Mo Putera comments on EA is Not Religious Enough (EA should emulate peak Quakerism)

[Mo Putera]

I interpret 80000 Hours as explaining this in their What is social impact? page (emphasis mine):

What does it mean to act ethically? Moral philosophers have debated this question for millennia, and have arrived at three main kinds of answers:

1. Making the world better — e.g. helping others.

2. Acting rightly — e.g. respecting the rights of others and not doing wrong.

3. Being virtuous — e.g. being honest, kind, and wise.

These correspond to consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, respectively.

We think all three perspectives have something to offer, but when our readers talk about wanting to “make a difference,” they’re most interested in the first of these perspectives — changing the world for the better.

We agree this focus makes sense — we don’t just want to avoid doing wrong, or live honest lives, but actually leave the world better than we found it. And there is a lot we can all do to get better at that. …

In our essay on your most important decision, we argued that some career paths open to you will do hundreds of times more to make the world a better place than others. So it seems really important to figure out what those paths are.

In contrast, it’s often a lot easier to know whether a path violates someone’s rights or involves virtuous behaviour (most career paths seem pretty OK on those fronts), so there’s less to gain from focusing there.

In fact, even people who emphasise moral rules and virtue agree that if you can make others better off, that’s a good thing to do, and that it’s even better to make more people better off than fewer. (And in general we think deontologists and utilitarians agree a lot more than people think.) …

Since there seem to be big opportunities to make people better off, and some seem to be better than others, we should focus on finding those.

So, while we think it’s really important to avoid harming others and to strive to act virtuously, when it comes to real decisions, we think the potential positive consequences are what we should focus on the most.

[Peter]

I think building skills to become better at research and building skills to become better at things like dealing with stress or interacting with others are both important to having a greater positive impact on the world, so my point wasn’t exactly about deontology vs consequentialism.

And I’d guess EA probably has more concrete consensus on the former than the latter.