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Effective Altruism: The short course




I mentioned "effective altruism" in one of my posts about Michael Lewis. I'm going to circle back on that now.  What the heck is it? 

In essence, it is a theory that has branched off of the strict utilitarianism, of Peter Singer, under the slogan (not Singer's) of "earn to give."  

The idea: people with the skill to take very high earning jobs, (to run hedge funds) and who have utilitarian convictions, should take those jobs. They would waste their efforts and utilitarian convictions caring for the ill or digging water wells in parts of the underdeveloped world.  No: they should do the Wall Street wheeling and dealing, earn lots of money, and then use it altruistically. They can PAY people to dig water wells.    

Further: effective altruism (EA) has tended to take a very long-term view of things. The utility of people who won't be born for another 500 years is as important as that of people alive today. This argument is key to the work of William MacAskill, author of WHAT WE OWE THE FUTURE (2022).  

Don't be fooled by the publication date of that book. The key ideas have been in circulation within EA circles for a bit longer. At least back to 2014, when MacAskill received his Ph.D. from St Anne's Oxford. 

When EA believers do become big earners, what they DO with that money is often for the benefit of the distant descendants of today's humans. So forget water wells altogether.  The EA money often goes to projects that will help ward off a robot takeover of the world and the subsequent destruction of carbon-based life.  Assuming (for a second) that robots don't have "utility" in the relevant sense, that event would be a pure negative in utility, and any non-zero chance of its happening makes preventive measures very urgent.  

More so than something silly like, ooo I don't know, taking care of each other. 

That is, still in something of a nutshell, EA. Surely something in that chain of reasoning goes horribly wrong, EVEN IF (what is not always the case) the EAs wheeling and dealing for these big earn-to-give fortunes live Spartan lives themselves.

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  1. Paul D. Van PeltNovember 23, 2023 at 12:13 PM

    I am not much interested in this notion., for the following reasons. The whole idea of effective altruism goes back decades. Several years ago, there were treatments of this, and the idea of philanthropy, generally. Big school. In California. I pointed out that altruism and philanthropy are
    ultimately self-serving enterprises. Silence there. Then. Now. Wealthy people and organizations donate fractions of that wealth towards altruistic/philanthropic ventures. They lose nothing. And, should those donations equal zero benefit. There it is.

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    1. ChristopherNovember 23, 2023 at 9:15 PM

      I understand and sympathize with your lack of interest in the subject.

      Delete

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