My first reaction to the original article (which I saw scrolling through the NY Times online, without any realisation that it was about EA or Effective Giving), it made me really angry. It still makes me angry, and I’m not normally the type to get angry.
First, given that I had just co-founded an Effective Giving organisation in Ireland, following a @Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator, I found it very sad that people were sharing such ill-informed articles, which would potentially discourage many donors from using their donations to help many more people. I cannot help but wonder how many more children will die because of this article? How many more animals will suffer in factory farms because of this article?
Because this article is wrong in a very bad way. It doesn’t just focus on the benefits of giving to charities that are close to your heart—it also actively criticises effective giving as if it were something that only truly insensitive people would do, as if EA’s as a species were somehow less than human because we dare care more about the people we want to help than about the warm fuzzy glow we get when we donate.
Because that is what effective giving is. It is saying “When I donate, I am going to decide how to donate not based on what feels good to me, but rather on what will help the most people or animals.”
But also, almost nobody in the effective giving movement discourages “non-effective” charity. First, because most of us arrived there not because we were super-logicians, but rather because we’ve been donating all our lives to causes we care deeply about, and started to realise that some of these donations weren’t helping people in desperate need as much as they might. But we still kept donating—and then when we discovered Effective Giving, it was like opening our eyes to a world of people who thought just like us, but had taken it a step further and devoted their lives to it.
It sickens me to see how these people, some of the most sensitive, generous and caring people I’ve ever encountered, have been mischaracterised in this article as unfeeling cynics who were in it for the joy of the math.
There are benefits to giving to all charitable causes* and that it is absolutely great when a person donates to a charitable cause close to their heart, or with which they have a personal connection to it. Effective Giving organisations want to help raise their awareness that there is also the option to give some of their money to very effective causes. We don’t ask that they stop giving to causes they already support. Indeed, there is a famous “3 pots” thinking (I first heard this from @Bram Schaper, the inspiring leader of the Dutch effective giving organisation, Doneer Effectief) that we often share: If you have some money available after all your costs have been paid, why not share it out into 3 pots:
something for yourself, your family, your friends, …
something for a charity close to your heart
something for a highly effective charity that will ensure your donation really helps someone a lot.
I really wanted someone with some credibility to reply to this article and call it out for what it was, which is just nonsense, low-quality, one-sided journalism. But apparently it’s OK to display bias as long as the people you’re biased against are mostly well off white males, which is unfortunately the stereotype of EA’s. The problem was that it wasn’t the well off white male EA’s who were the victims of the article, but rather the people that we are all trying to help, the people who desperately need help.
But, I decided to reflect a while before posting an angry comment on here, and I actually read some other comments about the article. Calm, measured, accepting that people have a right to their opinions. They focused on the fact that the journalist probably meant well and was probably a good person—and kind of glossed over the minor detail that that same journalist had shockingly and intentionally mis-characterised the entire EA and Effective Giving movements in a very harmful way.
Can you imagine how any other group would feel if they were treated like that?
Where was the anger? Where was the passion to stand up for what we believe in?
It’s very easy to sit comfortably in our chairs and debate the subtle details of arguments. But that’s not how we’re going to change the world. If we’re willing to let people attack the EA movement and Effective Giving and not defend ourselves, how can we expect to convince others?
We may be mostly in the 99th percentile for calm, logical reasoning, but the vast majority of people** are not. History shows that great movements require not just great thinkers and strategies, but also passionate advocates, and even sometimes stubborn, pig-headed supporters who do not back down.
And if we want to be scientific about it, we can. There is a huge amount of science related to effective ways to communicate with and convince the general public. Writing precise, detailed arguments is one of the least effective parts of this—although it is still vital that someone does this.
The world right now is utterly broken. In a world with the technology and capacity to feed and clothe and nourish and educate and care for everyone, we have billions of people who literally do not have the most basic necessities like clean water or enough food to avoid starvation. We have wars started because individual Sudanese generals or national leaders decide they want more power or a stronger image—and so hundreds of thousands die. We have an out of control AI development program led by a group of immature men with no history of responsible behaviour. We have a growing risk of nuclear war. We have a climate crisis that we’re effectively ignoring and denying even as the evidence grows more incontrovertible every day.
EA’s are among the few groups who really care about this. But if we remain a niche group and let ourselves be defeated by inaccurate stereotypes and biased communicators, we’re not going to have the impact that the world desperately needs us to have.
We have great thinkers and wonderful, good people within the EA movement. But we could use more overt passion—many of us are deeply passionate about EA, but too many of us do not want to share that passion with the world, to shout out our demands and lead others towards our ideas, without them necessarily having to go through the same deep thought process that brought many of us here.
Many people just want to be part of a movement—why not let that movement be one that will make the world better. Instead, we are literally being out-thought by people like Donald Trump, who understands people’s need to be part of a movement and is more than happy to cynically exploit it.
Imagine how much better off we’d be if people were chanting “no more factory-farms” and “stop the wars” rather than anti-immigrant slogans. But we won’t get there by just imagining it.
*although, especially in the US, some tax-exempt causes like extremely rich universities attended by some of the richest students, are IMHO pushing the definition of “charity” a bit too far.
Thanks for this great post.
