I donât think thereâs a clean answer to this, since not all âsystemâ critics have strong ideas about what the âsystemâ is, and those with strong ideas still donât see eye-to-eye. Some arenât even leftist (Iâd also put, say, Angus Deaton in this category, since he sees EA as addressing symptoms rather than root causes).
The best way to learn about this is to read critics carefully and try to interpret their words charitably. You can find a lot of EA criticism on this page developed by CEA. Iâd especially recommend the following sections:
Does effective altruism neglect systemic change?
Does charity and aid really work?
Does effective altruism neglect effective interventions when the impact canât be measured?
--
If I had to give a quick summary of the âsystemâ objection that I thought critics from anywhere on the political spectrum would generally support, Iâd say something like:
âMany attempts to fix problems by throwing money at the apparent direct cause of the problem have failed or had little impact, because the reason the problem was happening was not actually this âdirect causeâ.
âEffective altruism seems to focus on attacking the direct causes of problems in the development space, without as much energy going toward the considerable work that has been done on political and economic systems that are an ongoing source of problems and wonât be improved by spending on âdirect causesâ.â
For a leftist, the âsystemsâ I mentioned might be capitalism and (at the far edges of leftism) what we think of as âdemocracyâ (which may not actually be very democratic). For a non-leftist, the systems could be over-regulation by governments, restrictive immigration laws, tyranny and corruption within governments, etc. (That said, I donât think political lines are always this clearly drawnâthere are right-wing anticapitalists and socialists who support open borders.)
--
Overall, I donât think these objections make much sense nowadays. EA is moving quickly toward more work on policy and systemic change, and we were already deeply involved in those things years ago.
From my viewpoint, to the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is correct, EA should internalize this criticism, and should effectively change socioeconomic systems better than leftists ever expected from us, and perhaps better than leftist political movements themselves (lots of them donât appear to be active or at least effective in actually changing âthe systemâ they themselves criticize EA for neglecting). If thatâs the case, I think what weâve been doing is mostly lip service, or bending the activities we currently support out of shape to look like the systemic change leftists criticize us for not engaging in enough. Itâs plausible something like EA donations to Givewell-recommended charities like GiveDirectly or the AMF taken to their logical conclusion leads to the best systemic change we could reliably seek to enact. Yet I donât think weâve done our diligence to check that is in fact the case, or there is a kind of effective systemic socio-political/âsocio-economic change we should participate in.
While EA is quickly moving toward policy work, a comprehensive and legible slate of what the global EA efforts in this regard are doesnât exist. I could tell you most of whatâs going on in EA on the fronts of global poverty alleviation; mental health; animal welfare; AI alignment, and other x-risks. Iâm not confident I could map out even a minority of the policy work going on in EA if someone asked me.
To the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is incorrect, as EA enters the policy arena more and more, we will once again come in friction with leftist (and other political movements), unlike EA has since its inception. The difference this time is we would be asserting the systemic change weâre pursuing is more effective (and/âor in other ways better) than the systemic change other movements are engaging in. And if thatâs the case, I think EA needs to engage the communities of our critics just as critically as they have engaged us. This is something Iâve begun working on myself.
I also donât know of any single place where most EA policy work is gathered together for easy reference, and Iâd be grateful to anyone who compiled such a resource.
To the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is correct, EA should internalize this criticism, and should effectively change socioeconomic systems better than leftists ever expected from us.
I maintain that I donât think the criticism is âcorrectâ in any meaningful sense. Past EA efforts to examine possibilities for systemic change generally concluded that doing so wasnât worthwhile given the limited resources at our disposal (one notable exception is Open Phil, which has more available resources than any other organization in EA).
Iâm in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donât know that âEAâ is responsible for that workâit has to be done by individuals, and helped along by organizations who provide incentives to those individuals, but there are reasonable incentives in place already (at least for some areas of policy). Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenât?
(I often see arguments like âEA should do Xâ, but rarely âorg Y should do Xâ or âindividuals in group Z should do Xâ, even though arguments of the latter types seem more useful.)
Yet I donât think weâve done our diligence to check that is in fact the case, or there is a kind of effective systemic socio-political/âsocio-economic change we should participate in.
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Iâm in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donât know that âEAâ is responsible for that work
I agree. Itâs my habit for the sake of argument in casual and generic discussions in EA to treat âEAâ as a unitary blob of resources. I agree if weâre seriously trying to getpoliy specific, it doesnât make sense to talk about EA as a whole unit, but the individual actions of particular actors in and around the EA ecosystem.
Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenât?
I havenât thought about this enough to name specific organizations. There appear to be blocs within EA who support policy reform in particular areas, which may or may not be shared with the Open Philanthropy Project. However, unlike Open Phil, the most a bloc of supporters for a particular kind of policy reform in EA appear to organize themselves into is an informal association that is all talk, no action. When I think of EA-connected policy work, the following comes to mind:
Open Phil, through their grants.
The NGOs Open Phil grants to, which usually either predate EA, or are largely independent of the community aside from their relationship with Open Phil.
A number of academic/âresearch policy institutes focused on global coordination, AI alignment, and other x-risks, launched in tandem with some of the worldâs leading research universities, such as UC Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge.
In other words, these are all orgs that probably would have gotten off the ground, and could achieve their goals, without the support of EA, except for Open Phil as an EA-aligned org. And by âOpen Philâ, itâs more like just Good Ventures and a handful of program officers. So if we subtract their efforts from the rest of the policy work the EA community can take credit for, there isnât much left.
Collectively combined, the rest of the EA community is several thousand people with a decade of experience through dozens of independently launched NGOs/âNPOs and tens of millions of dollars at their disposal who, for all we talk about public policy, havenât done much about it. I believe some EA associations in Europe have done some policy consulting, yet, for example, in the United States, the most significant policy work that Iâm aware has ever been tried in EA independent of Open Phil was EA Policy Analytics, which didnât go very far.
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Iâd like to see more comprehensive responses to individual critiques of EA in history, and also to the body of criticism of EA in general. I think the series of more informal blog posts different EAs have written as responses to such critiques over the years have been okay, but they havenât really moved the dial. My impression EA, and our leftist critics, have reached a stand-still/âimpasse, but this is unnecessary. A systematic review of leftist criticism of EA is something Iâm working on myself, though it isnât at the top of my priority list to finish it in the near future.
I donât think thereâs a clean answer to this, since not all âsystemâ critics have strong ideas about what the âsystemâ is, and those with strong ideas still donât see eye-to-eye. Some arenât even leftist (Iâd also put, say, Angus Deaton in this category, since he sees EA as addressing symptoms rather than root causes).
The best way to learn about this is to read critics carefully and try to interpret their words charitably. You can find a lot of EA criticism on this page developed by CEA. Iâd especially recommend the following sections:
Does effective altruism neglect systemic change?
Does charity and aid really work?
Does effective altruism neglect effective interventions when the impact canât be measured?
--
If I had to give a quick summary of the âsystemâ objection that I thought critics from anywhere on the political spectrum would generally support, Iâd say something like:
âMany attempts to fix problems by throwing money at the apparent direct cause of the problem have failed or had little impact, because the reason the problem was happening was not actually this âdirect causeâ.
âEffective altruism seems to focus on attacking the direct causes of problems in the development space, without as much energy going toward the considerable work that has been done on political and economic systems that are an ongoing source of problems and wonât be improved by spending on âdirect causesâ.â
For a leftist, the âsystemsâ I mentioned might be capitalism and (at the far edges of leftism) what we think of as âdemocracyâ (which may not actually be very democratic). For a non-leftist, the systems could be over-regulation by governments, restrictive immigration laws, tyranny and corruption within governments, etc. (That said, I donât think political lines are always this clearly drawnâthere are right-wing anticapitalists and socialists who support open borders.)
--
Overall, I donât think these objections make much sense nowadays. EA is moving quickly toward more work on policy and systemic change, and we were already deeply involved in those things years ago.
From my viewpoint, to the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is correct, EA should internalize this criticism, and should effectively change socioeconomic systems better than leftists ever expected from us, and perhaps better than leftist political movements themselves (lots of them donât appear to be active or at least effective in actually changing âthe systemâ they themselves criticize EA for neglecting). If thatâs the case, I think what weâve been doing is mostly lip service, or bending the activities we currently support out of shape to look like the systemic change leftists criticize us for not engaging in enough. Itâs plausible something like EA donations to Givewell-recommended charities like GiveDirectly or the AMF taken to their logical conclusion leads to the best systemic change we could reliably seek to enact. Yet I donât think weâve done our diligence to check that is in fact the case, or there is a kind of effective systemic socio-political/âsocio-economic change we should participate in.
