I think my comment below[1] addresses parts of this: there are really (at least) two things called "EA," and adherents of the more ridiculous one (like SBF) will regularly use the less ridiculous one (Singer's) as moral cover. The post is pretty clearly about the former, not the latter.

I agree with your interpretation of Singer, for what it's worth: I don't recall him ever encouraging maximum personal income in any of his books; only observing that someone could do more good (in the Utils sense) with more resources.

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from? Guilty consciences? Shouldn't we as a society celebrate and encourage giving? It seems the alternative more often then not is to accumulate.

I don't think anybody really hates charity. What people (rightfully) identify is the "hazard" of motive in charitable giving, particularly public giving: when someone is known publicly to donate, it becomes impossible to distinguish truly benevolent motives from self-interested ones (even if those self-interested motives don't "really" matter from a Utils perspective).

Separately: charitable giving on the scale performed by billionaires demonstrates latent injustice. Even if not intended as such, it effectively represents the conversion of a just action (giving to the poor is right) into a whimsical or motive-driven one (I give to the poor because I want to).

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33708972

Can you explain what this sentence means?

> when someone is known publicly to donate, it becomes impossible to distinguish truly benevolent motives from self-interested ones (even if those self-interested motives don't "really" matter from a Utils perspective).

Who cares why someone donates, as long as they donate? Is there some thing called "truly benevolent" donations which keep more people alive longer, or have some other measurable impact? I actively am having trouble parsing this. It seems like you realize how ridiculous this sounds, by adding the bit at the end about how it doesn't matter, but then why even bring it up? Like what is special about "truly benevolent" giving?

It's not as though these motives don't "really" matter, they ... just don't matter at all?

Rich people give to charities to aggrandize themselves. Charities, needing donations, trim their sails to appease self-aggrandizing rich people. Not hard to see how this can lead to the charity in effect doing more to serve its patrons than the people it actually claims to help, and based on some up-close experience, I would say that is not an academic concern.

The whole point of EA is to move toward a system where charities are judged by the good they do and not their marketing campaign.

AMF and other top givewell charities seem far more focused on the good they can do than more classic charities like WWF or Plan Parenthood.

And what theory of Good determines how we do that judging? The different "schools" of EA seem to have radically different approaches ("longtermism" versus maximizing QALYs for living beings).

And even this punts on perceptive utility, the kind that Nozick warns us about[1]: it's entirely possible that Johnny in Country X gets more utility out of $100 in charitable giving than 50 others in Country Y. But this seems like a really bad logical consequence, the kind that the Internet Rationalist EA community uses to justify spending money on AGI research instead of donating to AMF.

Overall, it's much easier to live in a world where we can determine that some set of charities are worth giving to, and not try too hard to order between them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster

Do you think it's good to donate to charities?

Do you think that some charities are more effective than other ones?

Do you think we should try to measure that to determine which ones are more effective?

I think giving to charities is supererogatory, at best. At worst, it’s a reflection of a heteronomous will.

When one considers that there are numerous charities with exact opposite goals I’m not sure how you can consider your three questions to have self-evident answers.

Most charities don't have a charity with an exact opposite goal.

Most charitable donations are net good. Sure there exist a small subset of charities that aren't probably doing harm but that's the exception.

Would you argue that charitable giving is neutral or bad?

In some light it could be seen as "bad," at least as currently structured in this country: we basically allow people to withhold tax money and instead direct the money as they see fit, which has an anti-democratic implications -- in effect it as though we went to the richest Americans and said "why don't you decide how a substantial chunk of tax dollars are spent rather than Congress?" Beyond the more philosophical aspects, having been in the sausage factory for a bit, and having read about others, I think it is very easy for charities to just happen to serve their mission in a way that just happens to be more beneficial for their patrons (even if they could put superficially convincing numbers on it to prove they're highly "effective").

But I suppose I would say it's neutral; it could be good or bad depending on various characteristics of the charity itself.

I think on avg. charities aren't so bad that the world is better off if you buy a yacht and give 20% to the government than to donate it to the average charity.

But do you at least agree the government does less good with 20 cents than a givewell charity like the AMF does with a dollar?

I am rather skeptical of the notion that this can be meaningfully quantified.

Surely you think between two charities, one that takes a $1,000 and buys caviar for starving children and one that feeds 1000x as many bread the second one does more good per $ than the first.

Sure, it is easy to invent fantastically silly uses of money. Is that what is at issue?

Kinda, yes.

It's certainly the scale of impact difference between some of the charities:

Charities can be useless or actively harmful: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/im...

vs.

$4500/life saved: https://www.givewell.org/our-giving-funds#Top_Charities_Fund

They also say why it's that high: https://www.givewell.org/impact-estimates

Another example I've heard is hospitals asking people to stop skydiving to raise money for them, as the mean cost of medial care the average skydiver needs due to skydiving injuries exceeds the average money raised by skydiving.

