[HN Gopher] Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, ...
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Effective altruism has a sexual harassment problem, women say
Author : s17n
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-02-03 19:10 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (time.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (time.com)
| wendyshu wrote:
| A lot of people in EA have poor social skills and a lot of people
| in the community become friends and lovers. That probably
| explains most of this phenomenon.
| s17n wrote:
| You seem to be implying that "poor social skills" are a valid
| excuse for sexual misconduct?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| An explanation is not necessarily an excuse.
| empathy_m wrote:
| Is EA still a thing? I thought the post rationalist and e/acc
| communities were where the forefront of human civilization in the
| Bay Area is now.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Tech bros gonna tech bro. This is the nerd equivalent of
| highschool football team.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds a lot like the "Peace & Love" movement of the sixties
| (hippies).
|
| A _lot_ of what went on, in those days, would be considered rape,
| slavery, various types of coercion and larceny, etc., these days.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Least surprising thing ever when the movement's logic resembles
| the philosophical version of pickup artistry (and I'd bet good
| money that it's a thick middle of the Venn diagram) in terms of
| justifying some shitty behavior with rhetorical sleights of hand.
| ergonaught wrote:
| I wonder how many times we have to see that generalizing (outside
| of an immediate emergency scenario) is frequently harmful and
| always idiotic before we quit doing it.
|
| Let's ChatGPT this thing and see if it can do better than humans.
|
| Prompt: "Is it true that Effective Altruism has a toxic culture
| of sexual harassment and abuse?"
|
| Response: "The effective altruism community, like any other
| community, may have individuals who engage in harmful behaviors,
| including sexual harassment and abuse. However, it is not
| accurate to make blanket statements about an entire community
| based on the actions of a few individuals. It is important for
| all communities to take the issue of sexual harassment and abuse
| seriously and to have systems in place for addressing these
| issues when they arise."
|
| Bummer. LLMs win.
| supermet wrote:
| Hate speech for me, but not for thee.
|
| See if you can have the LLM rewrite this article, but for BLM,
| freemasonry, or grooming Pakistani immigrants.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| The article links to this EA community post on 'interpersonal
| harm' in the community, which I found interesting.
| https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NbkxLDECvdGuB95gW/...
|
| One item caught my eye: >>There are also cases where I find a
| report to be alarming and would like to take action, but the
| person reporting does not want it known that they spoke up. In
| these cases, sometimes there's very little that can be done
| without breaking their confidentiality.
|
| Yikes. That would not meet reporting standards at most
| organizations I've been a part of. There are a lot of hard
| lessons behind requiring mandatory investigation of credible
| claims.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| If you don't respect the desired confidentiality, you'll get
| fewer people confiding with you.
|
| There are similar practices regarding rape - victims can seek
| e.g. securing the biological evidence without automatically
| triggering a criminal investigation. The logic being that this
| (critical) step should be as risk-free / barrier-free as
| possible.
|
| > There are a lot of hard lessons behind requiring mandatory
| investigation of credible claims.
|
| Worth keeping in mind that companies are always primarily
| trying to cover their backs and these policies often reflect
| that.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| >> There are a lot of hard lessons behind requiring mandatory
| investigation of credible claims.
|
| >Worth keeping in mind that companies are always primarily
| trying to cover their backs and these policies often reflect
| that.
|
| Your comment was a fair one when it comes to corporations,
| but I was thinking of churches and community groups more like
| EA than corporations. Bad actors thrive in secrecy,
| particularly when they can use their power to create
| repercussions for people reporting bad acts, creating a
| culture of silence. Mandatory investigation is one of the few
| effective ways to resolve that. That's why it's the policy
| and/or law in many circumstances.
|
| If my group had the same policy as EA, I would be very
| uncomfortable with it.
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| good
| s17n wrote:
| (Original title was too long for HN, did my best)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This is not about effective altruism as in the generic practice
| of high-impact giving, it relates to a highly specific subculture
| of EA proponents. "Polycules", 'nuff said. These are not
| appropriate topics in a professional discussion among strangers.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It's a mission-focused group, and such groups usually include
| some amount of socializing. It's not the same as a workplace
| (although people frequently mention their partners in a
| workplace also)
|
| There are certainly polyamorous people who behave poorly, but
| that doesn't mean people with multiple lovers should be held to
| different standards than monogamous people are, just because
| their romantic orientation places them in the minority.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| We as humans can choose elevate our sexuality as the ultimate
| union with a soulmate and dedication of our talents to bringing
| up the next generation. Or we can behave like rats in the gutter.
| If women choose to associate themselves with the later group,
| they shouldn't be shocked when they are disrespected. If they
| join people who are actually doing altruism like tutoring kids or
| helping army vets, they are likely to meet some decent guys.
| cwkoss wrote:
| "Effective Altruism" is one of those things like "All Lives
| Matter" where what it says on the box is not reflective of the
| way that people who identify with the ideology practice it.
| prox wrote:
| So it is a doublespeak?
