Thanks for writing this Luke! Much like others have said, there are some sections in this that really resonate me and others I’m not so sure on. In particular I would offer a different framing on this point:
Celebrate all the good actions[6] that people are taking (not diminish people when they don’t go from 0 to 100 in under 10 seconds flat).
Rather than celebrating actions that have altruistic intent but questionable efficacy, instead I think we could be more accepting of the idea that some of these things (eg donating blood) make us feel warm fuzzy feelings, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel those feelings and taking actions to achieve them, even if they might not be obviously maximally impactful. Impact is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s important that people who are looking to have a large impact make sustainable choices, including keeping their morale high. For example, for people working on causes like AI safety where it’s difficult to see tangible impact, if donating blood gives you the boost you need to keep you feeling good about yourself and what you are doing with your life and therefor prevents you from becoming disillusioned with your choices and contributing less to AI safety, then I think that makes it very worth doing—however I think that is more an act of self-care rather than something that ought to be celebrated in the community (although perhaps acts of self-care ought to be more celebrated in the community).
I also think that a lot of average day-to-day charity (and perhaps other kinds of altruism) is primarily motivated by guilt, which I don’t think is particularly helpful for donors and I’d be surprised if it proved to be sustainable for charities either. I think effective altruism does a great job of reframing this: when I donate to GiveWell MIF, instead of doing it to assuage a sense of guilt, I do it because it lets me feel good about myself, knowing that I am actually making a tangible difference in the world with my actions. These are the same warm fuzzy feelings as from before, and I think perhaps that’s the framing I would prefer here: humans are warm-fuzzy-feeling-optimisers, and EA could do a better job at empowering people to feel those feelings when they make maximally impactful choices, rather than just ones where their impact is immediately obvious or provides some social kudos.
“I think we could be more accepting of the idea that some of these things (eg donating blood) make us feel warm fuzzy feelings, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel those feelings and taking actions to achieve them, even if they might not be obviously maximally impactful. Impact is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s important that people who are looking to have a large impact make sustainable choices, including keeping their morale high.”
A blood donation is still worth about 1⁄200 of a QALY. That’s still altruistic; it isn’t just warm fuzzies. If someone does not believe the EA community’s analyses of the top charities, we should still encourage them to do things like give blood.
Most of the value of giving blood is in fuzzies. You can buy a QALY from AMF for around $100, so that’s $0.50, less than 0.1x US minimum wage if blood donation takes an hour.
If someone doesn’t believe the valuation of a QALY it still feels wrong to encourage them to give blood for non-fuzzies reasons. I would encourage them to maximize their utility function, and I don’t know what action does that without more context—it might be thinking more about EA, donating to wildlife conservation, or doing any number of things with an altruistic theme.
Thanks for pointing that out, I didn’t realise how effective blood donation was. I think my original point still stands, if “donating blood” is substituted with a different proxy for something that is sub-maximally effective but feels good though.
Also, almost everything anyone does is sub-maximally effective. We simply do not know what maximally effective is. We do think it’s worth trying to figure out our best guesses using the best tools available but we can never know with 100% certainty.
Yeah, I actually called this point out in general in my #8 footnote (“Plus some of these things could (low confidence) make a decent case for considering how low cost they might be.”). I’ve been at EA events or in social contexts with EAs when someone has asserted with great confidence that things like voting and giving blood are pointless. This hasn’t been well received by onlookers (for good reason IMHO) and I think it does more harm than good.
Thanks for writing this Luke! Much like others have said, there are some sections in this that really resonate me and others I’m not so sure on. In particular I would offer a different framing on this point:
Rather than celebrating actions that have altruistic intent but questionable efficacy, instead I think we could be more accepting of the idea that some of these things (eg donating blood) make us feel warm fuzzy feelings, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel those feelings and taking actions to achieve them, even if they might not be obviously maximally impactful. Impact is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s important that people who are looking to have a large impact make sustainable choices, including keeping their morale high. For example, for people working on causes like AI safety where it’s difficult to see tangible impact, if donating blood gives you the boost you need to keep you feeling good about yourself and what you are doing with your life and therefor prevents you from becoming disillusioned with your choices and contributing less to AI safety, then I think that makes it very worth doing—however I think that is more an act of self-care rather than something that ought to be celebrated in the community (although perhaps acts of self-care ought to be more celebrated in the community).
I also think that a lot of average day-to-day charity (and perhaps other kinds of altruism) is primarily motivated by guilt, which I don’t think is particularly helpful for donors and I’d be surprised if it proved to be sustainable for charities either. I think effective altruism does a great job of reframing this: when I donate to GiveWell MIF, instead of doing it to assuage a sense of guilt, I do it because it lets me feel good about myself, knowing that I am actually making a tangible difference in the world with my actions. These are the same warm fuzzy feelings as from before, and I think perhaps that’s the framing I would prefer here: humans are warm-fuzzy-feeling-optimisers, and EA could do a better job at empowering people to feel those feelings when they make maximally impactful choices, rather than just ones where their impact is immediately obvious or provides some social kudos.
“I think we could be more accepting of the idea that some of these things (eg donating blood) make us feel warm fuzzy feelings, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel those feelings and taking actions to achieve them, even if they might not be obviously maximally impactful. Impact is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s important that people who are looking to have a large impact make sustainable choices, including keeping their morale high.”
Strongly agreed.
I think you may be underestimating the value of giving blood. It seems like according to the analysis here:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jqCCM3NvrtCYK3uaB/blood-donation-generally-not-that-effective-on-the-margin
A blood donation is still worth about 1⁄200 of a QALY. That’s still altruistic; it isn’t just warm fuzzies. If someone does not believe the EA community’s analyses of the top charities, we should still encourage them to do things like give blood.
Most of the value of giving blood is in fuzzies. You can buy a QALY from AMF for around $100, so that’s $0.50, less than 0.1x US minimum wage if blood donation takes an hour.
If someone doesn’t believe the valuation of a QALY it still feels wrong to encourage them to give blood for non-fuzzies reasons. I would encourage them to maximize their utility function, and I don’t know what action does that without more context—it might be thinking more about EA, donating to wildlife conservation, or doing any number of things with an altruistic theme.
Thanks for pointing that out, I didn’t realise how effective blood donation was. I think my original point still stands, if “donating blood” is substituted with a different proxy for something that is sub-maximally effective but feels good though.
Also, almost everything anyone does is sub-maximally effective. We simply do not know what maximally effective is. We do think it’s worth trying to figure out our best guesses using the best tools available but we can never know with 100% certainty.
Yeah, I actually called this point out in general in my #8 footnote (“Plus some of these things could (low confidence) make a decent case for considering how low cost they might be.”). I’ve been at EA events or in social contexts with EAs when someone has asserted with great confidence that things like voting and giving blood are pointless. This hasn’t been well received by onlookers (for good reason IMHO) and I think it does more harm than good.