The ‘effective altruists’
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
Those books provide just the right rational and scientific arguments and have shown me with how much cognitive dissonance I, as a supposed rational person, ran through my life.
Biologically you could define a "good" value system as one which is conducive to you having offspring. Ethics, morality, cultural values, etc. are not necessary for that although they might provide intellectual simplifications that help.
I have the will to survive but zero desire to have children.
And I don't think your example of gay suicides proves it, as it's hard to know what is the cause (and many people will point out, and I would agree, that there are many other causes of gay suicides, e.g. that our culture is oppressive toward gay people).
Traditions can change. Traditions that don't serve you any purpose personally should be discarded.
Also, cultures (at least microbial ones) with a certain percent of altruists grow faster than cultures without them, even though altruists' genes become less represented: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5911/272.abstract
In fact, culture has been shaping genes far more than genes, culture. In the last 50,000 years Homo Sapiens genetic adaptation has increased manyfold, likely in response to environmental changes brought on by culture (agrarian societies, towns and cities, large-scale cooperative venture etc).
So the 'genes rule the organism' idea has been untrue for 1000 generations, for humans.
Worth mentioning that you might be genetically predisposed to do something to achieve some end goal, but that doesn't mean you have to agree with or actually try to achieve that end goal.
Giving away money and thus 'helping the group' akin to older elephants protecting the entire herd might flip that feel-good switch in the brain.
If helping other people is really something you care about and value intrinsically, then rationality is about finding the most effective ways and means of helping other people.
What I don't like is the cultish behavior, and inherent bias that what I think is good is "universally" good. Effective altruism is nothing more than a rebranding of utilitarianism, and suffers from the same moral quandaries.
Should I kill someone if it is the best way to decrease child mortality rates in Africa?
Should we all quit our jobs to solve friendly AI? Because if not there is a non-negligible probability of human extinction, and the math clearly says this should be our top priority.
I think it's healthy to be aware of the short comings of effective altruism as well as its benefits. Morality and duty are too nuanced for a single ideology to provide all the answers.
Edit: wording
Did you mean "decrease" here?
> Does abnormal self-sacrifice inspire social change? (A response to "A Defense of Normality" link below)
> The conventional wisdom is that many movements throughout history (christianity, buddhism, Indian independence) were inspired and fueled by the extraordinary sacrifice of leaders/early adopters (or at least myths about such extreme altruism). The conventional wisdom may be wrong, but maybe we need more abnormal sacrifice in our movement, not less. In fact, I think it's plausibly a good idea for us to donate our kidneys, precisely as a symbol of our commitment-- not necessarily in the hopes that others will follow suit-- but in the hopes that it inspires people to take altruism more seriously.
Although reasonable people disagree on many principles of moral thought, a point of near-consensus is that if all other things are equal, we should try to reduce needless suffering as much as possible.
For a great and nuanced treatment, see: "Moral Tribes" by Joshua Greene.
It seems purely about reallocating some wealth from the rich to the poor. That's nice, but it's only treating the symptoms and ignoring many other factors that influence human flourishing, such as an individual's ability to improve their own circumstances (instead of waiting for a generous benefactor to give them some cash). Surely addressing poverty involves systemic changes, not just charity. And besides, charity can also have a negative utility, feeding feelings of inferiority in the receiver and leading to resentment.
"People now have access to bed nets which make them less likely to get malaria and die" seems like it would count as a systemic change.
If plain old reciprocal altruism hadn't somehow failed, there would be a way that you could exchange your labour or otherwise for bed nets. The people paying your wages could be acting altruistically, or they could be rationally self-interested actors.
These are the sort of systemic changes I was thinking of, but I like your argument.
So I don't think I know how a charity could reduce utility as long as the recipients have a choice and are rationally self-interested actors.
In other words, you're assuming they can have either independence or a reduced risk of malaria, but not both. What if having both is possible--but only if the charity is not there, so the person is forced to consider the third option? In other words, what if the second-order effect of providing charity to people is to make them unaware of other options that would actually provide more overall utility (because they would provide both independence and reduced risk of malaria, or whatever it is they're worried about)?
So you're saying that when a charity provides bed nets, it causes individuals to make the irrational and sub-optimal choice of using a bed net without purchasing it. And this happens frequently enough to significantly reduce the utility that a charity provides?
This doesn't seem very intuitive to me. I am curious if you have any evidence that you could point me to show this effect happening. I'd be especially curious how the presence of the charity causes people to act irrationally.
