You make excellent points, Owen. Especially resonant with me was your point about avoiding overly strange-sounding arguments. When faced with threatening ideas, especially those that are very demanding (such as donating a lot to charity), a person will look for any excuse to dismiss them. One of the primary ways people do this is by finding some fault in the person challenging them, such as radicalism. Too often, advocates walk straight into this, making themselves seem like, heck you said it, crackpots. I saw a video of Peter Singer giving a speech about EA recently. He began the speech by praising a number of effective altruists for donating their organs while they’re still alive to whoever may need them. This would be seen as extremely radical by most people. Thus, many of the people in the audience (or watching on Youtube) likely dismissed making large donations to effective charities as also radical, because it’s being proposed by these radical organ-donating people that call themselves “effective altruists”. The focus of my life is promoting vegetarianism as it is a practice of heinous victimization on a grand scale. It bothers me to see some veg activists publicly declaring that nature or wildlife should be completely eradicated so as to avoid wild animal suffering. To a meat-eater pondering giving up meat to have compassion for animals, this would seem so absurd and radical that he would have a good chance of dismissing vegetarianism altogether, as it’s proponents are clearly cuckoo. It’s important to come across as reasonable when advocating for something and keep your extremism to yourself. No matter how right you think you are, talking about giving internal organs away, as with Singer’s example, ain’t going to cause a rush at the local hospital for organ transplant volunteers… but it will prevent people from becoming major donors!!
Austen_Forrester
Fascinating! I’ve always wondered about the genesis of effective altruism, including the name. You definitely chose the best name; one that will survive the ages. The name makes it easier to explain to people why I think I’m helping others by working at an oil plant. As soon as I use the word “effective”, people STHU. How can you argue with effectiveness?. Rational is accurate, but a little dry, and somewhat off-putting for the faithful.
That’s a wonderful idea—researching how to increase empathy. Just as important, though, is how to actually get people to ACT on their caring feelings. I think that there’s a lot of ‘empty empathy’: people feel bad for others yet don’t act on their feelings. I guess this is the field of behavioural economics. It’s importance and EFFICIENCY cannot be underestimated. One behavioural economist suggested that getting people to stop acting against their own self-interest is by far the most cost effective global health care intervention (ie. many parents in India let their children die by refusing to give them oral rehydration salts despite being begged to by health care professionals). But there is also far too little empathy in the world, so that also needs to be developed, certainly. Another point to keep in mind is that no virtue has absolute value, it only has relative value compared to competing values. For instance, it would be hard to donate a lot to a charity no matter how much you care about its cause if you are simultaneously trying very hard to keep up with the Jones.
I couldn’t agree more. Brian, I am absolutely, 100% positive that the only way to greatly improve society’s behaviour (ie. Being veg, donating more, being more of a good person in general) is by altering society’s reward/punishment structure towards favouring positive actions. The desire for social acceptance and fear of social consequences is the main driver of human behaviour.
Regarding Buddhists and empathy, meditators generally believe that the are helping others just by meditating – bringing God’s light down to earth, yadda, yadda, yadda. For example, Paramahansa Yogananda has said that an adept yogi does more to help the world just by meditating than even the most prolific humanitarian. “Meditation is the highest service” is something I read from some guru, forget who. Also, since spiritual people usually consider spiritual practice the most important thing in the world, even more so than “worldly” problems, they think that by promoting their spiritual path, they’re performing the greatest service a person can do. For example, a Buddhist monk may not give money to the poor, but he may perform duties supporting the ashram and thus feel that he’s helping others with their spiritual lives.
Another reason spiritual people often don’t do activism is because their belief in karma makes them fatalistic as they expect individuals’/the world’s fate to play out as dictated by their pre-life karma and thus feel helpless to do anything about it. Believing in karma can be a tricky trap, no doubt. I get past it by telling myself that my altruistic actions are PART OF and not against others’ karmic destiny!!!! Oh yeah, and many meditators think that their actions will create karma (if not done with the proper mindset) that will force them to reincarnate, even if they are “good” actions, and thus try not to “do” much. That’s why I’m such a lazy bum – just avoiding making karma. No just kidding. :^)
“The standard response to the views of Singer and Unger, in the philosophical literature, is that giving such extortionate sums is just too demanding for it to be plausible as a moral requirement.”
