On your remark ('I don't know if the stated number of attendees for EAGs includes no-shows'): I volunteered for the Registration team at the London EAG this year and we only counted someone as attending if their QR code was scanned in person at the registration desk.
As I said, I'm accepting the argument (that's why I chose option 3!).
Option 3: Offer a constructive response
Accept the argument—and tell us what the impartial altruist should do anyway. Grant the conclusion, but offer a constructive response: defend a solution Anthony considers and rejects (e.g. wagering), or propose something entirely original.[3]I
I indeed can't find any impartial-altruistic rational reasons to pick one course of action over another if I reason at a cosmic scale, but my response explained why people should do effective altruism anyway (self-interest)! 😁
NB: I only read the summary by Toby and didn't engage with the larger body of posts from Anthony and others, so I most probably am missing crucial nuance TBF!
About the small portion of text you quoted (could you please let me know where it's from btw? EDIT: Just found it on your link, will read full text later!): I'm not sure I understand that compassion or avoiding dishonesty are different from Effective Altruism. To me the latter is the same as the formers but applied at a slightly different scale (e.g. Effective Altruism advocates being compassionate about all humans on the planet equally instead of say, preferring to show more compassion to those who are local to us). Therefore I also don't understand the point about compassion or avoiding dishonesty being able to act as action-guiding principles Vs EA not being able to. Finally I don't really understand what 'action-guiding' means as a concept - from your text it seems it has a precise definition which I'd love to learn more about.
Thank you for this! I actually had myself had some thoughts much akin to Anthony DiGiovanni's and also satisfied myself with my own version of bracketing (I referred to it in my mind as "local impact" as opposed to the cosmic-scale impact of which we can not really know anything about) without having any idea that others had had similar thoughts and had even given them names!! XD It's so satisfying to know others have grappled with similar doubts!
Here's my attempt at Option 3:
My justification for using bracketing (i.e. discounting cosmic-level uncertainty about all the possible ramifications and externalities of my actions) is that I am ultimately self-interested in wanting to do 'altruism': I am only 'altruistic' because it feels genuinely nicer to *me* to live in a world where others are healthy/happy/flourishing compared to one where they're not. Therefore, I shouldn't concern myself with consequences or externalities that are too much outside of my immediate field of perception / conceptualisation.
Does that make me a bad """altruist""" in absolute terms? Probably. But practically:
Either I'm right that my little 'good' actions as I construe them to be are actually good on a cosmic scale OR
I'm not right in my assessment that this is good on a cosmic scale and my actions are actually BAD, but then there's no way for me to know that and I'm still living under the blissful impression that I'm a good person / achieving good in the world, which checks my self interest box ✅ OR
[The hypothesis I believe in the most, and the most likely in my view] ...When viewed across the various filters of scale and time, my actions are simultaneously positive and negative (to illustrate this I recommend reading the Zen parable of The Chinese Farmer)
I am comfortable in my cluelessness when trying to do good because all of my attempts to do good actually end up being a net positive for me in terms of my own self-interest and in the worst case scenario I am either happily and innocently ignorant of my evilness (not great but oh well) or my 'negative' actions will be endlessly viewed either as positive or negative depending on the cosmic viewpoint.
PS: I also enjoy the intellectual challenge of finding effective solutions to what, from my limited cosmic vantage point as a human alive on Earth in the 21st century, consider to be 'problems'. Another point in terms of self-interested reasons to do
PPS: if somebody enjoyed reading this and is interested in how the problem of cluelessness when trying to do good is treated in ancient texts, I'm pretty convinced that Arjuna's dilemma in the Bhagavad Gita is about this (he is about to basically fight his cousins to death on 'moral' grounds and wonders whether this is the actual right action, and has a dialogue with Krishna about the 'art' (?) and nature of right actions.)
Yes true. But I guess many people are happy to tolerate that negative externality as a medium-term price to pay for progress towards the longer term goal of no / very little animal consumption which would be better both for animal welfare and anthropocentric reasons such as mitigating climate change/biorisk etc...
Also I guess the main point of the post (you can think of yourself as part of a broad strategic movement as opposed to just a person working in an organisation) can be applied to any movement, e.g. AI safety, biosecurity, existential risk, etc, not just animal welfare / ending factory farming.
Interesting perspective, although of course there are more reasons to want to end large scale intensive animal farming than just the welfare of animals (I'm thinking of anthropocentric reasons such as improving biosecurity, mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss, improving food security, etc).
This is really useful both from an idea generation point of view and also from the point of view of prospective applicants to Ambitious Impact, wanting to demonstrate how their prior experience might be relevant to a particular charity model. This belongs in the next edition of the Ambitious Impact book! :D
I was quietly thinking that, in the AI safety space, advocacy is more important than research at this point, precisely for the reasons you outline in the 'research vs lobbying section'. Thank you for giving a voice on the EA forum to these concerns of mine!
I would tentatively add that we already know that policy solutions (e.g. AI pause, global cooperation, mandating safety-first approaches to AI products) would be most effective in mitigating most X- and S- risks from AI (as opposed to finding technical solutions to the risks), but because of the general belief that policy is less tractable than technical improvement, we observe a lot more energy and funding being directed towards technical research into making AI products safer (which, as you say, isn't a sinecure because you can find technical solutions all you want, they won't necessarily be implemented at scale unless you have robust legislation making this compulsory!) rather than policy.
However, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less people believe policy is tractable, the less they invest in it, and the less tractable it actually is.
I'm interested in the reasons this happens and I can think of two possible ones:
Negative bias towards humanities: I believe with moderate certainty that the EA movement is unfortunately not immune to some of the broader negative bias towards humanities that we've noticed in recent years. This would explain the funding asymmetry you describe.
