Looking to advance businesses with charities in the vast majority shareholder position. Check out my TEDx talk for why I believe Profit for Good businesses could be a profound force for good in the world.
Brad Westđ¸
Karma: 2,138
It always has been somewhat odd that EA never seemed to go on the offensive against the normies⌠Everyday people have the power to save multiple peopleâs lives, prevent obscene amounts of suffering of nonhuman animals and choose not to do so⌠and EA is on the defensive?
Your observation about the criticism tradeoffs is spot-on. EA has traditionally directed its criticism inwardâendless debates about cause prioritization, effectiveness metrics, and optimizationâwhile being remarkably gentle with those outside the movement who arenât trying at all. Meanwhile, SMA seems to flip this: theyâre saying âquit your bullshit jobâ to the broader public while maintaining more internal harmony through their Radical Kindness principle.
Thereâs something refreshing about Bregmanâs willingness to say what many EAs think but rarely voice: that choosing prestige over impact when you have the resources to help is a moral failure. The average professional in a developed country could prevent multiple deaths through effective giving, yet spends that money on lifestyle upgrades. Weâve somehow normalized this as acceptable while agonizing over whether weâre supporting the 3rd or 5th most effective intervention.
I wonder if EAâs reluctance to criticize outward stems from: (1) a desire to seem welcoming rather than judgmental, (2) an intellectual culture that prizes nuance over bold claims, or (3) a strategic calculation that gentle persuasion works better than confrontation. But maybe SMA is showing us that thereâs room for both approachesâand that being morally ambitious means being willing to challenge societal norms more directly.
The real test will be which approach ultimately creates more impact. Does EAâs internal rigor and external diplomacy attract more committed effective altruists? Or does SMAâs external boldness and internal supportiveness mobilize more people to action? Perhaps we need both spiritual siblings playing different roles in expanding humanityâs moral ambition.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
I would note that Moral Ambition did mention catastrophic risk, specifically mentioning risks from Artificial General Intelligence, as a potentially promising area for morally ambitious people to make an impact.
Also, work on systemic change is consistent with core EA principles (doing the most good with the resources we can). Some areas could be a strong speculative bet, similar to the reasoning supporting some projects associated with longtermism.
I think thereâs a very high degree of complementarity and compatibility with core EA philosophy, even if actual SMA conclusions in terms of cause areas differ in some ways from the cause areas EA tends to focus on. I think, however, core EA philosophy is about the fundamental principles, not the downstream cause areas, and if different peopleâs epistemologies proceeding from those principles lead them different places than where the current EA community is, I donât think they are any less EAs.
Peter Singer & RutÂger BregÂman preÂsent the Profit for Good ConÂferÂence â 11 June livestream
Incredible resolve, Steven. Itâs rare to see someoneâlet alone a 14-year-oldâgrapple so squarely with how much good a single salary can buy. Youâre right: a single $5 k donation to AMF plausibly saves a life, so every extra dollar you push toward the margin matters enormously.
I sometimes feel that EA discussions lean too far toward âCareful, youâll burn outâdial it back.â Burnout is real, but the analysis often weights personal discomfort as if it were on par with someone elseâs entire life. Even if an austere lifestyle shortens a career a bit, the extra years of near-maximal giving you do manage could still dominate the equation. The stakes are that high.
Keep refining the plan, of courseâexperiment with smaller pledges first, protect your health so you can give longerâbut never lose sight of the basic arithmetic that inspired you. The world needs more people willing to do what youâre contemplating. Iâm cheering you on.
Worth noting: Peter Singer and Rutger Bregmanâs School for Moral Ambition are co-hosting a Profit for Good conference in Amsterdam on 11 Juneâa concrete EA-adjacent collaboration that channels Bregmanâs âmoral ambitionâ into effective-charity business models. Another good touchpoint for anyone looking to ride this wave.
https://ââwww.moralambition.org/ââprofit-for-good-conference-live-stream
I think that another aspect to consider in starting a new organization, non-profit or for-profit, is how many of your deficits (organizational, research, mathematical, etc.) can be addressed or alleviated by AI tools today. I think historically there were a number of qualities the absence of which would make starting new things very difficult. I think using AI tools could dramatically lower the bar if you have good idea for a business or a nonprofit.
I appreciate your exploration of the strategic complexity inherent in prioritizing effectiveness. A crucial aspect involves recognizing that impact often occurs in significant âchunks.â Identifying key thresholds and accurately assessing their likelihood of being pivotal is essential for effective resource allocation. For instance, in farmed animal advocacy, securing cage-free commitments from major corporations can lead to disproportionate industry-wide improvements, making precise strategic targeting crucial. In these contexts, there might appear to be little impact until the critical moment. However, openly communicating these threshold calculations might inadvertently strengthen adversariesâ resistance. Drawing from game theoryâs âmadmanâ approach, an actor sometimes gains strategic advantage if adversaries believe it may irrationally commit excessive resources or accept high risks to achieve its goals, thus deterring aggressive opposition.
On a related semantic note, describing strategic resilience or integrating adversarial responses as âless effectiveâ could oversimplify this nuanced issue. I would think when people say âeffectiveâ that they are talking about what best achieves oneâs goals, and integrating adversarial responses would help in doing so.
I resonate deeply with your sadness. What helps me stay anchored is identifying EA primarily as a personal commitment and life philosophy rather than merely as a movement. This perspective keeps my dedication resilient, rooted in the core EA value of boundless determination to better the world, regardless of external disruptions or individual mistakes.