Those “philosophers” wouldn’t find it too demanding if they were the ones who were had to endure the suffering of the Third World. It’s so wrong that people only put themselves in the shoes of the haves, rather than the have-nots when formulating their “morals”. Although, I think that framing cannot be underestimated here. Framing serious philanthropy as a moral necessity has a negative effect because no one wants to be told what to do—all that will happen is people will pull away and actually strengthen their selfish justifications. Framing serious philanthropy as an ideal, however, should have a positive effect, as people love nothing more than to strive for ideals THAT THEY FEEL THEY HAVE CHOSEN! Even the word “ethics” implies requirements that make you a “bad person” if unmet. I think that replacing the word “ethics” with “values” would have the effect I’m talking about—making hardcore philanthropy appear as aspirational and self-esteem-building rather than an attempt at convincing yourself you’re “not a bad person.”
Nice. Some of mine:
For donations, pay without using a credit card or PayPal so the charity won’t have to pay the 2-3% fee. (Sometimes charities can process credit cards for free, though.) And don’t be shy about letting others know how much you like donating to “top” charities, either! Monkey see, monkey do.
For advocacy:
make more friends and acquaintances. The more people you know, the more you can influence.
Enter more social spheres. To spread things by word of mouth, the more different social spheres you are in, the more it will spread. Even if you talk to the same number of people, those people that you talk to will be talking to different people themselves if they are in different groups/locations. If you stick to one group that you deal with, those people will be more likely just to talk to each other.
Letter writing can be very effective, especially if lots of people do it. Ie. I emailed a coffee and donut chain recently and complained that they don’t have soy milk. If more people complained, they’d have to start carrying it.
Improve your appearance: People are influenced by those that look like them, or are good-looking and successful. Also, appearing to be a happy, well adjusted person would make you a far better advocate. If you come across as weird, unhappy, etc, people will think “I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would have you as a member,” to paraphrase the old Groucho Marx joke.
For volunteering: if you have a trade or profession that is expensive to employ, that can be very high impact/irreplaceable. Ie. volunteering your accountancy services, or electrical work.
My number one advice for small steps, or what to do when you don’t know what to do for EA, however, is ironically to focus on yourself. Read and watch Youtube videos to educate yourself about whatever topics you feel are most important. Meditate to transcend negative emotions. Cultivate better social skills, or technical skills. As you become more educated on various issues, the manner in which to contribute best will reveal itself. Or you can become more effective at something altruistic you are already doing. Not to mention, if people see that you are educated, they will listen to you more so it greatly improves advocacy.
Spreading EA to non-First World nations to take advantage of people’s preference for helping their own country. Lots of both rich and poor in BRICS these days.
Spreading EA to institutions and governments. I know CEA advised the UK government but I haven’t heard much about other governments or corporate giving (although I realize that only about 5% of donations come from business, with most of the rest being from individuals). Although I realize a critical mass of individuals probably needs to be reach before institutions start to change.
Spreading altruism by counteracting it’s opposing forces, mostly the high priority people put on dominance and conspicuous consumption. For example, if people become less materialistic than they can give more. Moreover, if a culture judges others less for “living simply” than it would allow people to give more without facing social consequences. There actually is a “minimalist” movement occurring these days. Some popular websites are devoted to it. Spreading minimalism would help EA.
Bringing more religious people onboard. If people see others at their church giving effectively than they will consider it as well. Many, many, religious people would only consider giving to charities of their own faith, and will never change. Recognizing this, why not strive to make Christian, Muslim, etc, charities more effective or start new effective religious charities?
**By ‘spreading effective altruism’ do you mean ‘setting up charities doing effective work’ into developing countries? Because if so, it seems to me that spreading effective altruism as an idea throughout such countries by getting donors to support their own country might counteract spreading cosmopolitanism.
Most Second World nations probably wouldn’t have the most effective interventions at helping humans, you’re right. But look at India and China, both countries have hundreds of millions in extreme poverty as well as millions of people with money to spend. I would think that having an EA organization in each of those countries that evaluated domestic charities, gave talks at universities, and sought out and promoted people earning to give to the media, would have a huge impact. Development expert Mal Warwick estimates there are 5 million organizations in the world helping the poor, mostly in the poor countries themselves, so the odds of India and China each having extremely effective charities would be very high in my estimation. And that’s not to mention that people in those countries can also donate to INGOs with operations in their own country. (I know both these countries already have charity evaluators but I haven’t been able to find out whether they are GiveWell or Charity Navigator types. The Indian one has an English website but it is currently down.)
**I believe the very wealth and prosperity in nations which allows those nations to be more altruistic may be also the same forces which generate consumerist preferences in those nations. So, on a society-wide scale, spreading minimalist values might be on uphill battle.
I don’t think minimalism would be received as weirder than being a serious EtGing, so it doesn’t make sense to me to write it off so quickly. There are already minimalist blogs with hundreds of thousands of unique monthly visitors – maybe if CEA gets in touch with them they will like EA and promote it on their blogs, in their books, and so on. The people reading minimalist books and websites would be more open to EA than the general public, I would presume. Also, an EA could make a minimalist website that focuses on minimalism with the odd mention of EA/EtG so as to get visitors that find the simple life interesting but don’t like to be preached to about donating more.
