This is with regards to political ideologies where either the disagreement over fundamental values, or at least basic facts that inform our moral judgements, are irreconcilable. Yet there will also be political movements with which EA can reconcile, as we would share the same fundamental values, but EA will nonetheless be responsible to criticize or challenge, on the grounds those movements are, in practice, using means or pursuing ends that put them in opposition to those of EA.
I’m going to critique Connor’s article, and in doing so attempt to “lead by example” in showing how I think critiques of this type are best engaged.
The best way to show solidarity is to strike at the heart of global inequality in our own land.
There’s two problems with Connor’s article, and they both have to do with this sentence.
The less important problem: Who is the “our” in the phrase “our own land”? We’re on the internet, yet Connor just assumes the reader’s allegiances, identity, location, etc. Why is everyone who is not in some particular land implicitly excluded from the conversation? Why is “us” not everyone and “our land” not the Earth?
EA is just as guilty of this, for example when people talk about dollars going farther “overseas”. This is the internet, donors and academics and direct workers and so on live in every country, so where is “local” and where is “overseas”, exactly? For all EA’s globalist ambitious, there is this assumption that people who are actually in a low-middle income country aren’t a part of the conversation. (I agree with everything the “dollar overseas” article actually says, just to be clear. The problem is what the phrasing means about the assumptions of the writers.)
It’s bad when Connor does it and it’s bad when effective altruists do it. Yes, we are writing for a specific audience, but that audience is anyone who takes the time to understand EA ideas and can speak the language written. This is part of what I’m talking about when I say that EA makes some very harmful assumptions about who exactly the agents of change are going to be and the scope of who “effective altruists” potentially are. This problem is not limited to EAs, it is widespread.
The problem isn’t the phrasing, of course, it’s what the phrasing indicates about the writer.
The more important problem, and on this forum, this one is preaching to the choir of course, is 2) You can’t just assume that your solidarity group is the most effective way to do things. Someone still has to do an impact evaluation on your social movement and the flow of talent and resources through that movement, including the particularactivities of any particular organization enacting that movement.
Thus far, Effective Altruists are at the forefront of actually attempting to do this in a transparent way for altruistic organizations. The expansion to policy change is still in its infancy, but …I would not be surprised if impact evaluations of attempting political movements and policy changes begin surfacing at some point.
Nor can you just assume that the best way to do things is local and that people should for some mysterious reason focus on things “in their own lands”. Yes, it may in fact be beneficial to be local at times, but...you have to actually check, you have to have some reasonable account of why this is the most effective thing for you to do.
Once you agree on certain very basic premises (that all humans are roughly equally important moral subjects, that the results of your actions are important, etc) I think all effective altruism really asks is that you attempt process of actually estimating the effect of your use of resources and talentin a rigorous way. This applies regardless of whether your method is philanthropy or collective action.
(What would Connor say if they read my comment? I suspect they would at the very least admit that it was not ideal to implicitly assume their audience like that. But I’d like to think any shrewd supporter of collective action would eventually ask...”Well okay, how do I actually do an impact evaluation of my collective action related plans?” And the result would hopefully be more rigorous and effective collective action, which is more likely to actually accomplish what it was intended to accomplish. I think it’s important that the response deconstructed the false dichotomy between “collective action” and “effective altruism”. The critic should begin asking: “okay, disagreements aside, what might these effective altruist frameworks for evaluating impact do for me?” and “If I think that this other thing is more effective, how can I quantitatively prove it?”)
I think the “less important problem” is related to the “more important problem”. For Connor, even if we grant that collective action is the best thing, the implicitly western “us” limits his vision as to what forms collective action could take, and which social movements people like himself might direct money, talent, or other resources towards. (For EAs, I would speculate that the implicit “us” limits our vision in different, more complicated ways, having to do with under-valuing certain forms of human capital in accomplishing EA goals—Just as Connor just assumes local is better, I think EAs sometimes just assume certain things that EAs tend to assume about exactly who is well placed to make effective impact (and therefore, who needs EA oriented advice, resources, education, training, etc). it’s a subject I’m still thinking about, and it’s the one I hope to write about later.
For all EA’s globalist ambitious, there is this assumption that people who are actually in a low-middle income country aren’t a part of the conversation
Come on, the assumption of the writers is “people looking to us for philanthropy advice are predominantly living in the First World,” and that assumption is correct. (And it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, either).
The problem isn’t the phrasing, of course, it’s what the phrasing indicates about the writer.
OK, then how do you know that it doesn’t merely indicate that the writer is good at writing and marketing?
You can’t just assume that your solidarity group is the most effective way to do things. Someone still has to do an impact evaluation on your social movement and the flow of talent and resources through that movement, including the particular activities of any particular organization enacting that movement.
More evaluations and analyses are always nice (and some EA orgs have done that kind of thing, I believe). But their value can be dubious and it may just be a fruitless meta trap. You may think that an EA organization is under-allocating time and money for meta evaluations, but other people are going to disagree, and the reasons for such disagreement need to be properly addressed before this kind of thing can be used as a general criticism.
No one has a monopoly on critiquing people merely for having unexamined assumptions. If you start it, it turns into a game of whataboutism and petty status-seeking where no actually useful progress is made to help with important efforts in the real world. Drop the methodology wars and focus on making actual progress.
I think that’s a little unfair. It wasn’t just have an “unexamined assumption”, he just declared that solidarity was the best way and named some organizations he liked, with no attempt at estimating and quantifying. And he’s critiquing EA, an ideology whose claim to fame is impact evaluations. Can an EA saying “okay that’s great, I agree that could be true… but how about having a quantitative impact evaluation… of any kind, at all, just to help cement the case” really be characterized as “whataboutism” / methodology war?
