[HN Gopher] Effective Altruism Is Not Effective
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       Effective Altruism Is Not Effective
        
       Author : animalcule
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2021-04-14 22:13 UTC (46 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.philosophersbeard.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.philosophersbeard.org)
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | This is all about the framing. What question is being answered?
       | 
       | If the question is "which charity should I donate to" then we've
       | already narrowed the scope to an individual's action with their
       | own money. (Although there are some forms of collective behavior
       | like crowdfunding.) The case for effective altruism seems pretty
       | good _within that space_.
       | 
       | If you broaden your scope to all the things people could do
       | working together, there are other possibilities, but even they
       | often could use more funds.
        
       | lacker wrote:
       | I share some of these concerns. I was reading this book about the
       | Congo recently:
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCJ62YJ/
       | 
       | It's a fascinating book for many reasons, but one relevant part
       | is its interviews with many locals that complain about the
       | influence of NGOs in central Africa. It seems quite difficult to
       | measure the success of an NGO in a country that is run by a
       | dictatorship. There are cases where an organization starts
       | working on a particular charitable cause, so the government
       | immediately routes its own funding for that cause elsewhere. Or
       | the only way for an NGO to operate is to pay high taxes to a
       | corrupt government. So your money to these charities can
       | essentially end up in the pocket of dictators, funding genocide.
       | 
       | I think about these when reading GiveWell's analyses of charity.
       | Even things like mosquito nets - are we sure that these NGOs are
       | really providing mosquito nets that wouldn't be provided
       | otherwise? Or are they crowding out government spending, helping
       | dictators free up more of their budget for other things? Or are
       | mosquito nets simply the most appealing of many causes, the
       | wealthy donors backing GiveWell could easily fund the entire
       | demand for mosquito nets, and the cause is "kept alive" to enable
       | GiveWell to raise more funds for other, less-obvious causes?
       | 
       | It's hard to do much more analysis of charities whose actions are
       | so remote. I wish there were a GiveWell equivalent but just
       | focused on giving to help the poor in California, not because I
       | think the poor in California are so much more deserving than the
       | rest of the world, but because I think we would be more able to
       | observe which entities were spending money effectively.
        
       | vecplane wrote:
       | This reads like a strawman perspective on the concept of
       | 'effective altruism.'
       | 
       | The 'effective' part in the term is doing a lot of the heavy
       | lifting when it comes to the definition. It seems reasonable to
       | focus on actually 'effective' actions with good outcomes, rather
       | than comparatively ineffective virtual signalling or martyrdom.
       | 
       | Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means
       | is more impactful than being poor and helping dozens. Both should
       | be admired and encouraged, but one is clearly more 'effective'
       | than the other.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-14 23:00 UTC)