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How to support and improve the Reach Every Mother and Child Act

So here we go. EA's do not generally think seriously about political action. Is it time?

Julia_Wise

There's been more attention to this recently. Some EA organizations doing policy work.

End of Project Write Up: Effective Altruism Policy Analytics

Really glad you did this. I see some similarities with my work as a journalist. I've previously argued that journalism has never attempted systematic evaluation of government, e.g. department by department, so it's fantastic to see someone attempt this. Your problems regarding domain knowledge, slow or unhelpful responses from officials, inconsistent transparency, etc. are spot on and well known to reporters. Keep up the good work!

Systematically under explored project areas?

jonathanstray9y2

Several of these might be summed up under the heading "high risk." There is a notion that this is exactly what philanthropy (as opposed to governments) ought to be doing.

One area I think hits many of these: global income inequality.

Evan_Gaensbauer

I don't blame governments for not pursuing such things. I've never thought of philanthropy, or how others think of philanthropy, to be about pursuing high-risk altruism. I've alwasy thought of philanthropy as wealthy people with big hearts trying to help people in a way that tugged at their heartstrings, patronizing something they're passionate about, such as research to cure a particular disease or works of fine art they enjoy, or to signal their magnaminity, i.e., giving for the sake of conspicuity. How common do you think this notion is that philanthropy ought to be pursuing high-risk altruism? Effective charity is more risk-averse than other charity due to its very nature. However, some within effective altruism are moe risk-averse than others. Existential risk reduction such as funding the Machine Intelligence Research Institutute (MIRI) in that telling whether MIRI's research wil ultimately lead to saftey archictectures for A.I. which make it through all the bottlenecks of actually being implemented is so difficult. Why bother funding something which seems like it could have a low likelihood of succeeding, and you don't even know what to assess to improve your estimate of its success? This is how I feel about MIRI. The only thing I update my opinion on of MIRI's potential success is other effective altruists who seem to be correct about many things also believing MIRI has a decent chance of success at their mission. That is, outsiders from MIRI who favor other cause areas in the first place being bullish on MIRI indicates to me they're perceiving something I'm not, and I'm humble enough to accept just because I don't understand how the case for MIRI works doesn't mean it can't work. Of course, this is just evidence via informational social influence. I don't know how to rate that relative to other evidence, which I expect is stronger but I don't know how to asses either, so my updates on MIRI's proposed efficacy typically round down to zero. Really, such upd

Bertrand Russell on statistical empathy

jonathanstray9y2

Well, Russell believed it could be developed through education. One exercise which can help is comparing an abstract number of people to something that relates to daily experience, such as the number of people in your school or your city.

Here's a similar scale which was developed to communicate risk values

http://imgur.com/nLXDg1h

Rich-country policy changes that could greatly benefit poor countries

jonathanstray9y0

MacAskil discusses this in a section titled "international labor mobility" but does not mention "open borders" or draw the distinction you have. He writes:

"Increased levels of migration from poor to rich countries would provide substantial benefits for the poorest people in the world, as well as substantial increases in global economic output. However, almost all developed countries pose heavy restrictions on who can enter the country to work. ... Tractability: Not very tractable. Increased levels of immigration are incredibly unpopular in developed countries, with the majority of people in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom favoring reduced immigration."

Pablo

As the quote you provided shows, labor mobility was rated as "not very tractable", not "intractable". Moreover, labor mobility was given that rating because it was judged to be politically infeasible, in light of the low popularity of even modest migration reform proposals, and not because we lack evidence from RCTs, or due to blindness to the mechanics of political change. So I think you are mischaracterizing what was said in the book.

Rich-country policy changes that could greatly benefit poor countries

jonathanstray9y2

In "Doing Good Better" MacAskil rates labor mobility as "intractable." I agree it's difficult, but I think this a specific example of the wide blindness of EA to the mechanics of political change. All of the issues you have raised are fundamentally political problems, not technical problems, and would require political strategies, for which we will not have evidence from RCTs.

This is a weakness of the "progressive" philanthropic tradition in general, which tends to think in terms of technical solutions to specific problems. I... (read more)