My first reaction to the original article (which I saw scrolling through the NY Times online, without any realisation that it was about EA or Effective Giving), it made me really angry. It still makes me angry, and I’m not normally the type to get angry.
First, given that I had just co-founded an Effective Giving organisation in Ireland, following a @Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator, I found it very sad that people were sharing such ill-informed articles, which would potentially discourage many donors from using their donations to help many more people. I cannot help but wonder how many more children will die because of this article? How many more animals will suffer in factory farms because of this article?
Because this article is wrong in a very bad way. It doesn’t just focus on the benefits of giving to charities that are close to your heart—it also actively criticises effective giving as if it were something that only truly insensitive people would do, as if EA’s as a species were somehow less than human because we dare care more about the people we want to help than about the warm fuzzy glow we get when we donate.
Because that is what effective giving is. It is saying “When I donate, I am going to decide how to donate not based on what feels good to me, but rather on what will help the most people or animals.”
But also, almost nobody in the effective giving movement discourages “non-effective” charity. First, because most of us arrived there not because we were super-logicians, but rather because we’ve been donating all our lives to causes we care deeply about, and started to realise that some of these donations weren’t helping people in desperate need as much as they might. But we still kept donating—and then when we discovered Effective Giving, it was like opening our eyes to a world of people who thought just like us, but had taken it a step further and devoted their lives to it.
It sickens me to see how these people, some of the most sensitive, generous and caring people I’ve ever encountered, have been mischaracterised in this article as unfeeling cynics who were in it for the joy of the math.
There are benefits to giving to all charitable causes* and that it is absolutely great when a person donates to a charitable cause close to their heart, or with which they have a personal connection to it. Effective Giving organisations want to help raise their awareness that there is also the option to give some of their money to very effective causes. We don’t ask that they stop giving to causes they already support. Indeed, there is a famous “3 pots” thinking (I first heard this from @Bram Schaper, the inspiring leader of the Dutch effective giving organisation, Doneer Effectief) that we often share: If you have some money available after all your costs have been paid, why not share it out into 3 pots:
something for yourself, your family, your friends, …
something for a charity close to your heart
something for a highly effective charity that will ensure your donation really helps someone a lot.
I really wanted someone with some credibility to reply to this article and call it out for what it was, which is just nonsense, low-quality, one-sided journalism. But apparently it’s OK to display bias as long as the people you’re biased against are mostly well off white males, which is unfortunately the stereotype of EA’s. The problem was that it wasn’t the well off white male EA’s who were the victims of the article, but rather the people that we are all trying to help, the people who desperately need help.
But, I decided to reflect a while before posting an angry comment on here, and I actually read some other comments about the article. Calm, measured, accepting that people have a right to their opinions. They focused on the fact that the journalist probably meant well and was probably a good person—and kind of glossed over the minor detail that that same journalist had shockingly and intentionally mis-characterised the entire EA and Effective Giving movements in a very harmful way.
Can you imagine how any other group would feel if they were treated like that?
Where was the anger? Where was the passion to stand up for what we believe in?
It’s very easy to sit comfortably in our chairs and debate the subtle details of arguments. But that’s not how we’re going to change the world. If we’re willing to let people attack the EA movement and Effective Giving and not defend ourselves, how can we expect to convince others?
We may be mostly in the 99th percentile for calm, logical reasoning, but the vast majority of people** are not. History shows that great movements require not just great thinkers and strategies, but also passionate advocates, and even sometimes stubborn, pig-headed supporters who do not back down.
And if we want to be scientific about it, we can. There is a huge amount of science related to effective ways to communicate with and convince the general public. Writing precise, detailed arguments is one of the least effective parts of this—although it is still vital that someone does this.
The world right now is utterly broken. In a world with the technology and capacity to feed and clothe and nourish and educate and care for everyone, we have billions of people who literally do not have the most basic necessities like clean water or enough food to avoid starvation. We have wars started because individual Sudanese generals or national leaders decide they want more power or a stronger image—and so hundreds of thousands die. We have an out of control AI development program led by a group of immature men with no history of responsible behaviour. We have a growing risk of nuclear war. We have a climate crisis that we’re effectively ignoring and denying even as the evidence grows more incontrovertible every day.
EA’s are among the few groups who really care about this. But if we remain a niche group and let ourselves be defeated by inaccurate stereotypes and biased communicators, we’re not going to have the impact that the world desperately needs us to have.
We have great thinkers and wonderful, good people within the EA movement. But we could use more overt passion—many of us are deeply passionate about EA, but too many of us do not want to share that passion with the world, to shout out our demands and lead others towards our ideas, without them necessarily having to go through the same deep thought process that brought many of us here.
Many people just want to be part of a movement—why not let that movement be one that will make the world better. Instead, we are literally being out-thought by people like Donald Trump, who understands people’s need to be part of a movement and is more than happy to cynically exploit it.
Imagine how much better off we’d be if people were chanting “no more factory-farms” and “stop the wars” rather than anti-immigrant slogans. But we won’t get there by just imagining it.
*although, especially in the US, some tax-exempt causes like extremely rich universities attended by some of the richest students, are IMHO pushing the definition of “charity” a bit too far.
**more than 98% of people, to be exact!