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This take on EA notion replaces it with a straw man.

Essentially EA tells not "let's save as many lives as possible" but "let's improve the world according to our values as much as possible". And values might differ among the people.

In your example with cure for relative working with only X probability Vs definitely curing stranger on the other side of the world there should be value X for which you will prefer to cure the stranger. Whether it 10% , 1% or maybe 0.01% I will not blame you. But it worth to know your values like value of your family member life over the stranger's life to act accordingly.

Dive into EA activities starts with exploring your values. How do you value lives of animals in comparison to lives of people? Do you prefer improving people well being now or reducing existential risks like wars and epidemies? EA literally made a tool to estimate one's values and promote this tool on the front page.

Thanks, that might be true I have not seen in it.

I took this passage from effectivealtruism.org but I was mostly referring to the EA community online which seemed to mostly be the rationalists like the OP said. It's worth pointing out that Eliezer Yudkowsky was mentioned ITT.

Impartial altruism: We believe that all people count equally. Of course it's reasonable to have special concern for one's own family, friends and life. But, when trying to do as much good as possible, we aim to give everyone's interests equal weight, no matter where or when they live. Thi s means focusing on the groups who are most neglected, which usually means focusing on those who don’t have as much power to protect their own interests.

So this is not saying all EA people think the same thing or have the same values or are on that site but I do think this is a common viewpoint among them. I just question why that should be and whether or not a lot of EA people are even altruistic or just virtue signalling on the internet.

I toned down some of the language in this post. I am not being meticulous I am just freestyling my thoughts because it's fun and there is a dose of humor I am putting in here but usually it's not appreciated on HN. Anyways, I don't know if there is a counter criticism to EA officially by some philosopher, and I actually agree with some of what they say because I remember a lot of discussion about choosing charities wisely and not wasting charitable resources. So I don't want to write a formal argument but nevertheless I think what I wrote is a summary of why I am skeptical.

Ok but now I’m kind of lost. I genuinely don’t know anything about EA, so this is an honest question.

If EA is improving the world according to your values, is it really distinct as a concept? Like, to me, the reason why I think almost anything is because it improves the world according to my values.

Another way to put it is that to me it kind of sounds like someone is saying, “we believe in doing the best thing”, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I also hope everyone wants to do the best thing ;)

Effective altruism is about the _effective_ part. Don't just donate to the charity or cause that _sounds_ good; look for where your money would provide the biggest impact.

If you want to save lives in general, look for the most _effective_ charity like that, which may be something like mosquito nets rather than a cancer research foundation. Don't just donate money to whatever is the most obvious charity advertised on television.

If you had a family member with cancer, look at which of N cancer foundations spend the money most effectively and donate there.

Often, altruism comes down to people giving money to the 'obvious' causes, which don't necessarily use the money effectively.

cancer research will give benefits forever once a solution is found whereas mosquito nets will get worn out and so are only a temporary fix. Cancer cure also scales to more people eventually. Worse, how much is your donation contributing to cancer research? You just can't quantify that.

The whole concept just seems to assume you know everything, present and future, and have infinite calculation power.

First a disclaimer: I am not a part of EA community, but I have met several people from this community. And I am loosely connected to rationalists community. I find EA concept appealing and I think I should allocate some of my resources to help this movement.

Indeed my wording was too broad and over-compassing. Effective altruism was kick started from comparison of different organizations collecting money for whatever altruistic means. And comparison showed that these initiatives are vastly different in effectiveness which prompted an idea that we should take into account effectiveness of particular initiative before giving it money.

EA seems to focus on reducing suffering over improving happiness. Giving a hand to a stranger who have stumbled and have fallen to the ground near you is out of the scope: EA is about strategic long lasting calculated stuff.

"Doing good better" was the book title, and I think better defines the goal well. Not perfect, better.

The choices that people make with giving often have no framework for deciding good, let alone better. The moral question is not is X better than Y, but what of all the choices I am going to make can I make better?

If everyone made better choices, not perfect just better, there is a LOT we could improve.

> like for example, if a family member of mine needed money for a cancer treatment that had a 50% chance of working versus giving that money to save the life of someone I don't know on the other side of the planet, I will consistently try to save my family member.

So would most people, and we wouldn’t call it altruism. Looking for an objective criterion (whether ‘number of lives saved per dollar’ or something else) is an angle that I’m happy someone is taking. If you don’t like their approach then don’t give them money.

> So would most people, and we wouldn’t call it altruism.

Most people would call helping a relative pay their medical bills altruism. It's also the selfish and rational choice. It's both simultaneously.

> Most people would call helping a relative pay their medical bills altruism.

Altruism is the disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Helping your family is not altruism.

> Helping your family is not altruism.

Not necessarily altruism.

It absolutely could be.

Knowing the true motives of another human is very difficult, perhaps impossible (without a predictive biological model of consciousness we can't be sure we're reading minds correctly, and it's still an open question whether such a thing can exist).

> like for example, if a family member of mine needed money for a cancer treatment that had a 50% chance of working versus giving that money to save the life of someone I don't know on the other side of the planet, I will consistently try to save my family member. That is how most people would operate.

I just want to point out that:

1. Just because this is how most people operate does not mean this is the ethical choice. Slavery was normal at one time remember.

