That is really interesting about the improved economic prospects for dewormed children. That is indeed a strong argument for deworming this year rather than next year. These sorts of considerations need to be part of our analysis. It is unlikely that all methods of direct intervention will exhibit this sort of return, so it would seem that this ought to be part of our process when deciding which direct causes to donate to.
zackrobinson
Karma: 29
Thanks for those links. I was quite certain that this problem had probably been identified before, but I was unable to find anything written on it.
The Donor’s Dilemma: The Time Value of Money and Maximizing Effectiveness
Isn’t one purpose of effective altruism to be “clever in understanding human needs”? If we aren’t spending dollars in any more effective ways than regular folks are when they spend their paychecks, we have failed miserably. In the current climate, it is still quite possible to do a tremendous amount of good with relatively few dollars. There are probably several organizations that can either save or drastically improve a life for less than $5,000. I can’t imagine that ordinary people are spending their money during the course of their day in a manner that even approaches this sort of highly leveraged effectiveness.
The purpose of charity in the first place is to do more good than we would normally do when spending our money. Otherwise, we would have no good reason to ever donate to any charities. The purpose of effective altruism is to identify the very best ways of spending money in order to do the most good. If we aren’t even beating the average Joe’s personal spending habits, why are we here?
There is certainly an important difference here between cause and blameworthiness. In law, as in many cases in philosophy when one wants to make a moral appraisal, we are interested in more than mere causation. Culpability is often an additional requirement, and that can make things murky. Further, even more murkiness is introduced by the presence of moral luck, which some have argued might be highly intractable. However, for the purposes of EA assessments, I think basic counterfactual causation is sufficient. In precise terms, I think it is enough for a cause to be merely necessary, if not sufficient, for us to evaluate it as being useful. Let’s say that I convince Smith to donate a million dollars to an effective charity. It is certainly true that such a donation wouldn’t have been possible if Smith hadn’t earned that million dollars, but it is also true that the donation wouldn’t have occurred had I not made my pitch to Smith. We can say both factors (me pitching Smith and Smith earning the money) are necessary but not sufficient, assuming it is in fact true that Smith wouldn’t have made a similar donation without me. This does open up the possibility that both Smith and I can say that we “caused” a million dollars to be donated to an effective charity, but I’m not sure that’s actually problematic. Without either one of our actions occurring, the donation wouldn’t have happened.
When extrapolating this concept over the course of multiple cause/effect cycles, however, I believe there may be an epistemic problem. Using Singer’s vegetarian in the cafeteria example, it is very hard to know how many of the subsequent vegetarians would have come to accept vegetarianism through other channels. We might not even be able to attribute all of Singer’s vegetarianism to this one individual, as it seems like Singer might be the sort of person who would have at some point accepted vegetarianism anyway. In other words, even playing the counterfactual game, it isn’t clear what the otherwise outcome might have been. This seems to be a problem that we would face in any large set of cause/effect cycles.
This problem generalizes to other areas as well: increasing human populations almost certainly mean increased environmental strain, for example. I don’t want to digress into that too much, but I will say that I think you brought up a good response to this sort of critique: we shouldn’t assume too much about future causal chains. There is a great deal of awareness at the moment of both factory farming and climate change, and it is entirely possible that the effects of one additional human will be far lower than current states would project them to be.
Off the top of my head, I believe there are about 8-10 billion factory farmed animals consumed every year in the US—roughly 35 per person. Most of these are chickens, and I think we can say they lead net-negative lives (I simply do not believe non-breeder chickens are at a 4). There is no doubt that increasing the size of the US population would substantially increase the number of factory farmed animals, and an increase of 35 factory farmed animals per human is far from trivial. However, the good news is that the vast majority of lives extended by EAs are not in the US, and thus the increase in meat consumption their longer lives will produce is likely going to be sourced from animals with lives that are probably worth living.
I absolutely agree regarding animal charities. The potential is quite large simply due to the number of animals involved in factory farming and the quite poor conditions many of them live in. There are probably a relatively small number of humans who are actually living net negative lives. There are undoubtedly billions of animals who are living such lives. This alone should probably be a very important consideration for EAs.
