I understand! Out of curiosity, does whether the organization want to stay anonymous factor into the decision in any way?
mhendric
Karma: 385
Great to hear the second round was successful. Given an anonymous AI org is taking up half of the budget, I wonder what the overall approach of the org is, what makes you think you’re the best-suited funder for it, or what reasons led to granting anonymity to the organization. If there’s anything you’d be willing to share on any of these, it’d be greatly appreciated!
I think you are being unrealistically harsh on yourself. If I understand you correctly, you donate x% to a charity, and are now adding even more money by selling used manga. You wonder whether this is just an elaborate way of justifying your manga consumption.
I don’t see why your manga consumption would require any justification! If physical manga are something you enjoy, it is completely fine to enjoy them. Selling them afterwards to donate more to charity seems like a good move that combines something you like and a way to go above and beyond in your donations.
The question of why not more donations can always be asked, and this will lead to unrealistically high expectations, miserable lives and burnt-out EAs, all of which is not the most effective way to be. Hence, we set artificial points such as 10% of income (1% for students) as a point to no longer feel obliged to worry about donations. That you seem to have found a way to go above and beyond that point while allowing you to pursue a hobby is not weird or immoral, but rather laudable!
This was an interesting read, and it makes me more excited to recommend LEAF to young people. Thank you for taking the time to write it.
I mainly work with university students but sometimes do small work at high schools. What would you consider useful or underappreciated ways of supporting high school students that seem curious about EA related ideas, aside from LEAF? What are the kinds of advice or mentorship that you’d expect to be most needed or most useful?
I am similarly unenthused about the weird geneticism.
Insofar as somewhat more altruism in the economy is the aim, sure, why not! I’m not opposed to that, and you may think that e.g. giving pledges or founders pledge are already steps in that direction. But that seems different from what most people think of when you say socialism, which they associate with ownership of means of production, or very heavy state interventionism and planned economy! It feels a tiny bit bailey and motte ish.
To give a bit of a hooray for the survey numbers—at the German unconference, I organized a fishbowl-style debate on economic systems. I was pretty much the only person defending a free market economy, with maybe 3-5 people silently supportive and a good 25 or so folks arguing for strong interventionism and socialism. I think this is pretty representative of the German EA community at least, so there may be country differences.
Nikhil! I am very glad you wrote this post!
I read this post not as a we should, as EA, advocate socialism, but more as a EA should have more socialists, or people looking into socialism. I want to discuss two ways of pushing back against that particular claim.
Insofar as people decide what to look into, I think the justificatory basis for looking into socialism (as opposed to e.g. standard economic theory, market economy, trade policy) remains somewhat slim.
You give a first-principle argument that seems neutral between real socialism and a somewhat interventionist market economy a la Europe. Insofar as the latter counts, my sense is that there is quite significant EA research on state interventions and how to support them (e.g. Lead removal projects trying to empower state actors to curb lead), as well as on broader political change (e.g. Social Change Lab is EA-affiliated IIRC) or heterodox economy (e.g. LEP). So for non-hardcore interpretations of socialism, I do see a fair amount of engagement.
You give some examples where somewhat more hardcore socialist countries had positive results—but I think that for at least some of them, e.g. Chinese poverty eradication, the orthodoxy is to understand them as having worked because of a change towards a less socialist system, rather than a more socialist system. So on a loose understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s a fair amount of engagement. On a strict understanding of socialism, I feel like there’s too thin an evidence base to justify focusing on it over e.g. orthodox economics. This may be because I do not know all examples well enough.
A second way of pushing back against your claims is that I think you may be simply wrong that there is not a significant amount of socialists in EA. Left seems to be the second-most popular position in EA after center left ( https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJDgnPXqZ48eSCjEQ/ea-survey-2022-demographics#Politics ). While EA is often painted as libertarian, there seem to be 7 times as many leftists as libertarians doing the EA survey. I myself had many interesting and insightful conversations with socialists I met in EA (you among them!). I think the impression that EA is very libertarian or neoliberal in membership is wrong. I think it may arise from the fact that in university contexts, those positions are simply so rare that a handful of vocal neoliberal EAs give the impression that EA is hyper-neoliberal.