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Of course the "utopian" types happen to be the most degenerate.
| Ironic if you think about it. There is something seriously wrong
| with our culture when men and women can no longer pair up
| efficiently together and have to resort to these shenanigans in
| order to get laid. It is a symptom of how sick our society has
| become.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| You can see the EA forums response to this post here:
| https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JCyX29F77Jak5gbwq/...
| haunter wrote:
| >Thousands have signed a pledge to tithe at least 10% of their
| income to high-impact charities. From college campuses to Silicon
| Valley startups, adherents are drawn to the moral clarity of a
| philosophy dedicated to using data and reason to shape a better
| future for humanity. Effective altruism has become something of a
| secular religion for the young and elite.
| theragra wrote:
| If there are less cases of abuse than among generic populace, it
| is weird to blame the movement. From the article, it is hard to
| understand that EA is somehow worse than most of the USA.
|
| Also, arguments for polyamory are just that, arguments. You
| certainly can press someone into it, but from the article, the
| impression that it is more like persuasion.
|
| Regarding cult dynamics - any tight knit community feels like
| this. Be it psychedelics users, health nuts, athletes etc etc.
| All of these will have takes that outsiders will consider unusual
| and weird.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> arguments for polyamory are just that, arguments_
|
| Which have nothing whatever to do with effective altruism. So
| it's perfectly reasonable for a person who came to a gathering
| expecting to talk about effective altruism, to be
| uncomfortable, to say the least, when she finds herself getting
| proselytized about polyamory.
| olliecornelia wrote:
| It's never who you want to be polyamorous who's polyamorous.
| ketzo wrote:
| > but from the article, the impression that it is more like
| persuasion.
|
| Okay -- but if you showed up to a tech conference, and someone
| in the hallway was trying to "persuade" you to join a
| threesome, would you feel that was appropriate for the setting?
| The issue is that so much of this relationship-and-sex talk is
| happening to people who didn't think they had signed up for it.
| That's where you start verging on abuse.
|
| I think part of the issue is that EA is:
|
| - kind of life-defining by nature
|
| - filled with people who seek self-improvement
|
| - filled with people who are excellent persuaders
|
| With that mix, it is uncomfortably easy to start "mixing
| business with pleasure," so to speak. People in that
| environment think that they live a really interesting and good
| life, and want to convince others of that fact.
|
| That's why people are blaming the movement, I think.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > If there are less cases of abuse than among generic populace
|
| Where are you getting this?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Arguments for polyamory are also regarded as grossly
| unprofessional in any environment that's focused on a specific
| goal. Most people don't want to be goaded by strangers into
| "arguing" about their relationship status. It's abusive.
| jmeister wrote:
| Does Time's readership have any clue about Effective Altruism?
| 1shooner wrote:
| I think this may be a bit of a HN bubble. I can't imagine most
| people have a need for a social or philosophical framework for
| their philanthropic identity.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| After SBF and FTX, yes
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Well there's this high profile in the EA community who happened
| to have its name tied to FTX not just for being SBF's guru but
| also for being on the FTX payroll in FTX's early days.
|
| But not only that: it gets better for he happen to have bought
| a mansion in the UK, supposedly for EA, with $15m of stolen
| money SBF gave him. (mansion which may be clawed back, I sure
| do hope it is).
|
| The dude is a teacher at some fancy uni in the UK.
|
| Tells me all I need to know about EA and the kind of people
| higher up the echelons there. It's obviously highly
| manipulative and I'm not surprised at all to see manipulative
| gurus misappropriating money and using their manipulative
| tactics to prey on women.
|
| P.S: as he altruistically given back the mansion acquired with
| stolen money?
| supermet wrote:
| [dead]
| freejazz wrote:
| Effective Altruism has a "make me think whoever is involved in
| this isn't a grifty scammer weirdo" problem
| willcipriano wrote:
| Back in my day effective altruism was mainly about finding
| charities that aren't essentially scams (way harder than it
| looks). Scene has apparently moved on to other things since I
| followed it a decade or so ago.
| ketzo wrote:
| This is a super-simplified summary, but I think it's generally
| accurate.
|
| The basic thesis of EA is "it is your duty to improve/save as
| many human lives as you can."
|
| At some point, a lot of EAs realized that there were many more
| _future_ humans than _present_ humans.
|
| Once you widen your scope in that way, you start realizing that
| long-term, catastrophic risks (climate change, nuclear
| disaster, misaligned AI) would affect a _lot_ more human lives
| -- billions or trillions more -- than basically anything we
| could do today.