Overall, great article!
freewheeling evolution will not lead to satisfactory levels of global human cooperation in time to prevent severe risks . Nor it will lead to the preservation of human values in the long run ; humans, human values, and human cooperation are in no way the end-point of evolutionary processes.
Excellent point; this is something I’ve considered many times myself. Humans post-1850 are the first species in the history of the world that has been able to reflect on the evolutionary processes that brought it here. As such, we are the first species with an opportunity to play an intentional, direct role in affecting those processes. Evolution doesn’t select for morality per se, or values per se, but we will potentially have the capability of incorporating such considerations into the evolutionary process. As we continue to grow our ability to genetically modify humans, however, there is a possibility that we can intervene on a biological basis to improve the morality of the human species. It sounds very sci-fi, but also very realistic.
That’s great to hear. I think it is important that media depictions of EA highlight the positive impact one can have through EA. In other words, present the opportunity to do incredibly good things rather than offering condemnation for inaction. I agree that TLYCS is in a good position to do just that.
Kerry, I would be interested in helping with evaluations. I’m sure there is probably a way to contact you through this site, but for the life of me, I can’t find it. Let me know what the next step is.
I agree on the news front. The vast majority of news today is irrelevant to just about everyone’s life. There is no good reason why I need to know about a mother who killed her children or some comments one famous person said about another famous person. That sort of information doesn’t make me a better citizen or even make me more informed about the world in a meaningful way. I do listen to NPR when I’m in my car, and that has been useful to me, although it’s worth pointing out that I am essentially multi-tasking while doing it, so I’m not using dedicated time.
A couple other things I am not doing:
Eating meat (one year strong, and I’m happy to report that it takes almost zero time now)
Participating in social media (I was an early adopter in 2004, but I’ve been off for two years)
Checking a smart phone (I don’t have one)
Watching TV (I don’t have service)
Eric, I really like the article you wrote. It’s to the point while still being clever and enjoyable to read. I think that sort of writing represents the EA community in the best light. What has been the response within the HBS community? How is your student group going?
I think Bill has the same goal, but maybe the execution didn’t work out as well. I am not as familiar with the law culture as I am the business culture, but it seems like there was a bit more “down talking” in his article, intended or not, and that may have ruffled some feathers. I’m not sure that is an entirely bad thing, as there is some part of the EA message that is inherently challenging to many people. There is certainly a way to present it—as you did in your first article—that presents the reader with an opportunity to change the world rather than an indictment of their shortcomings.
Edit to add: I think Owen Cotton-Barratt’s paper recently posted on this forum (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/is/how_valuable_is_movement_growth/) makes a very relevant point:
Increasing awareness of the movement is important, but increasing positive inclination is at least comparably important. Therefore we should generally: o prefer advocacy to publicity;
o strive to take acts which are seen as good by societal standards as well as for the movement;
o avoid hostility or needless controversy.
I agree with his sentiments, and I think it is very important for young movements such as EA to present ideas in as positive a light as possible, which is very easy for EA to do considering that our goal is to essentially do as much good as possible.
“1) Joao Fabiano looked recently into acceptance likelihood for papers in the top 5 philosophical journals. It seems that 3-5% is a reasonable range. It is very hard to publish philosophy papers. It seems to be slightly harder to publish in the top philosophy journals than in Nature, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, or Science magazine, and this is after the filter of 6 positions available for 300 candidates that selects PHD candidates in philosophy (harder than Harvard medicine or economics).”
This is a very real problem. Many people outside of philosophy do not realize how difficult it is to become an actual tenured philosopher, and even if that happens, to become a regularly-published philosopher. Philosophy itself is already highly self-selecting (highest average GRE of any grad school-bound college students), and the acceptance rates are very, very low. Further, only about half of those students who are accepted to the top PhD programs complete them. Of those who do complete them, I’d say about half (of the top programs) end up with tenure-track positions. Those who do get such positions may or may not have difficulty gaining publication, but it isn’t a certainty that their ideas will be widespread in any real way. So, for Joe Smart sitting at home on his couch, wanting his great ideas to be read by a lot of smart people, becoming a philosopher is probably a terrible way of accomplishing his goal.
“4) For people who consider themselves intellectual potentials and intend to continue in academia, my suggestion is to create a table of contents for a book, and instead of going ahead and writing the chapters, find the closest equivalent of some chapter that could become a paper, and try to write a paper about that. If you get accepted, this develops your career, and allows you to be one of the stand-outs like Ord, MacAskill and Bostrom who will end up working in the top universities. If you continue to be systematically rejected, you can still get around by publishing books and being influential in the way say Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins became influential. Since I find this to be the optimal strategy I’m aware of at the moment, it is the one I’m taking.”
This seems like a good suggestion. I do still think that good ideas can be published in journals, and books should contain journal-worthy ideas, but the journal process can be quite slow. This may be a way to kill two birds with one stone.
As a reference, I wrote a paper in 2012 that is going to be published in the next couple of months. I do not hold a PhD, but my co-author does. Our paper was presented at a very prestigious conference (multiple household names were also presenting, including a couple of superstars). We were rejected by five journals before we were accepted, and some of those that rejected us were less prestigious than the one that eventually accepted us. It was quite a long process, and I am certain that it is not the ideal way to advance one’s EA-related message.
Of the eleven reasons given at the top, I thought the most obvious issue is raised by number three: Virtually no one reads most academic publications. This seems to be true in many cases even for an academics writing to other academics. The sheer number of papers published is staggering, and unless one is already very prominent in his or her field, it seems unlikely that a large audience will be exposed to one’s paper. There are exceptions of course, such as the reputation of the journal, but if we are to assume that we are not referring to academic superstars publishing in the absolute top journals in a given field, the audience of academics is also likely to be small.
If one’s goal is to write books, there may potentially be a problem in becoming perceived as legitimate enough to gain the attraction of a publisher if one doesn’t hold a research position and doesn’t publish in journals. I mentioned this to Diego as well. It is speculation on my part, and I’m sure there are many exceptions to this rule, but it does seem like a non-academic will be regarded by publishers differently than academics. I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of someone with direct knowledge of the publishing industry on this point.
Is anyone aware of efforts to put together a documentary on EA? Documentaries seem to have had some positive effects on movement building in other (often related) arenas such as vegetarianism, and I suspect the main demographic of EAs (young educated folks) probably watch documentaries at a higher rate than the general population. With the number of books being published in EA lately, it seems as though there might be the potential to cast the net a bit further. Thoughts?
The returns of philosophy are often not seen immediately. It was philosophers, after all, who brought us consequentialism. Without consequentialism, it is doubtful that EA exists. However, there is still a remaining question as to whether future philosophical breakthroughs will have as wide of an impact or if the insight will be far more technical in nature.
Is it possible to successfully publish philosophy books if you are not widely published in journals? My suspicion is that it would be very difficult. It depends, of course, on what type of books you aim to publish. If they are directed at the philosophical community, there will likely be widespread confusion as to why you did not first publish your ideas in a paper so that you could receive criticism and have the opportunity to really work through the arguments against your positions. It would be very odd indeed for a philosopher to write books directed at professional philosophers if he never publishes papers.
However, if you aim to write for the popular audience, that concern may not hold any weight. I would be curious to know, however, whom you see as your future employer? If you are going to be working for a research institution, there will almost certainly be a requirement that you publish your work in journals. It may be possible, however, to work for a teaching institution and have a minimal publishing requirement, thus the majority of your writing could be done in the form of books for the popular audience. You may still have difficulty gaining credibility before publishers, however.
Edit: I just realized that you never actually said your field was philosophy. So, if it is another field, take my post lightly.
