If I saw EA people spending time and doing work that ran counter to their own interests, I'd be less likely to believe it ia just another post-hoc justification for "I'm rich so I do what I want"
Relevant Rutger Bregman excerpt from WEF 2019: https://youtu.be/r5LtFnmPruU?&t=49 , who now seemingly advocates for 'Moral Ambition' as the alternative but I'm not quite sure what that means yet.
Yeah, and how much altruism is also just taxes? What is the difference between giving 10% to the government or 10% to your church for them to run a soup kitchen? Besides the fact that if the minister in charge is caught pinching he can't say it's a blessing from God if he's with the government.
It would be an interesting question if the overall amount of money to be distributed would increase? Because people are more interested to give up wealth, if they can dedicate it to a purpose they care about, rather than making a voluntary extra tax payment.
The problem is, that rich ppl are not interested in helping. They buy 10yachts, or go into orbit, or dive to the Titanic, but they dgaf about the poor.
Mackenzie Scott, Chuck feeny, warren buffet (already signed to give wealth away and donated a huge part) or even Gates (majority went into foundation) are outliers I guess? Point being, yes you’re right some people don’t care, some do. Generalization typically isn’t useful.
I’d agree if there would be a gov department dedicated to taking calculated risks and doing R&D on innovations with a potential social or ecological benefit. Philanthropy is not only EA, and also can take risks, which public offices aren’t good at.
NASA def pioneered important technologies, however, they were losing a bit relevance and SpaceX showed the economic inefficiencies (diff topic). Drug research currently needs to be profitable and therefore some topics are underresearched.
Short, long story short, I’m not making a binary argument like a is good and b is bad because things exist mostly on a scale. Not saying there’s no innovation or risk taking but I feel gov agencies currently aren’t the best vehicle.
Drug research is profitable because NIH pays for most of the non-profitable parts. As in so much of our society, we socialize losses, but privatize profits.
Gonna be real I have a hard time believing that you don’t care about what people choose to do to one another that’s a very basic part of being around other people. So for your sake and the sake of the people you know I hope this is not true.
It’s weird how many philosophies greedy dudes come up with land on “me having all the money and getting lots of sex is for the greater good of society”
the idea that we should leave the piloting of society to adderall addicted dorks who happened to get rich on crypto through sheer luck and exploitation
Tax them, get money out of politics, make lobbying illegal, make amicus briefs illegal, and make politicians across the board divest from public holdings. Civil servants, in public offices, shouldn't have the right to profit from their civil service beyond their salary.
Effective altruism basically allows the rich to become Gods where us poors have to beg them for basic needs like healthcare.
Its the crux of the whole Mr Beast curing blindness fiasco that rightoids worked to deliberately obfuscate.
no, see, you gotta start the bargaining with "systematically putting all the rich to death" so that they then compromise down into "taxes"...or you just start shooting, either or
Why is it so hard for the people in charge to imagine the people with the most money paying the most into our society 🙄🤦🏽♂️ Oh right: they're the ones in charge.
Peter Singer has so much to answer for. A sure-fire way the total amount of happiness in the world would increase is for that dude to choke on a carrot.
It really stinks that “effective altruism” has now come to mean “weird billionaire whims.” When done right, it’s about donating to causes like anti-malaria bed nets, cheap yet highly effective medicines, and animal welfare, all of which do incredible amounts of good in the world.
I do think there should be more accountability in philanthropy, not sure if it should be through a majority voting process. I’d rather like to see more focus on measuring impact and learning.
I'd like to push back on this a little bit. 2/3rds of Americans own their residence. As a result their political-economic interests are aligned in increasing property values, which increases housing costs for renters and new entrants.
The 2/3 figure is based on household-level data, ie adults forced to move back in with their parents are counted as homeowners. Percent of individual Americans whose name is on a deed is 45%.
Not totally clear to me where the policy interests of that variable 21% lie.
Well they're not paying fair market rent, so they're insulated from housing costs rising, and they're similarly at risk of losing their home if their parents' mortgage gets called, so they're incentivized to keep them from falling. Homeowner-lite in that case.
As someone who is only just now able to move out and even now only due to my partner being able to help with rent I assure you adults living with their family largely are not wanting to stay in that situation and absolutely would prefer lower rent averages.