|
| So the logic becomes -- why would I spend time/money on
| mosquito nets when we need to be securing the literal future of
| the human race?
| bena wrote:
| Because we do that with mosquito nets.
|
| EA seems like a way to achieve nothing while looking like
| you're doing everything. No one expects you to fly to Mars
| tomorrow. And that's true every single day. It's true today.
| It'll be true tomorrow. It was true yesterday. It was true 10
| years ago. It will be true 10 years from now.
|
| So if no one really expects you to fully achieve your goal,
| all you have to do is kinda look like you're trying and that
| will be good enough for most people.
|
| EA takes a good, hard look at all these good intentions and
| says, "Fuck, this would make a baller ass road".
|
| However, if we solve malaria. That's another thing not
| killing us. Another problem checked off. Like polio. Or
| smallpox. Colonize Mars? Fucking how? We can't even get the
| environment on Earth under control. How the living fuck are
| we going to create an environment on another fucking planet.
| Much less even get there.
|
| So how about we figure out a way to get the garbage out the
| ocean. On how to scrub the air of CO2. How to manufacture and
| produce without so many polluting side effects. We keep doing
| all these smaller things. Put in the work, and one day, we
| will save all those trillions of potential lives. But it
| requires putting in the work.
|
| Edit: Not saying you believe it. But presenting the counter-
| argument to EA.
| wendyshu wrote:
| I guess GiveWell still does that, but I'm not really sure what
| everyone else in the movement does.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Givewell is certainly my go to.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Looks good I'll check it out.
| sonjat wrote:
| It's unclear if the issue is EA or how to handle misbehavior in
| organizations without formal structure or hierarchy. It isn't
| like a workplace, with reasonably well-defined boundaries, but
| something more akin to religion, where its influence bleeds over
| heavily into many aspects of ones life. As such, it is probably
| both more devastating when one is the victim of misconduct and
| also more difficult to police such misconduct. I am not really
| sure what the answer here is. "Believe all women" is a great
| slogan, but I am not a fan of a "guilty until proven innocent"
| (and I say this as a woman). OTOH, this isn't a criminal
| procedure and as such, one shouldn't have to prove beyond a
| reasonable doubt that someone is preying on others to enforce
| some level of punishment. It's a tough problem.
| Y_Y wrote:
| You should be able to punish people even though there's
| reasonable doubt that they are culpable? Are you arguing for a
| "balance of probabilities" standard? Or that it's worth
| punishing some innocents so that the guilty are also punished?
| sonjat wrote:
| I think I am arguing for a "balance of probabilities". If (to
| spout off random hypothetical) the punishment is something
| like a banning of someone from EA conferences, then there
| definitely needs to be evidence of their misconduct, but that
| level of evidence doesn't need to be the same as if they are
| looking at a criminal conviction. The point is balancing the
| need to protect the victim while not punishing the innocent
| is a difficult issue outside the criminal courtroom.
| xchip wrote:
| This is a free article, and for the same reason in Photography
| Books, on the cover there is usually a naked lady, in these free
| articles the story is also always about sex or something that
| appeals to your instincts.
|
| Chances are this story was exaggerated up to a point to make it
| call your attention so you subscribe.
|
| If something is free, you are the product.
| [deleted]
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I waded through many, many paragraphs to discover that some of
| the crimes included people making comments that made others
| feel uncomfortable. I was kind of expecting more.
|
| So, yes, it looks like I was the product here. It made me feel
| uncomfortable!
| raincom wrote:
| You see same set of problems in a movement of super wealthy men,
| esp if you are a female.
| supersour wrote:
| > EA is diffuse and deliberately amorphous; anybody who wants to
| can call themselves an EA... But with no official leadership
| structure, no roster of who is and isn't in the movement, and no
| formal process for dealing with complaints, Wise argues, it's
| hard to gauge how common such issues are within EA compared to
| broader society.
|
| This passage reminded me of this article:
| https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
|
| Moral of the story: be weary of groups with low accountability
| and vague power structures. In a vacuum, power structures will
| always emerge, so it's generally better for them to exist in the
| light than in the dark.
| Sakos wrote:
| I think it's bizarre EA seems to be a movement with power
| structures. I always just thought EA was a philosophy and based
| on that I felt it was an interesting idea. I don't have to
| worry about sexual harassment when I'm considering Plato or
| Stoicism. Why is it a thing with EA?
| LarryMullins wrote:
| The EA "philosophy" is strongly tied up in libertarian
| utilitarian ways of thinking, and such people are able to
| talk themselves into believing that it's rational to defer to
| people smarter/richer than themselves. They get money,
| intelligence and virtue all mixed up and confused with each
| other. Being intelligent gets you money, money buys virtue,
| those who are smartest will become richest and those who are
| richest will be able to buy the most virtue.
