Vasco has come to a certain conclusion on what the best action is, given a potential trade-off between the impact of global health initiatives and animal welfare.
I think it is reasonable to disagree but I think it is bad for the norms of the forum and unnecessarily combative for us to describe moral views we disagree with as “morally repugnant”. I think this is particularly unfair if we do not elaborate on why we either:
a) think this trade-off does not exist, or is very small.
or
b) disagree.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
In my view, discussing difficult, morally uncomfortable trade-offs between prioritising different, important causes is a key role of the EA forum—whether within cause areas (should we let children die of cancer to prioritise tackling malaria / should we let cows be abused to prioritise reducing battery cage farming of hens), or across cause areas. We should discuss these questions openly rather than avoiding them to help us make better moral decisions.
I think it would also be bad if we stopped discussing these questions openly for fear of criticism from reporters—this would bias EA towards preserving the world’s moral status quo enforced by the media.
Also, traditionally, criticism of “ends justifies the means” reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), eg—prioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa. With a more expansive use of the term, critics could reject GiveWell style charity comparison as “ends justifies the means reasoning” which argues one should let some children die of tetanus to save other children from malaria.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
There is a difference between what the post does and what you mention. The post is not saying that you should prioritize animal welfare vs global health (which I would find quite reasonable and totally acceptable). I would find that useful and constructive. Instead, the post claims you should simply not donate the money if considering antimalarial nets. Or in other words, that you should let children die because of the chicken they may have eaten.
Also, traditionally, criticism of “ends justifies the means” reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), eg—prioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa.
In fact, the deontological rule he is breaking seems clear to me: that innocent children should die because their statistical reference class says they will do something bad. And yes, they are still innocent. To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant.
Also, let me say: I have no issue with discussing the implications of a given moral theory, even if they look terrible. But I think this should be a means to test and set limits to your moral theory, not a way to justify this sort of opinion. Let me reemphasize that my quarrel has nothing to do with cause prioritization or cost-effectiveness. Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant. [...] Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
Hmm, but we are all letting children die all the time from not donating. I am donating just 15% of my income; I could certainly donate 20-30% and save additional lives that way. I think my failing to donate 20-30% is morally imperfect, but I wouldn’t call it repugnant. What is it that makes “I won’t donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal suffering” repugnant but “I won’t donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myself” not?
What is it that makes “I won’t donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal suffering” repugnant but “I won’t donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myself” not?
I think actively advocating for others to not save children’s lives is a step beyond a mere decision not to donate. I read it this way:
Action: Write EA Forum post criticizing lifesaving as net-negative activity.
Implied Theory of Impact: Readers decide not to donate to GiveWell et al. --> Fewer lives get saved --> Less meat gets eaten --> Fewer animals suffer.
If I’m reading the theory of impact correctly, innocent children dying is a key part of the intended mechanism of action (MoA) -- not a side effect (as it is with “prefer to have more income for myself”).
There are obviously some cruxes here—including whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere / spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that “no endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent people” is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, I’m curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
Thanks, that is a useful distinction. Although I would guess Vasco would prefer to frame the theory of impact as “find out whether donating to GiveWell is net positive → help people make donation choices that promote welfare better” or something like that. I buy @Richard Y Chappell🔸’s take that it is really bad to discourage others from effective giving (at least when it’s done carelessly/negligently), but imo Vasco was not setting out to discourage effective giving, or it doesn’t seem like that to me. He is—I’m guessing—cooperatively seeking to help effective givers and others make choices that better promote welfare, which they are presumably interested in doing.
There are obviously some cruxes here—including whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere / spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Yes, I personally lean towards thinking the act-omission difference doesn’t matter (except maybe as a useful heuristic sometimes).
As for whether the harm to humans is incidental-but-necessary or part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, I’m not sure what difference it makes if the outcomes are identical? Maybe the difference is that, when the harm to humans is part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, you may suspect that it’s indicative of a bad moral attitude. But I think the attitude behind “I won’t donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal suffering” is clearly better (since it is concerned with promoting welfare) than the attitude behind “I won’t donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myself” (which is not).
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that “no endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent people” is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, I’m curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldn’t post anything that can be construed as concluding that it’s net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldn’t we want to know and find out?
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldn’t post anything that can be construed as concluding that it’s net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldn’t we want to know and find out?
