“Altruism is systems change, so why isn’t EA?” It’s true that Effective Altruism isn’t that interested in trying to throw out the idea that self-interest, although not a perfect model of human behavior, can be a helpful way to understand how individual people’s choices are influenced in a consistent direction by the incentives society gives them. But it’s unfair to say that just because we like using the tools of mainstream economics, EA is against “systemic change”. Like you say, even communism is basically built on a framework of self-interest-based economics analysis, but few would claim that a communist revolution “isn’t real systemic change”. Indeed, Effective Altruism loves systemic change:
Most recent Open Philanthropy research and grants, on immigration reform, criminal justice reform, macroeconomics, and international development, are clearly focussed on huge structural changes of various kinds.
The OpenBorders.info website collates research on and promotes the option of dramatic increases in migration from poor to rich countries.
Our colleagues at the Global Priorities Project research what should be the most important reform priorities for governments, and how they can improve cost-benefit and decision-making processes.
One of GiveWell’s main goals from the beginning, perhaps it’s primary goal, has been to change the cultural norms within the nonprofit sector, and the standards by which they are judged by donors. They wanted to make it necessary for charities to be transparent with donors about their successes and failures, and run projects that actually helped recipients. They have already significantly changed the conversation around charitable giving.
80,000 Hours alumni and effective altruist charities work on or donate to lobbying efforts to improve animal welfare regulation, such as Humane Society US-FARM. Other activists are working for dramatic society-wide changes in how society views the moral importance of non-human animals.
“Radical economist Kate Raworth has proposed and made a case for a new economic model with balance as its focus… Raworth is less precise about how we get there.” I don’t understand what the idea of ecological limits / environmental protection has to do with replacing self-interest as the basis of economic modeling?? Like you say, achieving a prosperous society without causing unsustainable levels of pollution, etc, is a goal, but not a method or a modeling technique. Personally, I think that society should do a much better job of taxing negative externalities—implementing carbon taxes to reduce emissions, congestion taxes to reduce traffic, taxes on things like cigarettes and sugary drinks that damage people’s health. But the idea of using government to correct for the negative externalities of individual behavior, doesn’t require overthrowing normal economic analysis. Indeed, the whole plan (which works very well when it is all-too-rarely implemented!) is created with the tools of economic analysis.
“If humans evolved forms of reciprocity, including altruism in addition to and not dependent upon the evolution of human self-interest, and it is these behaviors that make them distinct among species, while self-interest is ubiquitous, then which of these two human behaviors is more fundamental to human nature or even human existence?” Reciprocity and altruism are not totally unique to humanity—altruistic behaviors have famously been observed in numerous species. Check out this video on Arabian Babblers (who aggressively “compete” to be the most helpful), and this wikipedia page on some “eusocial” species that have been shaped by group-level selection. The tools of fields like evolution and economics aren’t stumped/bamboozled by these situations—rather, they are perfectly capable of understanding these fascinating exceptions to the general rule.
“To the contrary. I am suggesting that EA deepen its meaning of what is rational, beyond the reductionist predilection for finding the simplest answers because even if the intent is to find the truth, reductionism almost always only finds the partial truth [excludes], but disguises it as the needed [only] truth.” Just wanted to mention that I have no idea what this means; I am going to need some more examples of what it might mean for EA to deepen the meaning of what is rational, in order to visualize what your suggestion might possibly look like in practice. What awesome new things will become possible, when we throw out normal economics and create our own new way of modeling human nature? Is the point of creating a new version of economics that it will actually make people in the real world be less selfish? Or is it just to understand the world better by making a more complex model? etc.
I am sorry if the following comes off as rant-y or dismissive, but I have just gotta say it: Personally, I am a huge fan of (what I think of as) systemic change. I love nothing more than thinking about georgism, charter cities and network states, prediction markets, approval voting and liquid democracy, sortition, quadratic funding for promoting positive externalities, and so many other exciting ideas for improving the future. (I love these things so much that I spent a month creating an award-winning entry in a “world-building” competition to describe utopian futures for humanity! Wherein I tried to create a realistic narrative of how a revolution in improved governing institutions could develop over the next three decades.) And I love to meet other people who claim to be looking for radical new solutions and new experimental ways of governing to solve deep societal problems. But so often, it turns out that yet again it is just a bunch of cliché, politically left-wing language that either doesn’t present a clear plan at all (let’s overthrow the academic field of economics in favor of something more holistic and not based around self-interest, and then this will lead to a transformed world via… ???), or else the plan is just “we should be more socialist”, which is incredibly boring to me since (like you say in the post) this is not a radically new idea at all—it’s the primary axis on which all politics has been fighting back and forth for decades. So, I just want to communicate, from the depths of my heart, that I am not trying to put down your post because I don’t like the idea of radically improving the world via systemic change. Rather I think that so much more is possible—there is so much more territory to explore than the tired old battlefields of socialism, degrowther eco-doomerism, identity-politics culture wars, etc, that I see so many idealistic young people glomming onto as if they were groundbreaking and full of new potential. There are genuinely new ideas all around, important and tractable but tragically neglected even by the people who say they are most eager to fight for systemic change.
