubling your positive impact.

And if you don't quite have the chops to do something like that, no problem. I just tell people, go into vocational training, get something that pays like 70-80k a year, and donate 10k a year to effective charities and you should be set. Those jobs (plumber, welder, electrician, etc) are useful as hell too!

Anyway, what are YOUR thoughts on the EA movement? Any criticisms you wanna add? Any disagreements with me?

[teo123]

I think that EA is actually incompatible with veganism: it sometimes suggests precisely the opposite actions as solutions to global problems. Like I've written on my blog:

UPDATE on 23/04/2024: I have been thinking about this recently, is effective altruism compatible with veganism? I don't think it is. Consider the problem of superbacteria caused by the egg industry. Veganism suggests that we should buy some expensive alternatives to factory-farmed eggs, such as eggs from pasture-raised chickens or cooking with avocados instead of eggs. Effective altruism, as far as I understand it, suggests that we should buy the cheapest eggs possible (which will, of course, be ones from factory farms) and give what is left of our money to the scientists who are looking for new antibiotics. So, I think they are incompatible. And I think that the solution suggested by veganism is better because, well, how do we know there even are useful antibiotics left for scientists to find?

[aroneous]

As much funding as human charities get to the point of being well beyond diminishing returns, effective animal charities get comparatively little funding. These charities could benefit hugely from millions of dollars of funding, which would help immensely with the reduction of animal suffering, which one of the largest causes of suffering on the planet, and one of the most overlooked (and most importantly, one we can very easily do something about).

I do question the extent to which money alone can alleviate animal suffering. I'm sure there are several low-hanging fruit in terms of helping animals directly (e.g. wildlife vaccination campaigns, sterilizing stray dogs/cats, wildfire rescue ops) that can reduce suffering for a large number of individuals, but this would still be a very tiny dent in the total amount of suffering experienced by animals in the world. We shouldn't forget to also direct funding towards research in fields like welfare biology, which could help us discover more effective methods for reducing suffering in the longer term through an interdisciplinary STEM-focused approach. However, this money can only go so far, as there are very few people working in this field academically to begin with (though this may change in the future).

Yes, folks in the EA community do often bring up animal welfare as a serious concern, but it often seems to get overlooked despite how much good someone can do simply by donating a thousand bucks a year and being a casual advocate. I theorize that the reason why it isn't promoted much is because discussing animal rights issues personally troubles people with their own actions (whereas no one is necessarily personally responsible for children getting malaria) and they don't wannt turn off potential converts. But think of it this way, you're mostly going to be appealing to people in the "rational" community, and if somone who claims to be rational is turned off by the notion of considering his or her day to day actions may not be ethical, that person probably isn't rational to begin with. And let's not even get started on climate change.

Yep, a large component of it is probably trying to be more appealing to the common person, and also the fact that there are actually probably very few (if any) vegans in the EA movement. Personally I find the whole thing quite distasteful and too tied up with elitism -- which is something that might be a bit difficult to avoid in charities, since to appeal to the wealthiest benefactors, it does help to flatter them with the impression that they are from a distinguished class of individuals who will "do the most good" for society.

Of course it depends on your career. If you're in a lucrative but useful career like in STEM or Medicine, and donate a large amount of your income that's perfectly fine, and in fact I encourage it, and really should be the main method of attack for the movement. But alas, a large pillar of Effective Altruism is taking on morally grey but highly lucrative jobs such as those in banking and finance and donating the vast majority of the income to charity.

I agree, and I think that an extremely important point that is often missing in the discussion of charity is the fact that while it is true that money can do good, this really only applies to the money that you already have. I would say that if someone chooses a career in investment banking over, say, biomedical research, under the impression that the money that they donate will benefit others more than the outcome of scientific research, they have been fundamentally misled.

