EDIT: I wrote a pitch and sent it to the Guardian’s op-ed page. Given how quickly news cycles change, I think time is of the essence, but I’m also wary of reputational risks to EA, so I’d be happy to work with comms professionals about the best way to approach this, should they decide to run the piece.
I’m a freelance journalist and previously worked in fundraising at GiveDirectly. I may be able to write a draft tomorrow, or at least an op-ed pitch. If people have concerns/ideas, feel free to comment or DM me.
I’ve written for lefty outlets before and was thinking that the Guardian may be a good place to try to run this. It’s still likely to be rejected because these things are competitive. Worst case, I could write something on Medium that could go up quickly.
The general idea would be to agree that the $6B to solve world hunger claim is problematic, and pivot to filling the funding gaps of the GiveWell charities. GiveDirectly has the most room for funding, and could scale up a lot if needed (we went from ~$50M per year to $320M in 2020). Musk also donated $~15k in doge coin to GD while I was there. Trying to move into other cause areas is likely to be confusing and overreaching IMO. I had a short discussion of a similar idea in a past piece I wrote.
Relevant quote:
“We can learn a bit more about Koch by examining some of his claims in the interview. In response to the above question, Koch says:
I don’t like the term capitalism, that assumes that what we’re after is a system where certain people have a lot of capital. That’s not what we’re about. What we’re after is a system where everybody has the opportunity to realize their potential, including those who start with nothing. And businesses should only profit to the extent that they’re helping other people improve their lives… And polluting and making people sick, killing people shouldn’t profit. They should bear a cost for that…our biggest failures in our mind are safety problems. When there’s an accident and people die, I mean, that’s monstrous. Job one is keeping people safe and job two is protecting the environment. In the last 5 years, the EPA has ranked us either number one or two of US companies in pollution reduction initiatives.
There’s a lot to unpack here. If Charles isn’t “about” a system where certain people have a lot of capital, then why does he have over $47 billion? If he wanted to prove how not about capitalism he was, he could give away his capital. There is certainly no shortage of social problems that could be addressed by $47 billion. With the interest on his fortune, Charles could fully prevent and treat neglected tropical diseases that affect more than a billion people annually. With his principal, he could end extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day) for a year in all of Nigeria, Brazil, India, China, and Angola. Now this level of giving is not sustainable even for Mr. Koch, but that’s okay, because he’s not “about” anyone having that much money.”
I had a short discussion of a similar idea in a past piece I wrote.
Your pieces on Charles Koch is pretty ungenerous to him—it’s almost entirely criticism, accuses him of acting in bad faith, etc. Is this what you were thinking of doing with Musk? I’m not sure attacking him would be the best method of persuading someone who his already sympathetic to EA (and his followers).
I decided against writing a piece, but I think I actually engage honestly with Koch’s claims. I think there’s a strong case that Charles Koch has done more harm than almost anyone alive in the last 40 years, which I make in the piece. If you’d like more evidence for this, I recommend the book Dark Money.
If you can point to specific things you think I got wrong, I’d be happy to hear them. If we can’t be honest about the impact and motivations of people as odious as Charles Koch, I think we should reevaluate some things.
I wouldn’t have approached writing about Musk in the same way for a few reasons:
I wasn’t writing the CA piece in the hopes that Koch would read it and change his ways.
Musk has been sympathetic to EA ideas in the past and seems more genuinely motivated to help others (in his own way) than Koch
His core business may actually be net positive, while Koch’s is almost certainly not.
To be fair, that article was written for Current Affairs, not exactly a news outlet widely known for accuracy or nuance. I hope the Guardian is better.
Is that a defence? (Like, assuming arguendo that we agree with Larks’s characterisation, does the fact that one was published in a mean uncharitable magazine reduce the badness of writing a mean uncharitable article?)
I think so, at least a little. If I learned that someone wrote a bombastic/uncharitable/inaccurate article in a magazine otherwise known for levelheadedness/charitabilty/accuracy, this seems more blameworthy than if the value-above-replacement is 0.
This is a very similar argument to why we at least in part judge historical figures “for their time” and not entirely based on modern sensibilities.
I’m less interested in the blameworthiness angle, and more in the question of how one should use this sort of evidence when deciding how to interact with / relate to a given writer in the future. (For this and other reasons this seems quite different to the historical figure case to me.)
