Criticism of effective altruist causes

TagLast edit: 22 Jul 2022 13:44 UTC by Leo

The criticism of effective altruist causes tag covers posts that criticize popular claims about the importance of a given cause area, or an idea within that area. They don’t have to be critical of the area as a whole — just one or more popular ideas related to the area.

Related entries

criticism of effective altruism | criticism of effective altruism culture | criticism of effective altruist organizations | criticism of longtermism and existential risk studies

Pre-announcing a contest for critiques and red teaming

Lizka25 Mar 2022 11:52 UTC

173 points

27 comments2 min readEA link

Response to Recent Criticisms of Longtermism

ab13 Dec 2021 13:36 UTC

249 points

31 comments28 min readEA link

Why AI is Harder Than We Think—Melanie Mitchell

Eevee🔹28 Apr 2021 8:19 UTC

45 points

7 comments2 min readEA link

(arxiv.org)

Help me find the crux between EA/XR and Progress Studies

jasoncrawford2 Jun 2021 18:47 UTC

119 points

37 comments3 min readEA link

[Linkpost] Eric Schwitzgebel: Against Longtermism

ag40006 Jan 2022 14:15 UTC

41 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

How much current animal suffering does longtermism let us ignore?

Jacob Eliosoff21 Apr 2022 9:10 UTC

40 points

50 comments6 min readEA link

Progress studies vs. longtermist EA: some differences

Max_Daniel31 May 2021 21:35 UTC

84 points

27 comments3 min readEA link

Supervolcanoes tail risk has been exaggerated?

Vasco Grilo🔸6 Mar 2024 8:38 UTC

46 points

9 comments8 min readEA link

(journals.ametsoc.org)

Why I No Longer Prioritize Wild Animal Welfare

saulius15 Feb 2023 12:11 UTC

321 points

65 comments5 min readEA link

Ben Garfinkel: How sure are we about this AI stuff?

bgarfinkel9 Feb 2019 19:17 UTC

128 points

20 comments18 min readEA link

[edited] Inequality is a (small) problem for EA and economic growth

Karthik Tadepalli8 Aug 2022 9:42 UTC

99 points

28 comments7 min readEA link

[Question] How much EA analysis of AI safety as a cause area exists?

richard_ngo6 Sep 2019 11:15 UTC

94 points

20 comments2 min readEA link

Will splashy philanthropy cause the biosecurity field to focus on the wrong risks?

Tessa A 🔸30 Apr 2019 16:03 UTC

45 points

10 comments2 min readEA link

(thebulletin.org)

Is RP’s Moral Weights Project too animal friendly? Four critical junctures

NickLaing11 Oct 2024 12:03 UTC

152 points

56 comments5 min readEA link

Democratising Risk—or how EA deals with critics

CarlaZoeC28 Dec 2021 15:05 UTC

273 points

311 comments4 min readEA link

Concerns with the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill

Larks9 Mar 2022 18:12 UTC

126 points

37 comments21 min readEA link

Re. Longtermism: A response to the EA forum (part 2)

vadmas1 Mar 2021 18:13 UTC

15 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

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

Fods1228 Jun 2019 7:18 UTC

165 points

46 comments16 min readEA link

(thegodlesstheist.com)

On AI Weapons

kbog13 Nov 2019 12:48 UTC

76 points

10 comments30 min readEA link

Critical Review of ‘The Precipice’: A Reassessment of the Risks of AI and Pandemics

Fods1211 May 2020 11:11 UTC

111 points

32 comments26 min readEA link

20 Critiques of AI Safety That I Found on Twitter

Daniel Kirmani23 Jun 2022 15:11 UTC

14 points

13 comments1 min readEA link

Biological Anchors external review by Jennifer Lin (linkpost)

peterhartree30 Nov 2022 13:06 UTC

36 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(docs.google.com)

Blake Richards on Why he is Skeptical of Existential Risk from AI

Michaël Trazzi14 Jun 2022 19:11 UTC

63 points

14 comments4 min readEA link

(theinsideview.ai)

AI timelines and theoretical understanding of deep learning

Venky102412 Sep 2021 16:26 UTC

4 points

8 comments2 min readEA link

Farmed animals may have positive lives now or in a few decades?

