This post is serendipitous because I myself was thinking of writing a post sometime about how effective altruism is more a method than it is a philosophy. That is, effective altruism is philosophy in action, but it doesn’t need to be a philosophy, i.e., complete way of life. i.e., ideology. I still want to write that article in the future because framing effective altruism as a method taking its first steps into discovering what tends to work well in doing good, and what tends to work not as well.
How you framed it in the article is that ideologies answer questions, while effective altruism asks questions. Is another way of saying this the distinction between asking descriptive vs. normative questions, or making descriptive vs. normative claims? I don’t think so, but I’m unsure. Either way, I don’t believe it makes sense to make effective altruism into something that doesn’t ask normative claims, or doesn’t ask normative questions. Effective altruism is a community of people as much as it is anything else, so it’s not something that exists on its own (yet) as being indifferent to how ‘good’ is defined, so long as much as possible of it is done.
In the interest of reducing the size of identities for not just myself, but for others, and bunches of individuals, I’ve taken to referring to ‘effective altruism’ as if it’s a single agent sometimes. This may seem strange, but we do it all the time. In the news, ‘The White House’ wants all sorts of things; this is to the point that sometimes not only are the decisions of the executive branch conflated with the opinions of the whole federal government, but the position of America as a whole. Of course, that’s a problem on the other side that effective altruism doesn’t need worry about right now (see what I did there?). Sometimes I’ll also use ‘the effective altruist community’, similar to the ‘scientific community’. For example, the effective altruist community has mixed feelings on the efficacy of yet untested charitable interventions.
Again, I was thinking along similar lines with the idea of our actions and suggestions being features of effective altruism as it exists in the present, not the source of what effective altruism means at its core. Even more than people identifying themselves with ‘effective altruism’, I’m worried that identifying effective altruism with distinct causes permanently may limit the potential of what effective altruism can become, and also dilute it to the point that it doesn’t feel different than any other advocacy movement.
This post is serendipitous because I myself was thinking of writing a post sometime about how effective altruism is more a method than it is a philosophy. That is, effective altruism is philosophy in action, but it doesn’t need to be a philosophy, i.e., complete way of life. i.e., ideology. I still want to write that article in the future because framing effective altruism as a method taking its first steps into discovering what tends to work well in doing good, and what tends to work not as well.
How you framed it in the article is that ideologies answer questions, while effective altruism asks questions. Is another way of saying this the distinction between asking descriptive vs. normative questions, or making descriptive vs. normative claims? I don’t think so, but I’m unsure. Either way, I don’t believe it makes sense to make effective altruism into something that doesn’t ask normative claims, or doesn’t ask normative questions. Effective altruism is a community of people as much as it is anything else, so it’s not something that exists on its own (yet) as being indifferent to how ‘good’ is defined, so long as much as possible of it is done.
In the interest of reducing the size of identities for not just myself, but for others, and bunches of individuals, I’ve taken to referring to ‘effective altruism’ as if it’s a single agent sometimes. This may seem strange, but we do it all the time. In the news, ‘The White House’ wants all sorts of things; this is to the point that sometimes not only are the decisions of the executive branch conflated with the opinions of the whole federal government, but the position of America as a whole. Of course, that’s a problem on the other side that effective altruism doesn’t need worry about right now (see what I did there?). Sometimes I’ll also use ‘the effective altruist community’, similar to the ‘scientific community’. For example, the effective altruist community has mixed feelings on the efficacy of yet untested charitable interventions.
Again, I was thinking along similar lines with the idea of our actions and suggestions being features of effective altruism as it exists in the present, not the source of what effective altruism means at its core. Even more than people identifying themselves with ‘effective altruism’, I’m worried that identifying effective altruism with distinct causes permanently may limit the potential of what effective altruism can become, and also dilute it to the point that it doesn’t feel different than any other advocacy movement.