Opposition to Effective Altruism

[John Albert]

i'd be cautious in ignoring how well received the philosophy is amongst the most greedy people in america and at least try to understand what it is about it that they all found so appealing. i think there's certainly some irony in a bunch of billionaires thinking they know best how best to distribute resources charitably to best improve the lives of everyone and come to the conclusion that they should keep billions of dollars for themselves. yeah, real effective altruism.

Having read some of the discussion in the Effective Altruism communities, I think that its appeal to tech billionaires and self-important philbros is rather obvious.

However, I feel I ought to add a disclaimer that it's been over a year since I perused any Effective Altruism communities. So the discourse might have changed drastically in that time span, but I can't say.

Back in the early teens I used to peruse the articles on LessWrong. I was originally drawn to it on the assumption that it was a skeptic community, on account of it being named similarly to a quote from Matt Dillahunty.

Upon arrival though, I immediately saw it was something altogether different.

Basically, it appears to be a blogging community for Very Intelligent Individuals (like the guy in the well from the "Yet you participate in society" meme) to expound at length on subjects in which they have zero credentials or expertise.

I encourage you to check it out. It's usually pretty weird and sometimes hilariously so. Every once in awhile you might stumble across something really interesting.
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[The Great Zaganza]

EA is just a fancy way of saying Consequentialism.

And while I would 100% agree that the outcome matters in the end, not so much the means and definitely not the intentions, the problem is that we can't see into the future, don't have time machines and can resurrect people.
EA presupposes that we can predict the outcome of interventions when we really can't especially not for anything beyond the very short term.
I have yet to see an EA advocate putting in uncertainty and error bars in their prediction for the beneficial outcomes of their interventions. Obviously, the further into the future the benefit is supposed to be, the bigger the discount we should put on it being actually good.

A True Effective Altruist would only propose actions that are either very small and localized and clearly beneficial for the recipients, or those that can be fully adjusted and reversed if they don't turn out as expected.

If you think that with your actions you can save humanity for the next 1,000 years, remember that you might also unintentionally mess it up for the same amount of time or longer.

 

[John Albert]

EA presupposes that we can predict the outcome of interventions when we really can't especially not for anything beyond the very short term.

This is part of the reason why they advocate for "evaluating on the margin," looking to maximize short-term gains and maintaining the flexibility to switch focus at the first sign of diminishing returns.

The ideas laid out in the early Effective Altruist literature are actually rather astute and well-considered. It's too bad that the community are killing its chances of being a useful movement.

As usual, people ruin everything.
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[Gulliver Foyle]

EA is the justification rich people use for their destructive behaviours now by saying they'll use their riches down the line "for the greater good". Never mind that the down the line is put on the never never and the "greater good" is decided on by tbe same psychopathy that is condoning actual evils being carried out.

Or more simply declared intention is magic.