If your choice is between buying a bed net, or taking one that is available for free, the rational and optimal choice for you, if we only consider that choice itself, is to take the free one. Isn't that obvious?
But this is a first-order effect, and I'm talking about second-order effects. Most people who are given bed nets by charities probably can't afford to buy them. What I'm thinking about is this: people who get bed nets from charities are probably used to thinking of valuable things like bed nets as being provided by charity. They aren't used to thinking of them as something that can be worked for. More generally, they think of wealth--not just bed nets but things of value generally--as something that is pre-existing in the world, and it's just a matter of who happens to have it and is willing to give it to those who don't happen to have it. They view wealth as a zero-sum game.
But in reality, wealth is something that gets created. Those bed nets didn't grow on trees. Somebody made them. Somebody created the wealth they represent. But in order to create wealth, people first have to understand that wealth can be created, and people who are used to getting things through charity aren't likely to think that way. So they won't even think of, for example, figuring out how bed nets are made, and starting up an operation to make them themselves. Then they wouldn't need charity. They wouldn't even need to buy the bed nets. (And even if they did choose to buy them, it would be because they are doing something else that creates even more wealth, so they have enough surplus to trade for the bed nets and still come out ahead.)
Now you could say that, if all that is true, it is irrational to accept charity, instead of choosing to learn how to create the wealth yourself. I sympathize with that impulse; I have it myself. But now we're using a different definition of "rational", according to which people in sub-Saharan Africa, with no education, are supposed to understand wealth creation and economics well enough to see that accepting bed nets from charity, even if it benefits them in the short term, is not optimal for them in the long term. This definition of rationality, while it seems attractive in the abstract, has the huge downside of being totally unreasonable. It's much more reasonable to accept that people's perceptions of the choices available to them are affected by their environment, what they see other people around them doing, and what choices have been available in the past. That's why providing charity to people who are capable of creating their own wealth is, in the long run, a bad idea; it affects their own perception of the options available to them, so they don't even think of wealth creation as an option.
> I'd be especially curious how the presence of the charity causes people to act irrationally.
I'm not saying it does. Accepting charity if it is available is a rational choice, if a person is only considering that choice in isolation. The problem is with second-order effects. See above.
It seems to me you're argument is "if you give things to sub-Saharan Africans they start to think that work doesn't leads to things being made". This would be contrary to all the evidence around them. Specifically all of the things they are making on a daily basis. And this effect is so strong it overpowers the net positive of getting a bed net. If this were true then communities given a free net would do substantially worse than communities that pay a nominal fee for bed nets. All of the evidence I've seen shows that communities given free nets do better than ones that pay a nominal fee.
This is very counter intuitive theory. And I don't think mainstream psychology or economics agrees with it. So I was wondering if there was any evidence that bed nets harms the population they are meant to support.
You're quite correct that many people (including me, and apparently you as well) are able to understand wealth creation even though they were given a lot of wealth for free. So it's not always true that giving things to people makes them unable to understand how to create wealth through work.
But your example and mine are different from the sub-Saharan Africa example in an important way: we were children. The stuff we were given was stuff we could not reasonably have earned or traded for for ourselves. A child is not (yet) able to create enough wealth to pay for all the food, or shelter, or education he needs. That's why children are raised by parents, who can create the wealth needed to provide those things, until the children grow up and are able to do it for themselves. And if the parents are smart (mine were, and it sounds like yours were too), they will gradually introduce the children to the idea that all that wealth has to be earned somehow. My parents made me take summer jobs as soon as I was old enough to do so legally. (Even before that, they made me do household chores to earn my allowance.) So children, if they're being raised properly, aren't really taught that everything is spontaneously created.
The sub-Saharan Africans certainly do a lot of things for themselves, that's true. But it seems to me that, unlike (properly raised) children, there are things they do not do for themselves, that they reasonably could. Why? More on this below.
> All of the evidence I've seen shows that communities given free nets do better than ones that pay a nominal fee.
Bear in mind, again, that I'm talking about second order effects. I have already admitted that, to first order, if the choice is between paying for bed nets and getting them for free, it's obviously rational to get them for free. The evidence you describe supports that.
But the evidence you describe does not answer a deeper question: why do any of these communities need charity at all? If they do know how to create things through work, why can't they make their own bed nets? Or make something else that they can trade for them at a net profit? Why do they need to have these things given to them?
