tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post2713814358663293454..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Effective Altruism, Radical Politics and Radical PhilanthropyRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-62020607999335994432016-05-10T04:20:29.710-04:002016-05-10T04:20:29.710-04:00How about, "it's clearly not true that th...How about, "it's clearly not true that the EA movement is in general opposed to low-probability high-impact bets over long time horizons..."Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-47263340013339058792016-05-09T20:04:29.130-04:002016-05-09T20:04:29.130-04:00A somewhat belated further reply. I have doubts ...A somewhat belated further reply. I have doubts about #1, but those are not at issue in the current discussion, You're quite right all the doubts are about #2. Your invocation of "reliable" arbiters of relevant effects (namely, economists) is, I think, a giveaway and consistent with my doubts. That being said, I do not disagree at all that those who feel like they want to make a quantifiable difference in the very short-term, should embrace EA. My worry is, in part, about the effects of this attitude. I don't see that anything you said is responsive to that.Brian Leiterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08749548844483929392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-40787530662753654582016-04-25T07:13:56.472-04:002016-04-25T07:13:56.472-04:00Wonderful, if long, piece by Deidre McCloskey, aut...Wonderful, if long, piece by Deidre McCloskey, author of the Bourgeois Virtues worth a read in this regard : http://deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/McCloskey_HobbesRawlsBuchananNussbaum.pdf<br />"The contribution the non-economist<br />clerisy can make to an ethical change is to cease talking of voluntary exchange as<br />exploitative, or as easily second-guessed by the better Swedish bureaucrats, as Nussbaum<br />does. Prudence Only at the level of an ideal bureaucracy is just as partial and unethical as<br />Prudence Only at the level of individual motivation. We need to inquire into how to make<br />good people, including our governors, in the world as it is."<br />Sandymounthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00871848316953642107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-33177410926387408382016-04-24T22:08:49.092-04:002016-04-24T22:08:49.092-04:00Effective altruism is an evidence-based movement. ...Effective altruism is an evidence-based movement. So any discussion of forced redistribution should include a look at the evidence: what is the track record of forced redistribution and what sort of effects has it had historically? The track record is very disappointing:<br /><br />https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/4ft0ts/effective_altruism_vs_feel_good_altruism_good/d2e5y4o<br /><br />The US government rarely uses evidence to select programs and seems virtually incapable of cutting programs that don't work. Millions who died under communism are an even more salient example. If someone is pushing forced redistribution, the onus is on them to explain their proposal in detail and show that (a) it will actually work (b) it will not fall prey to the issues forced redistribution has had historically:<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A<br /><br />I doubt having EAs in charge of the forced redistribution would solve the problem, for instance. Sociopaths then have an incentive to infiltrate the EA movement, the same way they've infiltrated the administration of forced redistribution in the past.Ken_Obiwanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03703563569770107747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-25975445041766495072016-04-23T13:31:24.249-04:002016-04-23T13:31:24.249-04:00I appreciate your typically clear statement of how...I appreciate your typically clear statement of how you understand the dispute, and I'll have more to say about it when I have more time. Regarding your sniping at the end about the use of the label "bourgeois" to describe yours and Singer's moral philosophizing, it has a quite precise meaning that I discuss in the Analyse & Kritik paper from which I quoted the excerpt in the blog post to which you link: it means philosophical inquiry that does not challenge the perquisites of the capitalist class or capitalist relations of production. I use it in a pejorative sense, because I think it is a defect of a philosophical approach that it is conservative in this regard.Brian Leiterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08749548844483929392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-3634952706877060392016-04-22T05:20:51.799-04:002016-04-22T05:20:51.799-04:00Hence my line about how EAs might be wary of endor...Hence my line about how EAs might be wary of endorsing the radical Leftist's politics until we've heard "more from reputable economists about the likely effects and possible risks" of their policy goals. Of course, there's a big difference between, say, Scandanavian-style market socialism vs., say, soviet communism! I don't think anyone (sane) is advocating for the latter these days...<br /><br />Just to clarify though, EA as a movement contains people from across the political spectrum, including libertarians.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-49301392569792857192016-04-22T02:22:59.106-04:002016-04-22T02:22:59.106-04:00A libertarian might reasonably query how charity i...A libertarian might reasonably query how charity is consistent with a movement whose success would be to take property from one group to give to another and, if they are right, lead to lower economic growth/wealth thereFter. The kist of socialist countries where the poor are better off than thse in decadent capitalist countries is famously short.Sandymounthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00871848316953642107noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-68418502695101148812016-04-21T13:23:28.225-04:002016-04-21T13:23:28.225-04:00Thanks Jack, that seems right. Iason Gabriel has d...Thanks Jack, that seems right. Iason Gabriel has developed some of those normative disagreements in his helpful paper '<a href="http://philpapers.org/rec/GABEAA" rel="nofollow">Effective Altruism and its Critics</a>' (including the sort of group-egalitarian objection that I criticize <a href="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2016/03/philanthropic-focus-vs-abandonment.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>), albeit from a more "internal" standpoint.<br /><br />In general though, it takes a lot more than "just reject[ing] the crude form of act-utilitarianism" to find EA precepts broadly objectionable. I'd think that even, say, a Rossian pluralist could get on board with them. (It's not like we're advocating organ harvesting or pushing people off bridges here! Just saving more people rather than fewer, and stuff like that. Even the recommendation to go into finance is on the assumption that there are plenty of morally innocuous jobs in the financial sector. Actually doing harm is not, as far as I'm aware, sanctioned by 80k Hours or any other major EA organization.)