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That is the point though... would you rather “feel good” doing charity, or have a positive effect on society? Donating cash instead of physically participating in charity can be alienating, sure... but certainly more effective. Note that many food charities for decades now but even in the past year are like don’t send cans of food, send cash, because it has the most effect.

> Donating cash instead of physically participating in charity can be alienating, sure... but certainly more effective.

Do you have proof? Because whether it “feels good” (or rather, feels like you are actually doing something, rather than trying to motivate yourself by convincing yourself that the numbers are correct and you are (indirectly) doing something) will influence how much good you can do.

Some things—like only eating Soylent or maximizing your goodiness-output by working on Wall Street (or wherever else)—might only work well on paper.

In any case my point all along was the alienation factor. That’s the point, to me. Raise whatever other point you would like. (Of course an EA-enthusiast would only care about the supposed numbers.)

> Donating cash instead of physically participating in charity can be alienating, sure... but certainly more effective.

It can be more effective sure, especially if the physical participation is flying long haul to offer considerably less skilled construction labour than locally-based hungry people. But a division of labour between smart, driven people working outside the third sector to fund it and only people incapable of securing well paid jobs left inside the sector to spend it is also unlikely to lead to better resource allocation. There are certainly initiatives that could use a good software lead more than they could use a generous portion of a software lead's FAANG salary to hire some mediocre contractors, for example.

What I read in this is essentially an observation that "A scenario: you want to help people" does not necessarily (and possibly not even in most cases) imply "you want to maximize your good-output".

In many (perhaps most?) cases the feeling and motivation people have is the intuitive desire to feel good about helping others in their society personally, which is in many ways different from "true altruism". And it makes some sense (from e.g. evolutionary psychology perspective) to consider that our innate desire to "do good" is closely related to building social ties and status, and by helping people close to us in various ways (kinship, common "tribe-in-the-wide-sense-of-that-word", previous relationship history, expected future interactions) as opposed to simply helping abstract people as much as you can. True altruism is the exception (IMHO) rather than the norm, it certainly exists in some cases, but most helping others and charity and doing good is driven by "ordinary goodwill" that includes a mix of other motivations.

And, of course, if someone's goal is not really altruism, then doing more effective altruism won't help them achieve their goals. If we ("abstract we") want to optimize effective altruism, then instead we should help optimize people's efforts witin the area where true altruism overlaps with their actual goals to "do good" (whatever they mean by "do good" since that likely isn't exactly the same thing as true altruism); since once we get to the proposals which are more altruistic but contrary to their true personal goals/values, people are just going to reject the whole thing (as most do).

I keep getting impressed by the EA-proponents ability and eagerness to frame EA as “true altruism” (an actual quote in this case!), as if EA is some purely-rational approach with no philosophical baggage or assumptions. How utterly self-congratulatory.

Another problem I have with EA is how incredibly fragile it is: because it is so reductive and narrowly-focused, you are likely to optimize for the wrong thing (the map is never the territory) and might even do more harm than good. In the best case scenario you might do a lot of good, though.

Ah, I'm not really an EA-proponent, so please don't use my arguments as bad examples of their position, that wouldn't be fair. My use of "true altruism" isn't a proper term, I just needed to somehow contrast two different aspects of "altruism-as-understood-in-common-language", to differentiate the theoretical concept of fully unselfish concern for the welfare of others with the (IMHO more popular/realistic) concept that's somewhat like "general habit/desire/concer/action of doing good for others with limited (but still some) selfishness, because of a mix of motivation only part of which is actual altruism".

I mean, IMHO framing "effective altruism" as "true altruism" isn't that inaccurate as far as philosophy and definitions are concerned - my main criticism of EA is that actual altruism (according to a strict definition of altruism) is quite rare, so for most people effective altruism isn't personally relevant because most people (including me) simply aren't truly altruistic; it provides a guide on how to maximize something that most people (myself included) don't really want to maximize, they want to maximize other things which may have some overlap with altruism but diverge from it as you leave commonly accepted charity practices and approach various maximums.

I do concede that it's definitely good according to most value systems (including purely selfish ones) to have everyone else in your society to be a bit more altruistic, everything just works better that way, so facilitating various nudges towards altruism is generally a Good Thing no matter how altruistic you or I personally are.

Thank you for a concrete example. I think you will agree though, that the outcome you describe isn't inevitable or most-likely.