(I don’t think I agree with your first paragraph, but I do think it’s fair to argue that “but not all readers are in high income countries” is whataboutism until I more fully expand on what I think the practical implications are on impact evaluation. I’m going to save the discussion about the practical problems that arise from being first world centric for a different post, or drop them, depending on how my opinion changes after I’ve put more thought into it.)
I’m going to critique Connor’s article, and in doing so attempt to “lead by example” in showing how I think critiques of this type are best engaged.
There’s two problems with Connor’s article, and they both have to do with this sentence.
The less important problem: Who is the “our” in the phrase “our own land”? We’re on the internet, yet Connor just assumes the reader’s allegiances, identity, location, etc. Why is everyone who is not in some particular land implicitly excluded from the conversation? Why is “us” not everyone and “our land” not the Earth?
EA is just as guilty of this, for example when people talk about dollars going farther “overseas”. This is the internet, donors and academics and direct workers and so on live in every country, so where is “local” and where is “overseas”, exactly? For all EA’s globalist ambitious, there is this assumption that people who are actually in a low-middle income country aren’t a part of the conversation. (I agree with everything the “dollar overseas” article actually says, just to be clear. The problem is what the phrasing means about the assumptions of the writers.)
It’s bad when Connor does it and it’s bad when effective altruists do it. Yes, we are writing for a specific audience, but that audience is anyone who takes the time to understand EA ideas and can speak the language written. This is part of what I’m talking about when I say that EA makes some very harmful assumptions about who exactly the agents of change are going to be and the scope of who “effective altruists” potentially are. This problem is not limited to EAs, it is widespread.
The problem isn’t the phrasing, of course, it’s what the phrasing indicates about the writer.
The more important problem, and on this forum, this one is preaching to the choir of course, is 2) You can’t just assume that your solidarity group is the most effective way to do things. Someone still has to do an impact evaluation on your social movement and the flow of talent and resources through that movement, including the particular activities of any particular organization enacting that movement.
Thus far, Effective Altruists are at the forefront of actually attempting to do this in a transparent way for altruistic organizations. The expansion to policy change is still in its infancy, but …I would not be surprised if impact evaluations of attempting political movements and policy changes begin surfacing at some point.
Nor can you just assume that the best way to do things is local and that people should for some mysterious reason focus on things “in their own lands”. Yes, it may in fact be beneficial to be local at times, but...you have to actually check, you have to have some reasonable account of why this is the most effective thing for you to do.
Once you agree on certain very basic premises (that all humans are roughly equally important moral subjects, that the results of your actions are important, etc) I think all effective altruism really asks is that you attempt process of actually estimating the effect of your use of resources and talent in a rigorous way. This applies regardless of whether your method is philanthropy or collective action.
(What would Connor say if they read my comment? I suspect they would at the very least admit that it was not ideal to implicitly assume their audience like that. But I’d like to think any shrewd supporter of collective action would eventually ask...”Well okay, how do I actually do an impact evaluation of my collective action related plans?” And the result would hopefully be more rigorous and effective collective action, which is more likely to actually accomplish what it was intended to accomplish. I think it’s important that the response deconstructed the false dichotomy between “collective action” and “effective altruism”. The critic should begin asking: “okay, disagreements aside, what might these effective altruist frameworks for evaluating impact do for me?” and “If I think that this other thing is more effective, how can I quantitatively prove it?”)
I think the “less important problem” is related to the “more important problem”. For Connor, even if we grant that collective action is the best thing, the implicitly western “us” limits his vision as to what forms collective action could take, and which social movements people like himself might direct money, talent, or other resources towards. (For EAs, I would speculate that the implicit “us” limits our vision in different, more complicated ways, having to do with under-valuing certain forms of human capital in accomplishing EA goals—Just as Connor just assumes local is better, I think EAs sometimes just assume certain things that EAs tend to assume about exactly who is well placed to make effective impact (and therefore, who needs EA oriented advice, resources, education, training, etc). it’s a subject I’m still thinking about, and it’s the one I hope to write about later.
Come on, the assumption of the writers is “people looking to us for philanthropy advice are predominantly living in the First World,” and that assumption is correct. (And it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, either).
OK, then how do you know that it doesn’t merely indicate that the writer is good at writing and marketing?
More evaluations and analyses are always nice (and some EA orgs have done that kind of thing, I believe). But their value can be dubious and it may just be a fruitless meta trap. You may think that an EA organization is under-allocating time and money for meta evaluations, but other people are going to disagree, and the reasons for such disagreement need to be properly addressed before this kind of thing can be used as a general criticism.
No one has a monopoly on critiquing people merely for having unexamined assumptions. If you start it, it turns into a game of whataboutism and petty status-seeking where no actually useful progress is made to help with important efforts in the real world. Drop the methodology wars and focus on making actual progress.
I think that’s a little unfair. It wasn’t just have an “unexamined assumption”, he just declared that solidarity was the best way and named some organizations he liked, with no attempt at estimating and quantifying. And he’s critiquing EA, an ideology whose claim to fame is impact evaluations. Can an EA saying “okay that’s great, I agree that could be true… but how about having a quantitative impact evaluation… of any kind, at all, just to help cement the case” really be characterized as “whataboutism” / methodology war?
(I don’t think I agree with your first paragraph, but I do think it’s fair to argue that “but not all readers are in high income countries” is whataboutism until I more fully expand on what I think the practical implications are on impact evaluation. I’m going to save the discussion about the practical problems that arise from being first world centric for a different post, or drop them, depending on how my opinion changes after I’ve put more thought into it.)