The Nonlinear Library EA - What "Effective Altruism" Means to Me by Richard Y Chappell
Jun 14, 2024
Richard Y Chappell discusses the importance of effective altruism in helping others and addresses misconceptions. He highlights the virtues of supporting global challenges and encourages constructive dialogue within the community.
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Exploration of Effective Altruism and Ethical Considerations
00:00 • 10min
Challenging Misconceptions and Encouraging Dialogue in Effective Altruism
10:04 • 3min
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What "Effective Altruism" Means to Me, published by Richard Y Chappell on June 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
I previously included a link to this as part of my trilogy on anti-philanthropic misdirection, but a commenter asked me to post the full text here for the automated audio conversion. Apologies to anyone who has already read it.
As I wrote in 'Why Not Effective Altruism?', I find the extreme hostility towards effective altruism from some quarters to be rather baffling. Group evaluations can be vexing: perhaps what the critics have in mind when they hate on EA has little or no overlap with what I have in mind when I support it? It's hard to know without getting into details, which the critics rarely do. So here are some concrete claims that I think are true and important.
If you disagree with any of them, I'd be curious to hear which ones, and why!
What I think:
1. It's good and virtuous to be beneficent and want to help others, for example by taking the Giving What We Can 10% pledge.
2. It's good and virtuous to want to help others effectively: to help more rather than less with one's efforts.
3. We have the potential to do a lot of good in the face of severe global problems (including global poverty, factory-farmed animal welfare, and protecting against global catastrophic risks such as future pandemics).
4. In all these areas, it is worth making deliberate, informed efforts to act effectively. Better targeting our efforts may make even more of a difference than the initial decision to help at all.
5. In all these areas, we can find interventions that we can reasonably be confident are very positive in expectation. (One can never be so confident of actual outcomes in any given instance, but being robustly positive in prospect is what's decision-relevant.)
6. Beneficent efforts can be expected to prove (much) more effective if guided by careful, in-depth empirical research. Quantitative tools and evidence, used wisely, can help us to do more good.
7. So it's good and virtuous to use quantitatively tools and evidence wisely.
8. GiveWell does incredibly careful, in-depth empirical research evaluating promising-seeming global charities, using quantitative tools and evidence wisely.
9. So it's good and virtuous to be guided by GiveWell (or comparably high-quality evaluators) rather than less-effective alternatives like choosing charities based on locality, personal passion, or gut feelings.
10. There's no good reason to think that GiveWell's top charities are net harmful.[1]
11. But even if you're the world's most extreme aid skeptic, it's clearly good and virtuous to voluntary redistribute your own wealth to some of the world's poorest people via GiveDirectly. (And again: more good and virtuous than typical alternatives.)
12. Many are repelled by how "hands-off" effective philanthropy is compared to (e.g.) local volunteering. But it's good and virtuous to care more about saving and improving lives than about being hands on. To prioritize the latter over the former would be morally self-indulgent.
13. Hits-based giving is a good idea. A portfolio of long shots can collectively be likely to do more good than putting all your resources into lower-expected-value "sure things". In such cases, this is worth doing.
14. Even if one-off cases, it is often better and more virtuous to accept some risk of inefficacy in exchange for a reasonable shot at proportionately greater positive impact. (But reasonable people can disagree about which trade-offs of this sort are worth it.)
15. The above point encompasses much relating to politics and "systemic change", in addition to longtermist long-shots. It's very possible for well-targeted efforts in these areas to be even better in expectation than traditional philanthropy - just note that this potential impact comes at ...
I previously included a link to this as part of my trilogy on anti-philanthropic misdirection, but a commenter asked me to post the full text here for the automated audio conversion. Apologies to anyone who has already read it.
As I wrote in 'Why Not Effective Altruism?', I find the extreme hostility towards effective altruism from some quarters to be rather baffling. Group evaluations can be vexing: perhaps what the critics have in mind when they hate on EA has little or no overlap with what I have in mind when I support it? It's hard to know without getting into details, which the critics rarely do. So here are some concrete claims that I think are true and important.
If you disagree with any of them, I'd be curious to hear which ones, and why!
What I think:
1. It's good and virtuous to be beneficent and want to help others, for example by taking the Giving What We Can 10% pledge.
2. It's good and virtuous to want to help others effectively: to help more rather than less with one's efforts.
3. We have the potential to do a lot of good in the face of severe global problems (including global poverty, factory-farmed animal welfare, and protecting against global catastrophic risks such as future pandemics).
4. In all these areas, it is worth making deliberate, informed efforts to act effectively. Better targeting our efforts may make even more of a difference than the initial decision to help at all.
5. In all these areas, we can find interventions that we can reasonably be confident are very positive in expectation. (One can never be so confident of actual outcomes in any given instance, but being robustly positive in prospect is what's decision-relevant.)
6. Beneficent efforts can be expected to prove (much) more effective if guided by careful, in-depth empirical research. Quantitative tools and evidence, used wisely, can help us to do more good.
7. So it's good and virtuous to use quantitatively tools and evidence wisely.
8. GiveWell does incredibly careful, in-depth empirical research evaluating promising-seeming global charities, using quantitative tools and evidence wisely.
9. So it's good and virtuous to be guided by GiveWell (or comparably high-quality evaluators) rather than less-effective alternatives like choosing charities based on locality, personal passion, or gut feelings.
10. There's no good reason to think that GiveWell's top charities are net harmful.[1]
11. But even if you're the world's most extreme aid skeptic, it's clearly good and virtuous to voluntary redistribute your own wealth to some of the world's poorest people via GiveDirectly. (And again: more good and virtuous than typical alternatives.)
12. Many are repelled by how "hands-off" effective philanthropy is compared to (e.g.) local volunteering. But it's good and virtuous to care more about saving and improving lives than about being hands on. To prioritize the latter over the former would be morally self-indulgent.
13. Hits-based giving is a good idea. A portfolio of long shots can collectively be likely to do more good than putting all your resources into lower-expected-value "sure things". In such cases, this is worth doing.
14. Even if one-off cases, it is often better and more virtuous to accept some risk of inefficacy in exchange for a reasonable shot at proportionately greater positive impact. (But reasonable people can disagree about which trade-offs of this sort are worth it.)
15. The above point encompasses much relating to politics and "systemic change", in addition to longtermist long-shots. It's very possible for well-targeted efforts in these areas to be even better in expectation than traditional philanthropy - just note that this potential impact comes at ...