But you can't credit them to EA, it's not as if they invented the concept of altruism.
It's a bit like religion: you claim that all the good stuff is yours and all the bad stuff is the evil people and then you get people to give you lots of money to do more good stuff. But meanwhile you use that money in the first place to enrich yourself.
There are lots of these tech cults, EA, 'The Long Now', The Rationalists and the Freezer Fanatics, all of them have three central themes: gullible people, money and promises and concepts that are so far over the horizon that they can safely make claims in the knowledge they'll never be found out.
That's a very common theme in religion in general. And it works, lots of people fall for it. If you want effective altruism in your life go do something that is actually good or directly (and anonymously) give your money to people in need.
The things described at the link I provided can be credited to "effective altruists" because "effective altruists" are the ones who did them.
It's not a list of altruistic things that have been done by random people that the EA cult is trying to take credit for, as you seem to be implying; it's a list of specific things done by specific EA cultists and EA cult organizations, so you can credit them to EA. (EA is pretty much just a marketing name for the "rationalists", although technically you may be able to find a few people who claim to belong to one but not the other.)
It seems fair to criticize EA for the harm done by its cult aspects, but not to claim that they aren't doing the beneficial things they are in fact doing.
The basic idea of EA is the same many people have (especially those not used to the idea of nonlinear orders): quantifying everything, even "goodness" or "utility".
Not everything is quantifiable, and even more, not any family of things (investments, in this case) admits a linear ordering (they may even not admit a total order).
There can be incomparable outcomes from actions, and they may be maximal in their suborder.
This is difficult until you stop measuring everything and dedicate a minute to think of ordered trees.
The basic idea of EA is that if you want to spend money on improving something, you probably would want to spend it as efficiently as possible because your budget isn't infinite. "Getting the biggest bang for your buck", as the say. Spending millions on a specific way to solve a certain problem when it can be solved in a different way for mere thousands is plain silly. Of course, this idea isn't new at all.
The main problem with the charity from the ultra-wealthy, of course, is that they first materially worsen the world in order to get that wealth, and then they use part of that wealth to partially undo the damage (breaking things is easier than fixing them, after all). Like trying to help to alleviate Africa's problems with clean water when your own mining megacorporation is one of the major drivers of the pollution in the first place.
I was thinking of applying partially ordered set theory to social science. Order theory assumes only comparison operation ("less than" or "greater than") is possible to perform on the elements of the sets, so ordering is possible, but the values themselves can be completely non-measurable.
Pick an ideology that allows for selfish wants. For example, long-term greed would actually allow a lot more win-win coordination than currently happens.
One of the most effective (heh) programs of EA, predating the "EA" name itself, is an explicit halfway measure here, called "Giving What We Can", which advocates for people do donate less to charity than the maximum amount they could; specifically, 10% of their income: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
It’s just last century’s Objectivism with an even more smoke-and-mirrors name.
Effective altruism should have been effectively killed by SBF’s take on consequentialism - that basically the ends justify the means, and the means are all fine because one has egotistically (and narcissistically) omnipotently computed the optimal end result therefore the steps between now and that end are all justified. The problem is the world is a complex messy place, and reason is the slave of the passions, so in the real world it just seems to result in fraud and manipulation and can justify basically any kind of behaviour while making the doer believe they’re acting morally.
The idea of spending your money where it will do the most good is a good one. The execution can certainly be bad, though. Good deeds don't make up for bad deeds, and we should have learned a long time ago that "the ends justify the means" usually leads to terrible things.
It is a less effective version of mohism/state consequencialism. If 21st century biggest idea is worse than China's 6th century biggest idea, pardon my french: On a pas le cul sorti des ronces
> It is a less effective version of mohism/state consequencialism. If 21st century biggest idea is worse than China's 6th century biggest idea, pardon my french: On a pas le cul sorti des ronces
Iamverysmart tech nerds re-inventing wheels, because they did none of the reading? Say it ain't so!
26 comments
[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 34.6 ms ] threadThen AirBnB (Illegal hotel)
Then crypto (Money for criminals)
Then came AI (Plagiarism engine)
I'm sure Effective Altruism will find a usecase!
It's a bit like religion: you claim that all the good stuff is yours and all the bad stuff is the evil people and then you get people to give you lots of money to do more good stuff. But meanwhile you use that money in the first place to enrich yourself.
There are lots of these tech cults, EA, 'The Long Now', The Rationalists and the Freezer Fanatics, all of them have three central themes: gullible people, money and promises and concepts that are so far over the horizon that they can safely make claims in the knowledge they'll never be found out.
That's a very common theme in religion in general. And it works, lots of people fall for it. If you want effective altruism in your life go do something that is actually good or directly (and anonymously) give your money to people in need.
It's not a list of altruistic things that have been done by random people that the EA cult is trying to take credit for, as you seem to be implying; it's a list of specific things done by specific EA cultists and EA cult organizations, so you can credit them to EA. (EA is pretty much just a marketing name for the "rationalists", although technically you may be able to find a few people who claim to belong to one but not the other.)
It seems fair to criticize EA for the harm done by its cult aspects, but not to claim that they aren't doing the beneficial things they are in fact doing.
Not everything is quantifiable, and even more, not any family of things (investments, in this case) admits a linear ordering (they may even not admit a total order).
There can be incomparable outcomes from actions, and they may be maximal in their suborder.
This is difficult until you stop measuring everything and dedicate a minute to think of ordered trees.
The main problem with the charity from the ultra-wealthy, of course, is that they first materially worsen the world in order to get that wealth, and then they use part of that wealth to partially undo the damage (breaking things is easier than fixing them, after all). Like trying to help to alleviate Africa's problems with clean water when your own mining megacorporation is one of the major drivers of the pollution in the first place.
How to fix this problem?
One of the most effective (heh) programs of EA, predating the "EA" name itself, is an explicit halfway measure here, called "Giving What We Can", which advocates for people do donate less to charity than the maximum amount they could; specifically, 10% of their income: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
It’s just last century’s Objectivism with an even more smoke-and-mirrors name.
Effective altruism should have been effectively killed by SBF’s take on consequentialism - that basically the ends justify the means, and the means are all fine because one has egotistically (and narcissistically) omnipotently computed the optimal end result therefore the steps between now and that end are all justified. The problem is the world is a complex messy place, and reason is the slave of the passions, so in the real world it just seems to result in fraud and manipulation and can justify basically any kind of behaviour while making the doer believe they’re acting morally.
Iamverysmart tech nerds re-inventing wheels, because they did none of the reading? Say it ain't so!