Movements inevitably face setbacks and crises, but the philosophical essence of EAâits unwavering commitment to improving the worldâremains solid. The movement serves as a practical tool for amplifying these core values, even if it occasionally falters.
Controversies offer opportunities to recommit individually and collectively to fundamental EA principles such as transparency, humility, and rigorous inquiry. Rather than depending solely on central figures, these moments encourage broader ownership and individual agency.
Ultimately, the enduring strength of EA lies not in flawless execution but in the earnest pursuit of doing the most good we can with the resources available. This foundational ideal, characterized by thoughtful compassion and pragmatic action, is deeply worth preserving.
Donât OverÂthink it: A ManÂiÂfesto for Naive Utilitarianism
Would a potential cure to the sycophancy be to reverse the framing to Claude, so that it perceives that you are your opponent and you are looking for flaws with the comment? I realize that this would not get quite what you are looking for, but getting strong arguments for the other side could be helpful.
SharÂing My Profit for Good Blog Series
USA ToÂday HighÂlights Profit for Good
Because we face substantial uncertainty around the eventual moral value of AIs, any small reduction in p(doom) or catastrophic outcomesâincluding S-risksâcarries enormous expected utility. Even if delaying AI costs us a few extra years before reaping its benefits (whether enjoyed by humans, other organic species, or digital minds), that near-term loss pales in comparison to the potentially astronomical impact of preventing (or mitigating) disastrous futures or enabling far higher-value ones.
From a purely utilitarian viewpoint, the harm of a short delay is utterly dominated by the scale of possible misalignment risks and missed opportunities for ensuring the best long-term trajectoryâwhether for humans, other organic species, or digital minds. Consequently, itâs prudent to err on the side of delay if doing so meaningfully improves our chance of securing a safe and maximally valuable future. This would be true regardless of the substrate of consciousness.
I would like to see a strong argument for the risk of âreplaceabilityâ as a significant factor in potentially curtailing someoneâs counterfactual impact in what might otherwise be a high-impact job. This central idea is that the âsecond choiceâ applicant, after the person who was chosen, might have done just as well, or near just as well as the âfirst choiceâ applicant, making the counterfactual impact of the first small. I would want an analysis of the cascading impact argument: that you âfree upâ the second choice applicant to do other impactful work, who then âfrees upâ someone else, etc., and this stream of âfreeing up valueâ mostly addresses the âreplaceability concern.
Yeah I would think that we would want ASI-entities to (a) have positively valenced experienced as well as the goal of advancing their positively valenced experience (and minimizing their own negatively valenced experience) and/âor (b) have the goal of advancing positive valenced experiences of other beings and minimizing negatively valenced experiences.
A lot of the discussion I hear around the importance of âgetting alignment rightâ pertains to lock-in effects regarding suboptimal futures.
Given the probable irreversibility of the fate accompanying ASI and the potential magnitude of good and bad consequences across space and time, trying to maximize the chances of positive outcomes seems simply prudent. Perhaps some of the âmessagingâ of AI safety seems to be a bit human-centered, because this might be more accessible to more people. But most who have seriously considered a post-ASI world have considered the possibility of digital minds both as moral patients (capable of valenced experience) and as stewards of value and disvalue in the universe.
Really glad to see the success of the Compassion Calculator and hope for its continued success in bringing more omnivores into the fight against factory farming!
The preference for humans remaining alive/âin control isnât necessarily speciesist because itâs the qualities of having valuable conscious experience and concern for the promotion of valuable as well as avoidance of disvaluable conscious experience that might make one prefer this outcome.
We do not know whether ASI would have these qualities or preferences, but if we could know that it did, you would have a much stronger case for your argument.
I would write how thereâs a collective action problem regarding reading EA forum posts. People want to read interesting, informative, and impactful posts and karma is a signifier of this. So often people will not read posts, especially on topics they are not familiar, unless it has already achieved some karma threshold. Given how time-sensitive front page availability is without karma accumulation and unlikely relatively low karma posts are too be read once off the front page, it is likely that good posts could be entirely ignored. On the other hand, some early traction could result in OK posts getting very high karma because a higher volume of people have been motivated to check the post out.
I think this could be partially addressed by having volunteers, or even paying people, to commit to read posts within a certain time frame and upvote (or not, or downvote) if appropriate. It might be a better use of funds than myriad cosmetic changes.
Below is a post I wrote that I think might be such a post that was good (or at least worthy of discussion) but people probably wanted to freeride on othersâ early evaluation. It discusses how jobs in which the performance metrics actually used are orthogonal to many ways in which good can be done may be opportunities for significant impact.
Another set of actors that would be incentivized in this would be the survey respondents, to say higher counterfactual values of first vs second choices. Saying otherwise could go against their goals of attracting more of the EA talent pool to their positions. The framing of irreplaceability for their staff also tends to lend to the prestige of their organizations and staff.
With limited applicants, especially in very specialized areas, I think there is definitely a case for a high value of first vs. second choice applicant. But I suspect that this set of survey respondents would be biased in the direction of overestimating the counterfactual impact.
I think this creates a false dichotomy between growth and impact. If 1% of the global middle class gave effectively, that would dwarf all current EA fundingâeven at 1/â100th the per-person impact.
More crucially, broad movements create the conditions for high-impact work to succeed. Try getting AI safety regulation or pandemic prevention funding in a world where altruism remains niche. The abolitionists needed both William Wilberforce and a mass movement.
Your prediction may be rightâperhaps SMA will have numbers and EA will have impact per person. Thatâs precisely why both are valuable. SMA normalizes caring about important problems; EA ensures the most dedicated people are optimally deployed.