Overall, I would say that I see EA (and many other charities) as an outgrowth of some of the social ills of captialism. It's a place where who make a lot of money (by often questionable means) can seek to reaffirm their positive impact on society. That isn't to say that they don't do any good at all, I'm sure that they do, but I think that in a more ethical world we would be much more focused on trying to understand how to directly effect positive change rather than simply amassing huge amounts of money to direct to various organizations that purport to do good, without a clear idea of what impact this really has.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think that EA is actually incompatible with veganism: it sometimes suggests precisely the opposite actions as solutions to global problems. Like I've written on my blog:

UPDATE on 23/04/2024: I have been thinking about this recently, is effective altruism compatible with veganism? I don't think it is. Consider the problem of superbacteria caused by the egg industry. Veganism suggests that we should buy some expensive alternatives to factory-farmed eggs, such as eggs from pasture-raised chickens or cooking with avocados instead of eggs. Effective altruism, as far as I understand it, suggests that we should buy the cheapest eggs possible (which will, of course, be ones from factory farms) and give what is left of our money to the scientists who are looking for new antibiotics. So, I think they are incompatible. And I think that the solution suggested by veganism is better because, well, how do we know there even are useful antibiotics left for scientists to find?

EA isn't incompatible in itself, but proponents of EA may be overly fixated on (the illusion of) offsetting harm when it's not clear how effective that is.
There's a difference in perception, I think, more so than underlying philosophy.

[brimstoneSalad]

I do question the extent to which money alone can alleviate animal suffering. I'm sure there are several low-hanging fruit in terms of helping animals directly (e.g. wildlife vaccination campaigns, sterilizing stray dogs/cats, wildfire rescue ops) that can reduce suffering for a large number of individuals, but this would still be a very tiny dent in the total amount of suffering experienced by animals in the world. We shouldn't forget to also direct funding towards research in fields like welfare biology, which could help us discover more effective methods for reducing suffering in the longer term through an interdisciplinary STEM-focused approach. However, this money can only go so far, as there are very few people working in this field academically to begin with (though this may change in the future).

This is an interesting point, whereas the best effect may be to go into STEM (welfare biology and beyond) and help develop solutions since there's limited amount that money on its own can do if everybody is busy.

Might be good to catalogue possible areas of exploration.

Also, I would want to point out that much of this research isn't so complex that it's beyond the scope of a high school science project.
Are we talking about things like "What's the best way to prevent heat stoke for wild birds?" Breaking that up into bite-sized pieces for a larger community of young vegans to contribute to might go a long way to "democratizing" science, and it could be a good place to throw Vegan EA money in the form of prizes. I think there CAN be a lot more stem minds on these problems than there necessarily are by default.

[Red]

I do question the extent to which money alone can alleviate animal suffering. I'm sure there are several low-hanging fruit in terms of helping animals directly (e.g. wildlife vaccination campaigns, sterilizing stray dogs/cats, wildfire rescue ops) that can reduce suffering for a large number of individuals, but this would still be a very tiny dent in the total amount of suffering experienced by animals in the world.

Right now, since these charities are relatively underfunded, more money to them would likely make a huge impact in terms of benefit to dollar. Of course, no one's saying it'll end animal suffering wholesale, but it certainly lays important groundwork for continuing the growing strength of the movement by encouraging reducitarianism, animal welfare reforms, and the promotion and development of Vegan alternatives. I can't find it right now, but I remember reading on the Animal Charity Evaluators website that 20 dollars to one charity results in give or take one Vegetarian year (that is, one person going vegetarian for a year) via ads and promotion, leading to hundreds of animal lives spared (and I estimate about 1-2 metric tons of CO2 not released, making animal charities also very effective climate charities). Even if that estimate it totally wrong by a factor of ten, it'll still go a helluva lot further than to a malaria charity in terms of suffering spared.

At the same time, just donating to animal charities I don't think is enough. There are so many other things we can do to promote veganism and animal welfare, such as talking with political representatives, supporting Vegan companies, buying Vegan options, convincing people to eat less meat, and all in all just setting good examples.

We shouldn't forget to also direct funding towards research in fields like welfare biology, which could help us discover more effective methods for reducing suffering in the longer term through an interdisciplinary STEM-focused approach. However, this money can only go so far, as there are very few people working in this field academically to begin with (though this may change in the future).

Totally, and I think that's what some of the wild animal suffering charities listed on ACE do, and I think in general it should be promoted more in EA circles.