Talent constraint: A perhaps more palatable way of explaining the funding asymmetry would be that the EA movement really lacks excellent people in fields like policy, and is unwilling to invest in entreprises that rely on outstanding talent it doesn't have.[1]
I have actually made some recommendations on how this could be mitigated which you can read about here. Separately, because of all the recently made redundant policy specialist at e.g. USAID, there's probably an opportunity to reverse that gap quite quickly if the movement becomes more receptive to policy/lobbying as a priority.
Well done, sounds awesome!
On your remark ('I don't know if the stated number of attendees for EAGs includes no-shows'): I volunteered for the Registration team at the London EAG this year and we only counted someone as attending if their QR code was scanned in person at the registration desk.
😁🤣
Thanks Ben!
As I said, I'm accepting the argument (that's why I chose option 3!).
I indeed can't find any impartial-altruistic rational reasons to pick one course of action over another if I reason at a cosmic scale, but my response explained why people should do effective altruism anyway (self-interest)! 😁
NB: I only read the summary by Toby and didn't engage with the larger body of posts from Anthony and others, so I most probably am missing crucial nuance TBF!
About the small portion of text you quoted (could you please let me know where it's from btw? EDIT: Just found it on your link, will read full text later!): I'm not sure I understand that compassion or avoiding dishonesty are different from Effective Altruism. To me the latter is the same as the formers but applied at a slightly different scale (e.g. Effective Altruism advocates being compassionate about all humans on the planet equally instead of say, preferring to show more compassion to those who are local to us). Therefore I also don't understand the point about compassion or avoiding dishonesty being able to act as action-guiding principles Vs EA not being able to. Finally I don't really understand what 'action-guiding' means as a concept - from your text it seems it has a precise definition which I'd love to learn more about.
Thank you for this! I actually had myself had some thoughts much akin to Anthony DiGiovanni's and also satisfied myself with my own version of bracketing (I referred to it in my mind as "local impact" as opposed to the cosmic-scale impact of which we can not really know anything about) without having any idea that others had had similar thoughts and had even given them names!! XD It's so satisfying to know others have grappled with similar doubts!
Here's my attempt at Option 3:
My justification for using bracketing (i.e. discounting cosmic-level uncertainty about all the possible ramifications and externalities of my actions) is that I am ultimately self-interested in wanting to do 'altruism': I am only 'altruistic' because it feels genuinely nicer to *me* to live in a world where others are healthy/happy/flourishing compared to one where they're not. Therefore, I shouldn't concern myself with consequences or externalities that are too much outside of my immediate field of perception / conceptualisation.
Does that make me a bad """altruist""" in absolute terms? Probably. But practically:
I am comfortable in my cluelessness when trying to do good because all of my attempts to do good actually end up being a net positive for me in terms of my own self-interest and in the worst case scenario I am either happily and innocently ignorant of my evilness (not great but oh well) or my 'negative' actions will be endlessly viewed either as positive or negative depending on the cosmic viewpoint.
PS: I also enjoy the intellectual challenge of finding effective solutions to what, from my limited cosmic vantage point as a human alive on Earth in the 21st century, consider to be 'problems'. Another point in terms of self-interested reasons to do
PPS: if somebody enjoyed reading this and is interested in how the problem of cluelessness when trying to do good is treated in ancient texts, I'm pretty convinced that Arjuna's dilemma in the Bhagavad Gita is about this (he is about to basically fight his cousins to death on 'moral' grounds and wonders whether this is the actual right action, and has a dialogue with Krishna about the 'art' (?) and nature of right actions.)
Yes true. But I guess many people are happy to tolerate that negative externality as a medium-term price to pay for progress towards the longer term goal of no / very little animal consumption which would be better both for animal welfare and anthropocentric reasons such as mitigating climate change/biorisk etc...
Good objection though! 🙂
Also I guess the main point of the post (you can think of yourself as part of a broad strategic movement as opposed to just a person working in an organisation) can be applied to any movement, e.g. AI safety, biosecurity, existential risk, etc, not just animal welfare / ending factory farming.
Interesting perspective, although of course there are more reasons to want to end large scale intensive animal farming than just the welfare of animals (I'm thinking of anthropocentric reasons such as improving biosecurity, mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss, improving food security, etc).
This is really useful both from an idea generation point of view and also from the point of view of prospective applicants to Ambitious Impact, wanting to demonstrate how their prior experience might be relevant to a particular charity model. This belongs in the next edition of the Ambitious Impact book! :D
This sounds like a really great project. Best of luck!
Thank you for this post!
I was quietly thinking that, in the AI safety space, advocacy is more important than research at this point, precisely for the reasons you outline in the 'research vs lobbying section'. Thank you for giving a voice on the EA forum to these concerns of mine!
I would tentatively add that we already know that policy solutions (e.g. AI pause, global cooperation, mandating safety-first approaches to AI products) would be most effective in mitigating most X- and S- risks from AI (as opposed to finding technical solutions to the risks), but because of the general belief that policy is less tractable than technical improvement, we observe a lot more energy and funding being directed towards technical research into making AI products safer (which, as you say, isn't a sinecure because you can find technical solutions all you want, they won't necessarily be implemented at scale unless you have robust legislation making this compulsory!) rather than policy.
However, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less people believe policy is tractable, the less they invest in it, and the less tractable it actually is.
I'm interested in the reasons this happens and I can think of two possible ones:
I have actually made some recommendations on how this could be mitigated which you can read about here. Separately, because of all the recently made redundant policy specialist at e.g. USAID, there's probably an opportunity to reverse that gap quite quickly if the movement becomes more receptive to policy/lobbying as a priority.