They matter to people who aren't Utilitarians (like me!). I'm much more interested in motive than I am in outcome (although I like Good Things, just like everyone else).

Here's a hopefully intuitive framing: actions are built on outcomes, while institutions are built on motives. It's hard to imagine a consequential derivation of fundamental and inviolable human rights, for example: there will always be cases and circumstances where a consequential view of morality enables you to engage in casuistry to suit the occasion. I'd much rather build (and live under) practical moral systems where things stay right and wrong.

(To be clear: motive itself is not the moral object, in my view. Motive is merely the thing being questioned. The moral object is the moral law.)

So you think it's better to judge charities by what we think of their motives instead of how much they help people?

No. What I think is that ordering between charities is a morally insensible act.

So you think all charities are equally good, and applying any ordinality to them is insane?

Why do you think all charities are equally good?

Also no. I don’t know where you’re getting that.

There are good charities, and there are bad charities. One of the things that can make a charity bad is having a bad mission. Another thing that can make a charity bad is being corrupt or inefficient. But I don’t presume to order charities based on how bad or good they are, and I don’t think there’s anything particularly good about giving to one good charity versus another good charity.

Also, “insensible” does not mean “insane.” I meant that it does not make sense, in my moral system.

So you're happen to separate charities into "good" and "bad" but wouldn't be ok breaking them down into "bad" "ok" "good" or "bad" "good" better?

You're happy to assign a number of 1 or 0, but would never want to rank them any more than that? That doesn't make sense to me.

I'm perfectly happy to establish my own preferences: I tend to donate to journalistic and legal aid nonprofits. That's what I prefer, but I don't operate under the belief that I prefer those things because they're better, morally speaking, than donating to famine relief or animal care nonprofits.

There are lots of ethical theories (a majority, in fact!) that don't require (but may admit) grading actions on a sliding scale from "morally worst" to "morally best." Moral systems all boil down to a Theory of Right, and it's possible to have a Theory of Right rooted in virtue or autonomy rather than Good (i.e., greatest consequence).

I make no claim at to where our current world is on this spectrum, but there is some point on it where a world full of some tiny number of extremely rich people who shower money on the poor, even to the point of material scarcity largely vanishing, but everyone in this world is a dickhead to each other, is a worse world than a world that still has material scarcity but is full of people who honestly and legitimately care for each other.

This is probably far more obvious at small units like families, where we are all well aware of the existence of absolutely miserable rich kids who might live short, drug-addicted lives that end in suicide, in spite of their parents giving them all the money in the world.

Indeed, one of the many raps on, uh, modern? EA is that it's morally isomorphic to the practice of buying indulgences.

I am committed to give all that I can -- living frugally as much as reasonable until I die. I think we should be more worried about people that simply haven't come to understanding that we need to help the world, and that other lives matter as our own, than about people giving significant part of their incomes to charity. Of course, the idea is you don't have to do that -- if everyone gave 10%, the world would be much, much better![1].

Heck, sometimes (see the war in Russia), people are actively doing the opposite and trying to destroy civilization.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtWINl3C

Btw the phrase "morally isomorphic" is a delightfully creative piece of language -- both intuitive and precise.

1. I don't know about 'unrelated source.' I find that H2g2 is relevant in most aspects of life, one way or another. 2. I'll accept your recommendation, and read Peter Singer. Happy to. 3. "Don't recall Singer advocating earning at the expense of others." Now we go into complicated territory. Do we decide this based on theory or practice? Where did we land on how we see the Church, or the catholic priests who're guilty of child abuse? Admittedly EA is different because the movement doesn't certify or induct or employ people officially, but ultimately how people evaluate these things will depend on the practitioners they see. 4. No hate for giving to charities. But I do think there's a few more layers to unpack here.

Part of the problem is that con-men and con-women will take advantage of the surface level adornments and people's propensity to trust people who prop up their ego and run with the idea to con people out of both easy and hard earned money. It's not all that different from alt-medicine quacks who give people false hopes of cures. One offers moral salvation, the other a cure to medical ailments.

You can see the contempt he has for people in this report: https://www.gawker.com/money/sam-bankman-fried-is-so-stupid-...

This is going strongly into the regime of "no true scotsman" fallacy. Imagine someone advocating for women's bodily autonomy by criticizing the fundamentalist Christian movement in the US, and someone else popping up saying "Have you read the bible? What about Jesus's teachings about love and kindness?"

Really, the person you should be preaching Peter Singer to are the people inside of EA who might be misguided with promises of fat stacks of cash. Criticizing atheists for not knowing "the true teachings of Jesus" really doesn't do you much good, just makes you look defensive and responsibility-avoiding.

I don't think it's reasonable to simply read Peter Singer and define the whole movement with his ideas, because EA-thought doesn't stop there.

