Bob Jacobs

• Bob Jacobs 2 Oct 2025 9:12 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Ben_West🔸’s comment on: Are Billion­aire Philan­thropists Effec­tive in their Altru­ism?

  It’s not about the current spending it’s about the overall system of allocation. Currently our political economy has implemented a system where some people accumulate billions of dollars in private wealth. I’ve seen people in the EA-sphere and beyond defend this system on the basis of effective philanthropy. So I made a post evaluating this claim and found it lacking. My hope is that people will now either stop, or find a new defense for why this is the best we can do (well, I say ‘hope’, but that might be gone by now).

• Bob Jacobs 1 Oct 2025 22:17 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Ben_West🔸’s comment on: Are Billion­aire Philan­thropists Effec­tive in their Altru­ism?

  ITN framework? This is post is not a proposal for a cause area, it’s an analysis of whether Billionaire Philanthropists are effective. If someone says ‘but the government is bigger’ then that doesn’t really change the evaluation.
  Same for two, we can’t assume that billionaire philanthropy is effective if we haven’t even compared it to the other options. So I’m making an inductive claim that, given the demonstrated problems with billionaire philanthropy and given that there are many other options out there, it seems reasonable to assume that something else is actually ‘the most good we can do’.

• Bob Jacobs 1 Oct 2025 21:38 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Ben_West🔸’s comment on: Are Billion­aire Philan­thropists Effec­tive in their Altru­ism?

  Hi Ben, thanks for reading

  I included these common counterarguments to show that they don’t really address the issue.
  Argument 1 isn’t relevant. It does get used all the time, but it’s a whataboutism at best.
  Argument 2 is a false dilemma. It might be true that billionaire philanthropy is better than government programs (although while I’ve often seen it being asserted, I’ve never actually seen it demonstrated), but even if we grant that it doesn’t matter because those two aren’t our only options, it’s a false dilemma.

• Bob Jacobs 1 Oct 2025 18:47 UTC

  3 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: david_reinstein’s comment on: Are Billion­aire Philan­thropists Effec­tive in their Altru­ism?

  $2.5k for general families (more than one person), $737 for the mean individual American, so even lower for the median. I think that holds.

  I also think that if poorer people indeed give a higher proportion to church, this is probably because you’re expected to give a certain amount to your local church that does not scale linearly with your wealth (e.g. a billionaire that goes to church is also expected to place a couple bills in the jar, and not e.g. give them some gold bars). If that’s the case that would mean that the wealthy give a lower proportion by virtue of them having more money, and if that money was redistributed not much would change.

  As for redistribution. It might be redistributed towards lower income Americans and not global priorities, but that would still be a vast improvement over the status quo if the billionaires are spending that money on luxuries, or worse, buying votes, politicians, social media platforms, etc.

Are Billion­aire Philan­thropists Effec­tive in their Altru­ism?

• Bob Jacobs 23 Aug 2025 20:43 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: DavidNash’s comment on: Why did Effec­tive Altru­ism aban­don Open-Borders Ad­vo­cacy?

  But the tag has changed

  The tag has not changed, they have explicitly closed it (see their site) and I don’t think those three links count as examples since it’s not targeted at reform (nor general immigration), but even if they did, it’s still much lower than it used to be. They never told us why they closed it (which is annoying in itself) but the writing was already on the wall a year earlier with them saying:

  We have never had a clear theory of how to change the political economy to be supportive of substantially larger immigration flows, which is what would be necessary to achieve the global poverty improvements that motivate our interest in this issue. Accordingly, our recent spending has been lower than in macro or land use reform.

  The open borders website wrote a post tracking the downturn, e.g. writing under the section “Evidence that Open Philanthropy is reducing its involvement in and commitments to migration policy”:

  The grants database includes only one grant in 2021 [...] and otherwise no other grants in 2020. Open Philanthropy has been using exit grants as well as reducing levels of commitment even for grantees that they are continuing to support.