|
| Power structures emerge naturally from this.
| luckylion wrote:
| Something can both describe a philosophy and a movement. The
| movement always has hierarchies and power structures. The
| philosophy doesn't, but then again, it's often presented by
| the movement so the lines get blurry.
| Sakos wrote:
| This is insightful, thanks.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| When there is a lot of money moving around, it seems
| inevitable that power structures will form around it.
| gruez wrote:
| That might be true, but there isn't exactly an "Effective
| Altruism Foundation" that all the donations funnel through.
| You basically have a bunch of random people that are
| donating to charities that are well regarded, with a few
| philanthropists here and there setting up foundations. You
| might be able to hijack organizations like givewell (ie.
| organizations that tell people which charities they should
| donate to), but trying to monetize that is tricky. At the
| end of the day you don't really control anything, because
| you're still reliant on individuals following your advice.
| So if you try to funnel money to your own foundation (for
| embezzling purposes), you will easily burn any goodwill
| that you've built up.
| ketzo wrote:
| I see that essay linked every six months or so, and I swear
| every time I read it, a new element of it rings true to me.
| Really timeless, invaluable writing on the way groups of humans
| work.
| jfengel wrote:
| The worst thing about being smart is how easy it is to talk
| yourself into believing just about anything. After all, you make
| really good arguments.
|
| EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is
| perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always
| right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds
| of terrible things.
|
| Once that happens, it can easily spiral out from there. People
| who know perfectly well they're misbehaving will claim that they
| aren't, using the same arguments. It won't hold water, but now
| we're swamped, and the entire thing crumbles.
|
| I'd love to believe in effective altruism. I already know that my
| money is more effective in the hands of a food bank than giving
| people food myself. I'd love to think that could scale. It would
| be great to have smarter, better-informed people vetting things.
| But I don't have any reason to trust them -- in part because I
| know too many of the type of people who get involved and aren't
| trustworthy.
| dfgheaoinbt6t wrote:
| Effective altruism is, I think, an ideology perfectly suited to
| ensnare a certain kind of person.
|
| Conventional wisdom would say that wielding wealth and power
| like effective altruism demands requires humility, compassion,
| and maturity. It requires wisdom. Effective altruism can seem
| to remove the need for that. Doing good is about calculation,
| not compassion! Interpersonal failings don't matter if someone
| is really good with C++. One needn't care about the feelings of
| others if there are more _efficient_ ways to use the time.
|
| Effective altruism calls on the rich and capable to recognize
| their own power to help those who are poor and helpless.
| However, it is easy for pity to turn to contempt and for
| clarity of purpose to turn to arrogance. The poor, hungry, and
| sick of the world need the effective altruist for a savior. The
| effective altruist is _better_ than the rest because they are
| making the world a better place.
|
| An effective altruist may confuse immaturity with wisdom and
| greed with generosity.
|
| This is not meant to be a diatribe. I find much of effective
| altruism obviously true and find my exposure to it has made me
| a better person. If pressed, I would probably call myself an
| effective altruist. Still, it is greatly concerning that people
| like Elon Musk or Sam Bankman-Fried can be associated with
| effective altruism without any real hypocrisy.
| ben_w wrote:
| > EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is
| perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always
| right about everything. And from there, you can justify all
| kinds of terrible things.
|
| Yup.
|
| Which is super-ironic given the association with big-R
| Rationality, Less Wrong, Overcoming Bias, all of which quote
| Feynman saying "The first principle is that you must not fool
| yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
|
| Now I have the mental image of the scene in _The Life of Brian_
| where the crowd mindlessly parrots Brian 's call for them to
| think for themselves.
| gruez wrote:
| Your point seem superficially valid, but where do we go from
| there?
|
| >The worst thing about being smart is how easy it is to talk
| yourself into believing just about anything. After all, you
| make really good arguments.
|
| >EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is
| perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always
| right about everything. And from there, you can justify all
| kinds of terrible things.
|
| Should we _not_ talk ourselves into believing into stuff?
| Should smart people specifically avoid changing their beliefs
| out of fear of "justify all kinds of terrible things"?
|
| >I'd love to believe in effective altruism. I already know that
| my money is more effective in the hands of a food bank than
| giving people food myself. I'd love to think that could scale.
| It would be great to have smarter, better-informed people
| vetting things. But I don't have any reason to trust them -- in
| part because I know too many of the type of people who get
| involved and aren't trustworthy.
|
| So you don't trust donating money to food banks or malaria nets
| because "don't have any reason to trust them", then what? Don't
| donate any money at all? Give up trying to maximize impact and
| donate to whatever you feel like donating to?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Should we not talk ourselves into believing into stuff?
