I don’t think people are saying putting time and/or money to charities that address the poor in rich countries is not helping people, but merely that you could help more poor people in poor countries with the same resources. Thus, if we are saying that we are considering the interests of the unfortunate in poor and rich countries equally, we would want to commit our limited resources to the developing world.
I think a lot of times EAs are assuming a given set of resources that they have to commit to doing good. With that assumption, the counterfactual of a donation to the food pantry is a donation to a more cost effective charity. The “warm fuzzy/utilon” dichotomy that you deride here actually supports your notion that the food pantry could compete with the donor’s luxury consumption instead. This is because warm fuzzies (the donor’s psychic benefit derived from giving) could potentially be a substitute for the consumption of luxury goods (going out to eat, etc.).
So, the concept of the fuzzies (albeit maybe with language you find offensive) actually supports your notion that, within individual donation decisions, helping locally does not always compete with effective giving.
I think Siobhan (hi! correct me if I’m wrong!) is primarily trying to say that the assumption of a given set of resources doesn’t really hold anymore, and that acting like it does, at least from a comms perspective, can be harmful: i.e. EAs spending a lot of energy criticizing donations to food pantries is causing potential donors to be turned off from EA and therefore not give effectively or not give at all, regardless of whether the criticism is correct or not[1].
This feels to me like part of the broader growing pains of “EA in a world where people actually listen to us” (which is a phrase I’m stealing because I think it applies even though the motivation for that post is entirely different) -- EA is used to assuming a given set of resources (how should we allocate the amount of money that exists “within EA”?), but for a movement increasingly in the public eye that aims to grow, that’s actually no longer the best way to think about good strategy for the movement.
So what Brad is saying here is rightish[2]fora given set of resources, but not really relevant to the point OP is making as I understand it, which is that EA as a public movement is not just influencing a given set of resources anymore and should stop acting like it. The next marginal bednet dollar is more likely to come from your friend in tech who eats out 5 times a week than it is to come from your grandma who donates to the food pantry (or from a philosophy major doing a bunch of first-principles research on how to donate most effectively, because that audience is already spoken for).
I don’t think people are saying putting time and/or money to charities that address the poor in rich countries is not helping people, but merely that you could help more poor people in poor countries with the same resources. Thus, if we are saying that we are considering the interests of the unfortunate in poor and rich countries equally, we would want to commit our limited resources to the developing world.
I think a lot of times EAs are assuming a given set of resources that they have to commit to doing good. With that assumption, the counterfactual of a donation to the food pantry is a donation to a more cost effective charity. The “warm fuzzy/utilon” dichotomy that you deride here actually supports your notion that the food pantry could compete with the donor’s luxury consumption instead. This is because warm fuzzies (the donor’s psychic benefit derived from giving) could potentially be a substitute for the consumption of luxury goods (going out to eat, etc.).
So, the concept of the fuzzies (albeit maybe with language you find offensive) actually supports your notion that, within individual donation decisions, helping locally does not always compete with effective giving.
I think Siobhan (hi! correct me if I’m wrong!) is primarily trying to say that the assumption of a given set of resources doesn’t really hold anymore, and that acting like it does, at least from a comms perspective, can be harmful: i.e. EAs spending a lot of energy criticizing donations to food pantries is causing potential donors to be turned off from EA and therefore not give effectively or not give at all, regardless of whether the criticism is correct or not[1].
This feels to me like part of the broader growing pains of “EA in a world where people actually listen to us” (which is a phrase I’m stealing because I think it applies even though the motivation for that post is entirely different) -- EA is used to assuming a given set of resources (how should we allocate the amount of money that exists “within EA”?), but for a movement increasingly in the public eye that aims to grow, that’s actually no longer the best way to think about good strategy for the movement.
So what Brad is saying here is rightish[2] for a given set of resources, but not really relevant to the point OP is making as I understand it, which is that EA as a public movement is not just influencing a given set of resources anymore and should stop acting like it. The next marginal bednet dollar is more likely to come from your friend in tech who eats out 5 times a week than it is to come from your grandma who donates to the food pantry (or from a philosophy major doing a bunch of first-principles research on how to donate most effectively, because that audience is already spoken for).
i think this is true fwiw
i say ish because i think everything is warm fuzzies and that food pantry, bednets, and luxury goods are all in fact in competition