The best ways to reduce wild animal suffering right now would be things like mosquito (and pretty much all parasites) eradication and vaccination campaigns. Later down the line when the research becomes more robust and methods become more clear, it certainly seems like a worthwhile venue.

Yep, a large component of it is probably trying to be more appealing to the common person, and also the fact that there are actually probably very few (if any) vegans in the EA movement. Personally I find the whole thing quite distasteful and too tied up with elitism -- which is something that might be a bit difficult to avoid in charities, since to appeal to the wealthiest benefactors, it does help to flatter them with the impression that they are from a distinguished class of individuals who will "do the most good" for society.

As I said about the tone-deafness, they just assume things like Ivy League education are a given. I don't think it's done purely as an ego trip though, I think it's just pretty misguided and myopic.

The movement would benefit from promoting it as something for everyone (at least, everyone in a privileged first world situation), and you don't need to come from a place of high privilege and do something asinine like become a banker to make a big difference with donations. This isn't the middle ages, and there isn't anything stopping the average person from going into a high paying field and being able to donate a decent amount while still being able to support themselves. Of course as I've discussed, STEM and Med school are both highly lucrative and very useful, but we're going through something of a tradesmen shortage since everyone's going to college and getting the Gender Studies degrees instead of going into Vocational training and getting very good paying jobs that society needs. Welders don't make bank for nothing. I actually considered trade school earlier on before I went into engineering school for that reason.

Being a Lawyer is a bit of a grey zone. On the one hand knowing Law can be incredibly important for some movements, but on the other hand the field is notorious for the same reason banking is (you do need to be a lot smarter to be a Lawyer than a banker though, I would assume, or at least more patient). I'm not sure if I'd trust people with that.

I agree, and I think that an extremely important point that is often missing in the discussion of charity is the fact that while it is true that money can do good, this really only applies to the money that you already have.

Not quite sure what you're getting at there.

Overall, I would say that I see EA (and many other charities) as an outgrowth of some of the social ills of captialism. It's a place where who make a lot of money (by often questionable means) can seek to reaffirm their positive impact on society.

I think it depends. You hear a lot of stories of people who weren't in investing/banking or whatever who then got into it after reading about effective altruism. Once more though it baffles me why THIS is the main thing promoted when it comes to earning to give, ignoring like every other job that pays well.

Again, I don't think EA is something just for the rich (or at least it shouldn't be), and the movement really needs to get in touch with the average person who is making 60-70k a year and doesn't have an Ivy League education and show them that they can still make a huge difference if they play their cards right.

That isn't to say that they don't do any good at all, I'm sure that they do, but I think that in a more ethical world we would be much more focused on trying to understand how to directly effect positive change rather than simply amassing huge amounts of money to direct to various organizations that purport to do good, without a clear idea of what impact this really has.

As I said at the beginning, I think donating to charity is just one part of being a good and ethical person and maximizing your positive impact (and the impact is pretty assured, ACE doles out annual reports on their reported charities, and they're often very promising).

Really though, effective altruism, to me, is much more than just numbers and throwing money at charities, which is what the movement seems to view it as. I'm going to avoid waxing poetic here, effective altruism would of course giving to the most effective charities, but also includes voting for the best candidate, talking with political representatives, practices a Vegan lifestyle, promotes Vegan alternatives, convinces others to reduce consumption of animal products, biking/uses public transport instead of driving, dedication to following science and reason, working jobs that benefit society rather than merely making a handful of greedy scumbags a little richer, participates in animal rights campaigns, and all around just sets a good example. And the kicker to all this? You don't need to be some super rich person or genius to do any of it.

Also, here's a bonus read I wrote last year regarding EA and it's approach to animal rights stuff:
viewtopic.php?p=51501

[teo123]

everyone's going to college and getting the Gender Studies degrees

As far as I understand it, it's a myth that people in America often go studying for useless degrees such as Gender Studies. Only about 1% of students go into Minority and Gender Studies.

[Red]

everyone's going to college and getting the Gender Studies degrees

As far as I understand it, it's a myth that people in America often go studying for useless degrees such as Gender Studies. Only about 1% of students go into Minority and Gender Studies.

It's called a joke, Teo. The point was college is not a very good idea for people who won't be majoring in anything particularly useful but people who should be going to trade school still attend universities. And please don't derail this thread about university and your mental health, we've heard it all before.

