Altruism does not exist. It is often an excuse for abuse, confidence tricks, to gain favour and position, to hide wrongdoing, to grab power, to escape the consequences of behaviour. All life on Earth - animal and vegetable - is motivated by self-interest, and how that is served varies. But no organism does anything for no reward. Flowers do not produce nectar because they want to help the bees.
Even if altruism doesn't exist, not sure how that takes away from anything EA is doing? Like even if EA members are all just self-interested status-seeking utility maximizers, the currency of their own status game is doing the most good. Thus, the end result would still be overwhelmingly positive?
I guess the point point Brian is making (maybe the one you're making too?), is that EA in its purest form is fundamentally opposed to kind of status-seeking under the guise of altruism that characterizes most legacy institutions. And the fact that EA, with all of its intellectual horsepower, doesn't ceaselessly criticize and seek to reinvent those institutions, suggests it is a group more concerned with status than actual altruism.
If that's yours and Brian's point then you're probably right.
It doesn’t take away what they are doing, but what they are doing is not altruism.
Doing the most ‘good’ for whom and how is ‘good’ defined? That’s the point. The ‘good’ done always serves the ‘altruist’. NGO workers go to Africa to do the most ‘good’ by helping farmers - Hurrah! - be environmentally responsible and engage in ‘sustainable’ farming - Oh? This inevitably means near subsistance farming (so as to be in harmony with Mother Earth) whereas Africa needs industrial scale farming. So for whom is that ‘good’ - whose needs does it serve? NGO’s doing ‘good’ by building infrastructure like wells and piped, clean water, deprive local enterprise from doing that, building a business, creating employment, increasing economic activity and wealth. It serves the needs of the ‘altruists’ not their victims.
As far as I can tell EAs tend to be fairly self-aware about each of the issues you raise. While altruism may, in most senses serve the altruist, the whole point of EA is to be autistically focused on doing the most good evening if it comes at the expense of status.
This is where the robustness of the system comes in (or at least it should): the way to maximise status as an EA is to find something that maximises general wellbeing for as many people as possible in the most effective way possible. So even if you're blatantly self-interested, the only way to gain status is by helping people. It may not strictly speaking be 'altruism', but it's probably as close as we're gonna get to it.
That being said, there's an element of your critique I agree with. In trying to maximise "the good", it's close to impossible to anticipate the second order effects, third order effects... And so on. So, by trying maximize the good in the present, you end up causing a lot of suffering down the line you didn't anticipate.
Additionally, EAs often use Expected Value calculations to select what cause to put money towards, but I'm not sure this is always valid. On the one hand, there is rarely enough information to make any sort of precise calculation on charity. On the other hand, no one has any idea what is going to end up maximising wellbeing. I doubt Newton or Von Neumann were thinking about maximising the general well-being when they made their discoveries, but their discoveries have nonetheless generated extreme amounts of happiness for the world.
I don't know how to politely point this out... but I really don't think you understand anything important about the EA movement, other than the one fact that they're nominally altruistic.
The EA and rationalist communities are full of spiritually sick people who say things like “hmm why wouldn’t I let my wife have sex with other men? According to my utilitarian calculation the most effectively altruistic thing to do is to let her and her other sexual partners maximise their sexual pleasure. Jealousy is not rational plus we both already voluntarily made ourselves infertile like the prophet Peter Singer taught.“
cactus join our discord https://discord.gg/YvVJMXTapA for faang employees, kalash pastrorlists and ABDs who took indstury money and crushed their adivsors dreams. anyone reading this is welcome actually b/c your reading cactus's substack.
Imagine the CDC is called “Center for not letting people do anything substantive about a pandemic” and you have a better understanding about what it’s actual social role is. If you want to do things about pandemics it’s a good idea to get rid of the institution that gets in the way of that.
While I'm certainly no fan of the mRNA vaccines (side effects? what side effects?), it's certainly the case that the CDC was *amazingly* slow in ramping up Covid tests and banning other Covid tests aside from the one approved test (which didn't work that well).
"Ostensibly" not "Austensibly".
Otherwise, outstanding essay.
desacrilise/desacralise and austensive/ostensible also.
essay still outstanding!