**Thus, even if this is the case for a large religious charity which holds lots of potential for leveraged impact, it may be impracticable to convince them to change their tactics.
Institutions in general are very slow to change, especially large ones, but I think that the non-profit sector can only ignore evidence-based interventions and effectiveness evaluation for so long. It’s like with the environmental movement. In the 90′s, environmentalism wasn’t as big, but in the 2000′s the public’s expectations have changed and now most companies have to at least claim they are sustainable just to stay relevant.
**To affect religious people, it might take religious effective altruists.
I think the only way EA will grow among a religion is if people see others in their religion doing it. A trickle will grow into a stream. I don’t think EA has any true weaknesses, I really believe that (as a philosophy, not as a movement), so it seems like just a matter of time before religious people start earning to give, donating more based on evidence, etc.
Yeah, I was thinking it would be down the line, as well.
That’s wonderful that you are doing talks/blog posts promoting earning to give. I wouldn’t have the balls to do that. But no one wants to “be the first” to do something, so without seeing others do it, they wouldn’t even consider it.
Moving to a higher-income city (or country, obviously) to facilitate earning to give is something that people should think about, I agree. Whether or not you come out as having more disposable income is partly dependent on what you want your living standard to be. For instance, if you want to live centrally in a big house, than the increased income may not fully compensate for the higher housing costs, but if you are willing to rent a room or have a lengthy commute into the ’burbs, than it is more likely to be worth it.
Another thing to consider regarding moving to earn more is remoteness and quality of life. Jobs in natural resources, for instance, can be very well-paying to compensate for the remoteness, but the trade-off is that they are far away from civilization and have poor quality of life (ie. few amenities or women). For instance, the mining industry in Australia or America’s fracking meca of North Dakota. Even in heavy industry, there are lots of white collar jobs, eg. Engineer, accountant, human resources.
Paul Polak is the guru for for-profit solutions to poverty and the importance of focusing on scalability. He has a couple books and a website and lots of videos on Youtube—I highly recommend him.
Scalability means how easily/financially-sustainably something can be spread. Charities are limited with their interventions because every person they help costs them, but socially-beneficial businesses that make profit (ie Nokero) are unlimited because they can keep on growing and spreading to help more and more people through selling their products or services. And then there’s charities like One Acre Fund that are mostly but not fully compensated by their own clients, putting them in between the two.
Tell the audience that by donating to a highly effective charity, and in turn, greatly helping many people and making a large positive difference in their lives, they are thus, as donors in a relationship with every single person that they have helped. A relationship means a connection or association with another. Thus, if a donor in Britain, for example, pays for bed nets for a family in Uganda, saving one of the childrens’ lives, she has had more of an impact in that family than a close family friend, even though the family won’t know who the donor is. This is very emotionally powerful to recognize – by helping someone in a profound way, you are his “true friend” and have a strong relationship or bond with him, not figuratively, but literally. You are like his secret friend or protector and even if he doesn’t know who you are, you are still one of the most important persons in his life, there for him in his time of need.
And, of course, the more effective the charity donated to, the more people you’ll be in a relationship with! I think that thinking this way should combat scope insensitivity and domestic bias as well.
Young people “determined to make a difference” I think captures the grit of those who intend to become EAs, but haven’t necessarily already started. I think it sounds kinda catchy, myself. “Ambitious to make their mark in the world” is another one that I think makes EA seem aspirational and part of a leading a successful life, even if the grammar isn’t perfect (try correcting the grammar and it sounds really lame!).
I think that it’s great that some people have decided to give up an organ to help others. If more people did this, it would have a net benefit to the world. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want the public to associate effective altruism with something as radical as this. It would give people an excuse to dismiss EA altogether because they’d see it as only for extremists. To be clear, I’m not arguing against donating organs, just that we need to be mindful that all that matters is the total good being done. Publicizing an extreme act of altruism that could turn many people off of easier forms of effective altruism is not an acceptable trade-off to me.
I think you are confusing radicalism of getting attention with that of the form the social change will take. For example, Emily Davison ran onto a race track as a PR stunt, but all she was seeking was voting rights for women, not the right for them to walk around naked. Nelson Mandela was jailed for economic terrorism to bring attention to his cause, but he simply wanted blacks to enjoy the freedoms whites had – nothing radical about that. PETA does crazy publicity stunts sometimes, and perhaps they’ve had a net benefit, but they do them to bring attention to the abuse of animals on farms, mostly, not to emancipate domesticated dogs and cats. We should make a distinction between extremism in publicity measures with that of the demands that activists are making on society.
