But it is quite misleading for a volume that promises to provide general critiques of effective altruism (the book’s editors claim that it is “the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism”).
This is an aside, but that is almost certainly false, right? Larry Temkin’s 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 right—for example, it does engage in dialogue with EAs).
Thank you for pointing this out! From what I can tell, Temkin’s book also isn’t 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 altruism’s 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 “the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism” is still wrong though, because I think that book simply can’t be considered a ‘book-length critique of effective altruism’ if it almost exclusively focuses on effective altruism’s approach to one cause area (in a rather limited way too—I felt like the book’s 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 ‘aid critics’ (like William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo and Angus Deaton) seem to have, so I’m not sure how original the book is in that respect. Either way I’m not going to read it, because it looks very long and complicated and I’m not sure how much of it is actually relevant to effective altruism. I do think I might check out parts of Temkin’s 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 Temkin’s work.
This is an aside, but that is almost certainly false, right? Larry Temkin’s 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 right—for example, it does engage in dialogue with EAs).
Thank you for pointing this out! From what I can tell, Temkin’s book also isn’t 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 altruism’s 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 “the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism” is still wrong though, because I think that book simply can’t be considered a ‘book-length critique of effective altruism’ if it almost exclusively focuses on effective altruism’s approach to one cause area (in a rather limited way too—I felt like the book’s 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 ‘aid critics’ (like William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo and Angus Deaton) seem to have, so I’m not sure how original the book is in that respect. Either way I’m not going to read it, because it looks very long and complicated and I’m not sure how much of it is actually relevant to effective altruism. I do think I might check out parts of Temkin’s 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 Temkin’s work.