Evan_Gaensbauer

There's a difference between "labor mobility" reform, and "open borders". I don't know how often these two are conflated by effective altruists. Open borders is the idea a nation removes all restrictions for people from any country to exit and enter the country to live and work there. A reaction is citizens of a country worry this will flood the citizenship or immigration systems, will put strains on government welfare systems, and dramatically change the nature of the countries culture. I haven't read too much on open borders yet, but I blieve a counter to this worry is open borders doesn't ensure legal citizenship or other entitlements or political rights, such as the right to vote, are granted to any migrants moving in for work and a better economic life. Some advocates of open borders claim changing the nature of the granting citizenship in a given country also be changed to assuage these worries, while implementing open borders at the same time would realize most of the economic benefits of the policy. Labor mobility reform is immigration reform which makes it easier for professionals and/or laborers to move between countries, particularly from developing countries to developed countries. I think the greatest example of this is easing the way for the most educated professionals from developing countries to move to and be engineers or doctors in, e.g., the United States. The Open Philanthropy Project (Open Phil) is still investigating labor mobility as a possible space to make grants for policy reform to. The result of their investigation hasn't come out yet, and while they may conclude it's intractable, there investigation yet complete or published. I've never read the phrase "open borders" or a euphemism for it in any blog posts or conversation notes from Givewell or Open Phil. Thus, we cannot and should not assume "labor mobility" implies "open borders" when talking about Open Phil. Not that you, Jonathan, Topher, or anyone else in this discussion does that

zdgroff

Very much agreed. There's another thing I would note, though, which is that even when you can do an RCT, there are often many longer-term and more diffuse effects you won't pick up, and these effects are often highly important when it comes to politics and institutional change.

Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term

jonathanstray9y1

"The fact there seems to be missing the way by which effective altruism determines which moral goals are worth pursuing ... That seems to be the role of meta-ethics in effective altruism."

Maybe the answer is not to be found in meta-ethics or in analysis generally, but in politics, that is, the raw realities of what people believe and want any given moment, and how consensus forms or doesn't.

In other words, I think the answer to "what goals are worth pursuing" is, broadly, ask the people you propose to help what it is they want. Luckily,... (read more)

Evan_Gaensbauer

I'm not averse to such an approach. I think the criticism how effective altruism determines a consensus of what defines or philosopically grounds "the good" comes from philosophers or other scholars who are weary of populist consensus on ethics when it's in no way formalized. I'm bringing in David Moss to address this point; he'll know more.

Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term

jonathanstray9y2

"EA has very different needs than much of the non-profit world." In what way?

I also have to say that there is something very insider-y about this analysis. Much of the advice seems like it boils down to "don't waste your time with non-EA people."

Evan_Gaensbauer

Effective altruist organizations do work which is uncommon among other non-profit organizations, such as cause prioritization, charity evaluation, and the explicit growth and coordination of a budding social movement. Much of this might require unique skills, or at least ones that are less common to find among people working at conventional NGOs. So, long-time volunteers for EA oganizations who also have a tacit knowledge of dynamics in effective altruism as a community may be quicker and simpler to train than someone who knows nothing of effective altruism. However, if an organization broadened the scope of its search to talent beyond conventional non-profits and the existing EA community, to anyone and everyone from the public and for-profit sectors as well, they'd likely find unique candidates who fit the bill better than anyone else, effective altruist or not. In the past, it seems finding new hires has been difficult enough for small effective altruist organizations in what they consider an acceptable timeframe they feel forced to hire from within the community. However, now that the scope of effective altruism is expanding, past experience alone shouldn't stop EA organizations to look beyond their own existing circles of influence to find new hires. So, I don't agree with Elizabeth's original comment. AGB has a well upvoted comment above this thread, and I agree with the ratio of earning to give to other effective altruist work he puts forth would be ideal, based on the current state of things. I think he is more or less correct for however wide a net one casts to define the population of effective altruism, even if it's one so small it only includes people who post to forums like this one and attend conferences every year. I don't think the proportion of "early adopters", or whatever they're called, of effective altruism who go into direct work should be much higher than the total of whatever couple thousand effective altruists there are. I was just generat

Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term

jonathanstray9y0

If I understand you correctly I think you make two interesting points here:

the potential of EA as a political vehicle for financial charity
The current EA advice has to be the marginal advice

When I wrote "isn't that the fundamental claim of EA" I suppose more properly I am referring to the claims that 1) EA is a suitable moral philosophy 2) the consensus answers in the real existing EA community correspond to this philosophy. In other words that EA is, broadly speaking, "right" to do.