This is the second order effect I'm talking about. These people don't seem (to me) to have any idea how to generalize their ability to do some particular things that create wealth, in order to create more wealth that would obviously benefit them. They are, it seems, able to maintain their houses, knit their clothes, and grow food; but they can't figure out how to make bed nets (or something they can trade for them), even though the benefit to them in malaria prevention is obvious and huge? The only solution is to have bed nets given to them?
This disconnect is what makes me suspect that the provision of things like bed nets by charity has affected these people's mindset. They don't seem to view wealth creation as a general thing; they seem to think that they can only create some kinds of wealth, while other kinds of wealth (like bed nets) can only be provided to them by others.
I could hypothesize that another problem could be a lack of density combined with bad travel infrastructure.
Of course, your theory could be the major contributor. Or it could be a minor or non-contributor. Because I don't know, I understand the previous poster's request for a reference.
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home
However, I have not seen research into the reasons why certain countries do badly on these metrics that hypothesizes any real cause other than lack of charity--wealthy countries just aren't doing enough to help poor countries. The possibility that charity itself might be a contributing cause is never, as far as I can tell, considered. Which just puts us right back to the original question.
I am not aware of any research that says that charity has net negative expected utility. No charity to my knowledge forces any recipients to take the charity. So you would expect any individual who would receive negative utility from charity would choose to turn it down.
More subtly, charity could make one person better off and others worse off. You could go around to every doctor in the world and ask them if I gave you a million dollars, what would you do?. Then you could give a million dollars only to the ones who say they would retire and spend it on bribing law enforcement officers to overlook the murder spree that they can now afford to finance.
Those are both pretty actively evil, but it's at least plausible that well-intentioned but poorly-thought-out charities could have negative effects.
You're right that it's plausible that their have existed in the world at some time charities that have accidentally done harm. I don't think that it's plausible that it's a significant problem facing charities, specifically large charities advocated by 'Effective Altruists'.
But all other things are never equal. So this near-consensus is useless in practical terms. The arguments always start over which other things that are not equal should affect one's decisions, and which shouldn't.
For example, take Singer's classic analogy between saving a drowning child at the cost of ruining your clothes, and donating to charity to save a child in a faraway country at the cost of some luxuries. Obviously a lot of things are not "equal" between these two scenarios, but Singer is claiming that none of those things matter: if you would save a drowning child at the cost of ruining your clothes, you should forgo luxuries to donate to charity.
But Singer ignores one glaring thing that is not equal, and which, IMO, does affect the choice you should make: drowning children are rare. That's why we have a moral consensus that we should save them even if it costs us a ruined set of clothes. If there were drowning children all over the place, and everyone was always having to drop what they were doing and save them and ruin their clothes and have to buy new ones, all the time, we would not have the same consensus. Instead, we would be asking why there are so many drowning children around, and would be taking different actions to prevent them from being at risk of drowning in the first place.
But that's exactly the position we are in with respect to world poverty. Poverty is not rare; historically, it has been the normal condition of almost all human beings who have ever lived. Those of us who are fortunate enough not to be in poverty cannot afford to treat it as if it were a rare emergency like a drowning child, because it's not rare, it's common. (It's hard for people who live in the developed world to see this because what defines the "developed" world is precisely that poverty, real poverty, is not common. In the US, for example, a "poor" person typically has enough food--in fact, too much, since a major health issue for the poor in the US is obesity--some form of shelter, access to public transportation, a cell phone, and an internet connection. That is not "poverty" by any reasonable historical definition--it certainly isn't compared to the condition of people in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. There are people in the US who are in real poverty by this definition, but they are very rare, so it's hard for people in the US to realize how common real poverty is elsewhere.)
So if we are going to fix poverty, we can't do it by helping individual poor people, one at a time. We have to fix it by asking why it is so common in the first place.
Killing everyone, as fast as possible is the best way to minimize suffering in the long run.
Not sure that's what you're looking forward to...
I'd be very surprised if the EA movement has a consensus opinion on this question.
> Should we all quit our jobs to solve friendly AI?
I'm not aware that anyone has ever said we should do this. (If you have an example, feel free to share.) The closest I can come is something like "most people should donate as much money as they can to the cause of AI risk". That might itself be an exaggeration, and it's a fringe position within EA.
Right, but the rest of the world absolutely does have a consensus opinion on this. I think dmvaldman's point is that it's disturbing EA doesn't.