You’ve got five points of contention or question, I will address them in order.
1) Systemic change and systems change are not the same thing. The things you outlined that EA engages with on a systemic change level, are things meant to make the self-interested system better. My greater argument, put another way, is that EA has the potential to challenge the self-interested system, but its too busy propping up the self-interested system to realize it. EA is operating within the self-interested system, just as communism and socialism have and do, reifying self-interest in the process. Its rhetorically oxymoronic and generally contradictory to claim to be an altruist while also explicitly claiming not to challenge self-interest; altruism is literally a challenge to self-interest, the only way you can define altruism without challenging self-interest is to make altruism a form of self-interest (which is what economics strained to do for generations).
2) I’m using the example of what Raworth envisions to say that altruism and all the other forms of reciprocity are what can get us to balance. There are a lot of other examples in the world, of course. I cut, for instance, another section on Hopi culture—one that to this day still practices implicit and explicit reciprocity as fundamental parts of their culture and modes of exchange. They’ve also managed a sustainable existence (balanced) for millennia in some of earth’s harshest environs.
From my critique: “If the entire world were populated by effective altruists, we’d make it to Raworth’s sustainable zone (the donut). But the entire world is not populated by effective altruists because most of the world can’t even envision themselves as anything more than self-interested beings fighting for survival, because that’s what they’ve been told they are...”
3) I don’t actually claim that altruism and other forms of reciprocity are unique to humans, just that it makes them distinct among species. There is no other species on earth that cooperates and practices reciprocity at the level humans do. I will argue this point, not that there aren’t other instances. New Caledonian crows use tools, but humans really, really use tools would be an analogy of what I mean by distinct.
4) The linked application of this critique to a cause exploration is literally an example of what I mean by a deeper rationalism. Very simply, I mean the over use of reductionism is making EA shallow and therefore, oftentimes/sometimes wrong and it need not be.
5) And I agree with your notion that the dualism of right/left “systems” change ideas is getting us… not where we need to be. That’s part of why I am approaching that as one system and suggesting, with evidence, that there is another.
Quick feedback: I stopped reading after the summary because I find the writing style exhausting. There’s a lot of complicated words that require the reader to do a lot of active thinking and interpretation
Some assorted responses to bits of your post:
“Altruism is systems change, so why isn’t EA?” It’s true that Effective Altruism isn’t that interested in trying to throw out the idea that self-interest, although not a perfect model of human behavior, can be a helpful way to understand how individual people’s choices are influenced in a consistent direction by the incentives society gives them. But it’s unfair to say that just because we like using the tools of mainstream economics, EA is against “systemic change”. Like you say, even communism is basically built on a framework of self-interest-based economics analysis, but few would claim that a communist revolution “isn’t real systemic change”. Indeed, Effective Altruism loves systemic change:
“Radical economist Kate Raworth has proposed and made a case for a new economic model with balance as its focus… Raworth is less precise about how we get there.” I don’t understand what the idea of ecological limits / environmental protection has to do with replacing self-interest as the basis of economic modeling?? Like you say, achieving a prosperous society without causing unsustainable levels of pollution, etc, is a goal, but not a method or a modeling technique. Personally, I think that society should do a much better job of taxing negative externalities—implementing carbon taxes to reduce emissions, congestion taxes to reduce traffic, taxes on things like cigarettes and sugary drinks that damage people’s health. But the idea of using government to correct for the negative externalities of individual behavior, doesn’t require overthrowing normal economic analysis. Indeed, the whole plan (which works very well when it is all-too-rarely implemented!) is created with the tools of economic analysis.
“If humans evolved forms of reciprocity, including altruism in addition to and not dependent upon the evolution of human self-interest, and it is these behaviors that make them distinct among species, while self-interest is ubiquitous, then which of these two human behaviors is more fundamental to human nature or even human existence?” Reciprocity and altruism are not totally unique to humanity—altruistic behaviors have famously been observed in numerous species. Check out this video on Arabian Babblers (who aggressively “compete” to be the most helpful), and this wikipedia page on some “eusocial” species that have been shaped by group-level selection. The tools of fields like evolution and economics aren’t stumped/bamboozled by these situations—rather, they are perfectly capable of understanding these fascinating exceptions to the general rule.