Vasco Grilo🔸26 Oct 2024 9:18 UTC

24 points

7 comments8 min readEA link

[linkpost] Peter Singer: The Hinge of History

mic16 Jan 2022 1:25 UTC

38 points

8 comments3 min readEA link

Critique of Superintelligence Part 2

Fods1213 Dec 2018 5:12 UTC

10 points

12 comments7 min readEA link

Why the expected numbers of farmed animals in the far future might be huge

Fai4 Mar 2022 19:59 UTC

134 points

29 comments16 min readEA link

[Cross-post] Change my mind: we should define and measure the effectiveness of advanced AI

David Johnston6 Apr 2022 0:20 UTC

4 points

0 comments7 min readEA link

Critique of OpenPhil’s macroeconomic policy advocacy

Hauke Hillebrandt24 Mar 2022 22:03 UTC

142 points

39 comments24 min readEA link

Critique of Superintelligence Part 3

Fods1213 Dec 2018 5:13 UTC

3 points

5 comments7 min readEA link

Why I’m skeptical about unproven causes (and you should be too)

Peter Wildeford7 Aug 2013 4:00 UTC

54 points

1 comment11 min readEA link

The Epistemic Challenge to Longtermism (Tarsney, 2020)

MichaelA🔸4 Apr 2021 3:09 UTC

79 points

27 comments2 min readEA link

(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

Possible misconceptions about (strong) longtermism

JackM9 Mar 2021 17:58 UTC

90 points

43 comments19 min readEA link

A Sequence Against Strong Longtermism

vadmas22 Jul 2021 20:07 UTC

20 points

14 comments1 min readEA link

Winners of the EA Criticism and Red Teaming Contest

Lizka1 Oct 2022 1:50 UTC

226 points

41 comments19 min readEA link

The Fermi Paradox has not been dissolved

Fods1212 Dec 2020 12:02 UTC

107 points

14 comments14 min readEA link

[Question] Why should we not put effort into AI safety research?

Ben Thompson16 May 2021 5:11 UTC

15 points

5 comments1 min readEA link

People in bunkers, “sardines” and why biorisks may be overrated as a global priority

Evan R. Murphy23 Oct 2021 0:19 UTC

22 points

6 comments3 min readEA link

Why Research into Wild Animal Suffering Concerns me

Jordan_Warner25 Oct 2020 22:26 UTC

18 points

42 comments1 min readEA link

A Critical Review of Open Philanthropy’s Bet On Criminal Justice Reform

NunoSempere16 Jun 2022 16:40 UTC

302 points

97 comments26 min readEA link

Against GDP as a metric for timelines and takeoff speeds

kokotajlod29 Dec 2020 17:50 UTC

47 points

6 comments14 min readEA link

Updating on Nuclear Power

rileyharris24 Apr 2022 5:35 UTC

5 points

17 comments1 min readEA link

[Link] “The AI Timelines Scam”

Milan_Griffes11 Jul 2019 3:37 UTC

22 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

On how various plans miss the hard bits of the alignment challenge

So8res12 Jul 2022 5:35 UTC

125 points

13 comments29 min readEA link

Thoughts on electoral reform

Tobias_Baumann18 Feb 2020 16:23 UTC

85 points

31 comments4 min readEA link

EAA is relatively overinvesting in corporate welfare reforms

kato6 Jan 2022 2:47 UTC

68 points

27 comments5 min readEA link

RCTs in Development Economics, Their Critics and Their Evolution (Ogden, 2020) [linkpost]

KarolinaSarek🔸6 Apr 2021 12:29 UTC

78 points

5 comments12 min readEA link

Disentangling “Improving Institutional Decision-Making”

Lizka13 Sep 2021 23:50 UTC

92 points

16 comments19 min readEA link

The Base Rate of Longtermism Is Bad

ColdButtonIssues5 Sep 2022 13:29 UTC

220 points

27 comments7 min readEA link

AGI ruin scenarios are likely (and disjunctive)

So8res27 Jul 2022 3:24 UTC

53 points

5 comments6 min readEA link

Critique of Superintelligence Part 5

Fods1213 Dec 2018 5:19 UTC

12 points

2 comments6 min readEA link

Thoughts on “A case against strong longtermism” (Masrani)

