ErikHoel

Karma: 42

ErikHoel 17 Aug 2022 16:38 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Benjamin_Todd’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
Hi Benjamin, thanks for your thoughts and replies. Some thoughts in return:
In particular, we can impose limits on utilitarianism, but they’re arbitrary and make EA contentless. Does this seem like a reasonable summary?
I think it should literally be thought of as dilution, where you can dilute the philosophy more and more, and as you do so, EA becomes “contentless” in that it becomes closer to just “fund cool stuff no one else is really doing.”
However, it’s also different from utilitarianism since you can practice these values without saying maximising hedonic utility is the only thing that matters, or a moral obligation.
Even the high-level “key values” that you link to implies a lot of utilitarianism to me, e.g., moral obligations like”it’s important to consider many different ways to help and seek to find the best ones,” some calculation of utility like “it’s vital to attempt to use numbers to roughly weigh how much different actions help” as well as a call to “impartial altruism” that’s pretty much just saying to sum up people (what is one adding up in that case? I imagine something pretty close to hedonic utility).
But I think all moral theories imply crazy things (“poison”) if taken to extremes
My abridged response buried within a different comment thread:
Even if it were true one can find repugnant conclusions from any notion of morality whatsoever (I’m not sure how one would prove this), there would still be great and lesser degrees of repugnance, and there would also be the ease at which it is arrived at. E.g., the original repugnant conclusion is basically the state of the world should utilitarianism be taken literally—a bunch of slums stuffed with lives barely worth living. This is because utilitarianism, as I tried to explain in the piece, is based on treating morality like a market and performing arbitrage. So you just keep going, performing the arbitrage. In other moral theories, which aren’t based on arbitrage, but perhaps rights, or duties (just to throw out an example), they don’t have this maximizing property, so they don’t lead so inexorably to repugnant conclusions. . . Also, if one honestly believes that all moral theories end up with uncountable repugnancies, why not be a nihilist, or a pessimist, rather than an effective altruist?

ErikHoel 17 Aug 2022 15:43 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
Thanks Nathan, I’ll try to keep my replies brief here and address the critical points of your questions.
Am I right that this was your main point?
EA is doing well, but only because it ignores the fundamental conclusions of utilitarianism?
I wouldn’t phrase it like this. I think EA has been a positive force in the world so far, particularly in some of the weirder causes I care about (e.g., AI safety, stimulating the blogosphere, etc). But I think it’s often good practices chasing bad philosophy, and then my further suggestion is that the best thing to do is dilute that bad philosophy out of EA as much as possible (which I point out is already a trend I see happening now).
I don’t understand how utilitarianism is uniquely poisonous here. Do you write articles calling all these other worldviews poisonous? If not, why not? It’s not like they aren’t powerful. Your critcisms are are either unfair or universal.
This is why I make the metaphor to arbitrage (e.g., pointing out that arbitrage how SBF made all his money and using the term “utilitarian arbitrage”). Even if it were true one can find repugnant conclusions from any notion of morality whatsoever (I’m not sure how one would prove this), there would still be great and lesser degrees of repugnance, and there would also be the ease at which it is arrived at. E.g., the original repugnant conclusion is basically the state of the world should utilitarianism be taken literally—a bunch of slums stuffed with lives barely worth living. This is because utilitarianism, as I tried to explain in the piece, is based on treating morality like a market and performing arbitrage. So you just keep going, performing the arbitrage. In other moral theories, which aren’t based on arbitrage, but perhaps rights, or duties (just to throw out an example), they don’t have this maximizing property, so they don’t lead so inexorably to repugnant conclusions. That is, just because you can identify cases of repugnancy doesn’t mean they are equivalent, as one philosophy might lead very naturally to repugnancies (as I think utilitarianism does), whereas the other might require incredibly specific states of the world (e.g., an axe murderer in your house). Even if two philosophies fail in dealing with specific cases of serial killers, there’s a really big difference in the one that encourages you to be the serial killer if you can get away with it.
Also, if one honestly believes that all moral theories end up with uncountable repugnancies, why not be a nihilist, or a pessimist, rather than an effective altruist?
Only total utilitarians (if I’m getting that right) face the repugnant conclusion
From the text it should be pretty clear I disagree with this, as I give multiple examples of repugnancy that are not Parfit’s classic “the repugnant conclusion”—and I also say that adding in epicycles by expanding beyond what you’re calling “total utilitarianism” often just shifts where the repugnancy is, or trades one for another.
Again, and this is where you miss my main point, what EAs do in practice matters. You act as if no one in EA has seen the problems you raise and that we avoid them by mere accident.
I’m unaware of saying that no one in EA is aware of these problems (indeed, one of my latter points implies that they absolutely are), nor that EA avoids them by mere accident. I said explicitly that it avoids them by diluting the philosophy with more and more epicycles to make it palatable. E.g., “Therefore, the effective altruist movement has to come up with extra tacked-on axioms that explain why becoming a cut-throat sociopathic business leader who is constantly screwing over his employees, making their lives miserable, subjecting them to health violations, yet donates a lot of his income to charity, is actually bad. To make the movement palatable, you need extra rules that go beyond cold utilitarianism. . .”
What else would you have people do?
- You suggest that EAs will either drink the poison and behave badly
- Or dilute the poison and fail to thake their beleifs seriously
The latter.