  Speaking of the site. They posted every month from 2013 through 2015, only some months between 2016 and 2021, twice in 2022, zero times in 2023, once in 2024, and zero times in 2025. A clear sign that its engagement is going down (despite the number of EAs increasing over the years).

Why did Effec­tive Altru­ism aban­don Open-Borders Ad­vo­cacy?

• Bob Jacobs 15 Aug 2025 8:39 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  Thanks for the comment, that seems like a strange null hypothesis to me but alright. My earlier aversion to commenting on the EA forum has borne out again, so I’m going to stop commenting now.

• Bob Jacobs 14 Aug 2025 13:12 UTC

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  if you want to have true beliefs about how to improve the world, economics can provide a bunch more useful insights than other parts of the social sciences

  Source?

  EDIT: I’m getting downvoted for asking for a source on a controversial claim? Why? Why does the heterodox EA have to cite dozens of academic sources and still get more downvotes than someone just asserting an academically controversial (but orthodox within EA) claim without a citation or justification? Why does asking for one generate downvotes?

• Bob Jacobs 14 Aug 2025 12:59 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  If it was literally 2 we couldn’t do statistics, but say it was the same ratio but one we could do statistics on, e.g. 1000.000 vs 2000, I would say this research is valid. If it was just about citations it would be a problem, but what’s being polled there is opinions on interdisciplinary research, so it’s about attitude towards working with other disciplines in general.

  If a higher percentage of (a quantitatively smaller number of) political scientists think working with other disciplines is better, whereas a lower percentage of (a quantitatively higher number of) economists think so, then even though there is (in absolute numbers) a higher quantity of economists who think that interdisciplinary research is better, we can still (comparatively) say that economists are more in favor of being insular than political scientists.

• Bob Jacobs 14 Aug 2025 12:43 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  I’ve already responded to Larks on this

• Bob Jacobs 14 Aug 2025 10:45 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Linch’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  The first (by Fourcade et al) is about percentage not absolute numbers, so this is direct evidence of economists preferring to stay insular. Same for the one about citations in flagship journals. We can see that both the number of papers and the number of citations in economics is indeed higher, however it’s so minor (still within the same order of magnitude), while the differences are so large (more than an order of magnitude) that the trend still remains. Similar for the Angris et al one (also, I don’t know where you got these numbers from… the bureau of labor statistics indeed says 6,200 political scientists, but only 17,500 economists, so that ratio is not enough to explain the gap).

  I’m more worried about black and other minorities within EA, since, again looking at the EA demographics data, Asians do comparatively better (comparatively being a load-bearing term there), while black and brown people do not (maybe also inherited from economics?). When we look at the race scandals in EA (Bostrom scandal, Manifest scandal, FLI scandal...) it’s always about black and brown people being called less-intelligent, not Asians. So I think that’s where our focus should be.

• Bob Jacobs 13 Aug 2025 16:01 UTC

  2 points

  2 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Larks’s comment on: The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

  I’m not knocking economics as a field otherwise I wouldn’t study/​write about economics, I’m knocking overrelying on simple economic models to the detriment of a complete picture. That’s why I cite evidence of simple economic models failing (which are obviously published in economic journals) and talk about the value that other disciplines can bring. If you think my citing is bad, perhaps you’d like to present some better sources?

  What links here?

  • Bob Jacobs's comment on The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession by Bob Jacobs (14 Aug 2025 12:43 UTC; 2 points)

The Effec­tive Altru­ism com­mu­nity in­her­its the prob­lems of the eco­nomics profession

• Bob Jacobs 6 Aug 2025 13:36 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: Cash Trans­fers or Repa­ra­tions?

  Hi David,

  I don’t like commenting on the EA Forum given the karma-system’s distortionary effect, so your chances of getting a response are much higher if you use substack/​reddit/​DM/​email/​any-other-medium. However, since you addressed me directly I’m not going to be so impolite as to ignore you, so I’ll give it a go.

  Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have one that meets all these requirements. I linked Jason Hickel’s “The Divide”, which is probably the closest, but it’s been half a decade since I read it. Given that 1: I have trouble remembering what I even had for breakfast, and 2: I don’t even remember if I finished it, I don’t think I’m in a good position to recommend it.
  I heard that Ha-Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans” tried something like what you mentioned, but I haven’t read it. Writing for an antipodal/​hostile audience is quite an unrewarding job (trust me), so I don’t know how many writers you’ll find. I’ll keep my eye out for one though.

  I also tend to search literature by topic, and not by author-affiliation, so I most often don’t know the political position of the people I’m reading, beyond the vague vibes the text itself is giving off.
  I know the World Bank did some dodgy shit, which socialists have raked them over the coals over, but I’m not sure if capitalist scholars (today) defend those actions, so I’m not sure if it’s a uniquely socialist critique.

  I think, given your profile, you’ll probably find the arguments centered on western (farming) subsidies the most convincing (some sources linked in the beginning, though sources more to your liking are likely available online), and you’ll probably find the arguments centered on “unequal exchange” the least convincing. (or, well, Open Borders and Climate Injustices are the ones you’ll likely find the most convincing, but given that many capitalist scholars also champion those, I think you already believe in those)

  But also, I’m not an expert on global trade. The argument for reparations stems more from what happened in history than what’s happening today. Some highly upvoted comments by EAs were defending colonialism (which I know a bit about, so I’ll probably do a post on that at some point), but for global trade I’ve only read a small handful of books and articles on the topic, so I’d have to look into it more.

 Cash Trans­fers or Repa­ra­tions?

Is Effec­tive Altru­ism Neo­colo­nial? (an overview of the ar­gu­ments and coun­ter­ar­gu­ments)

• Bob Jacobs 1 May 2025 10:25 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: Poll: Should peo­ple with more fo­rum karma have more pow­er­ful votes?

  My complaint was the incentive structure:

  Not necessarily because you want to, but just because that’s how the system is set up.

  I used a personal example, but the complaint was about people being incentivized to downvote (past and future) stuff by the outgroup while upvoting the ingroup, whether or not it’s “mass” voting:

  it incentivizes detractors to go back and downvote your other stuff as well. [...]

  So if you want the forum to remain dominated by your ingroup, better upvote your ingroup’s posts/​comments

  which I then expanded on with examples like:

  If someone is spreading opinions you disagree with, then the karma system makes strong-downvoting them an excellent way to hinder their ability to do so.
  If your friend makes mediocre posts but he also upvotes all your mediocre posts, then upvoting them is a great way to ensure your posts get more exposure.

  ---

  If you had done it

  I had done it, see: my screenshotted comment.

• Bob Jacobs 1 May 2025 8:36 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ebenezer Dukakis’s comment on: Poll: Should peo­ple with more fo­rum karma have more pow­er­ful votes?

  I don’t believe that is true for admins

  They literally say so:

  Voting activity is generally private (even admins don’t know who voted on what), but if we have reason to believe that someone is violating norms around voting (e.g. by mass-downvoting many of a different user’s comments and posts), we reserve the right to check what account is doing this.

  That’s why I said:

  Voting is anonymous, so unless you “mass” vote it will remain undetected.

  The examples I gave—downvoting based on opinion not content, downvoting based on ideology, upvoting your ingroup, upvoting because they’re you friends—are all things that can be done while staying anonymous.

  But in any case, I encourage you to prove me wrong. I encourage you to reach out to the admins, and then report back here when nothing useful happens, as you seem to be predicting.

  You think I haven’t done that? I even send a comment to Ben West publicly and people downvoted me for it:

  

• Bob Jacobs 30 Apr 2025 22:08 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jobst Heitzig (vodle.it)’s comment on: Poll: Should peo­ple with more fo­rum karma have more pow­er­ful votes?

  Are all the voting theorists on the ‘disagree’ side or is there a voting theorist on the ‘agree’ side I don’t know about?