<br /><br />There are certainly additional widespread assumptions that might be questioned, e.g. that extinction or low welfare for future generations would be a very bad thing. It seems to me pretty difficult to deny that, but some philosophers do accept radical person-affecting views with such implications (though presumably not anyone who also worries about the impact of climate change on future generations), and it could be interesting for such discussions to develop further.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-35916121729195058052016-04-21T11:03:21.728-04:002016-04-21T11:03:21.728-04:00That should have been "low-probability/high-i...That should have been "low-probability/high-impact bets" in \P2. I should also add that a leftist might want to use a value-pluralist version of consequentialism as well. If you care less about the positive utility of future persons existing (rather than never having been), use a version of rule-consequentialism (or maybe "sophisticated" act-consequentialism, like Railton's), and assign greater value to things like art, crticisism, and non-alienated work as intrinsic goods, you might wind up with 1 and 2 speaking heavily in favor of seizing the means of production rather than trying to insure that future AIs will be friendly to us. This would indeed be an internal disagreement with sparse EA, but not just about means, rather about normative principles that are part of the definition of non-sparse (plentiful?) EA.Jack Samuelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04513763542840581676noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-28396674467349086102016-04-21T10:49:13.746-04:002016-04-21T10:49:13.746-04:00Am I right that, even though it is not entailed by...Am I right that, even though it is not entailed by your sparse formulation of EA (viz. 1, 2, and *), it is common if not universal to accept that effects should be calculated based on marginal difference? This seems like something a leftist might want to reject, while remaining consistent with `sparse EA'. That is, whether I assume that if I don't go into finance someone else will, so there's no net gain to my principled refusal to work in finance, is optional. Someone like Leiter appears to care more about the negative effects that someone in fact has by working in finance, rather than comparing those effects to a hypothetical world in which soeone else does the same job, or perhaps to care more about the farther-away worlds in which everyone refused to work in finance.<br /><br />Similarly, when calculating expected utility for X-risks, a leftist might want to reject various assumptions about how to think about the utility of future persons, and/or how to weigh the negatives of death against the negatives of suffering. Doing so might lead from a willingness to make low-impact/high-impact bets to trying to start revolutions rather than trying to prevent the singularity, again consistent with sparse EA but counter to what I take to be the orthodoxy.<br /><br />More generally, I wonder if leftists don't really just reject the crude form of act-utilitarianism that is a hidden #3 for most EA-proponents (at least, the one's with the loudest voices). In other words, you seem to be saying that even EA's critics really appear to accept 1 and 2, but they have essentially technical disputes about instrumental strategies, but it seems to me that while they may accept 1 and 2, the dispute is still about normative assumptions that, though not explicitly part of your sparse definition, appear to be a part of how EA is understood and practiced by its advocates.Jack Samuelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04513763542840581676noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-56481040435094436562016-04-20T16:25:21.628-04:002016-04-20T16:25:21.628-04:00The normative explanation "because... I reall...The normative explanation "because... I really want to make these improvements" is no part of EA. (I, for one, reject your implicit assumption that we should only do what will achieve what we want.) It would be a bizarre objection to white abolitionists to say "Oh, but abolishing slavery will not get you what you really want." Who cares what the abolitionists, deep down, "really" wanted? It is of no relevance to the assessment of abolitionism as such.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-80205926166861502342016-04-20T14:29:41.324-04:002016-04-20T14:29:41.324-04:00The objection is that "I should donate 20% of...The objection is that "I should donate 20% of my income to such and such a cause, because it would improve the world in such ways, and I really want to make these improvements," is a false statement. That it would improve the world is true; but that they really want the improvements is not, and if they understood what they really wanted, donating 20% of their income would not be a very good way to achieve that thing, so it is also probably false that they should make the donation.<br /><br />(I'm not going to try to prove my opinion about people's motives. I may well be wrong, if people turn out more different from one another than I suppose.)entirelyuselesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12422102436356978880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-11217003061457352262016-04-20T13:57:12.090-04:002016-04-20T13:57:12.090-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.AndrewSepiellihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03024569137176120644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-44085097421782317732016-04-20T13:56:14.803-04:002016-04-20T13:56:14.803-04:00It's not clear to me why -- even were it true ...It's not clear to me why -- even were it true -- "EAs are factually mistaken about their own motives" constitutes an objection to EA as such. (EA makes no claims about the motives of its proponents.)Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-89572954407398660262016-04-20T13:42:50.124-04:002016-04-20T13:42:50.124-04:00To be clear, I accept that people can and do care ...To be clear, I accept that people can and do care intrinsically about the condition of the world in itself. But I don't think they care enough to justify the investment of a substantial portion of their resources -- when it seems to them that they do, this is really (in my opinion) an expression of other concerns that they have, such as being objectively good people and so on.entirelyuselesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12422102436356978880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-76935693943050299812016-04-20T13:40:05.222-04:002016-04-20T13:40:05.222-04:00I'm not against making the world a better plac...I'm not against making the world a better place.<br /><br />But I think that people who wish to invest a substantial portion of their resources in making the world a better place in ways which do not affect them personally, and believe that this is because they care intrinsically about the condition of the world in itself, apart from their presence in the world, are factually mistaken about their own motives.<br /><br />It is possible that I am mistaken about this, but it seems to me a reasonable way to object to EA as such.entirelyuselesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12422102436356978880noreply@blogger.com