Vincent, your comment goes to the point I was trying to make. If a rich person has two options: (a) give money to charity; or (b) buy a yacht, and chooses (b), we (or at least I) don’t say he is behaving sub-optimally but that he is behaving unethically. Putting aside whether the Ivy league grad would enjoy working for a charity more than working in finance, how is her choice any different from the rich person’s choice? If she takes a job at a charity (assuming one for which she is entirely replaceable), rather than taking a job in finance and giving away half of her salary, she is effectively throwing away the money should could have made in finance rather than donating it to charity. How is that different than taking the job and buying a yacht? It seems intuitively different because her motives are different, but that’s irrelevant if you’re a consequentialist (which seems like part of EA’s fabric).
From a marketing perspective, I see why we don’t want to encourage stealing (which I still think could be done in a utility-maximizing manner) or claims that charity-minded Ivy league grads are as bad as yacht-buying millionaires, but if the only reason we don’t go there is for marketing reasons, that seems like a problem.
As to why this is a critique: I worry that the marketing strategy for EA whitewashes how radical its underlying premise truly is: that we owe the same duty to someone across the world as we do to someone right in front of us. Fully embracing that premise can lead us to extraordinarily counterintuitive (and unpalatable for many) places.
As to why this is a critique: I worry that the marketing strategy for EA whitewashes how radical its underlying premise truly is: that we owe the same duty to someone across the world as we do to someone right in front of us. Fully embracing that premise can lead us to extraordinarily counterintuitive (and unpalatable for many) places.
That I agree with. Obscuring/whitewashing it may be tactically wise however, and I think there’s been some posts here about whether EA really is consequentialist.
It’s better to say they were behaving suboptimally.
Vincent, your comment goes to the point I was trying to make. If a rich person has two options: (a) give money to charity; or (b) buy a yacht, and chooses (b), we (or at least I) don’t say he is behaving sub-optimally but that he is behaving unethically. Putting aside whether the Ivy league grad would enjoy working for a charity more than working in finance, how is her choice any different from the rich person’s choice? If she takes a job at a charity (assuming one for which she is entirely replaceable), rather than taking a job in finance and giving away half of her salary, she is effectively throwing away the money should could have made in finance rather than donating it to charity. How is that different than taking the job and buying a yacht? It seems intuitively different because her motives are different, but that’s irrelevant if you’re a consequentialist (which seems like part of EA’s fabric).
From a marketing perspective, I see why we don’t want to encourage stealing (which I still think could be done in a utility-maximizing manner) or claims that charity-minded Ivy league grads are as bad as yacht-buying millionaires, but if the only reason we don’t go there is for marketing reasons, that seems like a problem.
As to why this is a critique: I worry that the marketing strategy for EA whitewashes how radical its underlying premise truly is: that we owe the same duty to someone across the world as we do to someone right in front of us. Fully embracing that premise can lead us to extraordinarily counterintuitive (and unpalatable for many) places.
That I agree with. Obscuring/whitewashing it may be tactically wise however, and I think there’s been some posts here about whether EA really is consequentialist.