Here are several more recent resources addressing the differences between effective altruism and utilitarianism/âconsequentialism:
William MacAskill (2019) Effective Altruism, The Norton Introduction to Ethics, Elizabeth Harman & Alex Guerrero (eds.).
Effective altruism FAQ: Is effective altruism the same as utilitarianism? What if Iâm not a utilitarian?
To learn more about the difference between criteria of rightness and decision procedures, and how this difference entails a distinction between âsingle-level utilitarianismâ and âmulti-level utilitarianismâ, please see the section Chapter 3: Elements and Types of Utilitarianism: Multi-level Utilitarianism Versus Single-level Utilitarianism on utilitarianism.net.
Another way to approach this is to ensure that people who are already interested in learning about utilitarianism are able to find high-quality resources that explicitly cover topics like the idea of the expanding moral circle, sentiocentrism/âpathocentrism, and the implications for considering the welfare of geographically distant people, other species, and future generations.
Improving educational opportunities of this kind was one motivation for writing this section on utilitarianism.net: Chapter 3: Utilitarianism and Practical Ethics: The Expanding Moral Circle.
Another indicator: Wikipedia pageviews show fairly stable interest in articles on EA and related topics over the last five years.
Hi Pablo, I have only just seen your comments. Yes, of course, I am more than happy with all the changes you have made and trust your sense for how this Wiki should be designed/âstructured! Thank you and keep up the good work.
Wikipedia pageviews could serve as a useful indicator that I expect is strongly correlated with website views.
E.g. see the following comparison of the pageviews of several EA-related Wikipedia pages in 2020. As it turns out, Peter Singer gets about 2x the number of views of Nick Bostrom, 2.5x of effective altruism, and 12x FHI or GiveWell.
A somewhat related thought I had while reading this post: Several of the nuclear-weapon states (including the US for all I remember) retain the right to retaliate with nuclear weapons against an attack with bioweapons, chemical weapons, and even cyber weapons. On the one hand, this might make the overall situation more stable because hostile actors (at least states, probably not so much terrorist groups) are deterred from using these other weapons types. On the other hand, it may be destabilising since many more actors (including non-state ones) may trigger a nuclear conflict.
On the topic of nuclear warfare, I have also read and can recommend The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War by Fred Kaplan. The book provides a deep dive into the development of the US nuclear doctrine over time , covering all administrations across 70 years and outlining in great detail many issues and arguments around nuclear policy.
If youâre also interested in books on biological weapons, I particularly recommend (HT Chris Bakerlee):
1. Bioterror and Biowarfare: A Beginnerâs Guide by Malcolm Dando
2. Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs by Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker
On the rise of China (relevant to Great Power Competition), I have found it interesting to read Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World by Michael Schuman. However, I am not too excited to recommend it, because the great majority of the book covers developments in ancient China for which the level of âinsights per pageâ was fairly low for me.
All of the above books are also available as audio books on Audible.
What are your thoughts on the desirability and feasibility of differential technological development (DTD) as a governance strategy for emerging technologies?
For instance, Toby Ord briefly touches on DTD in The Precipice, writing that âWhile it may be too difficult to prevent the development of a risky technology, we may be able to reduce existential risk by speeding up the development of protective technologies relative to dangerous ones.â
What are your long-term goals for The Roots of Progress? Are you pleased with how far you have come so far (e.g. quantity and quality of content produced, page-view or subscriber numbers)?
How do you prioritise between the various projects you are working on? What other projects, if any, do you consider working on to advance progress studies in future?
I just did this and can attest to it working and being as easy as described in the post. Thanks a lot for the recommendation!
Hi Nil, thanks for linking to utilitarianism.net. Unfortunately, the website is temporarily unavailable under the .net domain due to a technical problem. You can, however, still access the full website via this link: https://ââutilitarianism.squarespace.com/ââ
Brief meta comment: I would generally recommend being very cautious about (and mostly avoid) using language like âconvertingâ others to EA, as in your sentence âYounger people might be easier to convert (...)â. This type of language seems fairly easy to avoid, whiled using it may make many people feel uncomfortable and even pose reputational risks for the community.
Thank you for your comment!
There is a part of me which dislikes you presenting utilitarianism which includes animals as the standard form of utilitarianism. (...) Iâd prefer you to disambiguate between versions of utilitarianism which aggregate over humans, and those who aggregate over all sentient/âconscious beings, and maybe point out how this developed over time (i.e., Peter Singer had to come and make the argument forcefully, because before it was not obvious)?