I’ve gone on too long here after saying in the initial post I’d try to keep my replies to a minimum. Feel free to reply, but this will be my last response.

ErikHoel 17 Aug 2022 15:08 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: sphor’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
Thanks! Your summaries are very helpful. Yes, I agree with the first two as a summary of my beliefs. However, for (3) I mostly agree with the first sentence, but disagree with the second.
This is because in-principle objections to utilitarianism do have the potential to affect the altruistic work that EA does. Indeed, there’s a sense in which in-principle concerns impact all the in-practice ones. E.g., let’s say there there are indeed qualitative moral differences, as (2) might imply. If so, then donating enough money to charity to save, in expectation, a life, could very well not be qualitatively equivalent to jumping in to save a child from drowning in a pond. It might be merely quantitatively equivalent. That is, the former might be a morally heroic act that it’s any adult’s duty to do, the other, still admirable, but one has far less of a duty to do it. And if it’s true there’s a qualitative difference between saving a child from drowning and donating enough to charity to save a life in expectation, this calls into question whether the entire motto of EA, of maximizing the good, is accomplished by the sort of secular tithing that make up the core of its in-practice operations. This is what’s behind my suggestion (I probably should have made it explicit) to continue to shift EA away from purely utilitarian causes and to much broader ones, like promoting “longtermism” or even just cool projects that no one else is doing that have little to zero utilitarian value. I very much agree that this piece lacks any specifics of how to do that (I think I glibly suggest mining an astroid) and could see a lack of specificity as a valid criticism of it, although I also think that the level of specificity of “move X dollars here” might be a somewhat high bar.
What links here?
- sphor's comment on Climate Change & Longtermism: new book-length report by John G. Halstead (30 Aug 2022 21:41 UTC; 2 points)

ErikHoel 17 Aug 2022 13:45 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Fawwaz Anvilen’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
It’s certainly a reply, but if this argument were sound, it would apply to everything in human cognition. Seems like it’s being applied selectively, such that all the repugnant conclusions are things we somehow cannot be sure of and therefore can’t endorse, but all the non-repugnant conclusions of the philosophy are things we are sure about and can endorse. It’s also a bit off, since in the first part he says the issue is definite knowledge, and the issue in the second part is that power corrupts. These are two separate replies, although both suffer from being selectively applied.

ErikHoel 17 Aug 2022 4:02 UTC
16 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
You appear to have missed the central point of the essay, which is strange because it’s repeated over and over. I point out that utilitarians must either dilute or swallow the poison of repugnant conclusions—dilution of the repugnancy works, but the cost is making EA weaker and more vapid, of it becoming a toothless philosophy like “do good in the world.” Instead of grappling with this criticism, you’ve transformed the thesis instead into a series of random unconnected claims, some of which don’t even represent my views. Now, I won’t address your defensive scolding of me personally, as I don’t want to engage with something so childish here. I’d rather see some actual grappling with the thesis, or at least the more interesting parts like on whether there are qualitative, in addition to quantitative, moral differences, but here’s the responses to the set of mostly uninteresting claims you’ve ascribed to me instead of dealing with the thesis.
Implicit claim: EAs are mostly utilitarians
IIRC about 70% of EAs are consequentialists, but I don’t think most will response to your claims as you do. I think your claims are largely straw men.
Already addressed in the text: “I don’t think that there’s any argument effective altruism isn’t an outgrowth of utilitarianism—e.g., one of its most prominent members is Peter Singer, who kickstarted the movement in its early years with TED talks and books, and the leaders of the movement, like William MacAskill, readily refer back to Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” article as their moment of coming to.”

