But it is quite misleading for a volume that promises to provide general critiques of effective altruism (the bookās editors claim that it is āthe first book-length critique of Effective Altruismā).
This is an aside, but that is almost certainly false, right? Larry Temkinās Being Good in a World of Need was published last year (and seems, from skimming it, like it gets a lot of the things you mention rightāfor example, it does engage in dialogue with EAs).
Thank you for pointing this out! From what I can tell, Temkinās book also isnāt really meant as a book-length critique of effective altruism, although it does criticize aspects of it. It also looks like his book focuses only on effective altruismās approach to global health and development, not on the other cause areas or the effective altruism movement as a whole. The claim that The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does is āthe first book-length critique of Effective Altruismā is still wrong though, because I think that book simply canāt be considered a ābook-length critique of effective altruismā if it almost exclusively focuses on effective altruismās approach to one cause area (in a rather limited way tooāI felt like the bookās authors did very little effort to explain the arguments used by organizations like Animal Charity Evaluators, I found that rather unhelpful).
It looks like Temkin has the same concerns about effective altruist charities that other so-called āaid criticsā (like William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo and Angus Deaton) seem to have, so Iām not sure how original the book is in that respect. Either way Iām not going to read it, because it looks very long and complicated and Iām not sure how much of it is actually relevant to effective altruism. I do think I might check out parts of Temkinās lectures on which his book is based, the lectures can apparently be listened to online here. Interestingly, William MacAskill wrote a very sharp critique of Temkinās work.
This is an aside, but that is almost certainly false, right? Larry Temkinās Being Good in a World of Need was published last year (and seems, from skimming it, like it gets a lot of the things you mention rightāfor example, it does engage in dialogue with EAs).
Thank you for pointing this out! From what I can tell, Temkinās book also isnāt really meant as a book-length critique of effective altruism, although it does criticize aspects of it. It also looks like his book focuses only on effective altruismās approach to global health and development, not on the other cause areas or the effective altruism movement as a whole. The claim that The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does is āthe first book-length critique of Effective Altruismā is still wrong though, because I think that book simply canāt be considered a ābook-length critique of effective altruismā if it almost exclusively focuses on effective altruismās approach to one cause area (in a rather limited way tooāI felt like the bookās authors did very little effort to explain the arguments used by organizations like Animal Charity Evaluators, I found that rather unhelpful).
It looks like Temkin has the same concerns about effective altruist charities that other so-called āaid criticsā (like William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo and Angus Deaton) seem to have, so Iām not sure how original the book is in that respect. Either way Iām not going to read it, because it looks very long and complicated and Iām not sure how much of it is actually relevant to effective altruism. I do think I might check out parts of Temkinās lectures on which his book is based, the lectures can apparently be listened to online here. Interestingly, William MacAskill wrote a very sharp critique of Temkinās work.