My favorite philosopher is one you may not have heard of, Walter Lippman:
When political parties or newspapers declare for...
Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity,
they hope to amalgamate the emotion of
conflicting factions which would surely divide,
if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to
discuss a specific program. For when a coalition
around the symbol has been effected, feeling flows
toward conformity under the symbol rather than
toward critical scrutiny of the measures. It is, I
think, convenient and technically correct to call
multiple phrases like these symbolic. They do not
stand for specific ideas, but for a sort of truce
or junction between ideas.[1][2]
Associations #1
In 2010-2015, it was fashionable for a tech company to convince college graduates, investors, and employees that they were "having a big impact on a lot of people" and "making the world a better place". There was almost no cost for a company to make this statement. They were not bound to any rigorous definition of good. What they were bound to was the argumentative method that would convince college graduates and their employees. More to the point, many convincingly argued that they were in fact doing good, and convinced many young, highly intelligent and rational college graduates.
You will rarely hear the phrase any more. It is met with suspicion, and a hint of irony. One may argue that there has been a broader disillusionment with tech. However:
- Weak claim: the disillusionment with "making the world a better place" preceded disillusionment with tech more broadly, by at least a few years, so cannot have been caused by it.[3]
- Strong claim: the narrower disillusionment may have partly caused the broader disillusionment : that tech companies acted to maximize profit and the motive to "have a big positive impact on a lot of users" in no way affected their behavior. Where profit and 'impact' conflicted, the companies revealed their preferences. Perhaps some companies meant it, but the rest debased the currency.
However you feel about this example, I assert that company leadership will find appeal in any philosophy that:
- Has cheap requirements for proving membership
- Places few restrictions on business practices
- Coincides with what adherents were going to do anyway
- Contains a way of thinking and argumentative method that aligns with a demographic that they are trying to appeal to
What is EA?
A good definition of EA is "doing good in a way that isn't ineffective". In other words, "doing good".
A narrower definition of EA is doing good in a way that isn't ineffective or actively harmful, and in a way that tries to make sure that attempts to do good actually work.
The condition "in a way that tries to make sure that attempts to do good actually work" includes probabilistic estimates. So if you donate to something and cannot verify its effect, what matters is your probabilistic expectation of its effect based on Bayesian reasoning. This means you don’t actually need to go out into the world and provide definitive evidence. You only need to argue and not make any errors in your argument.
I ask:
- If you prove that I “did good”, have you proved that I did “Effective Altruism”?
- If you disprove that I “did good”, have you disproved that I did “Effective Altruism”?[4]
If so, “doing good” => “Effective Altruism” and “Effective Altruism” => “doing good”.
Perhaps replace "doing good" with "doing best".
I may say, "there's a difference between doing good and doing best". But is there? If I throw my money away on something doing less than the optimal good, I have done bad, because I am now in a state of having done less good and now I have no money. In a Markov Decision Process, the value of being in the state of "having money and ability to do good" is equal to the value of doing that good.[5]
I may say, "Effective Altruism is like science, it is a method for doing good, not a statement of beliefs"? But the scientific method is specific and rigorous: it concerns itself with falsifiable statements that can be determined one way or the other. Bayesian reason has a wider scope: it includes everything that can be reasoned about, which is to say, everything that can be thought about, which is to say, everything. When a statement cannot be determined one way or the other, it is not science. There are many interesting ideas and statements and arguments that are useful, that even scientists find interesting, but they are not science.
To what does EA not apply?
Honesty
The scientific method isn't just about convincing other people. The easiest person to fool in science in yourself. It is a good philosophy because it is not just a method for people to prove to other people that they are not lying. It is a way to prove that they are doing science to themselves.
Associations #2
Quite apart from any rigorous definition, a word can pick up associations based on its use.
Sometimes the correlation in use doesn't have any causality behind it. In a cautionary tale, the non-profit "Fellowship Health Resources" is not religious and was founded with purely secular intentions. But the word "Fellowship" sounds religious, and therefore had a tendency to attract religious people. Then, the presence of religious people—combined with the word in the name—made it even more attractive to religious people. There was a positive feedback loop. The word “Fellowship” served as a kind of shelling point for religious people interested in improving health.