You’ll have to explain to me how so many EA leaders readily reference utilitarian philosophy, or refer to utility calculations being the thing that makes EA special, or justify what counts as an effective intervention via utilitarian definitions, without anyone actually being utilitarian. People can call themselves whatever they want, and I understand people wanting to divorce themselves from the repugnancies of utilitarianism, but so much in EA draws on a utilitarian toolbox and all the origins are (often self-admittedly!) in utilitarian thought experiments.
Claim: Utilitarians would murder 1 person to save 5
a) No they wouldn’t. They would know that they would be arrested and unable to help the many others in easier and less risky ways. Given how cheap it is to save a life, why would you risk prison?
b) Noone in EA acts like this. Noone in EA tells people to act like this. It’s a straw man.
(a) If you could get away with it utilitarianism tells you it’s moral to do, you’re just saying “in no possible world could you get away with it” which is both a way-too-strong claim and also irrelevant, for the repugnancy is found in that it is moral to do it and keep it a secret, if you can. As for (b) since harm is caused by inaction (at least according to many in EA), then diverting the charity money from say, the USA, where it will go less far and only save 1 life, to a third-world country, where it will save 5, is exactly this. You saying that “no one says to do that” seems to fly in the face of. . . what everyone is saying to do.
Claim: There is a slippery slope where you have to become a moral angel and give everything away.
I don’t say this anywhere I know of in the text.
Claim: “Is the joy of rich people hiking really worth the equivalent of all the lives that could be stuffed into that land if it were converted to high-yield automated hydroponic farms and sprawling apartment complexes?”

If there were a billion americans, the US would be less dense than the UK. It would be far less dense than England. There isn’t a tradeoff here.
You’re missing the point of this part, which is that the utilitarian arbitrage has to necessarily keep going. You just, what, stop at a billion? Why? Because it sounds good to you, Nathan Young? The moral thing to do is keep going. That’s my point about utilitarian arbitrage leading very naturally to the repugnant conclusion. So this seems to just not grok this part.
Claim: “Whereas I’m of the radical opinion that the poison means something is wrong to begin with.”
What is your alternative? Happy to read a blog about it.
“Before you criticize effective altruism come up with something better than it” seems like a pretty high standard to me.
Claim: “Basically, just keep doing the cool shit you’ve been doing, which is relatively unjustifiable from any literal utilitarian standpoint, and keep ignoring all the obvious repugnancies taking your philosophy literally would get you into, but at the same time also keep giving your actions the epiphenomenal halo of utilitarian arbitrage, and people are going to keep joining the movement, and billionaires will keep donating, because frankly what you’re up to is just so much more interesting and fun and sci-fi than the boring stuff others are doing.”
It seems like you basically agree with EA recommendations in their entirety. It seems unfair that you’ve made up a bogey monster to criticise when you yourself acknowledge that in practice it’s going really well.
I’m clear about some of the things EA is known for, like AI safety, being justifiable through other philosophies, and that I agree with some of them. Which, you’re right, the argument is focused on my in-principle disagreements, particularly that many will find the in-principle aspects repugnant, and my recommendation is to instead dilute it and use utilitarian calculations as a fig leaf. Again, a more complicated thesis that you’re simply. . . not addressing in this breakdown of unconnected supposed claims.
If this is going to leave you with the opinion that EAs are all defensive, then tell me and I’ll edit it. I wrote it in haste. But in my defence, I did read the entirety of your blog and respond to the points I thought were important.
None of these points were very important to the argument, and the ones that are, like whether or not EA is an outgrowth of utilitarianism, seem pretty settled.

ErikHoel 16 Aug 2022 18:24 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: EA criticism contest: Why I am not an effective altruist
Just to note: the specific accusation of it being “unreasonable” and clickbaity” relies entirely on there being a really strong difference in valence between the terms “poison” (my lay term for it) and “repugnancy” (the well-accepted academic term for it) and I just don’t think it’s the case that “this philosophy is poisonous” is an unreasonable stretch from “this philosophy is repugnant.” That may be a personal thing, but they seem within the same range of negative tone to me, and hence it also seems neither especially unreasonable or clickbaity to lead with a more understandable analogy of the same valence and then explain it in the text. Clickbait would have been if I titled it “Why do billionaires keep giving to a secretive poisonous philosophy?” not “Why I am not an effective altruist.”