As a ‘well-known’ EA, I would say that you can reasonably say that EA has one of two goals: a) to ‘do the most good’ (leaving what ‘goodness’ is undefined); b) to promote the wellbeing of all (accepting that EA is about altruism in that it’s always ultimately about the lives of sentient creatures, but not coming down on a specific view of what wellbeing consists in). I prefer the latter definition (for various reasons; I think it’s a more honest representation of how EAs behave and what they believe), though think that as the term is currently used either is reasonable. Although reducing suffering is an important component of EA under either framing, under neither is the goal simply to minimize suffering, and I don’t think that Peter Singer, Toby Ord or Holden Karnofsky (etc) would object to me saying that they don’t think of this as the only goal either.
I’m hopeful that the few times I’ve heard “minimize/reduce suffering” were out of context or misconstrued (or was said by lesser-known EAs than I thought).
Hi Will. I would be very interested to hear the various reasons you have for preferring the latter definition?
I prefer the first of the two definitions that you give, primarily leaning towards it because it makes less assumptions about what it means to do good and I have a strong intuition that EA benefits by being open to all forms of doing good.
As a ‘well-known’ EA, I would say that you can reasonably say that EA has one of two goals: a) to ‘do the most good’ (leaving what ‘goodness’ is undefined); b) to promote the wellbeing of all (accepting that EA is about altruism in that it’s always ultimately about the lives of sentient creatures, but not coming down on a specific view of what wellbeing consists in). I prefer the latter definition (for various reasons; I think it’s a more honest representation of how EAs behave and what they believe), though think that as the term is currently used either is reasonable. Although reducing suffering is an important component of EA under either framing, under neither is the goal simply to minimize suffering, and I don’t think that Peter Singer, Toby Ord or Holden Karnofsky (etc) would object to me saying that they don’t think of this as the only goal either.
Thanks Will. I also prefer the latter definition.
I’m hopeful that the few times I’ve heard “minimize/reduce suffering” were out of context or misconstrued (or was said by lesser-known EAs than I thought).
Hi Will. I would be very interested to hear the various reasons you have for preferring the latter definition? I prefer the first of the two definitions that you give, primarily leaning towards it because it makes less assumptions about what it means to do good and I have a strong intuition that EA benefits by being open to all forms of doing good.