Effective Altruism

Lainons, I want to wage slave Effective Altruism a little bit: In short jargony terms, it's a group of organizations focused on utilitarian applied ethics. In long, it's a bunch of different groups of people focused on creating the most good possible consequences from their short lives, and finite supplies of money, here on Earth. If you saw a child drowning in a lake, would you be justified in not saving it because you didn't want to get your $3000 suit wet? If not, then are you justified in spending your money frivolously when it's enough to be life and death for human beings who are about to die of vitamin-A deficiency? If you saw a child drowning in a lake, would you be justified in not saving it because you didn't want to waste your time? If not, then are you justified in spending your 70 years of lifetime unwisely when it's life and death for others in worse situations? Here's a video about it. It's one of the few good TEDx lectures: https://youtu.be/LtWINl3C_7s Here's https://www.givewell.org/ , a website which evaluates a huge multitude of different charities, and finds out which top charities save the most lives per dollar, long term. Here's some good job boards and career recommendations if you're searching for what to do with your life and want to make a difference in a field like AI safety research: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/

Lady, I make way below a living wage, my apartment is a soykafhole, i barely get enough sleep, and I've got a drinking problem. So excuse me if I feel a little more urgency in helping myself out than helping some people with vitamin A deficiency across the globe who I can only intact with in an abstract sense (which BTW is NOT the same as saving a drowning child in a lake, utilitarianism is bunk and virtue ethics is the only modern philosophy that makes sense)

hey an ea thread. I know some ea types. maybe I even know you. Big question about EA is: effective at what ? EA people and rationalists in general are often pretty interestested in quantifying some sort of 'utility' or 'negative utility' and then taking steps that are judged to be capable of effecting the greatest improvement. But what is utility ? How do you measure it ? How might you normalize it between groups ? and of course, if you're trying to sell this idea to anyone else, what is it they're actually trying to do with altruism ? There's a lot to think about and figure out there, and I'm personally not convinced EA has done it right (well, to my own satisfaction and tastes, anyway), and with attitudes like negative utilitarianism, its very very easy to slip into ideologies like extinctionism. I'd also point out that at least some of it might work from the perspective that brining technologically backward peoples into the '21st century' as it were is a Good Thing, and this makes people happy, reduces suffering, and increases utility, whatever all these mean. But honestly, when talking to many people with long experiences of living in '21st century' states, this seems to come with a lot of suffering, anxiety, and misery. Not to mention a bazillion useless jobs that don't seem to actually produce something. So what do you actually want to do ?

>>58249 I'm no anti-philosophy person or anything, i respect the field but i feel like stuff like this is just applying too much philosophy wehre just "hey you should be a nicer person" ought to be more than enough justification anyone convinced into doing things they dont already is a weird breed of centrist with "everything i do must be predicated in logic" type brainworms that is proabably the exact audience of ted talks, but not someone i would want to interact with maybe im being mean idk

>>58252 sorry for the word salad in the second sente,ce im drunk posting i meant "anyone convinced by this"

>>58249 >when your maslow's pyramid filled out basic needs but you cant get laid so you cope by trying to help others to get some appreciation

>>58251 >be me >try to be altruistic >Get scammed by someone demonstrating scamming by feigning poverty as a case study >Try to help out an acquaintance in need by letting them borrow my car while I was out of town >They totaled my car by accident >Try helping out another acquaintance facing homelessness because lost job/car broke/pawned off belongings to try to pay rent >end up loosing $1000 because they an-heroed when they couldn't figure out how to pay their rapidly mounting debt, and they didn't want their child to know how poor they were >Had a homeless person get mad at me that I didn't buy him restaurant food when I offered him my sandwich that I made for lunch. >Used to donate to an aid group >Realized the people the group was aiding was 80% people taking advantage of altruism to get free gibs and 20% of people who actually needed it. >Someone who bragged about being on wellfare and explained how they go to the 3 food banks in town each week tried to have me watch their kids for a day (for free) so they could get a tattoo for $300 I can't find justification to help people anymore. People call me cold when I literally stand there with a poker face and watch people suffer, but altruism doesn't work. A priest saved hitler from drowning. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Most people look at others as a way to get ahead using trickery and abusing peoples kindness. People aren't inherently good or evil, they are just self centered, and they hurt others intentionally or unintentionally. When I wear a nice suit, and people get mad at me, I don't care. I worked hard to afford the things that I can enjoy. I don't go overboard with luxury, but I am not here on this earth to be someones slave. Elon musk can buy twitter and brag about his ability to end world hunger in a single day showing his benevolent side, but the real kind people are the ones who offer whatever they have to help people in need. Those people end up taking the hits when people decide to take advantage of others.

