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Comment by Self-Perfection | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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