There are some defences I could see reducing the size of the update I would make on seeing that someone wrote something I find mean/uncharitable/otherwise unvirtuous – for example, “I wanted to reach that audience on some key issue, and needed to write in a nastier style to do that”, or “journalism work is hard to come by, sometimes you have to hold your nose and jump in the mud”. But these seem like pretty small counter-updates relative to the first-order evidence that someone wrote something mean and uncharitable.
Hmm, thinking personally, my tweets are definitely more off the cuff and don’t live up to the same standard of rigor as my academic papers. I think this is reasonable, since that’s what people are expecting from tweets vs academic papers, so I expect the audience will update differently based on them. Also, it’s probably good for society/the marketplace of ideas for there to be different venues with different standards (eg., op-eds vs news articles; preprints vs peer-reviewed papers, etc). The case here seems potentially* somewhat similar (let’s say, hypothetically, that we’re 75% sure that Koch is acting in bad faith; I wouldn’t want CNN then saying that he’s probably acting in bad faith, but it seems reasonable for a piece in CA to do so).
*note I haven’t actually read the piece in question, but I think the general point stands
“the EPA has ranked us either number one or two of US companies in pollution reduction initiatives”
This kinda makes me laugh, because the only way to be the company that reduces their pollution the most is to be polluting a ton in the first place. This is like saying “I know I’m a hero, because in the past year I’ve reduced the annual number of people I’ve killed more than anyone else”.
Reminds me of Nixon’s famous invocation of the third derivative:
When campaigning for a second term in office, U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing, which has been noted as “the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.”
If Guardian doesn’t accept the pitch, will you still write the actual article? (I don’t know how journalism works.)
In any case, I want to note that I’d like to read any article you do end up writing on this even if you don’t manage to get it published in Guardian, etc.
There are EA groups working on food security as a system, such as ALLFED, however while some of the work looks at today’s systems, much is concerned about future crop losses in the 5-10% range, up to nuclear winter and wars. It may be something to consider in the context of his tweet and your article, however it is more abstract than food aid today, more about designing ethical and resiliant ways to manufacture foods and the social systems needed to feed everyone in shocks—where the food equivalent of a bank run commonly occurs.
Candidly, I’m not super informed on global food insecurity and would try to avoid getting too bogged down in engaging deeply with Beasley’s claim (which seems pretty unlikely to be true, as OP spelled out nicely). But if there is a good EA write up on the topic, I might be able to bone up while writing the piece (assuming it gets assigned).
EDIT: I wrote a pitch and sent it to the Guardian’s op-ed page. Given how quickly news cycles change, I think time is of the essence, but I’m also wary of reputational risks to EA, so I’d be happy to work with comms professionals about the best way to approach this, should they decide to run the piece.
I’m a freelance journalist and previously worked in fundraising at GiveDirectly. I may be able to write a draft tomorrow, or at least an op-ed pitch. If people have concerns/ideas, feel free to comment or DM me.
I’ve written for lefty outlets before and was thinking that the Guardian may be a good place to try to run this. It’s still likely to be rejected because these things are competitive. Worst case, I could write something on Medium that could go up quickly.
The general idea would be to agree that the $6B to solve world hunger claim is problematic, and pivot to filling the funding gaps of the GiveWell charities. GiveDirectly has the most room for funding, and could scale up a lot if needed (we went from ~$50M per year to $320M in 2020). Musk also donated $~15k in doge coin to GD while I was there. Trying to move into other cause areas is likely to be confusing and overreaching IMO. I had a short discussion of a similar idea in a past piece I wrote.
Relevant quote:
“We can learn a bit more about Koch by examining some of his claims in the interview. In response to the above question, Koch says:
There’s a lot to unpack here. If Charles isn’t “about” a system where certain people have a lot of capital, then why does he have over $47 billion? If he wanted to prove how not about capitalism he was, he could give away his capital. There is certainly no shortage of social problems that could be addressed by $47 billion. With the interest on his fortune, Charles could fully prevent and treat neglected tropical diseases that affect more than a billion people annually. With his principal, he could end extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 per day) for a year in all of Nigeria, Brazil, India, China, and Angola. Now this level of giving is not sustainable even for Mr. Koch, but that’s okay, because he’s not “about” anyone having that much money.”
