Should altruism be selfless?
This is my blogging carnival submission for this month. The topic is: “selflessness”.
Some moral philosophies emphasize consequences and outcomes at the expense of intentions. Other philosophies (including, I would say, common sense morality) place high value on good intentions even if those intentions happen to lead to bad outcomes.
I don’t often see effective altruists talking much about intentions. Data from the recently published 2014 EA Survey suggests that roughly 75% of EAs are consequentialists. Common EA rhetoric focuses on doing the maximum good, choosing the best possible cause, or perhaps donating as much as you can.
But another common occurrence is for EAs to profess how much joy earning to give brings them, how fulfilling they find it, how little their donations disadvantage them because of the declining marginal utility of money, or about excited altruism more generally.
The Maximum Philanthropy effective altruist lifestyle doesn’t seem to be coming from a place of Maximum Selflessness. In some situations, it even seems to come from a place of outright self-benefit. Presumably (obviously?), the decision to achieve self-benefit via earning to give is at least in some part motivated by altruism but EA is very open about the existence of other powerful motivators: the “warm glow” of philanthropy and the benefits that come from perceived selflessness.
Does this matter at all? What if I openly proclaimed that I was going to donate all my money for 100% selfish reasons? Should I be docked points? It seems that EA benefits from being viewed with a “consequentialist gaze” in that the philosophy generally attempts to achieve the best outcomes, although it is arguably no better than other popular viewpoints when it comes to intentions.
To what extent does/should selflessness matter for being an effective altruist?
Does anybody perceive any PR problems related to EA’s closer relationship to Maximum Philanthropy than to Maximum Selflessness?
If EA were perceived as something people do for primarily selfless reasons, this would probably make it harder to persuade new people to join. Implicitly, the presence of an EA would be calling into question the moral character of the non-EA, which can tend to make people defensive and prone to rationalizing, see for instance this effect.
As to what is really going on with EAs: I think that the abstract philosophical motivation is indeed often selfless, because even if you’re an EA in order to feel good and find your life meaningful, this trick only works if you manage to fully convince yourself of the EA-goal. However, when it comes to having the motivation to overcome akrasia and put things into practice, I think that selfish reasons play a large role as to how far people will go. This is supported e.g. by the influence of social involvement on people becoming active.
First, self-benefit is great. It becomes easier to think about this if we try to ignore the distinction between self and other at least in our conscious thinking in so far as that is possible. Doing great good for ten people and doing a little good for one person is a little better than “only” doing great good for ten people. Self-benefit also has the carrot effect. Some Less Wrong folks use sugar or nicotine to Pavlov-like positively motivate themselves to enjoy doing something more (e.g., writing a thesis), so self-benefit can lead to even more excited altruism.
Selfish intentions are tricky, though, because while altruism can arguably originate in selfish intentions as some other commenters have pointed out, I haven’t found a way to motivate effectiveness on that basis (except in cases where the intervention benefits everyone, like x-risk).
I’ve seen criticisms of effective altruism in which effective altruists have been criticised for supposedly donating a large proportion of their income simply to improve their image and make themselves look better. On that basis, it could be argued that EA should have a closer relationship to Maximum Selflessness, but even then, people could still accuse EAs of “being selfless” in order to improve their image.
On the other hand, if EA were centred around the concept of Maximum Selflessness, it could be perceived as too demanding. But, if the selfish reasons for being an effective altruist are promoted too much, a selfish person may simply get bored after a while and find something else which benefits him or her.
So, a balance should be struck and I think this balance does exist currently in effective altruism. From a utilitarian point of view, I wouldn’t say that EA should ever be all about Maximum Selflessness, because self-benefit along with benefitting others surely means that net happiness or net preferences-satisfied in the world has increased to a greater extent than if one sacrificed everything to benefit others and was then unhappy.
[Incomplete response; will finish later today]
To what extent does/should selflessness matter for being an effective altruist?
If someone was only going to donate their money for only selfish reasons, I figure they could and would find something more efficient at making them feel good than donating their money. If someone was so selfish, I doubt what would serve their selfishness best would be donating to efficient charities. If someone was donating for 100% selfish reasons, it would imply they care 0% for those who benefit from the donation. That’s so absurd they likely wouldn’t be donating in the first place.
Of course, there are people with so much money to donate they may benefit socially for being perceived as magnanimous and gain status, without hurting financially or personally for it, and those on the receiving end benefit regardless. In this case, one could be virtually perfectly selfish in donating. Arguably, there are people like this in the world. If this happens within effective altruism, I would hope it’s noticed and countered, lest it become normalized as a perverse incentive. I don’t know to what extent this might already be a problem within effective altruism. While there are criticisms of the personal motivations of effective altruism, ones from within the movement aren’t on how we aren’t being selfless enough. If one wanted to gain benefits of giving only to feel good about oneself, there seems easier ways than effective altruism.
Someone could donate for partially altruistic, but majorly selfish reasons. I’m unsure how to treat this. The thing about altruism from the perspective of this movement is that as long as just as much help is being done, it doesn’t matter it one benefits from it selfishly. The “warm glow” from helping is extra on top of the good already done; it in no way diminishes the amount of altruism achieved. This is exactly the issue Jeff Kaufman covers in his blog post Altruism isn’t about sacrifice. Some people may define altruism as requiring great sacrifice.
I recall WIlliam MacAskill writing or saying social science research shows giving makes us feel good, and better than we might expect. I don’t remember the original source, but it might be common enough to be in multiple ones. Anyway, I believe he said this as a point to counter how the conception giving so much might be too hard for people. It seems we sometimes might be using that talking point as a promotion tool. I’ve met many people earning to give, but I don’t recall most of them stating receiving a selfishly “warm glow” as a major motivation. While some people feel obligated to do goo, and some morally inclined persons feel earning to give just make sense, most effective altruists I’ve met don’t mention it. Based on my observations, it seems obvious earning to give and being philanthropic makes them feel good for whatever reason, but it’s not what they’re pushing.
Nonetheless, if there’s a wide range of reasons effective altruists pursue earning to give, and even the ways it might make them feel good are varied, it’d be odd if we were pushing something as being less selfless than we actually treat it.
Yeh there is a lot of research showing that giving can make one happier overall, which GWWC summarised here (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/sites/givingwhatwecan.org/files/attachments/giving-without-sacrifice.pdf). I believe that observing this, and using it to try to motivate people to give, may well be self-defeating though, since it may undercut the grounds for altruistic motivation if we frame giving as (potentially) self-interested. Importantly, I’m not saying that it might simply replace moral motivation with equally or more efficacious non-moral motivation, but that making people think of giving as something that is in their self-interest might reduce their motivation to do it overall: for example, by making them unable to think of it as a sacrifice about which they can feel morally virtuous (and maybe even making them think of it as a form of selfish hypocrisy about which they should feel guilty).
Thanks for responding. You articulated exactly what I wanted to better than I could.
Thanks for writing this, Bitton!