| Should smart people specifically avoid changing their beliefs
| out of fear of "justify all kinds of terrible things"?
|
| It's simple really: just be skeptical of your own reasoning
| because you're aware of your own biases and fallibility. Be a
| good scientist and be open to being wrong.
|
| > So you don't trust donating money to food banks or malaria
| nets because "don't have any reason to trust them", then
| what?
|
| No, they don't trust that you can scale the concept of "food
| banks are more effective than I am" to any kind of
| maximization. You can still donate to worthy causes and
| effective organizations.
|
| > Don't donate any money at all? Give up trying to maximize
| impact and donate to whatever you feel like donating to?
|
| Yeah, basically. Giving is more helpful than not giving, so
| even a non-maximalist approach is better than nothing.
| Perfect is the enemy of good, aim for good.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's simple really: just be skeptical of your own
| reasoning because you're aware of your own biases and
| fallibility. Be a good scientist and be open to being
| wrong.
|
| This just seems like a generic advice to me which is
| theoretically applicable to everyone. Is there any evidence
| of effective altruists not doing that, or this being
| specifically a problem with "really-smart-person"s?
|
| >No, they don't trust that you can scale the concept of
| "food banks are more effective than I am" to any kind of
| maximization. You can still donate to worthy causes and
| effective organizations.
|
| I'm not quite understanding what you're arguing for here.
| Are you saying that you disagree with effective altruists'
| assessment that you should be funding malaria nets in
| africa or whatever (ie. what they want you to do), rather
| than donating to local food banks (ie. what you want to
| do)?
|
| >Yeah, basically. Giving is more helpful than not giving,
| so even a non-maximalist approach is better than nothing.
| Perfect is the enemy of good, aim for good.
|
| To be clear, you're arguing for donating for whatever your
| gut tells you, rather than trying to maximize benefit?
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who
| is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're
| always right about everything. And from there, you can
| justify all kinds of terrible things.
|
| > Should we not talk ourselves into believing into stuff?
| Should smart people specifically avoid changing their beliefs
| out of fear of "justify all kinds of terrible things"?
|
| The GP is talking about self-deception. And yes, we should
| not deceive ourselves.
| gruez wrote:
| Okay, but how does this translate into actionable advice?
| Nobody sets out to intentionally deceive themselves.
| Telling people that "we should not deceive ourselves" is
| basically as helpful as "don't be wrong".
| mistermann wrote:
| How about this: in swinger communities, they have safe
| words that they can use to transcend the playtime aspect
| of reality - how about we develop something similar for
| internet arguments, a term that is mutually agreed upon
| _in advance_ , and when uttered by a participant it kicks
| off a _well documented (and agreed upon)_ protocol where
| all participants downgrade System 1 thinking to zero and
| upgrade System 2 thinking to 11...and, all participants
| carefully monitor each other to ensure that people are
| executing the agreed upon plan successfully?
|
| This general approach works quite well (with practice) in
| many other domains, maybe it would also work for
| arguments/beliefs.
| gruez wrote:
| Wouldn't this devolve into name calling almost
| immediately? On internet arguments it's already implied
| that you're bringing forth logical points and not just
| spouting off what you feel in the heat of the moment.
| Invoking the safe word is basically a thinly veiled
| attempt at calling the other party irrational and
| emotional.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| It's called science.
| gruez wrote:
| That's the same problem as before. Outside of _maybe_
| fundamentalist religious people who think their religious
| text is the final word on everything, everybody agrees
| that "science" is the best way of finding out the truth.
| The trouble is that they disagree on what counts as
| science (ie. which scientists/institutions/studies to
| trust). When the disagreement is at that level, casually
| invoking "science" misses the point entirely.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I've never met anyone who didn't deceive themselves in
| significant ways.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is
| perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always
| right about everything. And from there, you can justify all
| kinds of terrible things.
|
| I came to the same conclusion after a group of my friends got
| involved with the local rationalist and EA community, though
| for a different reason: Their drug habits.
|
| They believed themselves to have a better grasp on human nature
| and behavior than the average person, and therefore believed
| they were better at controlling themselves. They also had a
| deep contrarian bias, which turned into a belief that drugs
| weren't actually as bad as the system wanted us to believe.
|
| Combine these two factors and they convinced themselves that
| they could harness recreational opioid use to improve their
| lives, but avoid the negative consequences that "normies"
| suffered by doing it wrong. I remember being at a party where
| several of them were explaining that they were on opioids
| _right now_ and tried to use the fact that nothing terrible was
| happening as proof that they were performing rational drug use.
