One basic lesson I learned from trying to do effective altruism for much of my adult life is that morality is hard. Morality is hard at all levels of abstraction: Cause prioritization, or trying to figure out the most pressing problems to work on, is hard. Intervention prioritization, or trying to figure out how we can tackle the most important problems to work on, is hard. Career choice, or trying to figure out what I personally should do to work on the most important interventions for the most important problems is hard. Day-to-day prioritization is hard. In practice, juggling a long and ill-defined list of desiderata to pick the morally least-bad outcome is hard. And dedication and commitment to continuously hammer away at doing the right thing is hard.
And the actual problems we face are really hard. Millions of children die every year from preventable causes. Hundreds of billions of animals are tortured in factory farms. Many of us believe that there are double-digit percentage points of existential risk this century. And if we can navigate all the perils and tribulations of this century, we still need to prepare our descendants for a world worth living in.
In that context, I think I want to cut other members of this community some slack. People are going to act in less than optimal ways. People are going to screw up, in words and deeds. It is likely still better to work with other people than to do my own thing. The problems of the world are challenging enough that we need the entire community, and more, to confront them.
We should not forget that the purpose that unites us here is the desire to do good. The ultimate arbiter of our actions is Utility. Perhaps we’ll eventually realize that the community is not the best way to do good, and needs to be broken up. If that happens, I will strongly prefer that the community, or large parts of it, dies on its own terms, with solemnity and grace, after extensive and careful cost-benefit analysis that tells us that destroying the community is the best way to serve the good. We should not just casually allow the community to shatter because of reputational crises, or internal infighting.
Morality is hard, and we’re in this together.
One basic lesson I learned from trying to do effective altruism for much of my adult life is that morality is hard. Morality is hard at all levels of abstraction: Cause prioritization, or trying to figure out the most pressing problems to work on, is hard. Intervention prioritization, or trying to figure out how we can tackle the most important problems to work on, is hard. Career choice, or trying to figure out what I personally should do to work on the most important interventions for the most important problems is hard. Day-to-day prioritization is hard. In practice, juggling a long and ill-defined list of desiderata to pick the morally least-bad outcome is hard. And dedication and commitment to continuously hammer away at doing the right thing is hard.
And the actual problems we face are really hard. Millions of children die every year from preventable causes. Hundreds of billions of animals are tortured in factory farms. Many of us believe that there are double-digit percentage points of existential risk this century. And if we can navigate all the perils and tribulations of this century, we still need to prepare our descendants for a world worth living in.
In that context, I think I want to cut other members of this community some slack. People are going to act in less than optimal ways. People are going to screw up, in words and deeds. It is likely still better to work with other people than to do my own thing. The problems of the world are challenging enough that we need the entire community, and more, to confront them.
We should not forget that the purpose that unites us here is the desire to do good. The ultimate arbiter of our actions is Utility. Perhaps we’ll eventually realize that the community is not the best way to do good, and needs to be broken up. If that happens, I will strongly prefer that the community, or large parts of it, dies on its own terms, with solemnity and grace, after extensive and careful cost-benefit analysis that tells us that destroying the community is the best way to serve the good. We should not just casually allow the community to shatter because of reputational crises, or internal infighting.