Altruism does not exist. It is often an excuse for abuse, confidence tricks, to gain favour and position, to hide wrongdoing, to grab power, to escape the consequences of behaviour. All life on Earth - animal and vegetable - is motivated by self-interest, and how that is served varies. But no organism does anything for no reward. Flowers do not produce nectar because they want to help the bees.
Even if altruism doesn't exist, not sure how that takes away from anything EA is doing? Like even if EA members are all just self-interested status-seeking utility maximizers, the currency of their own status game is doing the most good. Thus, the end result would still be overwhelmingly positive?
I guess the point point Brian is making (maybe the one you're making too?), is that EA in its purest form is fundamentally opposed to kind of status-seeking under the guise of altruism that characterizes most legacy institutions. And the fact that EA, with all of its intellectual horsepower, doesn't ceaselessly criticize and seek to reinvent those institutions, suggests it is a group more concerned with status than actual altruism.
If that's yours and Brian's point then you're probably right.
It doesn’t take away what they are doing, but what they are doing is not altruism.
Doing the most ‘good’ for whom and how is ‘good’ defined? That’s the point. The ‘good’ done always serves the ‘altruist’. NGO workers go to Africa to do the most ‘good’ by helping farmers - Hurrah! - be environmentally responsible and engage in ‘sustainable’ farming - Oh? This inevitably means near subsistance farming (so as to be in harmony with Mother Earth) whereas Africa needs industrial scale farming. So for whom is that ‘good’ - whose needs does it serve? NGO’s doing ‘good’ by building infrastructure like wells and piped, clean water, deprive local enterprise from doing that, building a business, creating employment, increasing economic activity and wealth. It serves the needs of the ‘altruists’ not their victims.
As far as I can tell EAs tend to be fairly self-aware about each of the issues you raise. While altruism may, in most senses serve the altruist, the whole point of EA is to be autistically focused on doing the most good evening if it comes at the expense of status.
This is where the robustness of the system comes in (or at least it should): the way to maximise status as an EA is to find something that maximises general wellbeing for as many people as possible in the most effective way possible. So even if you're blatantly self-interested, the only way to gain status is by helping people. It may not strictly speaking be 'altruism', but it's probably as close as we're gonna get to it.
That being said, there's an element of your critique I agree with. In trying to maximise "the good", it's close to impossible to anticipate the second order effects, third order effects... And so on. So, by trying maximize the good in the present, you end up causing a lot of suffering down the line you didn't anticipate.
Additionally, EAs often use Expected Value calculations to select what cause to put money towards, but I'm not sure this is always valid. On the one hand, there is rarely enough information to make any sort of precise calculation on charity. On the other hand, no one has any idea what is going to end up maximising wellbeing. I doubt Newton or Von Neumann were thinking about maximising the general well-being when they made their discoveries, but their discoveries have nonetheless generated extreme amounts of happiness for the world.
I don't know how to politely point this out... but I really don't think you understand anything important about the EA movement, other than the one fact that they're nominally altruistic.
Where did I go wrong?
Cool. And what made you read this piece (assuming you did) AND enlighten us for free? I know, I know, "showing off". Same here. lol
The EA and rationalist communities are full of spiritually sick people who say things like “hmm why wouldn’t I let my wife have sex with other men? According to my utilitarian calculation the most effectively altruistic thing to do is to let her and her other sexual partners maximise their sexual pleasure. Jealousy is not rational plus we both already voluntarily made ourselves infertile like the prophet Peter Singer taught.“
Absolutely disgusting.
> brand loyalty to legacy institutions that epitomized the causes of ineffective altruism.
I'm not sure I understand what that means -- which institutions? what actions or beliefs are affected by this loyalty?
cactus join our discord https://discord.gg/YvVJMXTapA for faang employees, kalash pastrorlists and ABDs who took indstury money and crushed their adivsors dreams. anyone reading this is welcome actually b/c your reading cactus's substack.
I think the "stripping them of the ability to use force" is clear enough.
Imagine the CDC is called “Center for not letting people do anything substantive about a pandemic” and you have a better understanding about what it’s actual social role is. If you want to do things about pandemics it’s a good idea to get rid of the institution that gets in the way of that.
While I'm certainly no fan of the mRNA vaccines (side effects? what side effects?), it's certainly the case that the CDC was *amazingly* slow in ramping up Covid tests and banning other Covid tests aside from the one approved test (which didn't work that well).