Tom_Davidson

Karma: 1,028

Tom_Davidson Dec 27, 2015, 2:12 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: The big problem with how we do outreach
I agree completely that talking with people about values is the right way to go. Also, I don’t think we need to try and convince them to be utilitarians or nearly-utilitarian. Stressing that all people are equal and pointing to the terrible injustice of the current situation is already powerful, and those ideas aren’t distinctively utilitarian.

Tom_Davidson Dec 26, 2015, 4:41 AM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Geuss’s comment on: Population ethics: In favour of total utilitarianism over average

There is no a priori reason to think that the efficacy of charitable giving should have any relation whatsoever to utilitarianism. Yet it occupies a huge part of the movement.

I think the argument is that, a priori, utilitarians think we should give effectively. Further, given the facts as they far (namely that effective donations can do an astronomical amount of good), there are incredibly strong moral reasons for utilitarians to promote effective giving and thus to participate in the EA movement.

I think that [the obsession with utilitarianism] is regretful… because it stifles the kind of diversity which is necessary to create a genuinely ecumenical movement.

I do find discussions like this a little embarrassing but then again they are interesting to the members of the EA community and this is an inward-facing page. Nonetheless I do share your fears about it putting outsiders off.

Tom_Davidson Dec 26, 2015, 4:15 AM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: Are GiveWell Top Charities Too Speculative?
Those seem really high flow through effects to me! £2000 saves one life, but you could easily see it doing as much good as saving 600!

How are you arriving at the figure? The argument that “if you value all times equally, the flow through effects are 99.99...% of the impact” would actually seem to show that they dominated the immediate effects much more than this. (I’m hoping there’s a reason why this observation is very misleading.) So what informal argument are you using?

Tom_Davidson Dec 22, 2015, 7:43 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Are GiveWell Top Charities Too Speculative?
This is a nice idea but I worry it won’t work.

Even with healthy moral uncertainty, I think we should attach very little weight to moral theories that give future people’s utility negligible moral weight. For the kinds of reasons that suggest we can attach them less weight don’t go any way to suggesting that we can ignore them. To do this they’d have to show that future people’s moral weight was (more than!) inversely proportional to their temporal distance from us. But the reasons they give tend to show that we have special obligations to people in our generation, and say nothing about our obligations to people living in the year 3000AD vs people living in the year 30,000AD. [Maybe i’m missing an argument here?!] Thus any plausible moral theory will such that the calculation will be dominated by very long term effects, and long term effects will dominate our decision making process.

Tom_Davidson Dec 22, 2015, 6:24 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Impossible EA emotions
Great post!

Out of interest, can you give an example of an “instrumentally rational technique that require irrationality”?

Tom_Davidson Dec 21, 2015, 5:21 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Robert_Wiblin’s comment on: Are GiveWell Top Charities Too Speculative?
Why? What are the very long term effects of a murder?

Tom_Davidson Dec 21, 2015, 5:15 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Robert_Wiblin’s comment on: Are GiveWell Top Charities Too Speculative?
Would you similarly doubt that, on expectation, someone murdering someone else had bad consequences overall? Someone slapping you very hard in the face?

This kind of reasoning seems to bring about a universal scepticism about whether we’re doing Good. Even if you think you can pin down the long term effects, you have no idea about the very long term effects (and everything else is negligible compared to very long term effects).

Tom_Davidson Nov 20, 2015, 1:27 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: We care about WALYs not QALYs
In defence of WALYs, and in reply to your specific points:
1. I don’t share your intuition here. Well-being is what we’re talking about when we say “I’m not sure he’s doing so well at the moment”, or when we say “I want to help people as much as possible”. It’s a general term for how well someone is doing, overall. It’s an advantage, in my eyes, that it’s not committed to any specific account of well-being, for any such account might have its drawbacks.
2. I worry that, in adopting HALYs, EA would tie its aims to a narrow view of what human well-being and flourishing consists of. This is unnecessary, for EA is just about helping people as much as possible. Even if we were convinced that the only component of well-being was happiness, it would still be an additional claim to the core of EA.

Tom_Davidson Nov 13, 2015, 4:52 PM
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: At what cost, carnivory?
A small quibble

One conclusion EAs might make is that their personal diets are no big deal, easily swamped as it is by the consequences of donations.

I think it’s flat out wrong to conclude our diets “are no big deal”. Being vegetarian for a lifetime prevents over 1000 years of animal suffering. That’s a huge, huge impact.