I’ve wondered lately whether there could be a future for crafty philosophers to carve out a niche in EA. Many economists of late have been able to utilize their skills to do things that, on their face, do not appear to be economics as traditionally conceived. There seems to be a similar opportunity in philosophy, given the skill set that philosophers bring to the table. However, I think the greatest difficulty would be the fact that philosophy (and philosophers) have typically been interested in advancing specific discussions about particular philosophical problems. In a sense, the goal is to discover what’s true. In that light, EA simply isn’t as interesting to many philosophers. It doesn’t seem to pose great unanswered philosophical questions. The premise of EA is relatively simple, and it seems that, given many philosophers sympathies toward consequentialism, it may be met with wide acceptance. However, that doesn’t leave anything to discuss philosophically, which is an obvious problem for philosophy as traditionally conceived. However, I see no good reason why at least some philosophers should not branch out in their line of work and become interested in a sort of “everyman” ethics. This wouldn’t involve as much discussion about what is right, but would instead involve persuasion. I certainly think there’s room in the field for it, and given the fact that many departments are on a sort of “justification treadmill” in having to justify their existence to the heads of their university and the general public, it may be exactly what the field needs.
I have actually heard some moral philosophers lament about how when people get sick, they call a doctor, when their car has problems, they call a mechanic, etc. When they have a moral predicament, however, no one calls a moral philosopher. It seems to me that EA is a perfect platform to be advanced by philosophers, and that at least some philosophers might welcome the opportunity. The question that needs to be answered is whether this can be done by a philosopher who is trying to build a career, or if it must be relegated to guys like Singer who already have successful careers.
Regarding the best tradeoff argument and veganism: It is difficult for me to think of any activities one could do that, in the very small amount of time it takes to become at least a somewhat faithful vegetarian, would do more good. If a 25 year-old becomes a vegetarian (let’s start with vegetarianism), he or she will likely save around 2,500 animals over the next fifty years. That is very substantial. If we were talking about a time commitment of several hours per week for fifty years, I might be more open to the idea there are better alternatives. However, for the vast majority of people, it requires far less time than that. In reality, we might be talking about a couple hours per week initially, but that commitment quickly gets close to zero. So, while I agree that becoming at least a vegetarian isn’t necessarily the most ideal use of one’s time, the reality for most people is that acquiring such a habit (I like that characterization) is hard to beat in terms of the good we can do per hour of time.
Regarding Goldsmith and the act/omission distinction: I am also inclined to think that I would bring Goldsmith into existence, and I’m not even sure it would take an order of magnitude difference between he and Smith to persuade me. I’m entirely open to the idea that we need to distinguish between moral assessments we make about people and moral assessments we make about actions. In the case of Smith, I have a strong sentiment that he is a terrible person. I don’t feel the same about Jones, but it’s possible that may be due to the fact that Jones’ behavior isn’t as far from “normal” behavior as Smith’s. Perhaps I should be skeptical of my intuitions in this case. I certainly agree that, if we are creating the world, we have no good reason to pick Smith over Jones, but we do have good reason to pick Goldsmith over both of them.
I do have some lingering reservations, and this may be more appropriate for another thread, but I’m hesitant because Jones’ actions aren’t that different from our everyday actions. Almost all of us—even committed EAs—spend $3500 on things that aren’t essential to our survival or even our flourishing, particularly if we look at our spending habits over time. I have intuitive difficulty in picturing this frivolous spending as equivalent to a trolley problem with a child on one track and several sporting events, dinners out and maybe a bike on the other. I have even greater difficulty imagining such spending as being equally immoral as shooting a child in the head.
(I am confused as to why I got voted down. I am new to EA, however, so it is possible that I may have unknowingly stepped on some toes or violated some norms of this forum.)