[Red]

Had a buddy crosspost this onto the EA forum:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/pos ... giant-meme
Already have one comment, let's take a look:

I don't understand what the title has to do with the body of the text. 'Meme' either means a unit of cultural information or a funny picture with text; EA is definitely not 'just' the latter, and it is the former to the same extent that environmentalism or any other movement is.

I can say these sentences certainly are memes.

This is probably the single most ignorant paragraph I have ever read about the financial industry. The sort of finance job EAs do for EtG are not easy, they are some of the most competitive and challenging jobs in the world.

OK

Nor is it the case that scamming, fossil fuel investment and investing in terrorist organizations (how would that even work? Does Al-Qaeda pay dividends?) is all they do.

I mean that's kinda what the biggest banks in the world do. Every major multinational bank on the planet is riddled with scandals and controversies.

Also regarding terrorist organizations:
https://www.nbcnews.com/businessmain/re ... ugs-889170
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stand ... s-4339bfd0

This guy is apparently aware that financial companies invest in fossil fuel companies - does he think there is some other industry that handles investment in all other types of firms, including green infrastructure?

I'm sure they do, but where's the money in that right now? Very little compared to the fossil fuel industries. This will likely change in the future, but that will be the result of legislation and general systemic change, not likely to be from working at such companies.

Finance plays a number of important roles in society, from facilitating transactions to matching savers and borrowers to allowing people to adjust their risk to vetting and due diligence to forecasting the future.

Of course banks are important, I was more referring to working a job that deals mostly with the scumbags. But while they are important, even putting aside the shady stuff, working in one mostly just makes you a middle-man; Hard to say if someone of fair intelligence and ability is necessarily reaching their potential working such a job.

These are valuable services and people voluntarily pay to use them.

I'm not sure if you read my whole post because I mentioned encouraging people to use local banks, which will likely act more ethically. Might not be possible for everyone, but it is for a lot of people who do use these banks. The less power they have, the better.

And really it's probably beneficial to the customers too since from what I can tell these big banks give their customers little interest, charge them a fee for using the bank, then invest in other evil industries.

There are some valid criticisms of the industry but this guy is just so ill-informed I seriously think your ""friend"" should start by reading a basic wikipedia article on the subject.

I think you're just mad

... and medicine and STEM are only comparable in income to the extent that you can compare them and observe them to be lower.

Still both in the six figures range, and plenty of room for increasing income. I am wondering, do you support more STEM and Medicine people? I would argue that any extra money made by someone in finance is far offset by a STEM/Medicine person since their careers contribute very positively in the world and working at a big bank is not so good.

Frankly the fact that the people working in finance make so much money is a cause for concern and shouldn't be a reality at all, at least with how they're currently getting their money.

[aroneous]

This is an interesting point, whereas the best effect may be to go into STEM (welfare biology and beyond) and help develop solutions since there's limited amount that money on its own can do if everybody is busy.

Might be good to catalogue possible areas of exploration.

Also, I would want to point out that much of this research isn't so complex that it's beyond the scope of a high school science project.
Are we talking about things like "What's the best way to prevent heat stoke for wild birds?" Breaking that up into bite-sized pieces for a larger community of young vegans to contribute to might go a long way to "democratizing" science, and it could be a good place to throw Vegan EA money in the form of prizes. I think there CAN be a lot more stem minds on these problems than there necessarily are by default.

There's also the question of how much of this funding should go directly to research in welfare biology versus STEM in general. I think there are a number of important technological prerequisites to truly effective welfare biology -- in the near future, things like BCIs and safe robotics, and perhaps a bit later, nanotech and AGI. Things are indeed changing fast, but in the present money still may be better spent on awareness campaigns, making young people aware of the sheer scale of suffering in the world and their ability to do something about it. Then again, the role of funding STEM research is already mostly filled by governments and private organizations (though their motivations are more along the lines of national security and corporate profitability, not "reducing suffering" per se). So EA funding may be a bit limited in advancing welfare biology as a field, but it could still have an important role in making people aware of it as something that they could contribute to, perhaps indirectly.