While EA is quickly moving toward policy work, a comprehensive and legible slate of what the global EA efforts in this regard are doesnât exist. I could tell you most of whatâs going on in EA on the fronts of global poverty alleviation; mental health; animal welfare; AI alignment, and other x-risks. Iâm not confident I could map out even a minority of the policy work going on in EA if someone asked me.
To the extent the systemic change criticism of EA is incorrect, as EA enters the policy arena more and more, we will once again come in friction with leftist (and other political movements), unlike EA has since its inception. The difference this time is we would be asserting the systemic change weâre pursuing is more effective (and/âor in other ways better) than the systemic change other movements are engaging in. And if thatâs the case, I think EA needs to engage the communities of our critics just as critically as they have engaged us. This is something Iâve begun working on myself.
I also donât know of any single place where most EA policy work is gathered together for easy reference, and Iâd be grateful to anyone who compiled such a resource.
I maintain that I donât think the criticism is âcorrectâ in any meaningful sense. Past EA efforts to examine possibilities for systemic change generally concluded that doing so wasnât worthwhile given the limited resources at our disposal (one notable exception is Open Phil, which has more available resources than any other organization in EA).
Iâm in favor of more work on figuring out policy strategy from an effectiveness perspective, but I donât know that âEAâ is responsible for that workâit has to be done by individuals, and helped along by organizations who provide incentives to those individuals, but there are reasonable incentives in place already (at least for some areas of policy). Are there specific actors within EA who ought to be doing more, but arenât?
(I often see arguments like âEA should do Xâ, but rarely âorg Y should do Xâ or âindividuals in group Z should do Xâ, even though arguments of the latter types seem more useful.)
What would this due diligence look like? Is there a certain thing you wish someone had created that no one has? Have people created the kinds of things you want, but in a low-quality fashion?
Also, I expect GiveWellâs upcoming policy change work (and ongoing work by orgs like J-PAL that have GiveWell funding) to generate a lot of systematic change per dollar spent. Have you looked at J-PALâs Innovation in Government Initiative at all?
I agree. Itâs my habit for the sake of argument in casual and generic discussions in EA to treat âEAâ as a unitary blob of resources. I agree if weâre seriously trying to getpoliy specific, it doesnât make sense to talk about EA as a whole unit, but the individual actions of particular actors in and around the EA ecosystem.
I havenât thought about this enough to name specific organizations. There appear to be blocs within EA who support policy reform in particular areas, which may or may not be shared with the Open Philanthropy Project. However, unlike Open Phil, the most a bloc of supporters for a particular kind of policy reform in EA appear to organize themselves into is an informal association that is all talk, no action. When I think of EA-connected policy work, the following comes to mind:
Open Phil, through their grants.
The NGOs Open Phil grants to, which usually either predate EA, or are largely independent of the community aside from their relationship with Open Phil.
A number of academic/âresearch policy institutes focused on global coordination, AI alignment, and other x-risks, launched in tandem with some of the worldâs leading research universities, such as UC Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge.
In other words, these are all orgs that probably would have gotten off the ground, and could achieve their goals, without the support of EA, except for Open Phil as an EA-aligned org. And by âOpen Philâ, itâs more like just Good Ventures and a handful of program officers. So if we subtract their efforts from the rest of the policy work the EA community can take credit for, there isnât much left.
Collectively combined, the rest of the EA community is several thousand people with a decade of experience through dozens of independently launched NGOs/âNPOs and tens of millions of dollars at their disposal who, for all we talk about public policy, havenât done much about it. I believe some EA associations in Europe have done some policy consulting, yet, for example, in the United States, the most significant policy work that Iâm aware has ever been tried in EA independent of Open Phil was EA Policy Analytics, which didnât go very far.
Iâd like to see more comprehensive responses to individual critiques of EA in history, and also to the body of criticism of EA in general. I think the series of more informal blog posts different EAs have written as responses to such critiques over the years have been okay, but they havenât really moved the dial. My impression EA, and our leftist critics, have reached a stand-still/âimpasse, but this is unnecessary. A systematic review of leftist criticism of EA is something Iâm working on myself, though it isnât at the top of my priority list to finish it in the near future.
I havenât. Iâll check them out. I wasnât aware of these developments, so thanks for bringing them to my attention.