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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

No... I, for one, would really like to know what the actual (measurable, practical) effect of effective altruism is. I definitely hope that it's not just like, we do nothing but more effectively.

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...).

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Malaria is one of the biggest issues preventing Africa as a continent from going forward. Where it’s worst, malaria contributes significantly to childhood brain damage, causing untold amounts of lost economic growth as generations after generation are stunted for life with the disease. 12 billion usd annually is spent on directly treating malaria patients, with many times that being lost due to long term damage. [0]

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

https://blog.givewell.org/2018/06/29/givewells-money-moved-a...

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.

Ultimately this can all be boiled down to the idea if working smarter not harder. Unfortunately mankinds definition of smart varies as as wildly as their actual intelligence

> working smarter not harder

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.

The point I was trying to make is that the order of operations matters. But we can only judge the outcomes of our efforts based on their effects not their original intent

What if feeding hungry people today is what it takes for them to feed themselves tomorrow? Africa currently has millions of entrepreneurs, and half the rare earth minerals in your computer's chips and a plurality of the beans for the daily cup of Starbucks you need to do your vastly more lucrative job with it come from there. Not only is the people of Africa not dying (or dying less fast) something that can pay dividends in the future, you directly benefit from it. (Most of the aid we send to Africa is not even remotely altruism, effective or not, although most of it is also not very effective.)

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.

EA is, if you read between the lines, a program to maximize deaths from starvation over other causes. Also a form of money laundering, the number of tiers of EA organizations allocating money is always growing. The money goes to employees of charities increasingly.

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