One of the defining characteristics of EA is rejecting certain specific reasons for counting people unequally; in particular, under EA ideology, helping someone in a distant country is just as good as helping a nearby person by the same amout. Combined with the empirical fact that a dollar has much larger effect when spent on carefully chosen interventions in poorer countries, this leads to EA emphazing on poverty-reduction programs in poor, mainly African countries, in contrast to non-EA philanthropy which tends to favor donations local to wherever the donor is.
This is narrower than the broad philosophical commitment Habryka is talking about, though. Taken as a broad philosophical commitment, “all people count equally” would force some strange conclusions when translated into a QALY framework, and when applied to AI, and also would imply that you shouldn’t favor people close to you over people in distant poor countries at all,even if the QUALYs-per-dollar were similar. I think most EAs are in a position where they’re willing to pay $X/QALY to extend the lives of distant strangers, $5X/QALY to extend the lives of acquaintances, and $100X/QALY to extend the lives of close friends and family. And I think this is philosophically coherent and consistent with being an effective altruist.
One of the defining characteristics of EA is rejecting certain specific reasons for counting people unequally; in particular, under EA ideology, helping someone in a distant country is just as good as helping a nearby person by the same amout. Combined with the empirical fact that a dollar has much larger effect when spent on carefully chosen interventions in poorer countries, this leads to EA emphazing on poverty-reduction programs in poor, mainly African countries, in contrast to non-EA philanthropy which tends to favor donations local to wherever the donor is.
This is narrower than the broad philosophical commitment Habryka is talking about, though. Taken as a broad philosophical commitment, “all people count equally” would force some strange conclusions when translated into a QALY framework, and when applied to AI, and also would imply that you shouldn’t favor people close to you over people in distant poor countries at all, even if the QUALYs-per-dollar were similar. I think most EAs are in a position where they’re willing to pay $X/QALY to extend the lives of distant strangers, $5X/QALY to extend the lives of acquaintances, and $100X/QALY to extend the lives of close friends and family. And I think this is philosophically coherent and consistent with being an effective altruist.