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.
mhendric
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!).
This source helps me see that now is a time where blood donations are especially needed, but it does not give me the means of evaluating that it would be more effective than alternative courses of action. Thank you for adding it in comments and post!
I don’t mean to be discouraging, but it would help me greatly if you added some sources to the post and/or added some explanation of how this qualifies as “probably the current most effective altruism”. In its current form, I find this quite unconvincing. While I do donate blood, I don’t think it’s a priority over other work, and superficial googling did not convince me that it should be.
Hey there, thank you both for the helpful comments.
I agree the shorttermist/longtermist framing shouldn’t be understood as too deep a divide or too reductive a category, but I think it serves a decent purpose for making clear a distinction between different foci in EA (e.g. Global Health/Factory Farming vs AI-Risk/Biosecurity etc).
The comment above really helped me in seeing how prioritization decisions are made. Thank you for that, Ardenlk!
I’m a bit less bullish than Vasco on it being good that 80k does their own prioritization work. I don’t think it is bad per se, but I am not sure what is gained by 80k research on the topic vis a vis other EA people trying to figure out prioritization. I do worry that what is lost are advocates/recomendations for causes that are not currently well-represented in the opinion of the research team, but that are well-represented among other EA’s more broadly. This makes people like me have a harder time funneling folks to EA-principles based career-advising, as I’d be worried the advice they receive would not be representative of the considerations of EA folks, broadly construed. Again, I realize I may be overly worried here, and I’d be happy to be corrected!
I read the Thorstadt critique as somewhat stronger than the summary you give- certainly, just invoking X-risk should not per default justify assuming astronomical value. But my sense from the two examples (one from Bostrom, one on cost-effectiveness on Biorisk) was that more plausible modeling assumptions seriously undercut at least some current cost-effectiveness models in that space, particularly for individual interventions (as opposed to e.g. systemic interventions that plausibly reduce risk long-term). I did not take it to imply that risk-reduction is not a worthwhile cause, but that current models seem to arrive at the dominance of it as a cause based on implausible assumptions (e.g. about background risk).
I think my perception of 80k as “partisan” stems from posts such as these, as well as the deprioritization of global health/animal welfare reflected on the website. If I read the post right, the four positive examples are all on longtermist causes, including one person who shifted from global health to longtermist causes after interacting with 80k. I don’t mean to suggest that in any of these cases, that should not have been done—I merely notice that the only appearance of global health or animal welfare is in that one example of someone who seems to have been moved away from those causes to a longtermist cause.
I may be reading too much into this. If you have any data (or even guesses) on how many % of people you advise you end up funneling to global health and animal welfare causes, and how many you advise to go into risk-reduction broadly construed, that would be really helpful.
I, too, would be happy to see more transparency about the 80.000 hour rankings. I think it would be especially valuable to see to which degree they reflect the individual judgment of decision-makers. I would also be interested in whether they take into account recent discussions/criticisms of model choices in longtermist math that strike me as especially important for the kind of advising 80.000 hours does (tldr: I take one crux of that article to be that longtermist benefits by individual action are often overstated, because the great benefits longtermism advertises require both reducing risk and keeping overall risk down long-term, which plausibly exceeds the scope of a career/life).
I think this would help me with a more general worry I have, and maybe others share. As a teacher at a university, I often try to encourage students to rethink their career choices from an EA angle. 80.000 hours is a natural place to recommend for interested students, but I am wary of recommending it to non-longtermist students. Probably good seems to offer a more shorttermist alternative, but are significantly newer and have less brand recognition. I think there would be considerable value in having the biggest career-advising organization (80k) be a non-partisan EA advising organization, whereas I currently take them to be strongly favoring longtermism in their advice. While I feel this explicit stance is a mistake, I feel like getting a better grasp on its motivation would help me understand why it was taken.I may be mistaken in taking 80.000 hours to lean heavily longtermist and Probably Good leaning heavily shorttermist, and would be happy to be corrected!
I have organized two small fundraisers with AMF, and in both cases, Rob was incredibly proactive and helpful, taking time to immediately respond to emails and hop onto calls. Many thanks, but a question remains: where does he find the time, and which time-management strategies does he use?
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.