people who have strong conviction in EA start with a radical critique of the status quo (e.g. a lot of things like cancer research or art or politics or volunteering with lonely seniors seem a lot less effective than GiveWell charities or the like, so we should scorn them), then see the rationales for the status quo (e.g. ultimately, society would start to fall apart if tried to divert too many resources to GiveWell charities and the like by taking them away from everything else), and then come full circle back around to some less radical position
I agree that we probably shouldnāt just defund all arts/ācancer/āold people charities overnight, but there are lots of causes that plausibly ādeserveā way less funding on the margin which would be better spent by GiveWell without society falling apart.
I take a Chestertonās fence sorta view here where I imagine a world which has zero arts funding and maybe that ends up being impoverished in a hard-to-quantify way, and that seems worth avoiding. But for the time being Iām happy to tell people to stop donating to the Cancer Research UK and send it to AMF instead.
Yes, there is an important difference between doing something yourself or recommending it to others (when you donāt expect to persuade the whole world) vs. a prescription for the whole world to universally follow. So, maybe itās good to stop donating to anything but GiveWell-recommended charities and suggest the same to others, but maybe it would end up being bad if literally the whole world suddenly did this.
Itās also different to say that societyās priorities or allocation of resources, as a whole, should be shifted somewhat in one direct or another than to say, I donāt know, developed countries should abolish their welfare systems and give the money to GiveWell.
The real life example that sticks out in my mind is when someone who was involved in our university EA group talked about volunteering with seniors and someone else told her this was self-interested rather than altruistic. To me, that is just a deeply unwise and overzealous thing to say. (In that group, we also discussed the value of novels and funding for cancer research and we had people arguing both sides of each issue.)
My attitude on those things was that there is no cost to me at least taking a cautious approach and trying to practice humility with these topics. I wasnāt trying to tell people to devote every ounce of their lives to effective altruism (not that I could convince people even if I wanted to) but actually proposing something much more modest ā switching whatever they donated to a GiveWell charity, maybe pledging to give 10% of their income, things of that nature.
If we were pitching the Against Malaria Foundation to a student group planning a fundraiser, then I would see my goal as persuading them to donate to AMF and if they decided to donate to AMF, that would be success. If we did a presentation like a Giving Game, I didnāt mind trying to give people a little razzle dazzle ā that was the whole idea.
But if someone came to our EA group alone, though, my attitude was more like: āHereās the idea. What do you think?ā I never felt like it was for me to try to convert anybody. (Does that actually even work?) I always wanted to respect peopleās autonomy and their humanity. That felt sacred to me. And, honestly, I just donāt have the stomach to give someone a hard sell. I could never be a telemarketer.
I agree that we probably shouldnāt just defund all arts/ācancer/āold people charities overnight, but there are lots of causes that plausibly ādeserveā way less funding on the margin which would be better spent by GiveWell without society falling apart.
I take a Chestertonās fence sorta view here where I imagine a world which has zero arts funding and maybe that ends up being impoverished in a hard-to-quantify way, and that seems worth avoiding. But for the time being Iām happy to tell people to stop donating to the Cancer Research UK and send it to AMF instead.
Yes, there is an important difference between doing something yourself or recommending it to others (when you donāt expect to persuade the whole world) vs. a prescription for the whole world to universally follow. So, maybe itās good to stop donating to anything but GiveWell-recommended charities and suggest the same to others, but maybe it would end up being bad if literally the whole world suddenly did this.
Itās also different to say that societyās priorities or allocation of resources, as a whole, should be shifted somewhat in one direct or another than to say, I donāt know, developed countries should abolish their welfare systems and give the money to GiveWell.
The real life example that sticks out in my mind is when someone who was involved in our university EA group talked about volunteering with seniors and someone else told her this was self-interested rather than altruistic. To me, that is just a deeply unwise and overzealous thing to say. (In that group, we also discussed the value of novels and funding for cancer research and we had people arguing both sides of each issue.)
My attitude on those things was that there is no cost to me at least taking a cautious approach and trying to practice humility with these topics. I wasnāt trying to tell people to devote every ounce of their lives to effective altruism (not that I could convince people even if I wanted to) but actually proposing something much more modest ā switching whatever they donated to a GiveWell charity, maybe pledging to give 10% of their income, things of that nature.
If we were pitching the Against Malaria Foundation to a student group planning a fundraiser, then I would see my goal as persuading them to donate to AMF and if they decided to donate to AMF, that would be success. If we did a presentation like a Giving Game, I didnāt mind trying to give people a little razzle dazzle ā that was the whole idea.
But if someone came to our EA group alone, though, my attitude was more like: āHereās the idea. What do you think?ā I never felt like it was for me to try to convert anybody. (Does that actually even work?) I always wanted to respect peopleās autonomy and their humanity. That felt sacred to me. And, honestly, I just donāt have the stomach to give someone a hard sell. I could never be a telemarketer.