My impression is that the major utilitarian academics were rather united in extending equal moral consideration to non-human animals (in line with technicalitiesâ comment). Iâm not aware of any influential attempts to promote a version of utilitarianism that explicitly does not include the wellbeing of non-human animals (though, for example, a preference utilitarian may give different weight to some non-human animals than a hedonistic utilitarian would). In the future, I hope weâll be able to add more content to the website on the link between utilitarianism and anti-speciesism, with the intention of bridging the inferential distance to which you rightly point.
Similarly, maybe you would also want to disambiguate a little bit more between effective altruism and utilitarianism, and explicitly mention it when youâre linking it to effective altruism websites, or use effective altruism examples?
In the section on effective altruism on the website, we already explicitly disambiguate between EA and utilitarianism. I donât currently see the need to e.g. add a disclaimer when we link to GiveWellâs website on Utilitarianism.net, but we do include disclaimers when we link to one of the organisations co-founded by Will (e.g. âNote that Professor William MacAskill, coauthor of this website, is a cofounder of 80,000 Hours.â)
Also, whatâs up with attributing the veil of ignorance to Harsanyi but not mentioning Rawls?
We hope to produce a longer article on how the Veil of Ignorance argument relates to utilitarianism at some point. We currently include a footnote on the website, saying that âThis [Veil of Ignorance] argument was originally proposed by Harsanyi, though nowadays it is more often associated with John Rawls, who arrived at a different conclusion.â For what itâs worth, Harsanyiâs version of the argument seems more plausible than Rawlsâ version. Will commented on this matter in his first appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, saying that âI do think he [Rawls] was mistaken. I think that Rawlsâs Veil of Ignorance argument is the biggest own goal in the history of moral philosophy. I also think itâs a bit of a travesty that people think that Rawls came up with this argument. In fact, he acknowledged that he took it from Harsayni and changed it a little bit.â
The section on Multi-level Utilitarianism Versus Single-level Utilitarianism seems exceedingly strange. In particular, you can totally use utilitarianism as a decision procedure (and if you donât, whatâs the point?).
Historically, one of the major criticisms of utilitarianism was that it supposedly required us to calculate the expected consequences of our actions all the time, which would indeed be impractical. However, this is not true, since it conflates using utilitarianism as a decision procedure and as a criterion or rightness. The section on multi-level utilitarianism aims to clarify this point. Of course, multi-level utilitarianism does still permit attempting to calculate the expected consequences of ones actions in certain situations, but it makes it clear that doing so all the time is not necessary.
For more information on this topic, I recommend Amanda Askellâs EA Forum post âAct utilitarianism: criterion of rightness vs. decision procedureâ.
I like the general thrust of your argument and would like to point out that within moral philosophy there is already an (in my view) satisfactory way to incorporate judgements associated with deontology and virtue ethics within a utilitarian frameworkâby going from âsingle-level utilitarianismâ to âmulti-level utilitarianismâ:
Iâm currently writing a text on this topic and will copy an excerpt here:
âUtilitarians believe that their moral theory is the appropriate standard of moral rightness, in that it specifies what makes an act (or rule, policy, etc) right or wrong. However, as Henry Sidgwick noted, âit is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aimâ.
Most, if not all, utilitarians discourage the use of utilitarianism as a decision procedure to guide all their everyday actions. Using utilitarianism as a decision procedure means always calculating the expected consequences of our day-to-day actions in an attempt to deliberately try to promote overall wellbeing. For example, we might pick what breakfast cereal to buy at the grocery store by trying to determine which one best contributes to overall wellbeing. To try and do so would be to follow single-level utilitarianism, which treats the utilitarian theory as both a standard of moral rightness and a decision procedure. But using such a decision procedure for all our decisions is a bad and fruitless idea, which explains why almost no one ever defended it. Jeremy Bentham rejected it, writing that âit is not to be expected that this process [of calculating expected consequences] should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment.â Deliberately calculating the expected consequences of our actions is error-prone and takes a lot of time. Thus, we have reason to think that following single-level utilitarianism would itself not lead to the best consequences, which is why the theory is often criticized as âself-defeatingâ.
For these reasons, many advocates of utilitarianism have instead argued for multi-level utilitarianism, which is defined as follows:
Multi-level utilitarianism is the view that, in most situations, individuals should follow tried-and-tested heuristics rather than trying to calculate which action will produce the most wellbeing.