Anyways, these are two ways in which I’d like to push back against the central claim. I enjoy you push towards thinking more about overlap between socialist and EA thought, and find it productive.
Hey there. Thanks for this post; I am sure many people can relate to your experience. I have found many EA’s, especially within the first few years of encountering EA, are incredibly harsh with themselves—often to a highly unproductive degree. I think part of this may be related to moral burnout: as one starts embracing a very demanding ethical theory, there is no longer a clearly visible threshold above which one is ‘safe’, and can stop worrying. After all, every dollar or minute spent could be better spent elsewhere, or so our short-sighted brains tell us. Suddenly, every decision must be justified.
I suspect a lot of this comes from a somewhat unfortunate framing. Rather than seeing EA as a way of having an outsized positive impact even with rather limited means, many people seem to see EA as an ideal of how to prioritize their every decision and see themselves as failing when not being able to optimize each and every decision. Your post sounds a bit as if you adopt the latter mindset, scolding yourself for failing to become vegetarian or hanging out with people you are related to (which no Utilitarian would object to!). But notice that there are many ways of helping animals and strangers that don’t require you to be a vegetarian/ignoring those you are related to, such as via donations or volunteering.
I have come to believe that this phenomenon is quite well-studied in other professions that frequently require tradeoffs and unfullfillable moral obligations, such as in healthcare settings. There, it is discussed under the monicker of moral burnout. I am currently working on a research project relating moral burnout and the demandingness of EA and other utilitarian theories. I have presented it to a few academic audiences (I am a philosopher), and I hope to finish the project this year. If I do, I’ll post about it on the forum.
I’d also be very interested in compiling different such reports by EAs. I think an emotional first-aid kit may also make sense, but I would not be qualified to help with that.
I find Julia Wise very insightful on this topic. I recommend you check out her work, or maybe even reach out to her!
Cool article. I like the writing style a lot. I hope it helps convince others to do EtG or creates general interest in EA. I myself try to have an impact mainly through recruiting and outreach in academia, so I share much of your enthusiasm. I think encouraging future high-earners (or even low- and mid-earners!) to donate a portion of their income is a great part of that strategy, particularly with folks who would not enter direct work alternatively.
One thing that strikes me as important to add to this basic pitch is the extreme differences in effectiveness of charities. As I see it, a fair amount of people in the US do donate a ton of their money after becoming rich, but they do so in dubious ways—e.g., donating to their Alma Mater or the local hospital.
I think there’s some nice downstream effects of encouraging more people to do this. For one, donor diversity is always nice. I also think there may be a fair amount of folks doing this, and then at some point considering more direct involvement, be it part- or full time.
Thanks for this response, Austin. For me, three things that made me hesitant to use Manifund:
(1) requires an account
(2) when linking via a google account, the supabase address looks scammy as it is just 15 random characters.
(3) I have to pay money into an account before pledging. Given not all projects may end up taking place, this makes me nervous about wasting money (i.e. if the project does not take place). Compare this to, e.g., Kickstarter, where you only need to pay if the project takes place, yet you can pledge without loading money into Kickstarter.I do think of Manifund as a good fundraiser option; I do think that it is good to have multiple options listed for the reasons explained above.
Thanks, much appreciated. Sent a donation via Paypal.
Based on the posts I read, EA Philippines has always struck me as a really vibrant and enthusiastic community. I hope you achieve your funding aim.
You use manifund to fundraise, and I was wondering why you chose manifund over other platforms. I initially wanted to donate but have not, because it seems it would require me to register an account, and to convert money into some manifund account, both of which seem like a hassle. Maybe others, too, are put off by this.
