There’s one huge difference between aiming to do good and aiming to make profit. If you set up a company aiming to make money, generally the very worst that can happen is that you go bankrupt; there’s a legal system in place that prevents you from getting burdened by arbitrarily large debt. However, if you set up a project aiming to do good, the amount of harm that you can do is basically unbounded.
I am very confused about this reasoning. It seems clear that there is a lot worse harm that can be caused by a for-profit enterprise than simply that enterprise going bankrupt. What about weapons manufacturers or fossil fuel and tobacco companies? There are many industries that profit from activities that many people would consider a net harm to humanity.
I think it was good that you noticed your confusion! In this case, I believe your confusion primarily stems from misunderstanding the paragraph. Will is not saying that the worst that a company can do from the impartial point of view is go bankrupt. He’s saying that the worst that a company can do from a profit-maximizing perspective (“aiming to make profit”) is go bankrupt. Whereas (EA) charities are presumed to be judged from the impartial point of view, in which case it will be inappropriate to ignore the moral downsides.
To be clear, stating that I was confused was a polite way of indicating that I think this reasoning itself is confused. Why should we evaluate for-profit businesses only from a profit-maximizing perspective? Having profitability as the primary goal of enterprise doesn’t preclude that enterprise from doing massive amounts of harm. If a for-profit enterprise does harm in its attempts to make profit should we ignore that harm simply because they’ve succeeded in turning a profit? If you interpretation of Will’s reasoning is what he intended, then he is asking us compare aiming to do good and aiming to make profit by evaluating each on different criteria. Generally, this is a misleading way of making comparisons.
This is important because this sort of reasoning is used to justify an uncircumspect version of encouraging people to earn to give that I see coming from this community. As I’ve seen it, the argument goes that in your career your should focus on acquiring wealth rather than doing good because you can then use that wealth to do good by being an effective altruist. But this ignores that you can potentially do more harm in acquiring great wealth than you can compensate for by using your wealth altruistically.
As I mentioned, I think there are some good reasons to believe the money Bankman-Fried and Moskovitz are contributing to the EA community was acquired in ways that may have caused significant harm. This doesn’t mean the EA community should reject this money, and if the money is used judiciously it may well mean the Bankman-Fried and Moskovitz’s successes in acquiring wealth may will be net positives for humanity. But it is also not hard to think of examples where so much harm was done in acquiring the funding of a charitable organization even if the charity does a lot of good it won’t be a net positive. For example, consider the Sackler family, who in the process of acquiring their wealth, were happy to ignore that they were creating tens of thousands of opioid addicts. Their charitable work (mostly donating to already well-funded museums as far as I know) also probably also wouldn’t be evaluated well by the EA community. But the real harm happened even before they attempted to clean up their reputations through charitable donations.
In light of harms that can be caused in acquiring wealth, I think the EA community should be more circumspect about encouraging people to earn to give. Succeeding in business to maximize your positive impact through charitable work isn’t necessarily bad advice, but you do need account for the harms businesses can do.
The way I read it, Will is comparing the challenge of doing good to the challenge of earning money (for its own sake). Not, as you assume, to the challenge of doing good by earning money.
The point is that if we try to learn any lessons from people who are optimizing to earn money, we’ll need to keep in mind that we have reason to be more risk-averse than they are.
If someone from High-Impact Athletes writes a post outlining what we can learn from deliberate practice in professional sports, and mentions salient differences between how metrics work in sports training and EA training as a caveat to this advice, I do not think the correct takeaway is “this whole discussion is irrelevant to EA because sports are of ~0 impact for the world, and probably net negative anyway.”
What did I say warranted this comparison? I am not saying anything anyone has said is irrelevant to EA. I am saying argument Will made that for-profit businesses can’t do much harm because their worst outcome is bankruptcy is misleading. I am also saying that encouraging people to earn to give without considering that harm can by done by earning is one of the ways the EA movement could end up having a net negative impact.
