Criticism of effective altruism

criticism of effective altruist causes | criticism of effective altruist organizations | criticism of effective altruism culture | criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies | criticism of work in effective altruism |effective altruism | red teaming | scalably using labour | social and intellectual movements | working at EA vs non-EA orgs 

Criticism of effective altruism collects critical discussion of effective altruism ideas (as opposed to criticism of effective altruist organizations, causes, culture, or specific pieces of cultureeffective altruist work).

• EA is incoherent. Consequentialism applies to one's whole life, but many EAs don’t take it this seriously
  • This argument applies to virtue ethics too, but no one criticises it - “why aren’t you constantly seeking to always do the virtuous action”. People in practice seem to take statements from consequentialist philosophies more seriously than they do from others
  • It is more intellectually honest to surface incoherence in your worldview - "I use 80% of my time as effectively as possible" is more honest that "I try and always do the most good" if you don't
• EA frames all value in terms of impact creation and this makes members sad^[4]
  • Yes, maybe
  • How widespread is this?
  • Many EAs don't feel this way
  • Some people control orders of magnitude more resources than others. They could use their time and money to improve the lives of many other people. It is not idea to say these people should feel free to not create benefit
• EA supports a culture of guilt 
  • How does EA compare in terms of mental wellbeing to other communities centred around "doing good" eg "Protestant Work Ethic" and "Catholic Guilt"?
  • If you struggle with this, consider reading Replacing Guilt, which is one of only 3 sequences with a permanent place sidebar of the EA Forum.
• EA is spending too much money
  • EA is spending more money but it's not immediately obvious it is spending too much. It might be spending too little.
  • In hindsight this criticism looks correct, but I'm not sure for the right reasons
• EA is too focused on people in developing nations
  • Dollars go much further in developing nations which does lead to a natural bias in spending
• EA isn't focused enough on systemic change in America
  • Note that this is often used in very similar situations to the above criticism.  And in some of these, they can't both be true. 
• EA is too focused on longtermism and existential risk to the detriment of people who are alive now
  • People who are alive now are far less neglected, they can participate in markets, democracies, and self-advocacy
  • A significant portion of funding goes to present causes
  • Existential risk is arguably high enough to be relevant even to people alive today
• EAs defer too much to authority
• EAs don't listen to outside experts enough
• The repugnant conclusion is bad
  • All current solutions to the repugnant conclusion are repugnant in themselves
    • If you only add lives that are on average better than than current lives, that implies that many current lives aren't worth living, which people don't tend to believe
• EAs lie a bit^[5]
  • Nick Bostrom said he won a national record when really he did more courses than anyone he ever talked to
    • It's hard to say.  This is the sort of thing many people write in book bios.  But regardless, he removed it when pressed
  • If these are the best accusations of dishonesty one can get from a 1000s strong decade long movement, then it sounds like they are pretty honest
• There is a culture of suppressing disagreement while claiming to welcome it
  • This seems much better than comparable communities. 
• Bostrom racist email