>If you don't donate you're MONEY you're essentially letting a child drown you monster!

>>58266 >Realized the people the group was aiding was 80% people taking advantage of altruism to get free gibs and 20% of people who actually needed it. For me, helping the 20% of people who do need it makes it worth being taken advantage of. But I think the point of "effective altruism" (and I could be very wrong because this thread introduced me to it) is to donate to causes that maximize the amount of actual help being given. One of the charities mentioned in OP's video was one for providing deporting treatment for kids which isn't something that can easily be taken advantage of. >Most people look at others as a way to get ahead using trickery and abusing peoples kindness. I think most people are just trying to get by. You got a few cut throat dicks in the world but they're not the majority. >end up loosing $1000 because they an-heroed when they couldn't figure out how to pay their rapidly mounting debt, and they didn't want their child to know how poor they were Sorry about your friend lain.

>>58266 >trust people too much >get burned >now sets up too high of a standard to trust people Literally an introduction to Human behavioral biology and "tit for tat with trust" tactics I suggest you look into this video series and learn how to effectively interact with the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

>>58275 >deporting deworming* oops lol

>>58249 >and finds out which top charities save the most lives per dollar, long term. Any charity that does not help to master fusion reactors, AI or eugenic is at the ground level of long term effectiveness. Some are at dust level and some are at hair level, but none of that is important. Also, do not feed Africa.

>>58266 >A priest saved hitler from drowning. What if we asked, not the wealthy to give to the unwealthy, but for everyone to realize than someone is more in need than them? What if we told everyone to help each-other? I have seen enough beggars to never give money again. There was the people mutilated by mafias from ex-Yugo countries. The mafias used their families as hostage to keep the mutilated obedient. They looked like desarticulated dolls. Here is a classic: Gypsies making their kids miss school so they can beg with them. The guys who ask for food money while smoking is another classic. The will to donate is an offer that create demand. Simple as. And what about real poverty? I don't know, 2/3rd of my income goes to non-reciprocal, non-optional solidarity and I go to jail if I am caught not paying it. I don't think what is left can help more.

>>58275 >I could be wrong on this I don't think you are. EA hopes to avoid the wasteful and dumb sorts of altruism and some of the corruption too. How effective they are at all that is another question but most of the people I've met in it seem sincere, if relatively low level. Then again there's a lot of sincere people in every charity. Its very in line with EA attitudes to be willing to just dismiss beggers as being not worth the effort to help, or write them off as just all generally well off and too expensive to elevate further. A fair number of them would also be willing to entertain the possibility that helping humans directly is ineffective and we really should be focusing on insects, or probably take 58284's thought and figure the ideal is just setting up a future in which suffering is minimized and screw everyone alive today if need be. I've certainly met people like this, who are mostly concerned about the hypothetical suffering of hypothetical AI's and hypothetical future animals that will be tortured and killed when humankind expands across the galaxy type of thing. Oh, you have a billion people in poverty ? how cute, the future holds trillions of trillions of suffering AI, cattle, and insects, much more important. Personally I don't care really about insects, I'm not sure I care too much about africans, or asians, at least as far as reducing their suffering goes, and not too concerned about AI's either. I'm not certain but I sometimes think this is the normal way to be. Obviously future suffering should have some weight, and future lives, but one cant loose all sight of the present in service of the far, hypothetical, future vision. Also its worth pointing out that EA is basically materialistic. If they were Christians, these people would be trying to convert the heathens, drop their mosquitto nets for Bibles, and dewormings for baptisms. Charity is still virtuous, but these peoples eyes are set very firmly on material problems and not at all on Souls. Many of these people wish to become immortal, and consider it a real possibility for themselves personally.

>>58266 >I'm a gullible sap and I fall for scams, so helping people less fortunate than me is bunk see this is exactly the thing that effective altrusts would like to stop.

The entire concept of 'no strings attached' altruism falls apart when you realize that almost no one you help would've helped you 'out of the goodness of their hearts' if the tables were turned. Humans are wired to be naturally selfish outside of narrow in-groups and it should be obvious why to anyone who's ever looked at Africa. It's why idealistic crap like communism always falls apart in practice despite having a neverending supply of gullible morons believing in it

>>58249 >If you saw a child drowning in a lake, would you be justified in not saving it because you didn't want to waste your time? 1. I don't know, but it seems to me that while saving drowning child should certainly be applauded, i am not sure you can DEMAND justification for inaction. After all, if you don't do anything, you don't do anything wrong. Right? 2. When i apply "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." razor on you suggestion, i get unsatisfying results. If everyone picked as their highest calling to help less fortunate, we soon wouldn't have any such people (which would be great), but i can't help but feel like it somehow enslaves people into service of each other. That said i am all for helping people in soykafty situations, if only because i would like to be helped when i get into one. And if you want to help less fortunate people, it makes sense to do so as effectively as possible.

