I think this has gotten better, but not as much better as you would hope considering how long EAs have known this is a problem, how much they have discussed it being a problem, and how many resources have gone into trying to address it. I think there’s actually a bit of an unfortunate fallacy here that it isn’t really an issue anymore because EA has gone through the motions to address it and had at least some degree of success, see Sasha Chapin’s relevant thoughts:
Some of the remaining problem might come down to EA filtering for people who already have demanding moral views and an excessively conscientious personality. Some of it is probably due to the “by-catch” phenomenon the anon below discusses that comes with applying expected value reasoning to having a positively impactful career (still something widely promoted, and probably for good reason overall). Some of it is this other, deeper tension that I think Nielson is getting at:
Many people in Effective Altruism (I don’t think most, but many, including some of the most influential) believe in a standard of morality that is too demanding for it to be realistic for real people to reach it. Given the prevalence of actualist over possiblist reasoning in EA ethics, and just not being totally naive about human psychology, pretty much everyone who does believe this is onboard with compartmentalizing do-gooding or do-besting from the rest of their life. The trouble runs deeper than this unfortunately though, because once you buy an argument that letting yourself have this is what will be best for doing good overall, you are already seriously risking undermining the psychological benefits.
Whenever you do something for yourself, there is a voice in the back of your head asking if you are really so morally weak that this particular thing is necessary. Even if you overcome this voice, there is a worse voice that instrumentalizes the things you do for yourself. Buying icecream? This is now your “anti-burnout icecream”. Worse, have a kid (if you, like in Nielson’s example, think this isn’t part of your best set of altruistic decisions), this is your “anti-burnout kid”.
It’s very hard to get around this one. Nielson’s preferred solution would clearly be that people just don’t buy this very demanding theory of morality at all, because he thinks that it is wrong. That said, he doesn’t really argue for this, and for those of us who actually do think that the demanding ideal of morality happens to be correct, it isn’t an open avenue for us.
The best solution as far as I can tell is to distance your intuitive worldview from this standard of morality as much as possible. Make it a small part of your mind, that you internalize largely on an academic level, and maybe take out on rare occasions for inspiration, but insist on not viewing your day to day life through it. Again though, the trickiness of this, I think, is a real part of the persistence of some of this problem, and I think Nielson nails this part.
I think this has gotten better, but not as much better as you would hope considering how long EAs have known this is a problem, how much they have discussed it being a problem, and how many resources have gone into trying to address it. I think there’s actually a bit of an unfortunate fallacy here that it isn’t really an issue anymore because EA has gone through the motions to address it and had at least some degree of success, see Sasha Chapin’s relevant thoughts:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220405152524/https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/your-intelligent-conscientious-in?s=r
Some of the remaining problem might come down to EA filtering for people who already have demanding moral views and an excessively conscientious personality. Some of it is probably due to the “by-catch” phenomenon the anon below discusses that comes with applying expected value reasoning to having a positively impactful career (still something widely promoted, and probably for good reason overall). Some of it is this other, deeper tension that I think Nielson is getting at:
Many people in Effective Altruism (I don’t think most, but many, including some of the most influential) believe in a standard of morality that is too demanding for it to be realistic for real people to reach it. Given the prevalence of actualist over possiblist reasoning in EA ethics, and just not being totally naive about human psychology, pretty much everyone who does believe this is onboard with compartmentalizing do-gooding or do-besting from the rest of their life. The trouble runs deeper than this unfortunately though, because once you buy an argument that letting yourself have this is what will be best for doing good overall, you are already seriously risking undermining the psychological benefits.
Whenever you do something for yourself, there is a voice in the back of your head asking if you are really so morally weak that this particular thing is necessary. Even if you overcome this voice, there is a worse voice that instrumentalizes the things you do for yourself. Buying icecream? This is now your “anti-burnout icecream”. Worse, have a kid (if you, like in Nielson’s example, think this isn’t part of your best set of altruistic decisions), this is your “anti-burnout kid”.
It’s very hard to get around this one. Nielson’s preferred solution would clearly be that people just don’t buy this very demanding theory of morality at all, because he thinks that it is wrong. That said, he doesn’t really argue for this, and for those of us who actually do think that the demanding ideal of morality happens to be correct, it isn’t an open avenue for us.
The best solution as far as I can tell is to distance your intuitive worldview from this standard of morality as much as possible. Make it a small part of your mind, that you internalize largely on an academic level, and maybe take out on rare occasions for inspiration, but insist on not viewing your day to day life through it. Again though, the trickiness of this, I think, is a real part of the persistence of some of this problem, and I think Nielson nails this part.
(edited on 10/24/22 to replace broken link)