Over time you will likely figure out a good life-work-philanthropy balance. Much of the conversation within EA is about self-care and long-term planning. If giving 70% of your income to charity works for you, that's magnificent. But if you realize you need to give less and take more care of yourself so you don't burn out, that's the appropriate decision.

I gave 50% one year but it didn't work out long term. I've been giving 10% for almost a decade and intend to ramp up to 20% in the future. My wife does 10% too - it works out well for us.

Burn out wasn’t the point. I explicitly disregarded that by putting in the premise that the hypothetical person is not and will not get burned out with that philanthropy schedule.

I could have just as well have written that they made a million a year and only donated 5%—that’s besides (my/the) point.

I guess we are all so alienated these days that we don’t find working on Wall Street—or Main Street—in order to indirectly help other people with our money instead of helping directly not the least bit weird at all. Or to help people by working as a programmer and donating a lot of your salary to some school instead of just working there as a teacher, helping people directly (to use another example). (Oh, that reminds me. I need to take my vitamin D supplements right about now. I calculated that being in the Sun is not worth my time so I have to compensate a bit, you see.)

Well, in the end, do you want to avoid feeling weird, or to help people? Both of those are valid desires, but they don't always go together. Sometimes you can find something that does both and that's great, but not everyone can.

Describing non-alienation as “feeling good” (as another commenter did) or “not feeling weird” is a great way to pathologize my observation of how weird it is to work a six-figure, ad/surveillance-optimizing job at Google in order for there to be more malaria nets in Africa. Trust me: I don’t believe that EA is sound in any way (or “effective”, if you like), but in this thread I chose to focus on just one aspect of it, indeed its most bizarre feature, which apparently isn’t bizarre at all to all of the Soylent-drinking life-optimizers out there, so my point has been like, as they say, seeds on barren ground.

Sorry, I was using your own terms from the post I replied to. I didn't mean to sound patronizing (well, only a little bit :)). My point stands though: "non-alienation" and "actually helping" are orthogonal. But not usually treated as such.

You have a point about working in a net-negative occupations. You might be doing more harm over all.

I wonder what alternative you would propose. Presumably, not doing philanthropy is not an alternative, because that would be the most alienating approach.

If it's connection to people you want, why not "Purchase Fuzzes and Utilons Separately"? [0] Give enough to charities that make you not feel alienated, and then donate the rest to charities that are making a greater positive impact on the lives of others.

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

What alternative? How is that even a question? The answer is obvious: do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly. That’s the obvious alternative. Maybe not everyone has the opportunity to do that, just like not everyone has the opportunity to get a non-alienating job.

> Give enough to charities that make you not feel alienated, and then donate the rest to charities that are making a greater positive impact on the lives of others.

You see? Both of these things are still indirect do-gooding. Donating to charity? How about being good, doing good? Or are you only able to assess the moral weight of something if you can read about them in some spreadsheet?

There are many ways to look at the problem we're discussing. One is to think about what the effect on the world would be if people follow one strategy over another.

The strategy of "help those around you" results in rich people who live in rich areas with multi-million-dollar-homes helping those that live in merely million dollar homes (because that's what's around). And if they venture too far geographically, they end up feeling alienated, apparently. Furthermore, these people, rather than taking the tremendous power of their wealth, do something "with their own minds and hands" - which is presumably serving some soup in a soup kitchen.

My observation is that it's really unfortunate that many people feel the need for a personal connection, and therefore do less good than they could otherwise. My response is to ignore the ill-fitting kluge that is the evolution-installed software I have.

When you know that a $3 donation protects 2 people from malaria for about 3 years, can you really think you can do more good with your hands and mind than to just protect those people with $3 you have?

You can get your warm feeling of having done good through doing something, and then use your money to give to cost-effective charities regardless of how "alienated" that makes you feel.

Perhaps the disconnect here is between fundamentally different ways of measuring "good" or "doing good".

Your argument here and EA arguments in general are based on an axiomatic assumption that good done to anyone is equally valuable, that all people worldwide now (and in some analyses, all hypothetical future people) have an equal claim on your help.

IMHO this axiom does not match the "built-in moral system" of most people. To start with an illustrative example (obviously you can imagine many less extreme comparisons), for most people, the welfare of their child is unquestionably much, much more important than the welfare of some other child across the globe. For most people saving the life of another child across the globe at the cost of the life of their child would not be a neutral exchange of things of equal value, it would be a horrifically unbalanced "trade". This is completely understandable even for undeniably good people doing lots of good. So this extreme establishes a baseline that the axiom of "saving every life is equally valuable" can not be accepted by most people (and accepting that axiom is not a requirement for "being good" or "doing good"), there is some difference, and the only question is about the scale and of that difference, what factors apply, etc.