|
| Long story short, the realities of recreational opioid use
| caught up with them and they were blind to the warning signs
| due to their hubris. I intentionally drifted away from that
| group around that time, so I don't know what happened to them.
|
| I will never forget how confident they were that addiction is
| something that only happens to other people, not rationalists
| like them.
| telotortium wrote:
| No, they should have listened to their parents! Drug
| positivity is supposed to be reserved for cannabis and
| hallucinogens!
| teraflop wrote:
| I'm reminded of a fascinating series of Reddit threads,
| starting back in 2009, from somebody who convinced himself he
| "could handle anything once" and decided to try heroin, only
| to rapidly spiral out of control:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/wef6.
| ..
| scarmig wrote:
| The issue with Reddit is that the story is as likely as not
| to be fake. Particularly, here, I don't think people are at
| risk of serious withdrawal after only two weeks of heroin
| use.
|
| Though heroin use is obviously one of the dumbest things
| anyone can do.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm only on the second update, and it seems like this guy
| speed-ran addiction:
|
| > I can't stop crying. Fuck heroin. Fuck my life. I guess I
| don't need to say that since heroin pretty much fucked my
| life for me in under two weeks, I just want to die.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| >recreational opioid use
|
| Horse? Were they shooting horse?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing that's
| been around for a very long time. The fundamental idea is
| sound. However, in practice, it all-too-easily devolves into
| something really terrible. Especially once people start down
| the path of thinking the needs of today aren't as important as
| the needs of a hypothetical future population.
|
| Personally, I started "tithing" when my first business was a
| success. In part because it's good to help the less fortunate,
| but also as an ethical stance. Having a business drove home
| that no business can be successful without the support of the
| community it starts in, so it's only right to share in the
| rewards.
|
| So, I give 10% back. I have rules about it:
|
| I always give to a local group who directly helps people and
| who is typically overlooked for charitable giving. I get to
| know the group pretty well first.
|
| I never give to any group that won't keep my identity a secret.
|
| I never give to any group that asks me for money.
|
| I don't always give in the form of money. Sometimes, it's in
| the form of my time and effort, or in material goods, etc.
|
| I don't give to "umbrella" groups whose purpose is fundraising
| for a collection of other groups. This isn't because I have a
| problem with them, but because they're not the ones who
| struggle the most to get donations.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I get to know the group pretty well first._
|
| I think this is a very, very, very important step. What's
| more, it's a step that I don't think can be outsourced to
| someone else, which is why I'm skeptical about claims by,
| among others, the Effective Altruism movement, to be able to
| do this kind of thing on your behalf.
| gruez wrote:
| >What's more, it's a step that I don't think can be
| outsourced to someone else, which is why I'm skeptical
| about claims by, among others, the Effective Altruism
| movement, to be able to do this kind of thing on your
| behalf.
|
| Why can't this be done? Society in general outsources due
| diligence to third parties all the time. Banks outsource
| credit worthiness assessments to credit bureaus. Passive
| investors outsource price discovery to other market
| participants. Online shoppers outsource quality control to
| reviewers. I agree that there's no substitute for doing it
| yourself, but it's simply not realistic in many cases to do
| the due diligence yourself. Even if you do it yourself,
| there's no guarantee that you'll do a better job than the
| professionals.
| dfgheaoinbt6t wrote:
| >Especially once people start down the path of thinking the
| needs of today aren't as important as the needs of a
| hypothetical future population.
|
| It's not that that bothers me so much as the fact that many
| effective altruists do it _so badly_. We need to be concerned
| with the future. That is the only reason to maintain roads
| and bridges, to prevent pollution, or to conserve resources
| like water in aquifers and helium. But effective altruists
| are as likely to talk about colonizing Mars as they are to
| talk about global warming.
|
| Effective altruism is supposedly about making evidence-based
| decisions. We have no idea how likely "existential risks"
| are. We have no idea what, if anything, can be done about
| them. We cannot predict a year into the future, let alone
| millenia. So-called longtermism is nothing more than
| guesswork.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's not that that bothers me so much as the fact that
| many effective altruists do it so badly. [...] But
| effective altruists are as likely to talk about colonizing
| Mars as they are to talk about global warming.
|
| Are they doing it badly, or are you not understanding their
| arguments? AFAIK effective altruists want to colonize mars
| on x-risk grounds, which would explain why they want to
| prioritize that over global warming, even though the latter
| is happening right now. AFAIK they think that global
| warming is bad, but isn't an existential risk, whereas
| colonizing mars will mitigate many existential risks.
| freejazz wrote:
| >Are they doing it badly, or are you not understanding
| their arguments?
|
| Do YOU not understand their arguments? They are facially
| stupid. The notion that we should be colonizing mars
| because of global warming is the stupidest thing I've
| ever read or heard.