My more serious worry is that people will draw this conclusion and eat less ethically as a result, without donating more (they already knew donating was great). But this is just psychological speculation backed up by some anecdotal evidence.

Tom_Davidson Nov 10, 2015, 2:53 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Don’t sweat diet?
Most people who go vegetarian find its very very little effort to be 90% vegetarian after a year or so. To me this warns against the view that people will give extra because “they haven’t made the sacrifice of becoming veggie”. Very soon the sacrifice becomes a habit and the claim that charitable donations are affected becomes even less plausible.

I’d be interested to know if anyone has given more money because of this thread. I know that i’m more willing to eat diary products and have read others saying it made them happier eating meat.

Tom_Davidson Nov 9, 2015, 11:31 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Don’t sweat diet?
That only seems to show that emissions do harm. Not that the harm is so finely individuated. fwiw there are reasons to doubt the butterfly effect works in the same way given quantum mechanics

Tom_Davidson Nov 1, 2015, 2:53 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: CarlShulman’s comment on: Don’t sweat diet?

When you emit carbon dioxide those emissions will go on to harm particular people. When you buy offsets that will avert emissions that would have harmed different people.

What’s this claim based on?

Tom_Davidson Oct 24, 2015, 7:43 PM
22 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Don’t sweat diet?
This is a really good article, and I do find the perspective advocated compelling. However, I would like to voice some worries.
1. Anyone not committed to an consequentialist mindset is likely to take serious issue with someone who eats meat but donates to charities that encourage other people to give up meat. In general, advocating that someone else make a sacrifice that you aren’t willing to make is seen as hypocritical and lacking in integrity. People will criticise you and perhaps, by association, effective altruism.
2. I’m sceptical, psychologically, that this kind of reasoning will make people donate more in total. I worry the main effect will be that they eat more meat.
3. This style of argument worries me more generally because rich people will very often be able to compensate for terrible things they wish to do by donating more money to charity. E.g. cheat on your partner and donate to a charity to encourage stable relationships. This buys into the negative image of EA as allowing rich people to justify themselves morally.
Perhaps we should instead claim that the strong reasons to be veg’n aren’t affected by the existence of other great ways to do good. Avoiding thousands of years of terrible suffering by going veg’n for life is just a great thing to do: anyone who can should make that sacrifice.

Tom_Davidson Oct 19, 2015, 11:55 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: SophiesWorld’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
I agree with this. Let me make explain why I stand by the point that you quote me on. Tl;dr: by “negative effects” I wasn’t talking about the hurt feelings of potential EAs.

My point wasn’t the following: “It’s unfair on relatively poor potential EAs, therefore it’s bad, therefore let’s change the movement” As you stress, this consideration is outweighed by the considerations of those the movement is trying to help. I accept explicitly in the article that such considerations might justify us making EA elitist.

My point was rather that people criticise us for being elitist etc. Having an elitist pledge reinforces this image and prevents people from joining—not just those in relative poverty. This reduces our ability to help those in absolute poverty. You don’t seem to have acknowledged this point in your criticisms.

Tom_Davidson Oct 15, 2015, 9:57 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tor_Barstad’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
Thanks for that.

My basic worries are: -Academics must gain something from spending ages thinking and studying ethics, be it understanding of the arguments, knowledge of more arguments or something else. I think this puts them in a better position than others and should make others tentative in saying that they’re wrong.

-Your explanation for disagreeing with certain academics is that they have different starting intuitions. But does this account for the fact that academics can revise/abandon intuitions because of broader considerations. Even if you’re right, why you think your intuitions are more reliable than theirs?

The views that I’m confident in are the ones that aren’t based on core ethical intuitions (although they overlap with my ethical intuitions), but can be deduced from things that aren’t ethical intuitions, as well as principles such as logical consistency and impartiality… I can extend on this if anyone wants me to

I’d definitely be interested to hear more :)

Tom_Davidson Oct 15, 2015, 9:27 PM
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Dale’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem

Why, do you believe we should redistribute moral virtue?

No, but it’s unfair that it’s harder for the poor to attain the status. That has negative effects which I talked about in the article.

Tom_Davidson Oct 14, 2015, 2:10 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Michelle_Hutchinson’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
Thanks so much for this! Really good and persuasive points.

One important thing to say is that the Pledge should absolutely not be used to distinguish ‘good people’.

