I want to express two other intuitions that make me very skeptical of some alternatives to effective altruism.
As you write:
“By their fruits ye shall know them” holds for intellectual principles, not just people. If a set of principles throws off a lot of rotten fruit, it’s a sign of something wrong with the principles, a reductio ad absurdum.
I really like this thought. We might ask: what are the fruits of ineffective altruism? Admittedly, much good. But also the continued existence, at scale, of extreme poverty, factory farming, low-probability high-impact risks, and threats to future generations, long after many of these problems could have been decimated if there had been widespread will to act.
That’s a lot of rotten fruit.
In practice, by letting intuition lead, ineffective altruism systematically overlooks distant problems, leaving their silent victims to suffer and die in masses. So even if strong versions of EA are too much, EA in practice looks like desperately needed corrective movement. Or at least, we need something different from whatever allows such issues to fester, often with little opposition.
Lastly, one thing that sometimes feels a bit lost in discussions of effectiveness: “effective” is just half of it. Much of what resonates is the emphasis on altruism (which is far from unique, but also far from the norm)--on how, in a world with so much suffering, much of our lives should be oriented around helping others.
[Cross-posting from the comments]
I want to express two other intuitions that make me very skeptical of some alternatives to effective altruism.
As you write:
I really like this thought. We might ask: what are the fruits of ineffective altruism? Admittedly, much good. But also the continued existence, at scale, of extreme poverty, factory farming, low-probability high-impact risks, and threats to future generations, long after many of these problems could have been decimated if there had been widespread will to act.
That’s a lot of rotten fruit.
In practice, by letting intuition lead, ineffective altruism systematically overlooks distant problems, leaving their silent victims to suffer and die in masses. So even if strong versions of EA are too much, EA in practice looks like desperately needed corrective movement. Or at least, we need something different from whatever allows such issues to fester, often with little opposition.
Lastly, one thing that sometimes feels a bit lost in discussions of effectiveness: “effective” is just half of it. Much of what resonates is the emphasis on altruism (which is far from unique, but also far from the norm)--on how, in a world with so much suffering, much of our lives should be oriented around helping others.