MichaelA🔸3 May 2021 14:22 UTC

39 points

33 comments2 min readEA link

Longtermist slogans that need to be retired

Michael_Wiebe9 May 2022 1:07 UTC

5 points

21 comments1 min readEA link

A tale of 2.5 orthogonality theses

Arepo1 May 2022 13:53 UTC

140 points

31 comments11 min readEA link

Birds, Brains, Planes, and AI: Against Appeals to the Complexity/Mysteriousness/Efficiency of the Brain

kokotajlod18 Jan 2021 12:39 UTC

27 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Julia Galef and Angus Deaton: podcast discussion of RCT issues (excerpts)

Aaron Gertler 🔸4 Jan 2021 21:35 UTC

29 points

5 comments9 min readEA link

(rationallyspeakingpodcast.org)

Nobody’s on the ball on AGI alignment

leopold29 Mar 2023 14:26 UTC

327 points

65 comments9 min readEA link

(www.forourposterity.com)

More global warming might be good to mitigate the food shocks caused by abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios

Vasco Grilo🔸29 Apr 2023 8:24 UTC

46 points

39 comments13 min readEA link

[Question] Are you optimistic about the commercialization of alt proteins in 2023 and beyond?

Eevee🔹29 Apr 2023 22:20 UTC

24 points

7 comments1 min readEA link

We don’t need AGI for an amazing future

Karl von Wendt4 May 2023 12:11 UTC

57 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Epistemics (Part 2: Examples) | Reflective Altruism

Eevee🔹19 May 2023 21:28 UTC

34 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

(ineffectivealtruismblog.com)

Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes

Elizabeth3 Jun 2023 0:12 UTC

126 points

84 comments1 min readEA link

Why Yudkowsky is wrong about “covalently bonded equivalents of biology”

titotal6 Dec 2023 14:09 UTC

29 points

20 comments16 min readEA link

(open.substack.com)

Saving lives in normal times is better to improve the longterm future than doing so in catastrophes?

Vasco Grilo🔸20 Apr 2024 8:37 UTC

11 points

25 comments9 min readEA link

Can a conflict cause human extinction? Yet again, not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸19 Jun 2024 16:59 UTC

19 points

2 comments11 min readEA link

Helping animals or saving human lives in high income countries is arguably better than saving human lives in low income countries?

Vasco Grilo🔸21 Mar 2024 9:05 UTC

12 points

10 comments12 min readEA link

Utilitarianism and the replaceability of desires and attachments

MichaelStJules27 Jul 2024 1:57 UTC

33 points

11 comments12 min readEA link

Nuclear winter scepticism

Vasco Grilo🔸13 Aug 2023 10:55 UTC

110 points

42 comments10 min readEA link

(www.navalgazing.net)

The Meat Eater Problem

Vasco Grilo🔸17 Jun 2023 6:52 UTC

61 points

1 comment7 min readEA link

(journalofcontroversialideas.org)

[Question] Are we confident that superintelligent artificial intelligence disempowering humans would be bad?

Vasco Grilo🔸10 Jun 2023 9:24 UTC

24 points

27 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] Do you think decreasing the consumption of animals is good/bad? Think again?

Vasco Grilo🔸27 May 2023 8:22 UTC

89 points

41 comments5 min readEA link

Prioritising animal welfare over global health and development?

Vasco Grilo🔸13 May 2023 9:03 UTC

112 points

50 comments18 min readEA link

Finding bugs in GiveWell’s top charities

Vasco Grilo🔸23 Jan 2023 16:49 UTC

46 points

14 comments6 min readEA link

Exaggerating the risks (Part 13: Ord on Biorisk)

Vasco Grilo🔸31 Dec 2023 8:45 UTC

57 points

18 comments13 min readEA link

(ineffectivealtruismblog.com)

International risk of food insecurity and mass mortality in a runaway global warming scenario

Vasco Grilo🔸2 Sep 2023 7:28 UTC

15 points

2 comments6 min readEA link

(www.sciencedirect.com)

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley on Barriers to Bioweapons

Vasco Grilo🔸15 Feb 2024 17:58 UTC

21 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(hearthisidea.com)