At first I thought you genuinely misread his comment, and politely corrected you. And then your next comment (which did not thank me, or acknowledge the correction) suggested you deliberately misread it so you can get on your hobbyhorse about something else. So I tried to illustrate why this is not an appropriate strategy with an analogy. Perhaps my issue was that I being too metaphorical and insufficiently direct earlier. In that case I’m sorry for the lack of clarity in communication.
I think it was good that you noticed your confusion! In this case, I believe your confusion primarily stems from misunderstanding the paragraph. Will is not saying that the worst that a company can do from the impartial point of view is go bankrupt. He’s saying that the worst that a company can do from a profit-maximizing perspective (“aiming to make profit”) is go bankrupt. Whereas (EA) charities are presumed to be judged from the impartial point of view, in which case it will be inappropriate to ignore the moral downsides.
To be clear, stating that I was confused was a polite way of indicating that I think this reasoning itself is confused. Why should we evaluate for-profit businesses only from a profit-maximizing perspective? Having profitability as the primary goal of enterprise doesn’t preclude that enterprise from doing massive amounts of harm. If a for-profit enterprise does harm in its attempts to make profit should we ignore that harm simply because they’ve succeeded in turning a profit? If you interpretation of Will’s reasoning is what he intended, then he is asking us compare aiming to do good and aiming to make profit by evaluating each on different criteria. Generally, this is a misleading way of making comparisons.
This is important because this sort of reasoning is used to justify an uncircumspect version of encouraging people to earn to give that I see coming from this community. As I’ve seen it, the argument goes that in your career your should focus on acquiring wealth rather than doing good because you can then use that wealth to do good by being an effective altruist. But this ignores that you can potentially do more harm in acquiring great wealth than you can compensate for by using your wealth altruistically.
As I mentioned, I think there are some good reasons to believe the money Bankman-Fried and Moskovitz are contributing to the EA community was acquired in ways that may have caused significant harm. This doesn’t mean the EA community should reject this money, and if the money is used judiciously it may well mean the Bankman-Fried and Moskovitz’s successes in acquiring wealth may will be net positives for humanity. But it is also not hard to think of examples where so much harm was done in acquiring the funding of a charitable organization even if the charity does a lot of good it won’t be a net positive. For example, consider the Sackler family, who in the process of acquiring their wealth, were happy to ignore that they were creating tens of thousands of opioid addicts. Their charitable work (mostly donating to already well-funded museums as far as I know) also probably also wouldn’t be evaluated well by the EA community. But the real harm happened even before they attempted to clean up their reputations through charitable donations.
In light of harms that can be caused in acquiring wealth, I think the EA community should be more circumspect about encouraging people to earn to give. Succeeding in business to maximize your positive impact through charitable work isn’t necessarily bad advice, but you do need account for the harms businesses can do.
The way I read it, Will is comparing the challenge of doing good to the challenge of earning money (for its own sake). Not, as you assume, to the challenge of doing good by earning money.
The point is that if we try to learn any lessons from people who are optimizing to earn money, we’ll need to keep in mind that we have reason to be more risk-averse than they are.
Yes, this is what I meant to say, but failed to communicate. Thank you for putting it more succinctly and politely than I could.
If someone from High-Impact Athletes writes a post outlining what we can learn from deliberate practice in professional sports, and mentions salient differences between how metrics work in sports training and EA training as a caveat to this advice, I do not think the correct takeaway is “this whole discussion is irrelevant to EA because sports are of ~0 impact for the world, and probably net negative anyway.”
What did I say warranted this comparison? I am not saying anything anyone has said is irrelevant to EA. I am saying argument Will made that for-profit businesses can’t do much harm because their worst outcome is bankruptcy is misleading. I am also saying that encouraging people to earn to give without considering that harm can by done by earning is one of the ways the EA movement could end up having a net negative impact.
At first I thought you genuinely misread his comment, and politely corrected you. And then your next comment (which did not thank me, or acknowledge the correction) suggested you deliberately misread it so you can get on your hobbyhorse about something else. So I tried to illustrate why this is not an appropriate strategy with an analogy. Perhaps my issue was that I being too metaphorical and insufficiently direct earlier. In that case I’m sorry for the lack of clarity in communication.