The problem with all those 'oh should I kill someone if it is the best way to decrease child mortality rates in Africa?' is that people try to intuitively reason about abstract situations; for which our intuition is shit. If you imagine what it would actually take for one person to have measurable impact on child mortality, so that just killing that one person decreases the rates, you always end up with monsters that 1. don't actually exist 2. your intuition would say should be killed.
with some gigantic assumptions...
I think people just have the desire for easy answers, that they have the one true answer and don't have to wrangle with the complexities of life.
Whatever the reasoning behind your actions is, you are going to choose a single action (at each step) -- this forces you to choose the best. That's all utilitarianism is for me -- it tells you nothing about how to construct the utility function. Now the utility this view provides is just that: you can see clearly what sorts of thing you give greater priority, so you'll make the best possible judgement.
The inherent problems are the usual objections to hedonic total utilitarianism: the Repugnant Conclusion, wireheading and experience machines, the fact that emotions and sensations just aren't linear real-valued variables, the difficulty in measuring them as such even if they were, and of course the Repugnant Conclusion.
Oh, and the fact that Singer has long-since given up on trying to prove hedonic total utilitarianism normatively correct, and thus simply begins his books by saying, "Well, I can't prove it to you, but let me appeal to your emotions and intuitions to hammer it into you, and then proceed on with my arguments about what I demand from you."
Which is why it's really quite disappointing to see people fawning over Singer's utilitarianism: it's unproven, it's unreasonable on its face, it engages in rather flagrant neoliberal apologia (ie: charity rather than social reform or revolution), and it thus adds up to a series of bad ideas wearing nice suits.
-"there is no utility function" is an odd claim. A function can obviously be defined, so what's the objection? Note that in any case there is an implicit utility function for which each action you do take has the maximum utility. Of course, there's the recursive problem of choosing the "best" utility function, which just highlights that at some point we stumble upon certain fundamental principles of physics and ethics which are ultimately arbitrary in which we would guide our actions consistently.
What I mean by the utility function being arbitrary is there is no way to derive it from within utility theory, or within mathematics for that matter. In this sense the laws of physics are arbitrary; what you define as good principles of utility are also arbitrary, but that doesn't make them useless -- in fact the stochastic version of the theory is widely applied in decision making and artificial intelligence. It let's you scrutinize the basic principles and act consistently based on that. Not unlike other mathematical tools, it's a way to find the best course of action given a small set of assumptions, and not more than that (i.e. doesn't provide a way to find the assumptions, because it's impossible).
Ultimately we're just certain animals of a species, and things like happiness, ethics, morality, are the outcome of our traits and can't be defined in a vacuum.
As noted, there's also the equality interesting reverse utility theory -- that is, finding utility functions that approximately match our choices. It's just as useful, it shows clearly how we instinctively prioritize things like money, time, feelings; I think it's all quite valuable analysis.
Ok, so list its definition in a programming language of your choice.
Utility theory applies when we define "utility" as a linear function of some number of real-valued variables inside a model of the world. For instance, if we say "utility world = sumOfMoney world", then we've defined a VNM utility function.
This doesn't mean that total hedonic utilitarianism possesses any such function, or that we've neatly uncovered any such function which accurately describes the desires of real people. It just means someone wrote down a bit of math that works well for trivial cases.
So here's one utility function (for a company, for example): "Utility = Capital ^ (2/3)". It's one valid utility function (even in accordance to VNM theorem), which is why I don't understand the saying "there is no utility function".
If you read what I wrote in response to gress below, I of course have no hope that utility theory would unveil a good utility function in itself; indeed you cannot do it within mathematics exclusively. I just think it's a useful tool that exposes whatever fundamental motivations you have with clarity. Which again is why I don't see why criticizing utilitarianism is a thing at all.
Because utilitarianism is doing utility-theory consequentialism with the utility function strictly defined to be summed-up quantities of pleasure across the whole population. Utilitarianism doesn't mean "consequentialist, VNM-rational decision making", it means, "the maximally effective way of creating and enforcing pleasure for everyone". It's not the utility function anyone really wants, which is why utility theory is such crap. It doesn't matter to have a coherent mathematical formalism if you get given not the slightest idea how to come up with a good value for the infinite-dimensional free parameter.
This works at the level of individual choice, but it doesn't add up over multiple individuals, because you can't compare different people's utilities on the same scale. But the key claims of utilitarianism under discussion (the ones that are supposed to motivate people to donate to charity instead of purchasing luxuries for themselves) require adding up utilities over multiple individuals. Your argument doesn't justify utilitarianism in that sense.
