Personally, I read Singer’s Practical Ethics in 2005, which convinced me that I ought to donate a share of my income to charities. I can’t say that notion was new to me then, but I found his argument particularly persuasive. The article Faith, hope and charities in the 13 November 2010 issue of The Economist convinced me that donors often do not exercise due diligence before deciding where to give. Despite this, it wasn’t until several years later that I came into contact with the website of Giving What We Can.
I’m curious, what is the typical length of time between when people were convinced of EA ideas and when they first heard about the term or the community? Did the survey cover this?
I originally posted this on the Facebook thread that linked to this discussion, but that thread was deleted, so I’m reposting it here.
The strongest counterargument against EA that I know of is an attack on its underlying methodological individualism. By “individualism” here I mean analysing our actions as those of individuals deciding and acting in isolation. That is, looking at what we ought to do regardless of how this correlates with the behaviour of others.
To see why this could be a problem, take Downs paradox of voting, as illustrated here. In that video, Diana Thomas argues—persuasively in my view—that voting (and being an informed voter) is irrational if seen solely as an individual act. Some have attempted to counter this by saying that voters are acting altruistically, rather than egoistically. I think such explanations are insufficient because they ignore the irreducibility of voting. The impact of voting for a specific candidate is an emergent property of sufficiently many doing it. Voting only makes sense when seen as a collective, rather than individual, act.
The fundamental question underlying EA is “how can I have the most impact?” Turning this question into a movement, thus changing the “I” into a “we”, doesn’t necessarily mean that the answer stays the same.