“To the contrary. I am suggesting that EA deepen its meaning of what is rational, beyond the reductionist predilection for finding the simplest answers because even if the intent is to find the truth, reductionism almost always only finds the partial truth [excludes], but disguises it as the needed [only] truth.” Just wanted to mention that I have no idea what this means; I am going to need some more examples of what it might mean for EA to deepen the meaning of what is rational, in order to visualize what your suggestion might possibly look like in practice. What awesome new things will become possible, when we throw out normal economics and create our own new way of modeling human nature? Is the point of creating a new version of economics that it will actually make people in the real world be less selfish? Or is it just to understand the world better by making a more complex model? etc.
I am sorry if the following comes off as rant-y or dismissive, but I have just gotta say it: Personally, I am a huge fan of (what I think of as) systemic change. I love nothing more than thinking about georgism, charter cities and network states, prediction markets, approval voting and liquid democracy, sortition, quadratic funding for promoting positive externalities, and so many other exciting ideas for improving the future. (I love these things so much that I spent a month creating an award-winning entry in a “world-building” competition to describe utopian futures for humanity! Wherein I tried to create a realistic narrative of how a revolution in improved governing institutions could develop over the next three decades.) And I love to meet other people who claim to be looking for radical new solutions and new experimental ways of governing to solve deep societal problems. But so often, it turns out that yet again it is just a bunch of cliché, politically left-wing language that either doesn’t present a clear plan at all (let’s overthrow the academic field of economics in favor of something more holistic and not based around self-interest, and then this will lead to a transformed world via… ???), or else the plan is just “we should be more socialist”, which is incredibly boring to me since (like you say in the post) this is not a radically new idea at all—it’s the primary axis on which all politics has been fighting back and forth for decades. So, I just want to communicate, from the depths of my heart, that I am not trying to put down your post because I don’t like the idea of radically improving the world via systemic change. Rather I think that so much more is possible—there is so much more territory to explore than the tired old battlefields of socialism, degrowther eco-doomerism, identity-politics culture wars, etc, that I see so many idealistic young people glomming onto as if they were groundbreaking and full of new potential. There are genuinely new ideas all around, important and tractable but tragically neglected even by the people who say they are most eager to fight for systemic change.
You’ve got five points of contention or question, I will address them in order.
1) Systemic change and systems change are not the same thing. The things you outlined that EA engages with on a systemic change level, are things meant to make the self-interested system better. My greater argument, put another way, is that EA has the potential to challenge the self-interested system, but its too busy propping up the self-interested system to realize it. EA is operating within the self-interested system, just as communism and socialism have and do, reifying self-interest in the process. Its rhetorically oxymoronic and generally contradictory to claim to be an altruist while also explicitly claiming not to challenge self-interest; altruism is literally a challenge to self-interest, the only way you can define altruism without challenging self-interest is to make altruism a form of self-interest (which is what economics strained to do for generations).
2) I’m using the example of what Raworth envisions to say that altruism and all the other forms of reciprocity are what can get us to balance. There are a lot of other examples in the world, of course. I cut, for instance, another section on Hopi culture—one that to this day still practices implicit and explicit reciprocity as fundamental parts of their culture and modes of exchange. They’ve also managed a sustainable existence (balanced) for millennia in some of earth’s harshest environs.
From my critique: “If the entire world were populated by effective altruists, we’d make it to Raworth’s sustainable zone (the donut). But the entire world is not populated by effective altruists because most of the world can’t even envision themselves as anything more than self-interested beings fighting for survival, because that’s what they’ve been told they are...”
3) I don’t actually claim that altruism and other forms of reciprocity are unique to humans, just that it makes them distinct among species. There is no other species on earth that cooperates and practices reciprocity at the level humans do. I will argue this point, not that there aren’t other instances. New Caledonian crows use tools, but humans really, really use tools would be an analogy of what I mean by distinct.
4) The linked application of this critique to a cause exploration is literally an example of what I mean by a deeper rationalism. Very simply, I mean the over use of reductionism is making EA shallow and therefore, oftentimes/sometimes wrong and it need not be.
5) And I agree with your notion that the dualism of right/left “systems” change ideas is getting us… not where we need to be. That’s part of why I am approaching that as one system and suggesting, with evidence, that there is another.
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.
Quick feedback: I stopped reading after the summary because I find the writing style exhausting. There’s a lot of complicated words that require the reader to do a lot of active thinking and interpretation
Thanks for the feedback.