The taboo would be around advocacy of the view that “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist.” Here, innocent group X would be under-5s in developing countries who are/would be saved by GiveWell interventions. That certain criticisms of GiveWell couldn’t be made without breaking the taboo would be a collateral effect rather than the intent, but it’s very hard to avoid over-inclusiveness in a taboo.
There have been social movements that assert that “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist” and encourage people to make legal, non-violent decisions premised on that belief. But I think the base rate of those social movements going well is low (and it may be ~zero). Based on that history and experience, I would need to see a very compelling argument to convince me that going down that path was a good idea here. I don’t see that here; in particular, I think advocacy of the reader donating a share of their charitable budget to animal-welfare orgs to offset any potential negative AW effects of the lifesaving work they fund is considerably less problematic.
Relatedly, I also don’t see things going well for EA if it is seen as acceptable for each of us to post our list of group X and encourage others to not pull members of group X out of a drowning pond even if we could do so costlessly or nearly so. Out of respect for Forum norms, I’m not going to speculate on who other readers’ Group Xs might include, but I can think of several off the top of my head for whom one could make a plausible net-negative argument, all of whom would be less morally objectionable to include on the list than toddlers....
To clarify, I think I’m ok with having a taboo on advocacy against “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist”, since that seems like the kind of naive utilitarianism we should definitely avoid. I’m just against a taboo on asking or trying to better understand whether “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist” is true or not. I don’t think Vasco was engaging in advocacy, my impression was that he was trying to do the latter, while expressing a lot of uncertainty.
Vasco has come to a certain conclusion on what the best action is, given a potential trade-off between the impact of global health initiatives and animal welfare.
I think it is reasonable to disagree but I think it is bad for the norms of the forum and unnecessarily combative for us to describe moral views we disagree with as “morally repugnant”. I think this is particularly unfair if we do not elaborate on why we either:
a) think this trade-off does not exist, or is very small.
or
b) disagree.
For example, global health advocates could similarly argue that EA pits direct cash transfers against interventions like anti-malaria bednets, which is divisive and counterproductive, and that EA forum posts doing this will create a negative impression of EA on reporters and potential 10% pledgers.
In my view, discussing difficult, morally uncomfortable trade-offs between prioritising different, important causes is a key role of the EA forum—whether within cause areas (should we let children die of cancer to prioritise tackling malaria / should we let cows be abused to prioritise reducing battery cage farming of hens), or across cause areas. We should discuss these questions openly rather than avoiding them to help us make better moral decisions.
I think it would also be bad if we stopped discussing these questions openly for fear of criticism from reporters—this would bias EA towards preserving the world’s moral status quo enforced by the media.
Also, traditionally, criticism of “ends justifies the means” reasoning tends to object to arguments which encourage us to actively break deontological rules (like laws) to pursue some aggregate increase in utility, rather than arguments to prioritise one approach to improving utility over the other (which causes harm by omission rather than active harm), eg—prioritising animal welfare over global health, or vice-versa. With a more expansive use of the term, critics could reject GiveWell style charity comparison as “ends justifies the means reasoning” which argues one should let some children die of tetanus to save other children from malaria.
Hi there,
Let me try to explain myself a bit.
There is a difference between what the post does and what you mention. The post is not saying that you should prioritize animal welfare vs global health (which I would find quite reasonable and totally acceptable). I would find that useful and constructive. Instead, the post claims you should simply not donate the money if considering antimalarial nets. Or in other words, that you should let children die because of the chicken they may have eaten.
In fact, the deontological rule he is breaking seems clear to me: that innocent children should die because their statistical reference class says they will do something bad. And yes, they are still innocent. To me, any moral theory that dictates that innocent children should die is probably breaking apart at that point. Instead he bites the bullet and assumes that the means (preventing suffering) justifies the ends (letting innocent children die). I am sorry to say that I find that morally repugnant.
Also, let me say: I have no issue with discussing the implications of a given moral theory, even if they look terrible. But I think this should be a means to test and set limits to your moral theory, not a way to justify this sort of opinion. Let me reemphasize that my quarrel has nothing to do with cause prioritization or cost-effectiveness. Instead, I have a strong sense that innocent children should not be let die. If my moral theory disagrees with the strong ethical sense, it is the strong ethical sense that should guide the moral theory, and not the other way around.
