As a matter of policy, I believe downvotes should indicate that the discussion point is not worth considering—not that we disagree with the idea. For example: we should downvote spam, nonsense posts, or inappropriately immature posts.
I’m not sure who downvoted you, but I can say that I doubt helping first world people is likely to be more cost-effective than helping people in developing countries. There’s just too many people already helping first world people. All the low hanging fruit has already been plucked.
Your link mentions possibilities like nuclear weapon containment or the far-future benefits accruing from funding artists today. The former seems like it would help everyone, not just first-world people. The latter seems… rather difficult to get evidence for.
Sure, we can create just-so stories that provide plausible ways that art/idea funding could effectively help the future. But we have no clear way of testing whether those just-so stories are accurate—nor even any way to really judge what kind of confidence level we should have for the effectiveness of art funding.
I like art. It’s one of my “things”. My house has several canvases, dozens of paint brushes, and upwards of 600 books on art. I have a significant other that is an art educator, and promoting art literacy is a big deal in our house. Despite this, I sincerely doubt that funding art is anywhere near as effective at creating utility than conventional EA interventions. Sure, great art can impact generations, and has potential far-future effects, but you can’t just fund the greats—how would you know which to fund in the first place? I just don’t see how it can compare to conventional EA ideas.
With that said, I do agree that we should consider first world interventions as a possibility for EA. I just can’t think of any first world interventions that could plausibly do a better job than developing world interventions.
I hope we don’t get carried away with the art thing-I was just trying to steelman that guy’s response.
My main point was just to solicit ideas about how to help first-world folks. That’s not because I think you can save more first-world folks than developing-world folks: it’s because I accept greater concern with socially nearby people in my definition of altruism. On this site you guys don’t-and I accept that too. But I now wonder if your definition of effectiveness is so different from mine that we can’t even talk.
I would definitely be interested in seeing more of a conversation about how to effectively help people in the first world. I think your position is not abnormal, and while I don’t hold it, I do think that it’s valuable for people with many different positions to pay attention to effectiveness in their altruism. At the Global Priorities Project we are working on some notes on how different ethical or factual assumptions would lead you to preferring different causes.
I guess that the link without framing may have made people think you were saying we should as a whole focus more on the first world, which could have earned the downvote.
Are you concerned with first world people alive today, or also with future first-world people? The answer may well depend on this (it affects how good economic growth is, as well as climate change mitigation and catastrophe reduction, particularly catastrophes that might destroy civilisation).
As a matter of policy, I believe downvotes should indicate that the discussion point is not worth considering—not that we disagree with the idea. For example: we should downvote spam, nonsense posts, or inappropriately immature posts.
I’m not sure who downvoted you, but I can say that I doubt helping first world people is likely to be more cost-effective than helping people in developing countries. There’s just too many people already helping first world people. All the low hanging fruit has already been plucked.
Your link mentions possibilities like nuclear weapon containment or the far-future benefits accruing from funding artists today. The former seems like it would help everyone, not just first-world people. The latter seems… rather difficult to get evidence for.
Sure, we can create just-so stories that provide plausible ways that art/idea funding could effectively help the future. But we have no clear way of testing whether those just-so stories are accurate—nor even any way to really judge what kind of confidence level we should have for the effectiveness of art funding.
I like art. It’s one of my “things”. My house has several canvases, dozens of paint brushes, and upwards of 600 books on art. I have a significant other that is an art educator, and promoting art literacy is a big deal in our house. Despite this, I sincerely doubt that funding art is anywhere near as effective at creating utility than conventional EA interventions. Sure, great art can impact generations, and has potential far-future effects, but you can’t just fund the greats—how would you know which to fund in the first place? I just don’t see how it can compare to conventional EA ideas.
With that said, I do agree that we should consider first world interventions as a possibility for EA. I just can’t think of any first world interventions that could plausibly do a better job than developing world interventions.
I hope we don’t get carried away with the art thing-I was just trying to steelman that guy’s response.
My main point was just to solicit ideas about how to help first-world folks. That’s not because I think you can save more first-world folks than developing-world folks: it’s because I accept greater concern with socially nearby people in my definition of altruism. On this site you guys don’t-and I accept that too. But I now wonder if your definition of effectiveness is so different from mine that we can’t even talk.
I would definitely be interested in seeing more of a conversation about how to effectively help people in the first world. I think your position is not abnormal, and while I don’t hold it, I do think that it’s valuable for people with many different positions to pay attention to effectiveness in their altruism. At the Global Priorities Project we are working on some notes on how different ethical or factual assumptions would lead you to preferring different causes.
I guess that the link without framing may have made people think you were saying we should as a whole focus more on the first world, which could have earned the downvote.
Are you concerned with first world people alive today, or also with future first-world people? The answer may well depend on this (it affects how good economic growth is, as well as climate change mitigation and catastrophe reduction, particularly catastrophes that might destroy civilisation).
I am concerned with future people; I would like us to have an interesting or “awesome” future.