I want to ask the EA community, "whom are we attracting"?
Politics and Crypto
The first EA political candidate lost; many voters thought he was the "crypto candidate".[6]
It doesn't help that money in politics tends to raise suspicion, especially when the reason for the donation is not explicit and falsifiable—i.e., provably serves no other purpose.
I suggest an experiment. Conduct a poll distributed evenly across ages and income levels the UK or US in 2022 and determine:
1. How many recognize the phrase "Effective Altruism"?
2. How many think it is related to "crypto"?
3. What level of trust do respondents have for people in the EA community?
I posit that 0.5 * (1) < (2) and correl((2), (3)) < 0.
What is Philanthropy?
A good angle of attack for criticizing EA is to repurpose attacks against its nearest neighbor in word2vec-vector-space, "Philanthropy".
It is hard not to note EA's origins in the UK. Much ink has been spilled about the peculiar role philanthropy plays in that country, more so than in other countries, with respect to relationships between different groups of people with different very different social, educational, and economic backgrounds.
It is also hard not to note that the rise of philanthropy in the US coincides with the time when the people with the most money and the least money had increasingly different amounts of money.
The UK's social safety net was promoted not just for its direct effects, but out of a desire to avoid the negative side-effects of philanthropy, that it created a subservient and conditional relationship between the philanthropist and the beneficiary.[7]
You do not need to agree with these people. But I note that their sentiment is widely held. Perhaps their opinion doesn't matter.
I want to highlight three key agent-based criticisms of philanthropy:
- It is used to promote the personal gratification and reputation of the philanthropist
- This promotion can counter a previously negative reputation, usually from the source of the money.
- The positive reputation can then be parlayed into influence.
Politics is extremely costly and dangerous for a philosophy. As soon as a philosophy enters the political arena, there will be disagreement about what it means. There is no political word that has a rigorous and rational definition, about which everyone agrees. There will be players with large deltas to the specifics of the definitions. And a word is defined, finally, by how it is used. Even if someone agrees about the definition of a word, another person can use it. If it is used too much, its effective definition changes.[8]
Some may argue that I have been underhanded in this essay, merely presenting evidence and letting the reader make connections. But I am not arguing about philosophy; I am arguing about language and politics. Association drives public opinion.
Who is a Philanthropist?
Who has given the most money to "philanthropy"? That's hard to answer; what is "philanthropy"?
A more precise question is, who has spent the most money and called it "philanthropy"?[9]
1. John Rockerfeller
2. Andrew Carnegie
3. Warren Buffet
4. Bill Gates
4. Elon Musk[10]
5. Mark Zuckerberg
6. MacKenzie Scott[11]
5 out of the 6 people on this list have all:
1. Run afoul of anti-competitive/antitrust law
2. Been criticized for disregard for the welfare of their employees and/or customers
3. Been criticized for inappropriately influencing politics
Warren Buffet is the exception to all 3 points. I will discuss him later: he is a very interesting counterexample who has made statements about altruism that are very different from the other people on this list. In particular, he explicitly gave up charitable decision making for his company, stating that, "Your charitable preferences are as good as mine".[12]
John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and their peers were the motivation for anti-competitive/antitrust law,[13] and were criticized for disregard for the welfare of their employees, especially the ones who were also children, in—admittedly—a different cultural era when strikes were broken by armed force. Andrew Carnegie gave his workers one holiday per year. Both men were criticized for improperly influencing politics, including—in John Rockefeller's case—uh, direct bribery of the Pennsylvania legislature. I recommend Ida Tarbell’s chapter on “Politics and Standard Oil”; the book influenced antitrust law. Also it is a superb book in general. Seriously, read it.[14]
Bill Gates ran afoul of antitrust law (1999) for killing the first web browser and has been accused of disregard for his customers, especially limiting functionality to serve anti-competitive practices. Microsoft has been criticized for improperly influencing politics to serve its antitrust aims, and has lobbied heavily for IP law, to the detriment of the open source community.