Your pieces on Charles Koch is pretty ungenerous to him—it’s almost entirely criticism, accuses him of acting in bad faith, etc. Is this what you were thinking of doing with Musk? I’m not sure attacking him would be the best method of persuading someone who his already sympathetic to EA (and his followers).
I decided against writing a piece, but I think I actually engage honestly with Koch’s claims. I think there’s a strong case that Charles Koch has done more harm than almost anyone alive in the last 40 years, which I make in the piece. If you’d like more evidence for this, I recommend the book Dark Money.
If you can point to specific things you think I got wrong, I’d be happy to hear them. If we can’t be honest about the impact and motivations of people as odious as Charles Koch, I think we should reevaluate some things.
I wouldn’t have approached writing about Musk in the same way for a few reasons:
I wasn’t writing the CA piece in the hopes that Koch would read it and change his ways.
Musk has been sympathetic to EA ideas in the past and seems more genuinely motivated to help others (in his own way) than Koch
His core business may actually be net positive, while Koch’s is almost certainly not.
To be fair, that article was written for Current Affairs, not exactly a news outlet widely known for accuracy or nuance. I hope the Guardian is better.
Is that a defence? (Like, assuming arguendo that we agree with Larks’s characterisation, does the fact that one was published in a mean uncharitable magazine reduce the badness of writing a mean uncharitable article?)
I think so, at least a little. If I learned that someone wrote a bombastic/uncharitable/inaccurate article in a magazine otherwise known for levelheadedness/charitabilty/accuracy, this seems more blameworthy than if the value-above-replacement is 0.
This is a very similar argument to why we at least in part judge historical figures “for their time” and not entirely based on modern sensibilities.
I’m less interested in the blameworthiness angle, and more in the question of how one should use this sort of evidence when deciding how to interact with / relate to a given writer in the future. (For this and other reasons this seems quite different to the historical figure case to me.)
There are some defences I could see reducing the size of the update I would make on seeing that someone wrote something I find mean/uncharitable/otherwise unvirtuous – for example, “I wanted to reach that audience on some key issue, and needed to write in a nastier style to do that”, or “journalism work is hard to come by, sometimes you have to hold your nose and jump in the mud”. But these seem like pretty small counter-updates relative to the first-order evidence that someone wrote something mean and uncharitable.
Hmm, thinking personally, my tweets are definitely more off the cuff and don’t live up to the same standard of rigor as my academic papers. I think this is reasonable, since that’s what people are expecting from tweets vs academic papers, so I expect the audience will update differently based on them. Also, it’s probably good for society/the marketplace of ideas for there to be different venues with different standards (eg., op-eds vs news articles; preprints vs peer-reviewed papers, etc). The case here seems potentially* somewhat similar (let’s say, hypothetically, that we’re 75% sure that Koch is acting in bad faith; I wouldn’t want CNN then saying that he’s probably acting in bad faith, but it seems reasonable for a piece in CA to do so).
*note I haven’t actually read the piece in question, but I think the general point stands
“the EPA has ranked us either number one or two of US companies in pollution reduction initiatives”
This kinda makes me laugh, because the only way to be the company that reduces their pollution the most is to be polluting a ton in the first place. This is like saying “I know I’m a hero, because in the past year I’ve reduced the annual number of people I’ve killed more than anyone else”.
Reminds me of Nixon’s famous invocation of the third derivative:
Yeah, the whole interview is filled with fun stuff like that.
If Guardian doesn’t accept the pitch, will you still write the actual article? (I don’t know how journalism works.)
In any case, I want to note that I’d like to read any article you do end up writing on this even if you don’t manage to get it published in Guardian, etc.
There are EA groups working on food security as a system, such as ALLFED, however while some of the work looks at today’s systems, much is concerned about future crop losses in the 5-10% range, up to nuclear winter and wars. It may be something to consider in the context of his tweet and your article, however it is more abstract than food aid today, more about designing ethical and resiliant ways to manufacture foods and the social systems needed to feed everyone in shocks—where the food equivalent of a bank run commonly occurs.
Candidly, I’m not super informed on global food insecurity and would try to avoid getting too bogged down in engaging deeply with Beasley’s claim (which seems pretty unlikely to be true, as OP spelled out nicely). But if there is a good EA write up on the topic, I might be able to bone up while writing the piece (assuming it gets assigned).