Maybe you should add another way of financially supporting EA Philippines. If you do, let me know. I’ll gladly make a small donation.
The Ballad of Smallpox Gone is my favourite EA song. It’s a banger, with great lyrics and reasonably easy to perform.
Awesome, very exciting!
Doing good Better has some estimates on the effect of individual consumption choices on animal production, and takes them to be positive. I think its widely believed that they matter—raising animals costs money, and if corporations sell less animal products, they will produce less animals.
I have no especially interesting answers to the healthcare question.
Both actions will be much less effective than e.g. developing a regular donation habit, getting a good degree and choosing a world-improving career etc. But I don’t think its healthy (or common!) for EAs to focus only on the most life-saving choices in their lives. Many EAs are vegan because they (rightly!) think it is just wrong for animals to be held in horrible conditions. Many EAs donate blood because they (probably rightly) think its an easy and positive way to help someone. I think its a good practice to not only focus on the highest-impact choices, but also to aim for a lifestyle in which we can integrate some lower-effort prosocial habits that one believes holds moral value.
I’d prioritize veganism. You may want to look into iron supplements (and generally supplement strategies for vegan diets), regardless of the blood donation issue—your health is of great importance.
Thats interesting—I know of similar arguments in e.g. wartorn countries like Ukraine. If those hold up to scrutiny, donating blood in these countries would indeed be shockingly effective.
Yes that seems right. I’d argue that a good consequentialist should devote quite some time to their character—it will affect their future behaviour and consequences thereof, after all!
Whats the point of resuscitating a stranger with an emergency while in your absence, another person may have done it? It is good to help; it may save the strangers life (even if someone else would have saved them in your absence); it builds character etcetc. It also saves money for the hospital!
“Does that mean there is no value in blood/platelet donation?” Of course not, I don’t know why you would think that I hold that position. Do donate! I donate myself.
“Also, it is said that life-saving surgeries have been postponed due to lack of blood/platelets. I guess it is hard to say if the postponement results in death.” I did not spot that in the source!
”Furthermore, I’m not entirely sure the shelf-life of blood/platelets is even long enough for there to be an importation from another country (ig it depends on the country).” The US is the biggest importer of blood, with roughly 20% of global imports going to the US. https://trendeconomy.com/data/commodity_h2/3002
Why do blood donation groups incentivize blood donation? I am not as familiar with the US; in Germany it is much cheaper to acquire blood by paying a donor $50 or giving them some food and drink than to buy it elsewhere. The Red Cross in Germany, to my knowledge, gives donors food and drink and then sells the blood to hospitals to make some money for their other charitable ventures.
Again, I do think it is good to donate blood! You should donate blood. I should donate blood. Others should donate blood.
I do not think it is probably the current most effective altruism.
If one donation would save a life, I would expect the news updates to be different, e.g.
”People are dying left and right from a blood shortage”
and to see a significant spike in mortality in the US.
I also would be surprised if such a problem could not be addressed by e.g. US health providers importing blood from other countries, which countries do quite routinely in times of shortages, to my knowledge.
I am not aware of any of these.
Generally, I take it that the burden of proof for effectiveness should lie on the new intervention. If you want people to switch from e.g. supporting AMF to e.g. supporting blood, you should provide compelling evidence. I don’t think the above is sufficient as compelling evidence. It lacks crucial information (e.g. how many people are dying from a shortage right now? how much of a shortage is there? what alternative means are being used to avert a shortage? has there even been one death yet directly caused from said shortage? how much does my donating alleviate this shortage? what is the % chance of my donation saving a life that would otherwise be lost due to the shortage?), and rests more on abstract vibe-based back-of-the-envelope calculations, rather than an explicit attempt at establishing the value of blood donations (which, I think, would be a lot of work but also be a valuable thing for the forum!).
Thanks both, that’s exactly what I meant to be asking.