Elon Musk's anti-competitive practices related to his self-enrichment from ownership of multiple companies, which act in tandem, and which he occasionally has buy one another. Also, lots of SEC stuff. The US government rarely uses the world "anti-competitive", for historical reasons,[15] but boy, in Musk's case it liberally applies the phrase "disregard for the rule of law". Despite running Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, he has managed to make all of them receive criticism for disregard for the welfare of his employees. He has been criticized for improperly influencing politics, and, uh, a lot of other stuff.
Mackenzie Scott's fortune comes from Amazon. Amazon is the topic of the thesis of the current head of the US anti-competitive/antitrust regulator (2017).[16] Amazon was accused of disregard for the welfare of its employees (and its customers, usually privacy). >90% of Mackenzie Scott's donations have been to (1) political causes, including the largest donor to Black Lives Matter, and (2) non-political causes based on the ethnicity of the employees of the receiving organization, on the belief that the ethnicity has been politically disadvantaged.
Facebook ran afoul of anti-competitive/antitrust law (2021)[17] and has been criticized for disregard for the welfare of his customers, in colorful language.[18][19] Facebook has been criticized for improperly influencing politics.
I ask on what terms we want to be associated with any organization that (1) been accused of anticompetitive practices and (2) has been criticized for disregard for the welfare of its customers, and (3) has moved into influencing politics.
Can Philanthropy be Politically Useful?
On what terms do we want to be associated with politics?
The association between the philanthropist and the philanthropy, and questions above motive, can be reduced by separating the philanthropist and the philanthropic decision-making—in particular, the greater the personal distance between the philanthropist and the decision-maker.
It is a warning that when:
- A public figure associates themselves with philanthropy, "doing good", "making the world a better place" AND
- The public perception of the figure sours
- Then the reputation of things associated with the public figure source.[20]
The first question that will be asked when a public figure espouses a philosophy is, "What is it? Who is part of your philosophy?" The second question that will be asked is, "What is it not? Who is not?"
What is to be done?
There are many solutions to this problem. It is not insurmountable; I am very confident we will solve it. I haven't thought too hard about a range within 90-99%. But I am brimming with emotional confidence that we will solve it.
The simplest solution is to do nothing. No matter what the public think about Effective Altruism, we can continue to do it. In fact, it does not matter what anyone thinks, as long as you do it. But I think we can do better than that.
Please reply, or write other posts, not just about problems, but about solutions. I have not stated an explicit problem because I want to merely assemble evidence to suggest the shape of a problem, or pieces of a problem, as a starting point for discussion. I will be happy if one Effective Altruist says, huh, weird post, didn't get it, but it made me think of something interesting.
If we go down the wrong road, we will spend more time discussion the problem than solutions. I suspect that when we share solutions, we may agree on good solutions for different reasons. That's fine. What matters is what we do.
I will put my money where my mouth is and start with a suggestion.
Effective Altruism is Doing Something
A good thing about Effective Altruism is that it is about doing something. It is not about talking about doing something. It is about action, and the action has effects on the real world that can be measured and examined.
You can ignore everything I've written and simply note that there are reasons not to take everyone at face value. Even if you should take everyone at face value, not everyone will, and that fact matters. The Effective Altruist system does not need to work on trust. Every time we do something, Effective Altruism becomes less philosophy and more science.
Doing something makes membership falsifiable, and costly.[21]
In particular, donating now is costly. The cost is proportional to the donation.
- It proves that the agent has expended resources
- It proves what the agent intends to expend resources on
The more we spend, the more we will learn how to spend, and the more we will be forced to update and disagree, especially for large amounts of money. This effect does not stop as the amount increases. What we decide to spend on will change even more as the order of magnitude of spending increases.
To spend a lot, now, is the only definitive way to prove to ourselves that we do not think we agree with one another when we in fact disagree.
And it will finally answer the question of how much we can spend, effectively.