To look at EA, the demands it makes on people should also be reasonable: give according to impact, not feelings; be irreplaceable, especially for the more important causes, etc. Making unreasonably large demands on people could result in people rejecting even the easier actions. For instance, studies demonstrate that to promote veganism, it’s actually more effective to promote vegetarianism, and let the vegetarians eventually gravitate towards veganism, than it is to directly promote veganism, which results in people not even giving up meat, because avoiding animal products completely is so demanding to people that they end up rejecting the whole veg thing altogether.
Please don’t take my comments as policing, I like your post and I think donating kidneys is great, I just wouldn’t want to see a CNN segment on EA discussing kidney donation as viewers may use it as an excuse to reject EA altogether.
I don’t think the importance of image in advocacy can be overstated. From what I’ve learned about vegetarian promotion and from my own observations in life, people don’t judge things by their merits, they judge them in terms of how cool they are (ie. How much acceptance it has received from others) or how congruent they are with their existing self-image/worldview.
I don’t think that a person can do “too much” to help others, even if others see it as extremist. I just think that people should keep quiet about actions/beliefs of theirs that could have a negative effect if other people found out about it.
Of course nothing is ever cut and dry. There’s always the possibility that others will come around. For instance, people may at first feel threatened by someone who is making too big a sacrifice – let’s say not having a child so as not to contribute to overpopulation, but then later come to think of it as a good thing once they get accustomed to the idea.
I think it depends on the demographics at work. I work with right-wing libertarians so obviously they have a lot of resentment towards me for donating a lot. From the old “all charities are scams” to “you’re not a real person.”… I’ve heard it all. But there are also a lot of Muslims where I work and I was pleasantly surprised at how positive they are towards my EtG, as helping others is part of Islam they tell me. But no one likes to be patronized so I never discuss philanthropy unless the other person brings it up (donating most of your income is so unusual that if you tell one co-worker, everyone at work will know REAL FAST! LOL!)
Well, I have to be somewhat judicial here as I post under my real name and I need to be mindful of work ramifications, but what happened there was I walked into the meeting room and my co-workers were talking about something, I forget what. Anyhow, one of them said “Austen doesn’t count, he’s not a real person.” completely serious, actually quite angrily. This was someone who knew me very well, so I was really offended. They kept talking and I didn’t even get a chance to say anything. I was really mad at first but I eventually concluded that the bitterness from him is the same that I get from everyone else. It comes down to human psychology: no one wants to admit that someone is able to do something that they aren’t so they attribute the person’s “caring” actions to vices, rather than virtues. In other words, I am vegan, not because I have compassion for animals and have the balls to carry it out but because I’m “weird.” I donate a lot because I’m a naive idiot, not because I care about protecting others, and I volunteer not because I believe in effective altruism and make it a priority but because I let myself get “screwed over” (as another co-worker of mine put it.)
If someone admits to himself that I eat veg, volunteer, and donate out of virtues, then he’ll feel inferior. We can’t have that now, can we? Therefore, they usually attribute these seemingly benevolent acts to vices, so as to protect their threatened egos. Even my own satsang leader (basically, like a pastor), accuses me of being “egotistical”, “greedy”, and “underhanded” for giving to charity and volunteering. He himself donates nothing, so to prevent himself from feeling inferior he villainizes me :^) The lengths people will go to protect their egos is astounding. Being a serious do-gooder really polarizes people – either they love you or they hate you, depending on whether they have a moral-based or domination-based life philosophy. In Alberta, most people are the latter, which explains the blowback.
It’s tempting to bend on the geographic equality aspect of EA because most people are primarily concerned with their own country, but worldwide human equality is so important from a moral point of view that I don’t think we should be flexible in this regard. My view of altruism is that it should be about others, not about oneself and one’s personal biases. If there were first world charities that were even in the ballpark of cost efficient reduction of suffering that we can get in the third world, perhaps it may be worth putting that charity in a “Best of Country” category, but as far as I know that isn’t even the case, so I’d stick to developing world causes. Not only that, but if an extremely efficient charity was created in the first world, you wouldn’t think it would be underfunded for long.
Another point I’d like to make is regarding meditation promotion as an altruistic endeavor. Effective altruism is about maximizing the benefit that you can have for others, so why should it be limited to physical well being? Spiritual/psychological well being is just as important! I don’t know how promoting meditation would work or how quantifiable it would be, but I just wanted to comment that it’s good that people’s spiritual lives are also being recognized. Not only is meditation good for a person psychologically, but it can also has positive social effects ie. decreasing violent conflicts.