Famine deaths due to the climatic effects of nuclear war

Vasco Grilo🔸14 Oct 2023 12:05 UTC

40 points

21 comments66 min readEA link

Critique of “Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2”

Vasco Grilo🔸19 Aug 2023 8:49 UTC

30 points

0 comments7 min readEA link

(daviddfriedman.substack.com)

Variance of the annual conflict and epidemic/pandemic deaths as a fraction of the global population

Vasco Grilo🔸10 Sep 2024 17:02 UTC

16 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

Attention on AI X-Risk Likely Hasn’t Distracted from Current Harms from AI

Erich_Grunewald 🔸21 Dec 2023 17:24 UTC

189 points

13 comments1 min readEA link

(www.erichgrunewald.com)

Concepts of existential catastrophe

Vasco Grilo🔸15 Apr 2024 17:16 UTC

11 points

1 comment8 min readEA link

(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

Can a war cause human extinction? Once again, not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸25 Jan 2024 7:56 UTC

67 points

29 comments18 min readEA link

Can a terrorist attack cause human extinction? Not on priors

Vasco Grilo🔸2 Dec 2023 8:20 UTC

43 points

9 comments15 min readEA link

Response to recent criticisms of EA “longtermist” thinking

kbog6 Jan 2020 4:31 UTC

27 points

46 comments11 min readEA link

Against immortality?

Owen Cotton-Barratt28 Apr 2022 11:51 UTC

110 points

40 comments3 min readEA link

There’s Lots More To Do

Jeff Kaufman 🔸29 May 2019 19:58 UTC

134 points

30 comments2 min readEA link

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)

Critique of Superintelligence Part 1

Fods1213 Dec 2018 5:10 UTC

22 points

13 comments8 min readEA link

Critique of Superintelligence Part 4

Fods1213 Dec 2018 5:14 UTC

4 points

2 comments4 min readEA link

Why EAs are skeptical about AI Safety

Lukas Trötzmüller🔸18 Jul 2022 19:01 UTC

290 points

31 comments29 min readEA link

Why I’m skeptical of moral circle expansion as a cause area

Question Mark14 Jul 2022 20:29 UTC

18 points

5 comments3 min readEA link

Voting reform seems overrated

Nathan_Barnard10 Apr 2021 0:35 UTC

12 points

11 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] What are the leading critiques of “longtermism” and related concepts

AlasdairGives30 May 2020 10:54 UTC

47 points

27 comments1 min readEA link

Were the Great Tragedies of History “Mere Ripples”?

philosophytorres8 Feb 2021 14:56 UTC

−9 points

11 comments1 min readEA link

Cash transfers are not necessarily wealth transfers

BenHoffman1 Dec 2017 23:35 UTC

17 points

12 comments12 min readEA link

Reflection—Growth and the case against randomista development—EA Forum

Joanna Picetti28 Jul 2022 23:38 UTC

−16 points

3 comments4 min readEA link

(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

Marginal Aid and Effective Altruism

TomDrake30 Mar 2023 20:31 UTC

39 points

14 comments2 min readEA link

Are we already past the precipice?

Dem0sthenes10 Aug 2022 4:01 UTC

1 point

5 comments2 min readEA link

Strong Longtermism, Irrefutability, and Moral Progress

ben_chugg26 Dec 2020 19:44 UTC

60 points

99 comments11 min readEA link

My argument against AGI

cveres12 Oct 2022 6:32 UTC

2 points

29 comments3 min readEA link

Review of Past Grants: The $100,000 Grant for a Video Game?

Nicolae3 Jun 2024 14:28 UTC

210 points

64 comments2 min readEA link

Longtermism and Uncertainty

Wahhab Baldwin26 Sep 2022 16:21 UTC

7 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

How to think about an uncertain future: lessons from other sectors & mistakes of longtermist EAs

weeatquince5 Sep 2020 12:51 UTC

63 points

31 comments14 min readEA link

Defective Altruism article in Current Affairs Magazine

ukc1001422 Sep 2022 13:27 UTC

13 points

7 comments2 min readEA link

Summary: Against the Singularity Hypothesis (David Thorstad)

Nicholas Kruus🔸27 Mar 2024 13:48 UTC

63 points

10 comments5 min readEA link

A case against strong longtermism

vadmas15 Dec 2020 20:56 UTC

68 points

79 comments1 min readEA link

Proving too much: A response to the EA forum

vadmas15 Feb 2021 19:00 UTC

24 points

7 comments1 min readEA link

How the animal movement could do even more good

Tobias_Baumann28 Feb 2022 23:10 UTC

80 points

1 comment7 min readEA link

(centerforreducingsuffering.org)

Against longtermism

Brian Lui11 Aug 2022 5:37 UTC

38 points

30 comments6 min readEA link

Searle vs Bostrom: crucial considerations for EA AI work?