And coming from an (incompatible) axiomatic assumption that it's plausible that helping someone in your community can be more valuable than protecting two people with no connection to you, all these other strategies start making some sense.

Looking at this from a Kantian 'moral duty' perspective, some people (perhaps including you) have an implied moral duty to care about everyone, equally. And some people have an implied moral duty to care about their community more than "strangers". Obviously those two approaches are incompatible, but IMHO both are frequently encountered, and I don't believe that "good people" and "people who do lots of good" always subscribe to the first concept of moral duty, there seems to be a lot of good works done based on the latter understanding.

Thank you for a beautiful description of what is likely happening. I think you're right about how many people think about morality.

I humbly try to encourage everyone (if the conversation strays this way) to reflect on the built-in moral system, and how wildly unprepared it is for dealing with the modern world. Given how much the world has changed (I can literally help people across the globe; people are interconnected deeply with others on the other side of the planet through everyday objects they use, etc) it is important to use reason and careful thinking when it comes to morality, not just our gut feelings.

The best writeup of all this comes from Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene - where he uses the photo camera analogy for morality: the automatic setting (gut feelings - great for usual scenarios evolution prepared us - like day to day courtesy with others), and the manual setting (slow and deliberate reasoning - essential for our complex world - anything to do with society beyond what our evolution prepared us for - I'm thinking like technology [mechanical and social] invented after 1500s).

I don't see how this is any different. Where does the proposition, "do good directly, with your own mind and hands", lead? Should the first step not be "consider who is most in need"? Should the next stop not be "consider how best to help them"? And should the last step not be "help them in that way"?

It almost seems like you're arguing against examining the problem at all. What would the world look like if everybody just quit their jobs so they could do good "directly"? They'd realize pretty quick they needs planes and ships to move people and things, and farmers to grow food. Not to mention doctors and chemists to develop and administer medicine. If they were smart about it, they'd end up allocating their own time to the things they were best at, and then liquidate and donate any excess they produce.

If you just follow your heart, in the most basal sense, you will probably do some good and you will likely feel very good about it. Which is great for you, and good for those you help. There's nothing wrong with that. But that approach will never help those afflicted with malaria, because your heart doesn't know about them. Your head has to hear about them. And then your head has to tell you not to fly down there yourself, because if everybody did that then there'd be nobody back here running air traffic control or formulating medicine.

You’ve set up a convenient dichotomy where one through pure reason alone arrives at the inevitable conclusion that one should “liquidate and donate any excess they produce”, or else one is merely being driven by pure sentiment/feel-goodiness. For some reason though it is only these tunnel-vision engineer types that seem to be sentimentally drawn towards this oh so obvious conclusion.

(As an example: a socialist will probably not think that making the most money possible and then giving a lot of it away is the most ethical thing to do.)

And yes, of course my obvious point is that everyone should just quit their jobs and travel to Africa.

I'm just trying to give examples, not set up a dichotomy. There's certainly a very wide range of ways to be charitable. For example, you could be charitable in this discussion by not lampooning those who disagree you as "tunnel-vision engineer types."

I'd like to hear more specifically how you think people should approach charity. Surely some people actually should travel to Africa? And some should not.

I'm not sure why you're being sarcastic about quitting one's job and traveling to Africa in a conversation about charity. It's not an insane thing to do. The point I was trying to make was that not everybody can do it, and that some people can actually do more good by just being excellent at their current job.

> do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly.

How? I live in North America. The people need the most help in the world don't live in North America. How do I help them directly "with my own mind and hands"?

I could help those in my city/state/country, which isn't unreasonable by any means, and definitely commendable. But this will leave the global poor in just as bad as state as they are right now. Who will do good directly for them?

As a side note, maybe this is an issue of framing. We've been calling EA charity, but another way to view it is wealth distribution from rich countries to poor countries. I think from that lens, it becomes obvious (to me) that this is not only good, but necessary, because I don't think the current global inequality in wealth is fair at all. Telling people to stop donating to EA charities is effectively telling them to keep the wealth in rich countries, rather than having it flow to poor countries (who really need it).