Defective Altruism

There's a great Scott Alexander (who may be an EA , I'm not sure, it doesn't matter) quote about complex disagreements that goes something like "the true answer will probably be the one that's complex and doesn't quite fall into any camp and leaves everyone feeling somewhat annoyed". I think the same is true of doing good. If doing good was easy we'd have figured it out in the last 3,000 years of moral philosophy. But instead, the some of the greatest minds of their times have beaten their heads against the problem and come out with solutions in complete contradiction with each other.

EA strides into this tradition with a seductive promise: you can basically do what you already wanted to do and have it be the most moral thing! Do you love computers and/or having Amazon helicopter piles of money onto your front lawn? You aren't a "techbro", you're a goddamn Mother Teresa. Just give away a small share of it. It's easy! Just a direct deposit away and you're good.

This isn't necessarily all bad! A lot of people do nothing and just feel guilty about it. They see the world is screwed up but they don't feel like they're in a situation where they can do much of anything about it. Maybe they donate $20 a month to whatever charity managed to get an ad onto their Facebook feed at a moment of particularly high guilt. EA is a highly tuned machine for getting to these people and extracting commitments of recurring funds to charitable causes -- some good (bed nets) and some less -- but probably net-positive.

But let's not fool ourselves. I work at a place that's on the 80,000 hours website as a recommended ex-risk workplace. Honestly, it's 20% because the work is far more interesting than CRUD dev, 20% because I like my coworkers, 20% because I needed a job, 20% because it pays pretty well, and 20% because it's good for the world. Compare me to a volunteer doctor working somewhere without adequate healthcare, like rural Ghana or West Virginia. They gave up a large salary, comfortable living conditions, high status, living close to their family. They put themselves at risk of contracting malaria, ebola, or other diseases that could seriously injure or kill them. Would any reasonable person say I'm doing more good for the world than them? That the world would be better off if they were more like me?

But, that's probably just appealing to emotion and the romanticized image of heroic self-sacrifice. If that doctor performs a highly effective intervention, like cataract surgery, they may only seriously improve the lives of tens of thousands of people, curing them of preventable blindness and preventing knock-on health effects at the source. If we instead shut up and multiply, I believe my contribution of 0.0000000...00001% improved chance of the survival of the human species, while somewhat small, will prevail when multiplied against the sum happiness of 1 yoctobillion potential future space-serf ecumenopolises. It's quite convenient that instead of needing to seriously question how I could do good in the world and give something up, young me's thought that "modding videogames is fun, I wonder if I can get paid for this" led directly to the mathematically optimal way to do good in world.

It's just a little too convenient.