>>58313 >The entire concept of 'no strings attached' altruism falls apart when you realize that almost no one you help would've helped you 'out of the goodness of their hearts' if the tables were turned. I mean, isn't that exactly what 'no strings attached' means? Also, I personally aim more at 'inspiring others to help' than hoping to get something from that particular sod.

>>58305 it sounds less like altruism and more like utilitarianism the way you describe it. that would seem like EA is just a buzzword because utilitarianism us frowned upon for a number of social reasons, so bu rebranding it, it becomes somehow more noble.

>>58315 Another point would be that a low chance of saving the child with a high risk of death would not be selfish, it would be the rational decision for self preservation. On the other hand, the value of adults and children differs cross culturally, which is why ethics cannot be cross-culturally defined.

>>58318 I think the point of the saving a child example is partially that its relatively easy to imagine a situation where a child might be in mortal danger but a bigger, stronger, smarter and more experienced adult could just wade into the water and scoop him out. Most situations that put a fellow adult into mortal danger would also risk a rescuer more than a couple minutes and some soaked and muddied clothes. >>58317 that seems a reasonable assesment.

>Video posted: 2015 >Current year: 2022 >Shit's still fuarrrked Why am i not surprised?

>utilitarianism Stopped reading there. >utility essentially means individual preference satisfaction (Kymlicka 2002) Good luck maximizing that when in need of Filipino waiters on your cruiseship. If, as you say >all on earth then: > of 7 billion people approx 10% lives below 2$ a day (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day) try and imagine your life then, o wait you cant, and neither can I. O dear, the suffering, the injustice! The harm! Blood is on your hands! >Harm has collapsed under the weight of its own success (Harcourt 1999) Bbut what does this all mean? 1. Bye harm-argument to argue injustice (gtfo sjw identity politics) 2. Bye Mill 3. Bye utilitarianism Whats left for the liberal? Rawls. Not saying he's any better, I'm just saying: Revise your ideology Read at least my references: Harcourt, Collapse of the Harm Principle, 1999 Kymlicka Utilitarianism 2002 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 1971 And maybe On Liberty while you're at it, or Singer. And watch you go from applied to not so applied anymore

>>58676 >preference satisfaction Preference utilitarianism is a heresy. Real utilitarianism is about maximizing the intrinsic enjoyability of direct experience (or, minimizing its un-enjoyability).

>If you saw a child drowning in a lake, This type of arguments seem to be based on guilt-tripping people who don't have their ethics well thought through. Such guilt-trip may make people vulnerable to manipulation looking for expiation of their sin of not being charitable enough and feeling like murderers of hypothetical drowning children. And such manipulation being used to funnel people into utilitarianism adds injury to insult. Utilitarianism is an ethics-standoff for psycho technocrat-types and (mainly) Jordan-Peterson-fan / dwellers-of-intellectual-subreddits types who want into ethics without actually reading the books and comparing the concepts. And charities, man. "Not giving money to us is basically like not saving a drowning child". GFYS.

>>58249 1) If a child is drowning in a lake, there is a high possibility of me, an adult man drowning with it too. Children generally know how to stay afloat in water they entered voluntarily, if they don't - then good riddance. If we rule out child's evolutionary unfitness to stay afloat in a puddle by age of one, then it might be the following: water is cold for any person to be in it, there is a heavy storm and undercurrents, all three combined. Without proper training and water experience I am not qualified to save anyone. Additionally, I would assess genetic and social proximity between me and child. If it's my blood relative, I would bother, if it a child of someone inside my Dunbar's limit, I would bother, if it's any other child and there are witnesses of me not interacting with - then who cares, I did not participate in drowning it, I walk away. Selfish gene is selfish. My usual suit is nowhere near $3000 and if it were, there would be two reasons: I can afford another one easily, I am renting it for occasion as a virtue of conspicuous consumption. I'm neither of the above. In any case, it's recommended to enter water naked for unobstructed movements and less dead weight, not including obvious damage to fabrics that would occur in industrially-polluted city and suburban waters. 2) Is a person who's not able to figure out that eating offal, butter and carrots provides enough vitamin A justified to spend precious oxygen and my money frivolously? I don't think so. 3) Yes 4) Artificially escaping other's life/death situations in favor of life increases proportion of individuals and their progeny unable to deal with such situations without external (often centrally-distributed) help.