Multi-level utilitarianism implies that we should, under most circumstances, follow a set of simple moral heuristicsâdo not lie, steal, kill etc.âknowing that this will lead to the best outcomes overall. To this end, we should use the commonsense moral norms and laws of our society as rules of thumb to guide our actions. Following these norms and laws will save time and usually lead to good outcomes, in part because they are based on societyâs experience of what promotes individual wellbeing. The fact that honesty, integrity, keeping promises and sticking to the law have generally good consequences explains why in practice utilitarians value such things highly and use them to guide their everyday actions.â
Thanks for writing this up! I really appreciated how you describe the problem of the competitive hiring landscape within the EA community, and especially that you connected this to a potentially increased risk of value drift for community members who grow frustrated after not being hired by their preferred employers within the community. I agree that this presents a major challenge for the EA community as a whole and would like to see more proposed solutions.
Having said all that, I also have two quarrels with your proposed solutions:
First, the EAs in academia who are in the best positions to be able to âsteer their fieldsâ in the future are probably the ones who need this type of advice the least, because they would seem to be in the best position to be hired within the EA community. Of course, if they are in such a special position within their academic field, it might be more impactful for them to stay in academia (depending on their field) regardless of whether they could get a job at an EA org.
Second, I have found it difficult to understand from your two points about local EA groups what you wish they would change about their strategy. You advise them to work on âcreating a nice and welcoming environment, where members want to come back to in regular intervals for yearsâ. However this seems like standard local group advice to me that most (all?) local groups aspire to implement anyway. (Note that this advice anyway does not really apply to EA university groups which by their very nature mostly attract students on a fairly short-term basis (~ 1-3 years).
I would be interested in your specific recommendations for how local groups could achieve this goal of long-term member engagement. Thanks!
Iâm surprised by how much low-hanging fruit there is still left to edit Wikipedia in order to make more people aware of (and provide them with a more sophisticated understanding of) important ideas that are relevant to EA. Iâve been adding and improving Wikipedia content on the side for two years now, with a clear focus on articles that are related to altruism.
In my experience, editing Wikipedia is really i) easy, ii) fun, iii) there are many content gaps left to fill, and iv) it exposes the content you write to a much larger audience (sometimes several orders of magnitude larger) than if you wrote instead for a private blog or the EA Forum. Against this background, Iâm surprised that not more knowledgeable EAs contribute to Wikipedia (feel free to reach out to me if you would potentially like to do just that).
A word of caution: the quality control on Wikipedia is fairly strong and it is generally disliked if people make edits that come across as ideologically-motivated marketing rather than as useful information. For this reason, I aspire to genuinely improve the quality of the article with all the edits I make, though my choice of articles to edit is informed by my altruistic values.
A useful resource on this topic is Brian Tomasikâs âThe Value of Wikipedia Contributions in Social Sciencesâ.
[Iâm collaborating with Will on creating the content for utilitarianism.net, but this comment is written in my private capacity]
Daniel Gambacorta has discussed value drift in two episodes of his Global Optimum Podcast (one & two) and recommends the following, which I found really helpful:
âChoose effective altruist endeavors that also grant you selfish benefits. There are a number of standard human motivators. Status, friends, mates, money, fame. When these things are on the line work actually gets done. Without these things itâs a lot harder. If your effective altruism gets you none of the things that you selfishly want, thatâs going to make things harder on you. If your plan is to go off into a cave, do something brilliant and never get credit for it, your planâs fatal flaw is you wonât actually do it. If you canât get things you selfishly want through effective altruism, you are liable to drift towards values that better enable you to get what you selfishly want. We humans are extremely good at fulfilling selfish goals while being self-deceived about it. With this in mind, you might pick some EA endeavor which is impactful but also gets you some standard things that humans want, because you are a human and you probably want the standard things other humans want. Even if the endeavor that grants you selfish benefits is less impactful in the abstract, this could be outweighed by the chance that you actually do it, and also how much more productive you will be when you work on something that is incentivized. If you do something that grants you significant selfish benefits, you just have to watch out for optimizing for those benefits instead of effective altruism, which would of course defeat the purpose.â
Suggestion to change this tagâs URL from â/âmoral-circle-expansion-1/ââ to â/âmoral-circle-expansion/ââ.