Comment by tux3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tux3 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is overall a very well written article, as someone not involved with EA, it seems a good critique of EA.

But! This actually makes me more interested in EA, because the criticism only really chips away small caveats in the idea it presents. It points out some inconsistency in the central principle, but a lot of things are still worth doing while having some unclear edge-cases that seem inconsistent.

I think it's also easy to reject the dichotomy between "EA says you should sacrifice everything in the embrace of extreme utilitarianism" and "EA is just generic try-to-do-some-good-ism that brings nothing new".

I just started reading the 80000 hours website. Their argument against the former seems to be that your continued career and income is your most important asset (unless you inherited a fortune), and not being miserable or depressed STRONGLY supports building a sustained income and career, and continuing to give.

So you should allow yourself to eat ice cream sometimes not just because it's intuitively obviously okay, also because it supports your mental health, which is a continued asset that increases your capacity to keep giving.

If you burn out and start giving less or stop, obviously that's not effective altruism, and I think the 80000 hour website and EA more broadly must be very aware of that.

(The other side of the dichotomy seems even easier to rebuke. It's just overly reductive for the sake of making a point.)

Overall this is a great article that has ruined my weekend by giving me way too many other interesting web pages to read :)

> I just started reading the 80000 hours website. Their argument against the former seems to be that your continued career and income is your most important asset (unless you inherited a fortune), and not being miserable or depressed STRONGLY supports building a sustained income and career, and continuing to give.

I have a fundamental problem with the argument of “mental health maximizes giving” which is that it doesn't do a good job of justifying self-care in many situations.

Fundamentally, the issue is that sustainability can't be an enduring argument when you have finite time horizons (as all humans do).

For example, if I ever retire or become irreparably sick, should I just donate all of my money and make my life miserable? That is, if I'm no longer productive, what's the point of caring for my mental health?

Your question is the source of its own answer: if we want EA to be the most effective force for good it can be, we should make it something people will be glad to be a part of.

It sounds like slight of hand, to say that things aren't optimal purely as a result of people not wanting them to be optimal, but it tracks. An EA that forces people to give up the things that they love is not as successful, on any axis, as one that does not.

I was somewhat expecting this argument when I wrote the comment.

The thing is that argument only works at the policy and governance level of EA. If I'm an individual who is convinced on the philosophy behind EA, and I'm willing to place it before anything else, then it doesn't matter what's optimal to “ensure commitment” because I'm already committed.

That's why I mean when I say that sustainability isn't a good general argument: it can help you in some cases, but not all. Examining EA as a system of values, that either suggests that EA is insufficient or that self-care shouldn't be that important.

That's only a counterargument if you're ignoring the value of coordination with the greater EA movement. I don't know why one would take that stance.

I believe one of the biggest problems in EA and my own explorations in basically trying to "optimize good" is that "good" can be a very fuzzy concept.

Good for what? For whom?

> For example, if I ever retire or become irreparably sick, should I just donate all of my money and make my life miserable? That is, if I'm no longer productive, what's the point of caring for my mental health?

Taking your example to the morbid extreme, if I'm irreparably sick and "good" is the number of healthy, living people, do I kill myself so others don't have to spend resources on me? But then this gets tricky, because is spending resources on someone else something that drives love, connection, and unity, which can be overall good for those individuals and also for society? What if "good" is defined as what's best for the plants, should we commit mass suicide to allow nature to restore itself or at least give up the concept of private property to perhaps align ourselves more closely with nature?

Personally, I think I've spent so much time on the rabbit-hole of what is "good" and more so, "which is better," that sometimes the only thing that gives me respite from the anxiety is saying "more loving, less saving"—in other words, appreciate things as they are instead of trying to constantly make things better.

Maybe for me, the underlying problem is trying to know with certainty which is is "more good" ("better"), instead of accepting the uncertainty in it and going for it anyway. I dunno.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com