| gruez wrote:
| >The notion that we should be colonizing mars because of
| global warming is the stupidest thing I've ever read or
| heard.
|
| Yeah, because that's a strawman you imagined in your
| head. I'm not sure what gave you the impression that the
| two were related (other than that they're competing
| options) based on my previous comment.
| freejazz wrote:
| Someone posted it upthread. You can replace any
| catastrophic event with global warming and it's just as
| facially stupid. Literally like the thought process of a
| child. It's completely divorced from reality.
| dfgheaoinbt6t wrote:
| I understand their arguments just fine. I just don't
| think they make any sense.
|
| Ought implies can. We _cannot_ predict the far future of
| humanity. We _cannot_ colonize other planets in the
| foreseeable future. We _cannot_ plan how to handle future
| technology that we aren 't yet sure is even possible.
|
| The things we actually can predict and control, like
| global warming and natural disasters and pandemics, are
| handled with regular old public policy. Longtermism,
| almost by definition, refers to things we can neither
| predict nor control.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I've yet to see an argument for colonizing Mars for this
| purpose, that wouldn't be a better argument if the goal
| were instead "build robust, distributed bunkers on earth,
| and pay families to live in them part-time so there's
| always someone there".
|
| Cheaper, and more effective.
|
| Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far
| easier to live on than Mars.
|
| The remaining threats that wouldn't also be pretty likely
| to take out Mars at the same time, would be something
| like a whole-crust-liquifying impact, which we'd have a
| pretty good chance of spotting well in advance, and we
| could put some of the savings into getting better at
| that.
|
| I think a bunch of smart people are also just romantics
| when it comes to space shit, and that's why they won't
| shut up about Mars, not because it's actually a good
| idea.
|
| Hell, building orbital habs is probably a better idea
| than colonizing Mars, for those purposes, if we _must_ do
| space shit.
| walleeee wrote:
| > Most plausible post-apocalyptic Earths would be far
| easier to live on than Mars.
|
| thank you
|
| how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead,
| ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves
| capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a
| sustainable long-term civilization here
|
| Earth is easy mode compared to Mars
| WalterBright wrote:
| > how are we supposed to build a second home on a dead,
| ruthlessly hostile planet until we demonstrate ourselves
| capable of stabilizing the biosphere and building a
| sustainable long-term civilization here
|
| Because we can afford to make big mistakes in
| terraforming a dead, ruthlessly hostile planet.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| A few microscopic fungal-like spore things could throw a
| wrench in that. Now the planet is a nature reserve.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Right--living on Mars is like living on Earth if it
| ambient surface radiation levels were significantly
| higher, nothing would grow in the soil anywhere without a
| ton of preparation, and you couldn't leave your house
| without a pressure suit. And there's no surface water.
| And the gravity's fucked up. And the temperatures suck
| for basically anything life-related. And none of the
| geological and chemical processes that keep our biosphere
| viable existed, at all.
|
| So... like Earth if several apocalypses happened at once,
| including a few nigh-impossible ones. Except it starts
| that way. And it's actually even worse than that. Sure,
| maybe we could slam some comets into it and do a ton of
| other sci-fi shit over a few centuries and it'd
| eventually get better, sorta, a little--but c'mon,
| seriously?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Why Mars though? Why not colonize the Gebi Desert first?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Presumably because the goal is to survive something bad
| that happens to Earth. If you're on Mars (and self-
| sustaining...), that's no big deal. If you're in the Gobi
| Desert, you're going to be the _first_ people to get
| wiped out by whatever happens to Earth.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| x-risk is existential risk, as in humans get wiped out.
| Some big ones are meteor impact, nuclear war and disease.
| The risk of those things ending all of humanity are
| greatly reduced with a second planet. They're not reduced
| with a desert colony.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The risk of those things ending all of humanity are
| greatly reduced with a second planet.
|
| I can imagine a situation where that's true. But right
| now, for almost any situation, a series of super-bunkers
| is orders of magnitude cheaper and more effective. A lot
| of ridiculously destructive things can happen to Earth
| and it will still be a better place to live than Mars.
| [deleted]
| goatlover wrote:
| None of those things would make Earth less hospitable
| than Mars. A desert colony would still be better off than
| trying to survive on Mars, particularly once Earth's
| resources are cutoff. Mars is far more hostile than
| anything likely to happen to Earth over the next hundred
| million years.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Oh, I agree! I didn't mean to imply that being concerned
| with the future isn't critically important. It is. I like
| how you put it better -- it's that they do it so badly.
| mistermann wrote:
| > It's not that that bothers me so much as the fact that
| many effective altruists do it so badly.
