I feel weirdly (perhaps irrationally) about the effective altruism people including 80,000 hours. I just can't shake the cult-y vibes they give off. Am I alone in this?
The basic drive to empirically evaluate one's actions is also sound, had been simmering in the "traditional" community for quite a while, and would have become more relevant in some way or another (eventually). If you look the output of GiveWell, to cite just one example, their deep dives on policies and charities make for fascinating reading.
Yet, of course, any such trend is bound to find people overdoing it, or cargo-culting it, or whatever. Just look at the split within the community to see this perfectly illustrated: there's one group that wants to focus exclusively on AI risks, because they assess it as having the potential to wipe out humanity (rendering the probability meaningless in their calculations).
And there is another group that wants to focus on animal suffering in the wild. Tadpoles, this group says, die in the billions each year, and the difference of their nervous system from humans' is just a question of degree.
I don't want to redirect all of human effort to reducing animal suffering, but I would sleep a lot better if I were sure these people are wrong.
The only thing I can put my finger on is this: those organisations - and this article - present themselves as being above-average rational and insightful. At least that's my impression. Yet many of these suggestions seem to be speculation based on very small data, for example the point about them not having competitors. Many others could simply be rephrased as "take a holistic view", for example considering whether recruiting people to your company is good for the cause as a whole.
Don't get me wrong, there is some insight here, it's well-written, and some of these heuristics might turn out to be helpful to some people. I just think that the website it's published on is inflating its perceived significance.
Now, ask yourself, if you don't disagree, why did you write this?
I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
> why did you write this?
I was exploring a shared, unexplained feeling of discomfort. This is an intellectually and emotionally fulfilling thing to do.
> I know from actual experience that a large number of people, when their actions do harm, fall back on "I was just trying to help." I wish more people read, and following, this kind of advice.
In my experience those people are not the same types that would read this article, nor do they seem to be the target audience. The target audience appears to be leaders and employers in "fragile fields".
> I have the same feeling. It concerns me because I'm not sure how to differentiate between my subconscious conservatism and my instinctive backlash against cultishness and/or over-complication.
I agree somewhat with your sentiment with regards to where they are now, with a lot of their focus on far-future risk avoidance. That stuff can't really fit, because it can't be reasoned about very precisely/scientifically. It's gone from a movement with emphasis on measurement and scientific methods to having a lot of emphasis on things that can't be measured. I think part of the problem is literally it started with some of the brightest guys around and as it gets disseminated to general pop, they lose and distort the message.
For example I don't dislike Nick Bostrom but I feel like he's being quoted so uncritically in this article - not totally unlike how a few years ago some HN commenters could quote Paul Graham essays as holy scripture.
Look, don’t get me wrong. Publicising good causes and helping people direct their charity can do no harm. I won’t criticise that. But instructing your readers to do economics PhDs, or join an investment bank, or take an internship at a thinktank, is assuming they enjoy some enormous opportunities.
Most people cannot do those things, not even if they went to Oxford. They cannot do an MBA or live on the subsistence wages of the modern academic. Like most human beings in the history of civilisation they can only choose how to be instruments of power and capital, which often means doing things only indirectly related to the public good.
Tangentially, I think you're underestimating what a typical Oxford grad can do. Most of them absolutely can do one of those things, especially if they decide to before they graduate.
Possibly I could do it now, but even if I obtained that golden policy job - how would I survive in London? Housing here is more expensive than even San Francisco.
My degree has opened many opportunities - sure. But I can't pay my rent with it.
I likewise question the efficacy of efforts like eradicating malaria. I can't help but feel all that money would be better spent on technology (not startups, but like fusion and other energy research, nanotech, space industry etc), even if for-profit. Like, no mater how many Africans you can save from malaria, they will keep dying or living shitty lives because of poverty, famine, wars... Only technology can actually change the world (and politics, but we can't really seem to be able to do much about that...).
Not even. I think it's more about, what to work towards - i.e. the goal. I mean, feeding hungry people is definitely a worthwhile goal, but... you have to do it again, tomorrow. It's not a scalable solution.
I think the goals of NGOs working in that space are generally in the right place. It's true that they seldom do anything scalable in the sense of transformational research or marked improvement in processes, but the structure (of funding) somewhat prevents them to. I think the most scalable thing we can do for poor countries right now is make information, education and food and essential medication as available and as cheap as possible for as much of their population as possible, and let these children's children save themselves.
Because of this, I’m very skeptical of the idea that dealing with malaria isn’t one of the most effective use of resources in improving countless lives right now.
[0]https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html
I feel like that pretty comprehensively answers your question. Givewell is a[n ea affiliated] charity which empirically evaluates the effectiveness of other charities, and aims to convince charitable givers to give to those they deem most effective. They've had a lot of success in this goal. Their top charities are listed and in depth reasoning for their evaluations are available.
I certainly hope that I'm mistaken, but that sounds awfully a lot like a pro - eugenics bit of propaganda.
Personally, I would suggest that people with a clear intent toward 'love thy neighbor' rather than 'We're the best set of people to fix your problem for you' is best for humanity.
If you thought they were referring to something else, I wonder where you got that idea.