- ^
I recommend specific chapters from his book: "Time and Attention", "Truth and News", "The Transfer of Interest", and "Reason"
- ^
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html
- ^
I remember the phrase gradually being made fun of and then dropping out of usage around 2015-2016. There were funny variations on it, many of which are too rude to reproduce here. This article suggests it was dead by 2016.
"It's shrouded in the fake hippie rhetoric of ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ because it’s uncool to just say ‘Hey, we’re crushing it and making money.’”
I’ve been told that, at some of the big companies, the P.R. departments have ordered their employees to stop saying ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ specifically because we have made fun of that phrase so mercilessly."
Here are some amusing videos to reward you for reading a dry article.
- ^
Put another way, Imagine that I argue that I “did good” and won the argument (or lost). Under which conditions would I not win (or lose) if you repurposed the exact same argument, verbatim, and replaced “did good” with “did Effective Altruism”?
- ^
More to the point, does everyone who uses the word Effective Altruism use the narrower definition of "suboptimal good is bad"? And "suboptimal" means comparing all the possible goods. I'm not sure anyone has solved that. There are certainly a lot of people who argue one way or the other.
- ^
You can tell how strong the association was between Flynn and "crypto" by how hard he tried to distance himself from it. In an interview:
Flynn: First, I’ve never met him, I’ve never talked to him.
Flynn: [People] think I’m involved in crypto or something. That is not the case. I’m not a crypto person. I don’t know very much about it. I’ve never looked at regulations for it.
Flynn: After I got accused of this stuff, I started to go back and try and read about [crypto].
- ^
I can't find the Clement Attlee quote. If you find it, feel free to add it
- ^
Alexis de Toqueville:
These abstract terms which abound in democratic languages, and which are used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact, enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey; they render the mode of speech more succinct, and the idea contained in it less clear. But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to labor. I know not indeed whether this loose style has not some secret charm for those who speak and write amongst these nations. As the men who live there are frequently left to the efforts of their individual powers of mind, they are almost always a prey to doubt; and as their situation in life is forever changing, they are never held fast to any of their opinions by the certain tenure of their fortunes. Men living in democratic countries are, then, apt to entertain unsettled ideas, and they require loose expressions to convey them. As they never know whether the idea they express to-day will be appropriate to the new position they may occupy to-morrow, they naturally acquire a liking for abstract terms. An abstract term is like a box with a false bottom: you may put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed.
- ^
You may argue with me about exact inclusion criteria and ordering. However, note the baseline level for the number of people who satisfy (1)-(3) among the general population.
- ^
I have included philanthropists who have pledged to give away their fortune. I have taken their pledge at face value. I have not attempted to adjust for inflation: instead, I put all the "moderns" below the "ancients" because it is too hard to compare in inflation terms; in addition, as a fraction of the population of the US at the time, the ancients outrank the moderns.
- ^
Mackenzie Scott's source of funds is Amazon. If you don't think it counts, fine, remove her. Still 4/5. Although less famous than Jeff, Mackenzie Scott was one of Amazon's first employees, was high up, and negotiated their contracts.
- ^
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/1999ar/shcontri1.html
- ^
They also had a significant influence in popularizing the word “philanthropy”.
- ^
- ^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices#Common_actions
- ^
It's a good read! https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf
- ^
- ^
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#Quotes
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don't know why.
Zuckerberg: They "trust me"
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks - ^
Anti-competitive stuff: http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg
- ^
It is even worse when one observes that philanthropists tend to take a special interest in politically-oriented philanthropy at a time when their businesses are under scrutiny by regulators. For all 5 our of 6 people on this list, their businesses were all threatened or limited by US law at one point. The reputation of the company is tied to the reputation of the philanthropist. And the reputation of the philanthropist is tied to their philanthropy.
- ^
This is just a suggestion for a solution. It's speculative. It's brainstorming. You don't need to agree with it.
In particular, I expect many to agree that there is a problem without agreeing on a solution. That's fine. I include a solution only because I cannot bring myself to point out a problem without suggesting a positive solution.
I'm having trouble understanding the focus of this post. What are its central theses? What is the TLDR?