Evan_Gaensbauer

I'm going to address both of your above questions with one answer. So, effective altruism is sort of a moral philosophy, but it's not as complete or at all formalized a system as most religious deontologies, utilitarianism, or other forms of consequentialism or deontology. Virtue ethics is like effective altruism in that it runs on heuristics rather than the principles of deontology, or the calculations of utilitarianism. I think virtue ethics and effective altruism are similar in how they output recommendations in such a way they attempt to be amenable to human psychology. However, with it's own heuristics, virtue ethics has thousands of years of ancient and modern philosophy from every civilization to build upon and learn from. Effective altruism is new. There are three types of ethics in formal/academic philosophy: normative ethics, the ethics of what people should do generally; practical ethics, the ethics of what people should do in specific and applied scenarios; and meta-ethics, the philosophy and analysis of ethics as a discipline in its own right. When anyone thinks of any one ethical system, or "philosophy", such as Kant's categorical imperative, or preference utilitarianism, or Protestant ethics, it's almost always a system of normative ethics. Because of how different effective altruism is, what with it trying to mimic science in so many ways to figure out existing goals, and accomodating whatever normative system people used to reach the conclusion of their moral goals, so long as they converge on the same goals, effective altruism seems more like a system of practical rather than normative ethics. This makes it difficult to compare to other moral systems. The fact there seems to be missing the way by which effective altruism determines which moral goals are worth pursuing is a fair criticism lobbed at the philosophy in the past, and one philosophers like Will MacAskill and Peter Singer research to solve without forcing effective altruism to conform to

Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term

jonathanstray9y1

Yes. But then, shouldn't all arguments about what is appropriate for EA's to do generalize to what it is appropriate for everyone to do? Isn't that the fundamental claim of the EA philosophy?

Evan_Gaensbauer

I don't think so. I meant your above argument is one for effective altruism to grow, and that growth to primarily be driven by people who go into earning to give. That doesn't mean everyone should earn to give. If effective altruism grew indefinitely, there would be a point at which there are diminishing marginal returns for more earning to give relative to other options people would pursue. Your argument makes the case this is true for the relative proportion of earning to give within effective altrusm, but also seems to me to imply the amount of earning to give in the world should grow in its absolute quantity as well. This doesn't imply, however, that 50% of anyone who could earn to give should, nor that everyone should do what effective altruism prescribes now. If effective altruism did become a community of, say, tens of millions of people, what effective altruism would have the marginal person do in that case would likely look much different than what it recommends people do now. I believe the fundamental claim of the EA philosophy isn't that the arguments from effective altruism should necessarily generalize to everyone, but should generalize to the marginal, i.e., next person who adopts effective altruism. What this generalization is changes as the number of effective altruists grows. However, effective altruism is very far from a number of people such that it would change all its recommendations to the average or marginal community member.

Peter Hurford thinks that a large proportion of people should earn to give long term

jonathanstray9y1

Here's a completely different route for arguing that giving money may be one of the most effective possibilities for improving the lives of others.

Income inequality is at historic high levels, both globally and in the US (see e.g. http://www.networkideas.org/networkideas/pdfs/global_inequality_ortiz_cummins.pdf)
Income inequality is robustly correlated with unhappiness (see e.g. http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/614.pdf)
Therefore, there may be a large opportunity in income redistribution.

I realize this is not a quantitative analysis, partiall... (read more)

Benjamin_Todd

Huge income inequality might also just mean our most powerful way to help others is via money rather than via labour.

Evan_Gaensbauer

This seems as much an argument for growing earning to give absolutely outside of effective altruism as it currently exists as it is an argument for there being an increased proportion of existing effective altruists to pursue earning to give.

A way of thinking about saving vs improving lives

jonathanstray9y-1

Doesn't this all depend on assuming we are trying maximize average happiness? That seems like a very questionable assumption to me. Rawls argued against it explicitly, for example. He phrased his arguments in terms of "fairness" and there are nice links here to the relationship between happiness and comparison to others. The mathematical implication is we need some more sophisticated function which maps the distribution to a scalar. And then of course there are the non-consumption variables. If you're a well fed woman who is married to the man who raped you (see e.g. the issues surrounding article 308 of the Jordan criminal code) I don't think total consumption is what matters to you...

How we can make it easier to change your mind about cause areas

jonathanstray9y6

Relevant to the issue of identity: I think it's telling that the empathetic advice here is described as "try ideological Turing tests" rather than "try to argue the other side convincingly," which is a much older principle and much more generally understandable.

Should making EA legible to the majority of the worlds' citizens, who are not and will never be computer scientists, be a goal? If so, we need to work on the language we use to discuss these issues.

EA introduction course and YouTube playlists

jonathanstray9y0

Seems like a good project, but why rot13 the topics?

DavidNash

I guess to not bias the responses, rather than having to make a later comment saying what their original brainstorm brought up.

Why effective altruism used to be like evidence-based medicine. But isn’t anymore

jonathanstray9y12

Bayesian stats is not the panacea of logic it is often held out to be; I say this as someone who practices statistics for the purpose of social betterment (see e.g. https://projects.propublica.org/surgeons/ for an example of what I get up to)

First, my experience is that quantification is really, really hard. Here are a few reasons why.

I have seen few discussions, within EA, of the logistics of data collection in developing countries, which is a HUGE problem. For example, how do you get people to talk to you? How do you know if they're telling you the trut... (read more)

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