2. You say EA people have biases they refuse to admit to, but your argument is showing that you are exhibiting the bias, namely the bias towards preferring your family member over general human life. Arguably a position that does not prefer one human life over another is less biased, no?

yes I am biased if bias means not weighting all people equally on moral grounds. I am not sure why I should. If someone did that I think it's interesting what conclusions they might draw about how to spend their money or what job they might choose. It destroys much of the point of having a family. You would have to weight random strangers with equal status to your own children. So the needs of random strangers would almost always outweigh the needs of your children assuming they are healthy and you live comfortably. It would not surprise me if EA people thought families were immoral though.

I don't think assuming an equal weighting is being unbiased though. It could be a result of a political bias. As I said I don't know why people should assume this. The digital era of social media and digital banking enable this viewpoint so I think that is another angle to discuss regarding how to weigh these issues.

But the specific bias I was accusing some in the EA community of having is virtue signalling as having superior ethics, morals, and intelligence. I think that is a real bias. I don't want to accuse everyone in the community of not being altruistic but claiming to be an effective altruist could certainly be a career enhancer if you are an ethicist. Also, my experience with this community is some of them come off as misanthropes. A misanthrope might be motivated to argue elaborate contrarian viewpoints in order to cause harm or annoy people.

> If someone did that I think it's interesting what conclusions they might draw about how to spend their money or what job they might choose. It destroys much of the point of having a family.

I'm not sure they would. They might adopt instead of having their own kids, for instance.

> So the needs of random strangers would almost always outweigh the needs of your children assuming they are healthy and you live comfortably.

Not necessarily. Divide and conquer is one of our most effective problem solving strategies, and family units fall under this umbrella of dividing the work of raising the next generation.

> But the specific bias I was accusing some in the EA community of having is virtue signalling as having superior ethics, morals, and intelligence. I think that is a real bias.

It could be. It's also possible that they are more ethical and intelligent though. Not in the sense that becoming an EA makes you more intelligent, but in the sense that maybe EA attracts more intelligent and ethical people. This self-sorting effect would diminish as EA spreads in popularity of course.

Ultimately, whether they are more ethical or intelligent is an empirical claim that you can validate, and while it's reasonable to think it's implausible for it to be true, that's not a proof that it isn't true.

> I doubt even the EA people would do that unless they could virtue signal about how smart they are and how stupid everyone else is online. Most of the time, these people just speculated about how they might spend their money if they were in such a scenario. It was like a hobby

I think it's clear you don't know any EA people in real life.

> I will consistently try to save my family member

Sure, but that's because we all prefer living in a society where everyone abides by their obligations to the people closest to them - nothing wrong with this. That's special pleading, though.

Is helping your family get through cancer considered altruistic?

> Why should I be asked to ignore my own family by annoying redditors who don't give a shit about me anyways?

You shouldn't; doing so would be irrational. There is a fairly decent chance that your relative, if they survive, will be in a position to help you in the future. But the random person on the other side of the planet? The chance of them randomly helping you in the future is about one in a few billion. Particularly if they don't know who their benefactor was, so they couldn't deliberately repay the favor to you.

So the rational/selfish position is to always put family and friends first, before strangers.

That’s fine… but that’s _not the reason_, right? The reason is that you know the person and don’t want them to suffer. Trying to ignore that lived reality in a quest to be objective or rational seems to me like a recipe for mistaken thinking.

It's not the reason, but it is a reason. The reason (for me) would be the principle of family coming first. But as is often the case, you can reconstruct deontological principles within a utilitarian framework.

For instance; if everybody sticks to the principle of murder being wrong despite the consequences, then there will be fewer misguided mass murderers, and this is better for society in the long run than everybody going around committing murders they believe to be justified by some end.

I don't know about "always", but yes, there's a strong rational element behind favouring friends and especially family, and in general others that you're more likely to interact with in the future. For one thing, I'd think confidence that you have family members that will ensure your children will thrive even after you're gone gives peace of mind for most parents. And even if I never actually need help from family or friends of the nature I give them now, the regular act of providing assistance is an important part of what maintains good relationships, which we all know are pretty vital to mental health etc. I would say though that giving money is probably not generally the best way to achieve that end, and EA are primarily (solely?) about monetary donations.

Honestly I don't think there's any realistic way to decide in general whether giving assistance to person A vs person B is more "rational" or even more "effective", but it's good to at least be aware that some charities/NGOs/etc. are at least trustworthy and ensure a high % of donations do actively go towards providing help, rather being swallowed in marketing and admin budgets.

In defense of marketing and admin budgets. What would you prefer, a nonprofit where $100 of your donation goes to "providing help" (I don't really know what that means, since money alone can't do anything) or a nonprofit where $30 of your $100 is invested in "marketing and admin" which results in: - the charity has $500 - there are admin humans around to "provide help" (and you're paying them a decent or even above-average salary because you want them to do an amazing job, right?) What if they took $60 out of your $100 and turned it into $5,000 (not unheard of if they invest in digital ads to a warm list, for example)

It's counterproductive to insist that nonprofits operate without operations budgets.

Yes, I think this is reasonable. I would also like to take a moment to reiterate why so many people are bitter about the marketing / admin angle:

I pay them money. Charity pays consultants to turn that into more money (plus admins to manage the consultants). Consultants determine that a fraction of that money should be used to solicit more donations. Research indicates best source of new donations is in fact existing donors.

At this point charity is spending money I gave them to extract further donations from me. The ice-cream cone is now licking itself :/

I wouldn't consider 30% unreasonable or an example of money being swallowed - but there are known instances of non-profits where over 60% of donations go towards covering such costs (the Law Enforcement Legal Defense fund supposedly is one of the worst offenders).