I have three thoughts:
1) I think people often undervalue the benefit of a generally vegan or vegetarian diet when they raise the “best tradeoff” argument. The financial costs are of being a vegan or vegetarian are relatively small, if there are any, so there is no financial opportunity cost. It is not as though we are giving up the chance to financially support a highly effective organization by choosing beans over meat. The psychological “cost,” as other posters have pointed out, almost certainly diminishes over time. Further, and more importantly, I’m not sure we can evaluate psychological cost in the same way that we evaluate financial cost. It is not as though I am giving up the ability to make some other sacrifice because I am sacrificing meat. I’m not sure it works that way. Finally, while there is a small time commitment, it doesn’t seem substantial enough to warrant an argument that we could have done something in that time that would have a greater impact. However, particularly with regards to vegetarianism, the good accomplished can be very significant. Depending on one’s meat of choice, it isn’t outrageous to think that a vegetarian could easily save the lives of 50-75 animals every year. The good represented by that will depend on what types of animals, certainly, but it seems impossible to me that more good could be accomplished in the extra hour per week that someone spends on meal planning or reading up on the vegetarian lifestyle.
For an additional comment on something relevant to the “best tradeoff” argument, see my third comment below.
2) I don’t believe we have a moral commitment, or even that it is morally preferable, to bring more organisms into existence, even assuming a pleasant quality of life. The argument that factory farming is not ideal but is preferable to those animals not existing at all doesn’t seem to hold water for me. For one, that line of reasoning isn’t consistent with many other moral intuitions we have. For example, if a poor, homeless teenage girl approached us on the street and asked if we thought she should become pregnant soon, we would almost certainly advise her not to—after all, her situation precludes her from giving the baby a quality life. Yet, if we were to hold to the principle that “some life is better than no life, regardless of quality,” we should tell the girl to not only get pregnant, but hope for twins (ignoring considerations about how having children would affect the girl herself—let’s say she deeply wants children soon). So, while I agree that we should seek some form of maximizing utility (or happiness or flourishing, etc.) in the world while minimizing suffering, I don’t believe that entails maximizing total happiness by increasing populations.
3) While I’m generally sympathetic to utilitarianism, I still have difficulty with the act/omission distinction. It is very easy to concoct examples that are very intuitively problematic. For example, let’s imagine that Smith enjoys drowning young children, and it is his habit to wake up on Sundays, drive to a local park, and pick his victim. After he drowns his victim, however, he drives home and donates $3,500 to the Against Malaria Foundation, which is the estimated cost of saving one life (I may have the exact figure wrong). Is the weight of Smith’s donation equal to the weight of his drowning a child? My intuition is to strongly say no. If you’re inclined to say yes, let me pose the question differently: If Jones, Smith’s neighbor, chose to throw $3,500 in the trash just for the fun of it, would his actions be equally immoral as Smith’s drowning a child? I can’t imagine that anyone would say yes to that. So, while it may be tempting to treat something like eating meat in the same vein as we treat the opportunity to give to effective charities, I am not convinced that the “best tradeoff” argument can apply to cases where we are proactively behaving immorally. Your sensitivity to this critique will probably depend on your views on act/omission distinction.
Hi Scott. I’ve had one paper published in philosophy, and I’ve had several others accepted to conferences. I’m certainly not as credentialed as Will, but I might be able to give some tips. My guess is that many of these are not particularly unique to philosophy. First, it’s always good to reference other relevant philosophical work. We all know what hedonistic utilitarianism is, but if you’re going to write a paper about the implications of effective altruism for a hedonistic utilitarian, you should still clearly define the concept and cite major works on the topic. Second, clear writing is always preferred over convoluted writing. Sometimes people think philosophers want to sound smart and intentionally use complicated language, but the reverse is true. Sure, philosophy sometimes does legitimately require an understanding of technical terms, but good philosophical writing aims to be as clear as possible. Third, a good format to follow is abstract, introduction, argument, conclusion. Abstracts are extremely useful because they allow people to get the gist of your argument very quickly. Fourth, it is often better to make a genuine contribution to a narrow problem than to not really contribute anything to a broad topic. Finally, a good practice is probably to just read some published philosophy work. That is the best way to get an idea of the writing quality and organizational nature of publishable papers. I believe Will has some of his papers posted on his site. I’ve read some of his work, and I think it’s a good example of clear writing. That’s probably a good place to start.
Most CFPs request papers that have been prepared for blind review as well, so be sure to do that.