I also think utility can makes sense when there's a set of actors looking forward to make a set of decisions. Again, this set of decisions is going to be unique. So if those actors are able to 1) achieve consensus on a utility 2) coordinate their actions according to said utility, then it also makes sense to talk in terms of a joint utility theory.
That's not the same as utilities of multiple individuals adding, or otherwise being composed into a single utility function. The "good" individual's utility function can certainly depend on that individual's beliefs about how his actions will affect the well-being of others; but it can't depend on the actual utility of those others, because the "good" individual doesn't know the actual utility to others of various states of the world.
> if those actors are able to 1) achieve consensus on a utility 2) coordinate their actions according to said utility, then it also makes sense to talk in terms of a joint utility theory.
I agree with this, but I think the necessary conditions for it are very rare. In most cases of collective action, the actors do not have consensus on a utility function and do not coordinate their actions according to a single utility function.
In fact, in most cases the actors probably do not even share a common or compatible set of beliefs about factual things. In US politics, for example, you have members of Congress who are young earth creationists alongside other members who believe standard evolutionary theory.
In the real world, the rule can be nothing more than a belief that is applied by individuals in their decision making. One can easily see how this could lead to a wide range of perverse outcomes, primarily because the idea of a 'utility function' is not a real thing in the world and cannot be universally calculated.
1. If you discover that you're so bad at predicting the consequences of your actions that always following the rules would produce better outcomes, then the good utilitarian thing to do is to give up on your own judgement and follow the rules.
2. If you discover that people you convince to follow utilitarianism end up in situation #1, then the good utilitarian thing to do is to lie to people about your beliefs and convince them to just follow the rules.
> Why ten percent?
> [...] The most important thing is having a Schelling point, and ten percent is nice, round, divinely ordained [that's a tithing joke], and – crucially – the Schelling point upon which we have already settled. [...]
> It’s ten percent because definitions were made for Man, not Man for definitions, and if we define “good person” in a way such that everyone is sitting around miserable because they can’t reach an unobtainable standard, we are stupid definition-makers. If we are smart definition-makers, we will define it in precisely that way which makes it the most effective tool to convince people to give at least that much.
1: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/19/nobody-is-perfect-every...
See, as one of many alternatives, Rawls works (perhaps most particularly Justice as Fairness, but also the earlier A Theory of Justice) which present an approach which considers the position of different individuals and groups, but does not optimize a summing-like equation (unless you take "summing-like" very loosely.)
But, ultimately, what constitutes what is desirable -- "the most good" -- is a subjective decision. Any philosophical/moral discussion of the most good is either about which axioms are most subjectively desirable to choose or which particular things fit a given set of axioms.
It's an interesting though experiment but I think we subconsciously way over estimate our chances of being born into similar circumstances and way underestimate being born a poor African child in Somalia. It's also hard to imagine what it would be like to be born with cognitive issues like reduced executive function, psychopathy, or reduced grit.
But it seems to me it leads to similar conclusions as utilitarianism, such as 'Effective Altrusim'. The number of situations where these philosophies would differ seems fairly small to me.
My charity of choice is Schistomiasis Initiative, which I donate to through GiveWell. The Life You Can Save has a satisfying "Impact Calculator" that can help you visualize what good your money is capable of doing http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org
I urge everyone here to really consider taking the pledge and begin diverting at least some of their income to effective charities. I am now also considering donating a fraction of my 10% to AI research. (Tip: Don't set up automatic donations if doing it yourself manually every month isn't too much of a hassle. The good vibes are definitely worth soaking in!)
I wasn't aware of Peter Singer etc., but I was actually independently considering doing the same thing (also 10%). But to be honest, I still fight with my worries - I am not sure about the local culture (Czech Republic), many people here still believe "who doesn't steal, steals from the family", and I worry that some of my friends/family will not like the idea. Although it may be completely unfounded fear or rationalization (I have a fair share of social anxiety).
Perhaps at the other end, the focus on individual contribution is arbitrary as well. This is also a focus of libertarians who are methodological individualists - who say only individuals act, not orgabizations, and eg paying taxes to have a government agency pay for schooling is always less efficient than a charity that funds private school admission for poor students. But who says? That's quite an extreme position.
Who says YOU can do the most good? Perhaps if they hired someone else to make the money they'd make more and donate more correctly. Maybe you're better off getting out of the way.
Who knows maybe your company when led by someone else can do even more good? Maybe you should step aside after you've built it?