My worry is this isn’t realistic, even if ideally it we wouldn’t distinguish people like this. For example, having taken the pledge myself and told people about it I was congratulated (especially by other EAs). This simple and unavoidable kind of interaction rewards pledgers and shows that their moral status in the eyes of others has gone up. To me, it seems a real problem that this kind of status and reward is so much harder for the poor to attain.

Further, making the Pledge is bound to be an important part of engaging with the movement, even if we don’t use it to distinguish virtuous people. To me, again, this feels like a serious issue.

so it doesn’t seem sensible for us to pick a cut-off. I also think the simplicity of the message is pretty crucial… [it’s powerful that we can] say ‘we are a community of x people who all actually give 10% of their wages’

Great point! I’m interested to know how we currently accommodate the exception the the rule: students? Could we do the same thing for an income clause as well? To me an income exception seems better motivated because i) its a more important access issue, and ii) the pledge is already about lifetimes earnings, so wouldn’t be particularly harder for a student to make (they can just give a little later) than a non-student.

I’m not convinced that your characterisation of the ethical views of effective altruists is accurate, and I think it could be harmful to simplify in the way that you do… the description of being arrogant and dogmatic is less true of them than most other ethicists.

This is a really good point and i’ll keep this in mind, especially about the uncertainty. [To be clear neither Toby nor William MacAskill have ever done any of the things I objected to.] It’s not clear to me that calling them narrow utilitarians is misleading though (unless they’re deontologists)

Tom_Davidson Oct 14, 2015, 1:29 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Tor_Barstad’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
Thanks for a thoughtful response.

But what do you mean by “Refrain from posting things that assume that consequentialism is true”? That its best to refrain from posting things that assume that values like e.g. justice aren’t ends-in-themselves, or refrain from posting things that assume that consequences and their quantity are important?

Definitely the former. I find it hard to get my head round people who deny the latter. I suspect only people committed to a weird philosophical theories would do it. I thought modern Kantians were more moderate. Let’s remember that most people don’t have a “moral theory” but care about consequences and a cluster of other concerns: it’s these people I don’t want to alienate.

I think that encouraging all EAs to speak as if Kant and other philosophers with a complete disregard for consequentialism might be correct would be asking a lot.

I think philosophers who reject consequentialism (as the claim that consequences are the only morally relevant thing) might be correct, and personally find it annoying when everyone speak assumes that any such philosopher is obviously mistaken. I certainly agree there’s no need to talk as if consequences might be irrelevant!

I’m sympathetic with your comments about rationality. I wonder if an equally informative way of phrasing it would be “carefully investigating about which actions help the most people”. For people who disagree, reading EA’s describe itself as “rational” will be annoying because it implies that they are irrational.

I suppose that if being uncontroversial among “experts” is a good measure of reasonableness, then even today we should be more open to the possible importance of acting in accordance with theistic holy texts.

This is a really interesting point. We could see history as a reductio on the claim that the academic experts reach even roughly true moral conclusions. So maybe the academics are wrong. My worry is the idea we can round this problem by evaluating the arguments ourselves. We’re not special. Academics just evaluate the arguments, like we would, but understand them better. The only way i can see myself being justified in rejecting their views is by showing they’re biased. So maybe my point wasn’t “the academics are right, so narrow consequentialism is wrong” but “most people who know much more about this than us don’t think narrow consequentialism is right, so we don’t know its right”.

Tom_Davidson Oct 14, 2015, 1:02 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Owen Cotton-Barratt’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
I agree with you on technical language—we have to judge cases on an individual basis and be reasonable.

Less sure about the consequentialism, unless you know your talking to a consequentialist! If you want to evaluate an action from a narrow consequentialist perspective, can’t you just say so at the start?

Tom_Davidson Oct 13, 2015, 2:14 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: xccf’s comment on: EA’s Image Problem
I don’t think the existence of another pledge does much to negate the harm done by the GWWC pledge being classist.

I agree there’s value in simplicity. But we already have an exception to the rule: students only pay 1%. There’s two points here. Firstly, it doesn’t seem to harm our placard-credentials. We still advertise as “give 10%”, but on further investigation there’s a sensible exception. I think something similar could accommodate low-earners. Secondly, even if you want to keep it at one exception, students are in a much better position to give than many adults. So we should change the exception to a financial one.

Do you agree that, all things equal, the suggestions I make about how to relate to each other and other EAs are good?