Forumite13 Jul 2022 10:18 UTC

11 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Three Biases That Made Me Believe in AI Risk

beth13 Feb 2019 23:22 UTC

41 points

20 comments3 min readEA link

(Crosspost) Is Effective Altruism just a giant meme?

cryptopsyfan694205 Oct 2024 23:33 UTC

−18 points

5 comments4 min readEA link

The reasonableness of special concerns

jwt29 Aug 2022 0:10 UTC

3 points

0 comments3 min readEA link

Response to Torres’ ‘The Case Against Longtermism’

HaydnBelfield8 Mar 2021 18:09 UTC

138 points

73 comments5 min readEA link

AI Risk is like Terminator; Stop Saying it’s Not

skluug8 Mar 2022 19:17 UTC

189 points

43 comments10 min readEA link

(skluug.substack.com)

An epistemic critique of longtermism

Nathan_Barnard10 Jul 2022 10:59 UTC

12 points

4 comments9 min readEA link

Thoughts on Émile P. Torres’ new article, ‘Understanding “longtermism”: Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic’?

Atsina22 Aug 2022 9:13 UTC

8 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Is the Far Future Irrelevant for Moral Decision-Making?

Tristan D1 Oct 2024 7:42 UTC

35 points

31 comments2 min readEA link

(www.sciencedirect.com)

Why this isn’t the “most important century”

Arjun Khemani27 Jul 2022 15:27 UTC

2 points

2 comments5 min readEA link

(arjunkhemani.com)

Comments on Ernest Davis’s comments on Bostrom’s Superintelligence

Giles24 Jan 2015 4:40 UTC

2 points

8 comments9 min readEA link

A Response to OpenPhil’s R&D Model

Anthony Repetto3 Aug 2022 23:31 UTC

5 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

Effective altruism is worse than traditional philanthropy in the way it excludes the extreme poor in the global south.

Jaime Sevilla17 Dec 2022 14:44 UTC

56 points

29 comments2 min readEA link

(dear-humanity.org)

A response to Matthews on AI Risk

RyanCarey11 Aug 2015 12:58 UTC

11 points

16 comments6 min readEA link

Concerns with Longtermism

Wahhab Baldwin16 Sep 2022 5:37 UTC

13 points

9 comments3 min readEA link

Against prediction markets

Denise_Melchin12 May 2018 12:08 UTC

25 points

20 comments4 min readEA link

Linkpost—Beyond Hyperanthropomorphism: Or, why fears of AI are not even wrong, and how to make them real

Locke24 Aug 2022 16:24 UTC

−4 points

3 comments2 min readEA link

(studio.ribbonfarm.com)

Raphaël Millière on the Limits of Deep Learning and AI x-risk skepticism

Michaël Trazzi24 Jun 2022 18:33 UTC

20 points

0 comments4 min readEA link

(theinsideview.ai)

Hobbit Manifesto

Clay Cube30 Aug 2022 20:24 UTC

8 points

9 comments7 min readEA link

Speculative scenarios for climate-caused existential catastrophes

vincentzh27 Jan 2023 17:01 UTC

26 points

2 comments4 min readEA link

Editable “Important, Tractable, Neglected” critiques review

DirectedEvolution11 Feb 2023 4:01 UTC

10 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

There can be highly neglected solutions to less-neglected problems

Linda Linsefors10 Feb 2023 20:08 UTC

211 points

35 comments3 min readEA link

For Longtermism, Employ an Earth-Based Morality

Wahhab Baldwin26 Sep 2022 18:57 UTC

−3 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

On Mike Berkowitz’s 80k Podcast

Timothy_Liptrot21 Apr 2021 1:53 UTC

16 points

10 comments4 min readEA link

No comments.