• EA is incoherent. Consequentialism applies to one's whole life, but many EAs don’t take it this seriously
  • This argument applies to virtue ethics too, but no one criticises it - “why aren’t you constantly seeking to always do the virtuous action”. People in practice seem to take statements from consequentialist philosophies more seriously than they do from others
  • It is more intellectually honest to surface incoherence in your worldview - "I use 80% of my time as effectively as possible" is more honest that "I try and always do the most good" if you don't
• EA frames all value in terms of impact creation and this makes members sad^[4]
  • Yes, maybe
  • How widespread is this?
  • Many EAs don't feel this way
  • Some people control orders of magnitude more resources than others. They could use their time and money to improve the lives of many other people. It is not idea to say these people should feel free to not create benefit
• EA supports a culture of guilt 
  • How does EA compare in terms of mental wellbeing to other communities centred around "doing good" eg "Protestant Work Ethic" and "Catholic Guilt"?
  • If you struggle with this, consider reading Replacing Guilt, which is one of only 3 sequences with a permanent place sidebar of the EA Forum.
• EA is spending too much money
  • EA is spending more money but it's not immediately obvious it is spending too much. It might be spending too little.
  • In hindsight this criticism looks correct, but I'm not sure for the right reasons
• EA is too focused on people in developing nations
  • Dollars go much further in developing nations which does lead to a natural bias in spending
• EA isn't focused enough on systemic change in America
  • Note that this is often used in very similar situations to the above criticism.  And in some of these, they can't both be true. 
• EA is too focused on longtermism and existential risk to the detriment of people who are alive now
  • People who are alive now are far less neglected, they can participate in markets, democracies, and self-advocacy
  • A significant portion of funding goes to present causes
  • Existential risk is arguably high enough to be relevant even to people alive today
• EAs defer too much to authority
• EAs don't listen to outside experts enough
• The repugnant conclusion is bad
  • All current solutions to the repugnant conclusion are repugnant in themselves
    • If you only add lives that are on average better than than current lives, that implies that many current lives aren't worth living, which people don't tend to believe
• EAs lie a bit^[5]
  • Nick Bostrom said he won a national record when really he did more courses than anyone he ever talked to
    • It's hard to say.  This is the sort of thing many people write in book bios.  But regardless, he removed it when pressed
  • If these are the best accusations of dishonesty one can get from a 1000s strong decade long movement, then it sounds like they are pretty honest
• There is a culture of suppressing disagreement while claiming to welcome it
  • This seems much better than comparable communities. 
• Bostrom racist email

Criticism of effective altruism collects critical discussion of effective altruism ideas (as opposed to criticism of effective altruist organizationsor, causes, or the effective altruism communityculture).

criticism of effective altruist causes | criticism of effective altruist organizations | criticism of the effective altruism community |criticism of effective altruism culture|criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies | effective altruism | red teaming | scalably using labour | social and intellectual movements | working at EA vs non-EA orgs

criticism of effective altruist causes | criticism of effective altruist organizations | criticism of the effective altruism community | criticism of effective altruism culture|criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies | effective altruism | red teaming | scalably using labour | social and intellectual movements | working at EA vs non-EA orgs

This entry focuses on criticism of effective altruism as an idea. For criticism of effective altruism as a community, see criticism of the effective altruism community. 

This entry focuses on criticism of effective altruism as an idea. For criticism of effective altruism as a community, see criticism of the effective altruism community. 

Arguments and counterarguments 

• EA is consequentialist and consequentialism has a number of well-documented failure cases []
  • Most of EA behaviour can be justified under other moral views. Giving to the global poor, helping animals and avoiding x-risk are justifiable under virtue ethics
  • [A seperate wiki page linking to consequentialism]
• EA is undemocratic
  • The EA baseline for global poverty [link] giving is GiveDirectly [link] which is exceedingly democratic, since it just gives people money
  • The EA consensus is that you have to do 5 - 10x better than GiveDirectly [link] which is a higher bar for choosing not to give money directly than other movements
  • This criticism often comes from people in movements which also believe that money should be spent differently than the people it is affecting would spend it. EA is therefore only undemocratic if nearly every other movement is also
• EA is stagnating
  • EA commands more resources [citation needed]
  • EA is giving more resources to previous cause areas [EA data link] than ever before without reason to think quality has fallen
  • EA has recently focused more resources on AI safety [link]. This is not the action of a stagnating movement
  • Sam Bankman-Freid [link] has recently given a significant amount to political candidates [link]
• Billionaires shouldn't exist, they fund EA so EA is bad
  •  
• EA dehumanises it's community - by framing everything in terms of impact it's easy for people to devalue themselves.
  • Some people control orders of magnitude more resources than others. They could use their time and money to improve the lives of many other people. Whether they should is a different question, but it doesn't avoid the fact that this is true.
• EA supports a culture of guilt [Kerry thread]
  • How does EA compare in terms of mental wellbeing to other communities centred around "doing good" eg "Protestant Work Ethic" and "Catholic Guilt" [link]?
  • If you struggle with this, consider reading Replacing Guilt, which is one of only 3 sequences with a permanent place sidebar of the Forum.
• EA is spending money to fast
  • [Will MacAskill article]

Ideas to add

Stefan Shubert's criticisms and responses