I think it's interesting the way it has developed. At the beginning it was stuff like which is better bang for your buck: giving people chickens, giving them mosquito nets, deworming or what. All quite measurable and something that had immediate impact on ones suffering the most. Now philosophy called longtermism is what is in vogue. If world were to end, stopping it from happening would be the ultimate act of altruism. From longtermist view, giving bantus mosquito nets might not be that effective way to spend your resources. Instead of helping those worst of you give resources to those with highest potential, giving money to high iq kids early in their careers so they can solve ai-alignment, superpandemic threat, climate change, nuclear threat, make humans multiplanetary and so on.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that all human life has worth. It does not.

>>61776 I don't think that applies to effective altruism. They want to maximize the positive impact of their charity which means making judgment calls about which people are more valuable to help. From what I've seen, it's common for effective altruism to be a justification for not helping people of low value.

>>61777 >which people are more valuable >people of low value Whose lives are significantly less valuable?

>>58249 I'm not even going to touch this soykaf, it all looks like a bunch of scams to me and you seem to be trying to run a guilt-trip. Looks like a totally inorganic paid-for post, too. >Press [S] to spit.

>>61780 Imagine not EAing for that reason and not any other

>>58249 >and finds out which top charities save the most lives per dollar, long term. All of them are donations to fusion reactors research. All of them, without exception. Ho,, you got a cheap and effective cure against paludism. Great. More people will die of starvation in 50 years now. Congratulation, you literally killed people. >>61779 Not him but a crack addict who never had a job and don't know how to produce anything is worth less to humanity than a hardworking family oriented person. We are running on limited resources. We have to make a choice between progress or the well being of criminals. Yes, it is unfair to let a kid abandoned by his parents die in the street, but it mean one less person in jail, working people being safer and possibly a rape or two avoided. When you start your live like that you have few opportunities to get back to normal. We have to make a choice. No, it is not just, no it shouldn't be this way. But it is and whatever we do, the choice will be done.

>>59552 >Children generally know how to stay afloat in water they entered voluntarily They are not knew for their wisdom and that's why it's the responsibility of an adult to supervise them. The rule of evolution apply not just to individuals but also to social structures. Societies that let half of their kids die in accident will suffer a major disadvantage against a sane society and eventually, the sane society will take over the insane one and will make them adopt their culture of responsibility. >it's recommended to enter water naked No it's not, the water will suck the heat of your body and you will die.

>>58249 My gripe with EA stuff is they all seem to be neoliberals cheerleading global capitalism, free trade, and large companies. I believe that when you spend money, that money is going to go on to boost the economy and ultimately do more harm than whatever good thing you may have initially paid for. This is because money represents ownership of the time and lives of other human beings, and that is inherently an evil thing that produces more evil, you can't make it good. It is only ever possibly justified at all as a lesser evil to systems of human governance based directly on murder and torture. EA types will never even honestly consider this possibility because they are narrowly intelligent yet gullible people who have been suckered into putting all their time and energy into high paying careers. They want to believe they can make a difference in the world without questioning their life choices or giving up status, and since that means their time is spoken for, all they have left to execute their will is money, which because of how hard they worked for it, how much they have, and how deserving they think they are, must count for a lot right? It must be a very effective tool? It isn't. They are fooling themselves.

>>61774 from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism

>>61790 Lmao, I remember few years back laughing at marginalist (yes, this is marginalism, just rebranded) because of how silly their ideas are when it comes to things like this. Just think of how absurd you can get with this. If you have a murdered who loves murder so much it has the kick of cocaine mixed with thousands orgasm, he should be allowed to kill people so long they aren't as mad about dying as he is pleased about killing. It's such a dumb idea. Actually marginalist had one way to fight against it. Saying that "hapiness points" of people can't be compared. So you kinda escape this. I like how EA people just are like "yeah, let just people of less worth die". I'm pretty sure also what defines as "less worth" is "people who aren't me", cause I know they would throw this ethics system out of the window if they got the short end of the stick. Also, lainchan spam system is fuarrrking terrible.

>>58249 Bunch of soykafty false dichotomies. I think i prefer a world of bots to be honest. your crappy suppositions suck and aren't worth the effort other than to soykaf on them

>>61786 EA reek of Bill. Bill give so much money to the WHO that it became Bill's bitch sponsored by various states. He want his money to be spent well and to save the maximum of lives. That's the least evil thing he have ever done. I just can't imagine threads like this isn't intimately linked to Bill's spendings. If only Bill knew he was just going to get more people killed in the future.

>>61782 Imagine thinking people have to fall for your false dichotomies. I hope you learn to eat your own dogfood.