|
| I feel the same about Rationalists and rationality. They
| even had an excellent approach with their motto: "We're
| only _aspiring_ rationalists ", but when you remind them of
| that motto in the process of them being not actually
| rational, it has no effect.
|
| There's got to be a way to ~solve something that is so in
| your face, _like right there in an argument, the very
| essence_ , but it is a very tricky phenomenon, it always
| finds a way to slip out of any corner you back it into.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I never give to any group that asks me for money.
|
| I get how this would keep you personally from being annoyed,
| but it seems to incentivize in worse outcomes. "Let's collect
| all the money we can, we never know if we'll get more. Let's
| grow that reserve" vs. "In a bad month we can get our usual
| donors/JohnFen to give us his annual donation a little
| early".
| tptacek wrote:
| _I never give to any group that asks me for money._
|
| Far be it from me to second-guess anybody's giving (motes and
| beams and all that) but this rules out many of the most
| effective aid organizations, all of which are absolutely off-
| the-charts obnoxious about fundraising --- because it works.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| If it works for those orgs, then those orgs don't need his
| money anyway.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| > because it works
|
| apparently not!
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > many of the most effective aid organizations, all of
| which are absolutely off-the-charts obnoxious about
| fundraising
|
| This doesn't seem to jive much with what's reported by
| charity evaluators like GiveWell, or with what kinds of
| charitable organizations get grants from more traditional
| but still high-impact philanthropies like the B&MGF.
|
| It's quite plausible that too much emphasis on fund raising
| among the general public distorts incentives within these
| charities and makes them less likely to be highly effective
| on average. If so, we're better off when the job of
| publicly raising charitable donations is spun off to
| separate organizations, such as GiveWell or more generally
| the EA movement itself.
| tptacek wrote:
| Fundraising expenses are a huge problem with large
| charities, but it doesn't follow that fundraising
| _annoyingness_ is a huge problem. It 's not a customer
| service problem with donors; it's a "using too much of
| proceeds on fundraising" problem.
| scarmig wrote:
| If an organization believes a marginal dollar of money on
| their programs is the best way to improve the world, then
| spending $10 to get $11 in donations allows them to spend
| an extra dollar on it. It's rational and even morally
| required. (The only potential negative being the extent
| to winning a contribution pulls funding away from other
| causes.)
|
| More generally, people overly emphasize low
| administrative expenses as a sign of quality. You need
| overhead to effectively administrate and evaluate
| programs.
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| true. and those of us that are not psychopaths dont even have
| to think about it. it just happens.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Effective Altruism is just a modern iteration of a thing
| that's been around for a very long time.
|
| Which you think is what, exactly? I'm under the impression
| that thing is warmed-over utilitarianism.
|
| > The fundamental idea is sound.
|
| I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its logic
| can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible things.
| However the framework appeals very strongly to "rationalist"
| type people.
| michaelt wrote:
| The "10% of lifetime income to charity" pledge is pretty
| close to Christian tithing, Islamic zakat, and suchlike.
| Who also claim to be spending donations to help the poorest
| people in society, and with low waste.
|
| Of course, EA has a bunch of other weird stuff like AI
| safety, which isn't an idea that's been around for
| millennia.
| czzr wrote:
| Well, actually, on AI safety:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
| kiba wrote:
| _I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its
| logic can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible
| things. However the framework appeals very strongly to
| "rationalist" type people. _
|
| If it sounds horrible, then it's probably is?
|
| The logical chain of hurting a human leading to helping two
| human doesn't sound like something that is moral or
| dependable.
|
| Giving to charities that focus on the most severe and
| urgent problem of humanity is a very straightforward idea.
|
| However, not all charities are focused on the most urgent
| problems. For example, a local charity I frequent does
| improv and comedy theater, hardly 'urgent' needs. People
| don't like to hear is that they could donate money to a
| third world NGO providing vaccines, or fighting corruption
| in third world countries instead of their local church or
| community theater.
|
| Don't get me wrong, community theaters/churches/etc are
| good things. They just aren't saving lives.
| gruez wrote:
| >I do not believe utilitarianism is sound, because its
| logic can be easily used to justify some obviously horrible
| things.
|
| Right, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about
| consequences at all. There's a pretty big gap between
| "given that we have scarce resources, we should maximize
| the impact of our use of it" and "committing this atrocity
| is fine because the utility calculations work out".
| bena wrote:
| I wouldn't say "really-smart-person" but reasonably smart
| person who believe they are way more intelligent than they
| actually are. People who mistake competence in one area as
| expertise in all areas.
| kazinator wrote:
| Effective altruism is a cult rooted in pseudo-intellectual
| garbage ... that, we are in no way surprised to learn, has a
| sexual harassment problem too.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Well, this is unsurprising.
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