Well I've provided the basis of my understanding of EA, which is more than you or the author. If we're meant to have a conversation on the merits of EA then we need to be clear about our terms.

To try to mind read, if everyone's simply saying: "it's wrong for someone to do immoral things and justify them with the promise of future charity" then I suspect there's not much to say except, "Yes, duh."

I think it's safe to assume that people talking about EA this month are thinking more in terms of MacAskill and longtermist EA; the EA of "earn to give" and AI defense.

I wouldn't characterize it as hate for charity. I'd characterize it as hate for "Here's the handbook for what words to say, so that when you make scads of money doing evil things, you can maximize the amount of good reputation your dollars buy".

I'm confident that there are lots of people who are part of EA for the reasons the EA community advocates. My expectation is that the dollar weighted average of participants motivations would be more cynical. I think the parallel to religious participation kind of writes itself.

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from?

People don't hate when people give to charity.

People hate when people earn money in ways that have negative side-effects and justifying it by: promising to (at some point in the distant future) give (some portion of) their money to (select) charities.

> Setting aside this article, where's all the hate for giving to charity coming from?

Nobody hates giving to charity. Some people are skeptical about the utility of donating millions of dollars to an anti-skynet foundation founded by a guy whose primary accomplishment is writing a Harry Potter fanfic.

Can you expand on the last bit?

EA is heavily rooted in the rationalist movement, which was kickstarted by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky wrote some HP fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Yudkowsky now runs some sort of foundation about averting "AI risk," and AI risk seems to be a disproportionately (and dare I say irrational) concern for rationalists and EA advocates.

I consider myself close to rationality and EA, so maybe I have to explain myself here.

First, I call myself rationalist because of the culture around the blog SlateStarCodex (and r/<same name>[1]), by Scott Alexander (now at AstralCodexTen[2] for interesting reasons), and a bit less lesswrong.com , and also a few sources like Julia Galef (which is popular for the Scout Mindset[3]) and some people around this movement. The ideas are fairly tame and simple around encouraging clear thinking and avoiding biases -- but they go fairly deep into promoting an understanding how our brains and minds work (frequently discussed in SSC). I am partly defined by this now, I learned a lot about myself and in some ways improved my writing and why not thinking (yes, thinking more effective in general terms is not as well defined as it seems, and not nearly as effective as it seems either -- but in a certain sense I think it's good). I have not went through EY's extensive work to critique or embrace it. I think this movement is partly a response to the very damaging ideological war environment of the late 2010s and still ongoing that creates divided societies and not bringing us closer to a move charitable, loving, understanding, good future (instead lost in endless culture wars -- that in a way became very real wars with millions of affected). EA is a nice sort of consensus result from (part?) of the community as how one should approach charity and ethics (but none of the original EAs came from rationality I believe, they are largely academic philosophers from Oxford).

I'm an EA and I'm not sure where I stand on the AI debate. I personally have embraced the philosophy (although reluctantly, I try to follow Scout Mindset principles, which is I try to stay open to changing my mind), but I mostly give to GiveWell and to GiveDirectly. I also give to a few local charities in my quite poor country (written about here[4] -- I believe donating locally can be effective), volunteer and to many open source projects (some public seen here[5]). I made a commitment with myself to live frugally and give all that I can reasonably give, without unreasonable excesses (largely consumerism, luxury goods, things I don't need to work, etc.). I really believe in the potential of the movement, and rationality does help, because in the end it invites you to embrace the value of other lives, which I've become convinced with by many angles (from a metaphysical perspective, to a logical, social and economic ones): that's the foundation of my giving. Recently, Scott A. wrote that EAs really believe in the movement/philsophy, and the recently criticisms haven't really shaken my belief in the fundamentals (although I'm saddened by SBF and his statements, which I find deeply misguided and unethical, more here[6]). I also subscribe to Jane Goodall's (and Singer's) observation that we need to make the Head (reason) and the Heart (love and humanity) work in harmony to thrive as a society and as individuals -- most people have good will, but if you don't use reason and solid ethics to guide your good will we often fall short, sometimes tragically and spectacularly.

I believe other people matter, and I'm committed to trying to make the world a better place with whatever tools I find most appropriate (statistics, economics, social sciences, art, philosophy, technology, math ...): It's very simple, very robust, and very necessary for our collective future as well :)

(which is to say: Hack the Planet!!!)

[1] https://reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex

[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/yrhl3g/l...

[5] https://liberapay.com/gustavonramires/ see also: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/v7ma0d/w...

[6] https://mastodon.social/@gnramires/109337319931759374

Just for context AI is ~10% of EA donations.

I'm not a huge AI risk guy, but it doesn't seem irrational to me. It doesn't seem unreasonable that you'll have a 5% chance of > than human IQ in the next 100 years. Assuming a 5% risk of it going rogue you end could end up in a pretty terrible situation.

