Part 7: What Might We Be Missing?

Aaron Gertler 🔸
31 Jul 2021 6:18 UTC

Effective altruism isn’t a fixed set of ideas. We want to keep improving our work, so that we can get closer to finding the best ways to do good. Criticism, whether from inside or outside of the movement, has been essential to its development.

Here, we cover prominent critiques of EA — the ideas, and the way they’ve been implemented. In some cases, we also share counterarguments.

Note that some of these critiques come from earlier points in the movement’s history, and may not be as relevant to the present-day movement. However, we still see them as useful to know about — and many are still worth considering! (Like any movement with ambitious goals, EA has a lot to work on.)

If you think we’ve missed an important piece of criticism, please let us know.

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<— Part 6: Emerging Technologies

—> Part 8: Putting it into Practice

Photo credit: Sigmund

Interactive Exercise

What Might We Be Miss­ing?: In­ter­ac­tive exercise

EA Handbook1 Jan 2021 19:58 UTC
2 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

The Essentials

These readings cover, in order:

  • The most common criticisms from outside the movement

  • An early attempt to evaluate the movement’s weaknesses from within

  • A heated academic debate on the merits of EA

  • A thought experiment which poses a challenge to expected-value theory; how should we think about unlikely events with very high potential impact?

Ob­jec­tions to effec­tive altruism

EA Handbook29 Dec 2020 8:00 UTC
4 points
2 comments7 min readEA link
(www.effectivealtruism.org)

A cri­tique of effec­tive altruism

Ben Kuhn3 Dec 2013 1:39 UTC
30 points
5 comments12 min readEA link
(www.lesswrong.com)

Re­sponses to “The Logic of Effec­tive Altru­ism”

EA Handbook1 Jul 2015 7:00 UTC
14 points
0 comments12 min readEA link

Pas­cal’s Mugging

EA Handbook1 Jul 2009 7:00 UTC
9 points
0 comments4 min readEA link
(www.nickbostrom.com)

Further Reading

These readings cover, in order:

  • Two critiques initially published on the EA Forum, both of which inspired lengthy discussion within the community

  • A rebuttal to the common idea that effective altruism only values change that is easy to quantify, rather than “systemic change”

  • An argument that almost all “EA criticism” attacks ideas associated with effective altruism, rather than the core idea

  • The usual exploratory content (even more criticism! Hurrah!)

Effec­tive Altru­ism is an Ide­ol­ogy, not (just) a Question

James Fodor28 Jun 2019 7:18 UTC
166 points
46 comments16 min readEA link
(thegodlesstheist.com)

The case of the miss­ing cause pri­ori­ti­sa­tion research

weeatquince16 Aug 2020 0:21 UTC
309 points
88 comments16 min readEA link

Effec­tive al­tru­ists love sys­temic change

Robert_Wiblin8 Jul 2015 7:00 UTC
54 points
2 comments6 min readEA link
(80000hours.org)

Disagree­ing about what’s effec­tive isn’t dis­agree­ing with effec­tive altruism

Robert_Wiblin16 Jul 2015 7:00 UTC
18 points
1 comment3 min readEA link
(80000hours.org)

What Might We Be Miss­ing? More to explore

EA Handbook1 Jan 2021 10:55 UTC
2 points
0 comments1 min readEA link