Perhaps giving your time and money to educate a kid or invest in someone else's work will go further because they'll earn more money?
Perhaps robots can do a better job than you.
With more and more technology and automation, it really does seem like there are diminishing returns from a growing class of people, and demand for their labor is falling. Perhaps the best thing people around the world can do is use condoms and prevent overpopulation in their respective areas.
From a purely utilitarian calculus, is it better to have as many kids as you can if you can maximie the QUAYs? What if you could have less kids but they'd all have a higher quality of life? Isn't that better than having a society crammed with poor kids, who as the article points out are nearly as happy as the rich? Is it really additive? Or are we risking an ecosystem crash that can suddenly lead to greater misery?
In short, we don't really have all the answers. I'd advise erring on the side of admitting we don't know what we could so to an ecosystem and not try to rape externalities to satisfy unchecked population growth and growing demand. Ecosystem collapse may be the thing that crashes your QUAYs down, and even if after the whole mess your sum was still higher due to sheer population numbers, I question the additivity.
Finally the problems come down to this: what is the definition of SHOULD?
I believe there is a hidden premise that many people omit when they say should. It is a ternary relation:
A should do B if A wants C to happen
Without individual goals, there is no should. As for the responsibility of the individual, here is my simple answer and the motto of our company:
People live lives. Companies create products.
Yes it is a bit ordinary and not as catchy sounding as "don't be evil". But it at every point make it clear who has responsibility to do what. When you are working for a project, you create a repeatable product and drive down costs through maximizing re-use. When you are off the clock, you live your life and honor your relationship, which are deeper than just "I don't know you from a hole in the wall." In the marketplace, there are less promises and moral obligations than in an intimate relationship, where shared goals are formed.
Remember - poverty is already going down around the world. The biggest issue we can face today is an ecological disaster caused either by us or an outside factor. Given the history of life on Earth, we can say that the probability of an outside event exceeding what we've seen in the last 10,000 is slim. However, our own population growth in the last 200 years is staggering and unprecedented! We should worry about collapse of various ecosystems that we put pressure on.
At the very least, these utilitarians should read about the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument and stop focusing on mere additivity of QUAYs. Perhaps the best thing they can do is hand out free condoms to everyone on the planet.
In the context of sciences, "effective X" usually means "something that is not X, but in the effect acts as X" (e.g. "effective potential"). So, I when I first met the phrase "effective altruism" I was thinking it is something in the line of Ayn Rand or so - that we should be egoistic, but (some) egoistic behaviours are effectively altruistic. While "how to do as much X given fixed amount of resources?" is talking about being "efficient".
In that way, I find the wording "effective" better suited. It means the maximum impact given your resources, while for "efficient" it would be okay to have 80% of the effect if you get that for just 70% of your resources.
Especially as, in evolutionary biology, and game theory, there is a big topic of investigating how egoistic behaviour may give raise to an altruistic effect.
(And of course, the main thing is that adjectives created from nouns are very ambiguous, i.e. effective can mean both "altruism that gives effect" or "altruism that is an effect".)
Even if you could, with a fair amount of certainty, say that for every $40 that the Yurt charity gets, they'll build 3 homes, there's a pretty hard limit on how many $40's they'll be able to turn into homes. Eventually they'll run out of qualified people willing to build homes for peanuts. Charity simply doesn't scale. The more you try, the more it just looks like regular old business.
EA could very well be a viable philosophy at the low volumes that participate right now, but if they're successful as a movement, whatever they build is just going to turn into another Red Cross. The Red Cross couldn't scale appropriately, and I highly doubt it was due to any lack of can-do willingness.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_eff...
So finance came up and I'm not gonna to say, that finance is by definition evil, but I can see quite some bad things coming out of finance, just think about all the trading with food, which painfully increased prices especially for the poorest people in the third world. Not to speak about the effects of the financial crises and their reasons.
I was just quite surprised about this kind of thinking, this kind of simplification and to think of this as the most effective kind of altruism seems to be a bit blinded.
That one comes up a lot and the fundamental problem is that nobody actually does it. People start careers with the intention of doing it but hedonistic treadmill/peer-pressure seems to wring it out of them sooner rather than later.
Even ignoring, as you point out negative externalities, it's just bad advice to suggest that doing something that no one seems capable of carrying though with is a good way to affect positive change.
What if someone really wants to go into finance, likes its money and prestige and now he might be even able, thanks to effective altruism, to appease his morally doubts.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246884045785455...