Given how seriously mamy rationalists take certain things like Roko's Basilisk I have a hard time imagining that AI risk charities use their funds effectively (the E in EA, after all). That's assuming I agree with your 5% estimate (I don't).

I spend a lot of time in EA adjacent spaces and I've read the Basilisk there once, but I've seen it in several popular magazines reporting about EA 4 times. I really don't think it's a top concern at Givewell.

I've never seen seen a survey of AI experts where less than 50% thought we wouldn't have AGI by 2100. Why are you so confident that AI is an order of magnitude less likely in the next 100 years then the vast majority of experts in the field?

https://nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf

Are they AI experts? The authors of the paper you linked are philosophers, not CS. Yudkowsky doesn’t have even a high school education, and I’ve never seen any programming or ML work by him.

Frankly, the “research” in this area all appears to be science fiction that takes itself too seriously.

Two of the groups they surveyed were AI researchers, it break it does by those groups, and the majority of those groups think AGI will happen in 100 years.

1. EETN: Members of the Greek Association for Artificial Intelligence (EETN), a professional organization of Greek published researchers in the field, in April 2013. Ca. 250 members. 2. TOP100: The 100 ‘Top authors in artificial intelligence’ by ‘citation’ in ‘all years’ according to Microsoft Academic Search(http://academic.research.microsoft.com) in May 2013. We reduced the list to living authors, added as many as necessary to get back to 100

I have literally never encountered someone who really takes Roko's Basilisk seriously.

Other than the person who came up with it, I've not even heard of such people.

I don't doubt they exist — I've met people, people are dumb and believe dumb stuff even when they're smart — but I've never once encountered that.

>Other than the person who came up with it, I've not even heard of such people.

Yudkowsky took it seriously enough to ban it from discussion on LessWrong as it was an "information hazard," so I think you might be a bit naive about how seriously many rationalists took/take it.

“an incredibly costly way for me to learn that deleting a stupid idea is treated by people as if you had literally said out loud that you believe it, but Roko being right was never something I endorsed, nor stated.” - Yudkowsky

https://web.archive.org/web/20140626092902/http://www.reddit...

So no, not naïve.

He didn't just delete a post about it, he outright banned discussion of it as an information hazard, so you'll forgive me if I don't believe him.

Oh, MIRI. I didn’t know about the Harry Potter aspect. Everything I have seen out of MIRI, however, is completely ridiculous. So that makes sense.

> where's all the hate for giving to charity

You're misreading it.

EA, on its own terms, reads something like what you describe. But many people do not believe that it plays out that in the real world, and instead is something like "prosperity gospel for agnostics" - a thin rationalization for gobbling up as much as possible.

The hate isn't directed at "giving to charity", it is directed at rich people advancing their own interests while calling it charity. (For instance, SBF convincing Propublica to burn their reputation publishing weak, politicized studies for $5M.)

>Why not just read some of the direct sources and their motivations?

Because, and this may not come as a shock after the SBF revelations, those people may not be sincere and honest, to others, themselves or both.

With something like EA the interesting part isn't what's being said out loud, it's what philosophic and in particular aesthetic goals aren't literally spelled out. This is the case for almost any form of activism, ideology or lifestyle. The interesting parts are never the banal things people advertise.

For example take an adjacent belief, also practiced by the EA folks. Veganism. Now superficially they will tell you this is all about animal welfare, but what they won't tell, they may not even be aware of it, is also that it's an upper class signal of purity, their own modern recreation of the Brahmin class. When you look at things that way it suddenly becomes less surprising why a 28 year old effective-altruist Potterhead also seems weirdly fascinated with Indian caste systems and imperial Chinese social dynamics.

1) We probably shouldn't take anything that can be used to manipulate at face value.

2) As far as I understand it, EA actually is a very, very simple concept that ultimately states that 'doing good in some ways is better than others' aka some things make us 'feel good' but may not be effective. Literally 'be effective'.

3) EA in practice can be a secular kind of moral signalling and personal brand washing. You can't use religion to be huckster anymore so much (FYI I support religion, it's just that it can be easily appropriated), or rather, the 'My Pillow Guy' does but that's to a more limited audience, so 'EA' can be used for the same purposes among the white collar culturally secular masses. Which is how it was used at FTX.

Like anything we should be thoughtful and skeptical about all of it, try to put things in context, don't accept wild claims at face value and be perennially wary of people who just 'talk' about things as opposed to 'doing' them.

Narratives, idol making, lack of skepticism are the problem here.

Incidentally, there's an individual who brought evidence to Bloomberg about FTX months ago and they avoided it partly due to fear of lack of access - and - a conflict of interest with advertising. Such is the power of money with tentacles. Same thing for major geopolitical powers with money and leverage.