Cross-posted from my blog.
Contrary to my carefully crafted brand as a weak nerd, I go to a local CrossFit gym a few times a week. Every year, the gym raises funds for a scholarship for teens from lower-income families to attend their summer camp program. I don’t know how many Crossfit-interested low-income teens there are in my small town, but I’ll guess there are perhaps 2 of them who would benefit from the scholarship. After all, CrossFit is pretty niche, and the town is small.
Helping youngsters get swole in the Pacific Northwest is not exactly as cost-effective as preventing malaria in Malawi. But I notice I feel drawn to supporting the scholarship anyway. Every time it pops in my head I think, “My money could fully solve this problem”. The camp only costs a few hundred dollars per kid and if there are just 2 kids who need support, I could give $500 and there would no longer be teenagers in my town who want to go to a CrossFit summer camp but can’t. Thanks to me, the hero, this problem would be entirely solved. 100%.
That is not how most nonprofit work feels to me.
You are only ever making small dents in important problems
I want to work on big problems. Global poverty. Malaria. Everyone not suddenly dying. But if I’m honest, what I really want is to solve those problems. Me, personally, solve them. This is a continued source of frustration and sadness because I absolutely cannot solve those problems.
Consider what else my $500 CrossFit scholarship might do:
* I want to save lives, and USAID suddenly stops giving $7 billion a year to PEPFAR. So I give $500 to the Rapid Response Fund. My donation solves 0.000001% of the problem and I feel like I have failed.
* I want to solve climate change, and getting to net zero will require stopping or removing emissions of 1,500 billion tons of carbon dioxide. I give $500 to a policy nonprofit that reduces emissions, in expectation, by 50 tons. My donation solves 0.000000003% of the problem and I feel like I have f
Thanks, Will!
I have several ideas in mind but wouldn't feel confident submitting right now, because I don't know the norms of philosophy publication. I'd love to have someone who's written for philosophy journals (preferably an EA) provide a guide to EAs who might want to submit articles. Is there anyone who might be able to address these kinds of questions?
Hi Scott. I've had one paper published in philosophy, and I've had several others accepted to conferences. I'm certainly not as credentialed as Will, but I might be able to give some tips. My guess is that many of these are not particularly unique to philosophy. First, it's always good to reference other relevant philosophical work. We all know what hedonistic utilitarianism is, but if you're going to write a paper about the implications of effective altruism for a hedonistic utilitarian, you should still clearly define the concept and cite major works on the topic. Second, clear writing is always preferred over convoluted writing. Sometimes people think philosophers want to sound smart and intentionally use complicated language, but the reverse is true. Sure, philosophy sometimes does legitimately require an understanding of technical terms, but good philosophical writing aims to be as clear as possible. Third, a good format to follow is abstract, introduction, argument, conclusion. Abstracts are extremely useful because they allow people to get the gist of your argument very quickly. Fourth, it is often better to make a genuine contribution to a narrow problem than to not really contribute anything to a broad topic. Finally, a good practice is probably to just read some published philosophy work. That is the best way to get an idea of the writing quality and organizational nature of publishable papers. I believe Will has some of his papers posted on his site. I've read some of his work, and I think it's a good example of clear writing. That's probably a good place to start.
Most CFPs request papers that have been prepared for blind review as well, so be sure to do that.
Thanks, Zack!
really this is a great idea i like this
very nice idea
Can anybody submit an essay or do authors have to meet certain qualifications?
Would it be a good idea to create an open access journal dedicated specifically to effective altruism? From what I understand, it would cost relatively little to run a website where papers could be submitted by authors, assigned to referees, evaluated by editors, and published for anyone to read. There also seems to be enough technical expertise in the community to design a website like that if there are volunteers interested in doing it. Of course, it would be a big time commitment on the part of whoever serves as the editor, but it could have significant benefits to the movement including:
-increasing dialogue between the EA community and academic philosophers
-creating a formal mechanism for receiving thoughtful feedback on new ideas
-allowing readers to find the most important new contributions in one location
-incentivizing serious research on topics that are important to the movement
-signalling the openness of the community to changing its mind on key issues
The journal could complement the various ways that new ideas are currently shared. An EA could still write a blog post to share her views, and online forums could still be considered legitimate places for serious discussion. It's just that the author of a post would now have the option of developing the idea in greater depth, a process during which she may significantly improve her argument.
The journal could be slightly different in its willingness to publish articles from authors outside the academy and select referees outside the academy. As long as the editor is an experienced academic, she should be able to ensure that the papers still meet the standards of normal philosophy journals.
Since there is currently a large unpublished literature on effective altruism, there should be enough material for the first several issues. After that, you would probably have enough submissions from people who devise arguments with the intent of getting them published in the journal.
[Edited]
What is the desired range of length, if any? Is there any provision in submitting to a journal for originality? I want to avoid writing something that is similar to something already published. I'll double check myself, of course, but I could still miss it.
Are you SURE that's the deadline? ;^)
9000 words - http://commons.pacificu.edu/eip/styleguide.html