I recognise that a lot of criticism is bad, and I have written a long post on why I think that is. But this is going too far in the other direction.
Spend enough time listening to the criticisms of effective altruism and it becomes clear that, aside from those arguing for small tweaks at the marigns, they all stem from either a) people being very dogmatic and having a worldview that’s strangely incompatible with doing good things (if, for instance, they don’t help the communist revolution); b) people wanting an excuse to do nothing in the face of extreme suffering; or c) people disliking effective altruists and so coming up with some half-hearted excuse for why EA is really something-something colonialism.
All of them? You think literally every person who is not on board with the effective altruism movement is doing so for these three reasons?
EA, as a movement, is miniscule and highly homogenous. Like any group, it will be wrong about a lot of things. I think sentiments like this, dismissing every person who is not on board with the EA movement as some kind of crazy SJW, is epistemological suicide.
Look, I’m a fan of malaria nets and animal welfare EA. I have donated plenty to malaria nets myself. But that is not the entire movement. You can’t just isolate one part of it and ignore the whole “billion dollar fraud” thing, the abuses of power, the mini-cults, the sexism/racism controversies. Or it’s part in building up OpenAI and starting the AI arms race, with all the harms they have brought.
EA is seeking power and influence, and wants to have a large effect on the future of humanity. People are allowed to be concerned about that.
In my mind since EA premises are vague and generic, any criticism above a quality bar gets borg’d in. So no, I didn’t ever see an “external” criticism of EA be any good—if it was good, then it’d be internal criticism, as far as im concerned.
I recognise that a lot of criticism is bad, and I have written a long post on why I think that is. But this is going too far in the other direction.
All of them? You think literally every person who is not on board with the effective altruism movement is doing so for these three reasons?
EA, as a movement, is miniscule and highly homogenous. Like any group, it will be wrong about a lot of things. I think sentiments like this, dismissing every person who is not on board with the EA movement as some kind of crazy SJW, is epistemological suicide.
Look, I’m a fan of malaria nets and animal welfare EA. I have donated plenty to malaria nets myself. But that is not the entire movement. You can’t just isolate one part of it and ignore the whole “billion dollar fraud” thing, the abuses of power, the mini-cults, the sexism/racism controversies. Or it’s part in building up OpenAI and starting the AI arms race, with all the harms they have brought.
EA is seeking power and influence, and wants to have a large effect on the future of humanity. People are allowed to be concerned about that.
I think that there are certainly legitimate critiques of some of EA. But the ideas that either:
A) EA does more harm than good.
B) Doing EA things like giving to givewell charities isn’t very valuable
C) One shouldn’t strive to do good effectively
are all very crazy and supported by nothing.
In my mind since EA premises are vague and generic, any criticism above a quality bar gets borg’d in. So no, I didn’t ever see an “external” criticism of EA be any good—if it was good, then it’d be internal criticism, as far as im concerned.