I don't know if treating 67% of the population as "the enemy" is going to get you far; there are a lot of good reasons homeowners, especially with lower incomes, aren't exactly happy with rising prices either.
Homeowners with lower incomes are likely to be the worst incentivized actually. They will have the lowest equity margins, have the mortgages most vulnerable to call, and be unable to afford a catastrophe.
And I'm not saying it's a convenient fact but it is a fact nonetheless.
If you have a mortgage, it is by definition an investment. If your home value were to sink precipitously, it could trigger the bank to foreclose, causing you to lose your home.
Just because you're not maximizing profit doesn't mean you don't have an interest in its value.
I like how the implication is it's just an itty bitty flaw, and not "Psychopathic billionaires spend money on whatever crackpot idea they think is best for society and we're all supposed to pretend they're right."
In theory, but the rich people get to decide what evidence is or is not convincing to them, rather than having elected officials, experts, or regulators making the call.
There's also terrible conclusions drawn from EA. "Should disabled people be allowed to live" is an ongoing debate, for example.
Eh, that’s a bit of a stretch. The evaluation, study or survey has to be conducted with scientific standards and rigor. One can throw more money at a topic to produce more research, which create an advantage, but unless we’re talking about corruption, the data will speak for itself.
It was supposed to be, but then it became billionaires realizing that they can literally seize control of governments and corporations and try to shape the future into whatever bigoted, eugenicist, totalitarian crackpot fantasy they could imagine, because that's "better" for humanity
OK, that’s a strong statement. As I said, haven’t followed EA very closely, but it seems like after FTX crashed and Bankman-Fried’s reputation with it, they have lost quite a lot of visibility and political capital.
The unspoken premise there is "evidence the particular billionaire finds convincing." Weird they almost never conclude the evidence supports welfare, public schools, public utilities, etc. even though it overwhelmingly does.
For example, on deworming or bed nets , the evidence is pretty clear and reliable. However, I would say having such a strong scientific foundation is rather the exception.
Mhh, might self selecting selecting bias, but I do work in philanthropy and a lot of private philanthropist support education and basic livelihood. Of course very much depends on the region. And we’re talking about philanthropy in general not EA.
The EA types love to co-opt the mosquito nets/copepod-free water examples, but personally I see a distinct difference between that kind of efficient philanthropy and the convoluted, obtuse bullshit being peddled by Sam Bankman-Fried, for ex.
To be honest, I am not really in the depths on EA. My impression was they they make safe bets on evidence based solutions like bed nets, and more recently there is this more vague “hedging future risks like AI” movement - not very scientific
Well first, 1) The entire idea is that they should all become stock brokers and do incredibly evil shit all day so they can donate with their big salaries. But no one has even tried to quantify the evil done by being a stock broker or whatever other evil thing they do to get the most money.
Sorry, no, you lost me. I thought EA and the movement fletching to give a certain amount of their income away exactly the same thing? There is an overlap I didn’t know this is a principle?
2) The same guy invented both "we should work as stock brockers to make money" and also "we should do things to benefit untold future generations, often instead of living people."
3) Their actual "evidence based" evaluation are also very bad! It turns out, it's really hard to actually find out
Comments
Anything. Literally anything else.
Its the crux of the whole Mr Beast curing blindness fiasco that rightoids worked to deliberately obfuscate.
See it's possible, you kind of have to treat them like toddlers, praise them so they will get in the habit of doing the right thing
EA (capitalized (amusingly)) is the weird billionaire shit which doesn't appear to be effectively altruistic in the colloquial sense.
Silicon Valley gonna Silicon Valley.
Not totally clear to me where the policy interests of that variable 21% lie.
And I'm not saying it's a convenient fact but it is a fact nonetheless.
Just because you're not maximizing profit doesn't mean you don't have an interest in its value.
There's also terrible conclusions drawn from EA. "Should disabled people be allowed to live" is an ongoing debate, for example.
There’s a article on the episode https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/19/23268786/deworming-givewell-effective-altruism-michael-hobbes
The latest meta study I found:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308733121
3) Their actual "evidence based" evaluation are also very bad! It turns out, it's really hard to actually find out
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html
checkmate, libs
~ Rutger Bregman
Chief Judge Fargo: