Some random thoughts on psychology and EA. We need to make some distinctions.
On the one hand you have a theory about suffering. CBT doesn’t have a clear fixed theory, it updates given the evidence. Most refer to these evolutions as first wave (behaviorism) vs second wave (revolution of cognitions, Beck, ‘typical’ CBT) and third wave (mindfulness-based (MBCT) & value-based (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT, a contextual behavioral science). The discussion continues.
Psychoanalytical and psychodynamisch therapies have different theories about suffering as well, but have some fixed ideas on the importance of early experiences.
There shoud be a difference between evidence based vs science based. Psycho-analytical (Freud, Lacan) theories aren’t science based, although some interventions might be evidence based.
The dodo-bird effect is overrated and mostly people with different agenda’s (promoting non science based interventions) misuse it to make their point. Be careful. Different forms of interventions do matter.
But psychology is a young science and a lot of things need to be fixed, updated and worked upon. Hope EA will contribute to this by taking a decent theory on psychological suffering into account. Before looking at evidence of different interventions. Contextual behavioral science might be a great place to start.
I was in contact with Michael before, and let me first say I’m happy he promotes the focus on IHI vs EHI in the EA community.
However, I disagree on how to think of IHI’s. I’ve been struggling with how to think of human suffering since I learned about EA, and it seems to be caused by different views on human suffering between philosophers and what I’ve learned from clinical psychology, mainly by more pragmatic contextual behavioral sciences (not as an authority argument, but FYI I’m a clinical psychologist/CBT-therapist/PhD-student).
My argument boils down to these 2 points: 1) The premisse and constructs of the EA movement already causes a bias towards Positive Psychology and 2) there are better potential alternatives out there.
So I believe this is a false distinction, and there is great added value in using a more pragmatic paradigm that can be considered as a third option. And that is: building contexts wherein people can live value-based lives, and preventing avoidable psychological suffering.
Yes it is an arbitrary distinction, and contributes to the bias towards positive psychology. I don’t see a reason why to make a distinction: humans are humans, and with the knowledge of how high prevalence rates of psychopathology are, it’s more logic to assume that underlying mechanisms are present in each of us. The danger of making this distinction is that you end up with interventions targeting the ‘ordinary human unhappiness’ and not taking into account what these interventions do with people higher up the continuum of suffering. And that’s exactly one of the criticism positive psychology receives.
This bias becomes more explicit in the article when Michael describes branches of psychotherapy.
If it is to a much lesser extent, then why acknowledge Positive Psychotherapy? NICE guidelines (UK) and APA guidelines (US) don’t regard positive psychology interventions as evidence based. (And by the way, classical CBT and MBCT can be regarded as just being part of the happy family of CBT). Another problem is the word ‘methods’. Before we start thinking of methods, we need a theory on human suffering, so that when we think of interventions we don’t just start from constructs like happiness. This discussion is very alive in the CBT-family, because of the rise of another branch: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
So EA’ers interested in this topic, please read on ACT and the underlying theory of it (Relational Frame Theory, RFT). Before we use numbers, we need a decent theory on suffering to frame them.
If this topic is still alive, I’ll try to write another post on how effective altruism based on contextual behavioral sciences might look like. To say it very briefly, a distinction between two sorts of interventions is needed:
building contexts (by EHI) wherein each human being has the possibility to live towards their values (and that has the side effect of unavoidable suffering, e.i. by having the time to worry and grief about the loss of loved ones).
promoting contexts (by IHI) with the least possible psychological suffering.