Hmm, but we are all letting children die all the time from not donating. I am donating just 15% of my income; I could certainly donate 20-30% and save additional lives that way. I think my failing to donate 20-30% is morally imperfect, but I wouldn’t call it repugnant. What is it that makes “I won’t donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal suffering” repugnant but “I won’t donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myself” not?
I think actively advocating for others to not save children’s lives is a step beyond a mere decision not to donate. I read it this way:
Action: Write EA Forum post criticizing lifesaving as net-negative activity.
Implied Theory of Impact: Readers decide not to donate to GiveWell et al. --> Fewer lives get saved --> Less meat gets eaten --> Fewer animals suffer.
If I’m reading the theory of impact correctly, innocent children dying is a key part of the intended mechanism of action (MoA) -- not a side effect (as it is with “prefer to have more income for myself”).
There are obviously some cruxes here—including whether there is a moral difference between actively advocating for others not to hand out bednets vs. passively choosing to donate elsewhere / spend on oneself, and whether there is a moral difference between a bad thing being part of the intended MoA vs. a side effect. I would answer yes to both, but I have lower consequentialist representation in my moral parliament than many people here.
Even if one would answer no to both cruxes, I submit that “no endorsing MoAs that involve the death of innocent people” is an important set of side rails for the EA movement. I think advocacy that saving the lives of children is net-negative is outside of those rails. For those who might not agree, I’m curious where they would put the rails (or whether they disagree with the idea that there should be rails).
Thanks, that is a useful distinction. Although I would guess Vasco would prefer to frame the theory of impact as “find out whether donating to GiveWell is net positive → help people make donation choices that promote welfare better” or something like that. I buy @Richard Y Chappell🔸’s take that it is really bad to discourage others from effective giving (at least when it’s done carelessly/negligently), but imo Vasco was not setting out to discourage effective giving, or it doesn’t seem like that to me. He is—I’m guessing—cooperatively seeking to help effective givers and others make choices that better promote welfare, which they are presumably interested in doing.
Yes, I personally lean towards thinking the act-omission difference doesn’t matter (except maybe as a useful heuristic sometimes).
As for whether the harm to humans is incidental-but-necessary or part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, I’m not sure what difference it makes if the outcomes are identical? Maybe the difference is that, when the harm to humans is part-of-the-mechanism-and-necessary, you may suspect that it’s indicative of a bad moral attitude. But I think the attitude behind “I won’t donate to save lives because I think it creates a lot of animal suffering” is clearly better (since it is concerned with promoting welfare) than the attitude behind “I won’t donate to save lives because I prefer to have more income for myself” (which is not).
I do not think it is good to create taboos around this question. Like, does that mean we shouldn’t post anything that can be construed as concluding that it’s net harmful to donate to GiveWell charities? If so, that would make it much harder to criticise GiveWell and find out what the truth is. What if donating to GiveWell charities really is harmful? Shouldn’t we want to know and find out?
The taboo would be around advocacy of the view that “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist.” Here, innocent group X would be under-5s in developing countries who are/would be saved by GiveWell interventions. That certain criticisms of GiveWell couldn’t be made without breaking the taboo would be a collateral effect rather than the intent, but it’s very hard to avoid over-inclusiveness in a taboo.
There have been social movements that assert that “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist” and encourage people to make legal, non-violent decisions premised on that belief. But I think the base rate of those social movements going well is low (and it may be ~zero). Based on that history and experience, I would need to see a very compelling argument to convince me that going down that path was a good idea here. I don’t see that here; in particular, I think advocacy of the reader donating a share of their charitable budget to animal-welfare orgs to offset any potential negative AW effects of the lifesaving work they fund is considerably less problematic.
Relatedly, I also don’t see things going well for EA if it is seen as acceptable for each of us to post our list of group X and encourage others to not pull members of group X out of a drowning pond even if we could do so costlessly or nearly so. Out of respect for Forum norms, I’m not going to speculate on who other readers’ Group Xs might include, but I can think of several off the top of my head for whom one could make a plausible net-negative argument, all of whom would be less morally objectionable to include on the list than toddlers....
To clarify, I think I’m ok with having a taboo on advocacy against “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist”, since that seems like the kind of naive utilitarianism we should definitely avoid. I’m just against a taboo on asking or trying to better understand whether “it is better for the world for innocent group X of people not to exist” is true or not. I don’t think Vasco was engaging in advocacy, my impression was that he was trying to do the latter, while expressing a lot of uncertainty.