Effective altruism is good actually

Responding to a dumb criticism of effective altruism

Lots of people criticize economics broadly, as a field. This is almost always stupid. They frequently claim that economics as a field assumes that people are always selfish, and mistakenly believe that model assumptions are held to be universally true metaphysical principles. Economists and people who know what they’re talking about have to gently debunk these absurd anti economics ramblings.

That’s sord’ve how I feel reading lots of articles arguing against effective altruism. Effective altruism is a social movement that uses logic and data to figure out the most effective way to better the world. Seems good, right. It’s saved lots of people’s lives. Well, these people in this article think the opposite.

The authors start out explaining that they “believe a more accurate phrase for this concept is “defective altruism” and will therefore use that term for the remainder of this article.”

(I’m slightly tempted to use a derogatory nickname for these authors when writing the rest of the article like “defective-brained people,” but I shall resist this puerile impulse because I am not 6.)

The authors say then

“Above all, being an informed donor means using the information one gathers to help guide resources toward those organizations that are doing the best work in whatever field or cause area one chooses to support.”

I agree with them there. Lets see where ea goes wrong according to them.

Next they say

“By contrast, defective altruism is—by the admission of its proponents—an approach that not only unjustifiably claims the moral high ground in giving decisions, but also implements this bold claim by weighing causes and beneficiaries against one another. In this, it is not moral, but rather, moralistic in the worst sense of the word.”

If this is moralistic then sign me up for being moralistic. Compare three causes.

1 A cause that very effectively saves people’s lives, who would otherwise die of malaria.

2 A cause that very effectively shits on the floor of lots of people.

3 A cause that very effectively distributes homeopathic medicine that doesn’t work.

All of them are effective in their respective fields. However, I think it’s safe to say that one would be more praiseworthy for donating to save people’s lives than for donating to shit on the floor or to do nothing. The world moralistic here, like so much of this article, is a term of abuse, in place of an actual substantive argument.

The authors next say

“Later in the book, Friedman uses the analogy of buying a friend a birthday present to make his point. He asks us to imagine wandering through a mall and arbitrarily selecting a gift for our friend rather than choosing something they’d really appreciate. He then suggests that making a donation based on “thoughtful consideration” requires that we determine what would have the greatest impact. But the cold and hyper-rationalistic birthday giver who followed the defective altruism model would have to opt not to give a present to their friend at all; they would be required by this logic to scour the planet for the person most “worthy and in need” of that birthday gift.”

This is false. The world would likely be worse if you didn’t give gifts to your friends. Effective altruism does not make the claim that people should give all of their money to charity. It just says that people should give a reasonable amount and that they should give it to charity. Thus, raising the demandingness objection to utilitarianism, as a response to effective altruism, when all prominent effective altruists say explicitly that one is not obligated to give everything they have, and Peter Singer only gives about 30%, shows the authors are deeply misinformed about effective altruism.

They also don’t respond to the point Friedman makes. Instead, they make a politician esque pivot, talking about something tangentially related to the point, instead of the argument made. The argument made, that we should be rational in charity, like in gifts, seems like a good one.

The authors next say

“This approach amounts to little more than charitable imperialism, whereby “my cause” is just, and yours is—to one degree or another—a waste of precious resources. This approach is not informed giving. Were such opinions limited to a small audience, we could reasonably dismiss them as a danger only to those unfortunate enough to hear them. However, in taking on this cause and using the bully pulpit of its website as its forum, GiveWell truly is doing more harm than good to both the donor community and those thousands upon thousands of organizations that are doing much-needed work in areas that the defective altruism fringe deems unworthy.”

Effective altruism does say that some causes are better than others. This is because some causes are, in fact, better than others. The shitting on the floor charity is worse than the malaria consortium. Empirically, good charities are hundreds or thousands of times better than average ones. Much like it would be foolish to invest in a plan with a 2% rate of growth per year, rather than one with a 2000% rate of growth per year, it’s foolish to invest in charities that are thousands of times worse than the very best charities. Instead, we should give to very good charities.

They call it charitable imperialism. This is, once again, a term of abuse. It this is charitable imperialism then sign me up. Any approach with sufficiently lax standards that they can’t distinguish between effectively saving lives and effectively shit on the floor, is not good altruism. Some might even say it’s defective.

The claim that givewell is not informed giving is particularly baffling. They literally provide people information about their giving. If telling people information doesn’t make them informed, then I don’t know what does.

The assertion that it does more harm than good has no justification in the article, beyond puerile mudslinging combined with basic logical errors and misunderstanding what effective altruism is.

The authors next say “Unfortunately, as Singer’s TED presentation demonstrated most effectively, the defective altruism movement has determined that only those causes about which it is passionate are worthy of making the cut—American children dying of life-threatening diseases need not get in line but Angolan children can.

In GiveWell’s case, this bizarre approach led to its recommendation to not assist the victims of the Japanese Tsunami. In fact, it discourages support for disaster relief in general. Long-time GiveWell supporter Friedman notes, “Most of those killed by disasters could not have been saved with donations.” Instead, GiveWell has a particular fixation with global health and nutrition charities.”

You would expect that, after presenting GiveWell’s view, the authors would go on to explain why it’s wrong, to do more than scoff at it, call it bizarre, and present it as narcistic. You would, sadly, be wrong.

The basic argument against donating to disaster relief charities is pretty simple. They already get vast influxes of money. Extra money given to them does nearly nothing. On the other hand, extra money given to other, better charities, can save lots of lives.

If we can either save dozens of lives or zero lives, even if the zero lives saved is associated with a feeling of virtue, we should obviously save the dozens of lives. It is bad when people die, and the extreme demands of efficiency only seem counterintuitive when we are not the recipients of the benefits. The fixation with health charities comes from their ability to save lots of lives at a low cost.

The authors next say

“If we all followed such a ridiculous approach, what would happen to:

Domestic efforts to serve those in need?

Advanced research funding for many diseases?

Research on and efforts in creative and innovative new approaches to helping others that no one has ever tried before?

More local and smaller charitable endeavors?

Funding for the arts, and important cultural endeavors such as the preservation of historically important structures and archives?

Volunteerism for the general public, since most “worthy” efforts are overseas and require a professional degree to have what Friedman calls “deep expertise in niche areas”?

Careers in the nonprofit sector? Since the spokespeople for this opinion suggest that it might even be ethical to have a “lucrative job in an immoral corporation” so that you can be a so-called “do-bester” and give all the money away, it is unclear who would then run the charities to which defective altruists would give.”

This reply demonstrates that the authors wholly missed the marginal revolution in economics. Effective altruism advocates doing what is best, given the facts of the world. If everyone was an effective altruist, the facts of the world would change. If enough people were effective altruists to eradicate malaria, then effective altruists wouldn’t advocate any more action on the malaria front. As Scott Alexander says “if everyone gave 10% of their income to effective charity, it would be more than enough to end world poverty, cure several major diseases, and start a cultural and scientific renaissance.”

Malaria bed net distribution has prevented upwards of 450 million malaria cases. That’s about one case for every 11 dollars. 5 billion dollars have been spent on this. The global GDP is about 80 trillion dollars. Thus, the total budget of anti malarial bednet distribution is a miniscule fraction of gdp. The fraction of income that gets spent on anti malarial bed nets is vanishingly small. Despite that it has saved millions of lives. That means that, at the margin, it makes sense to spend money on bed nets rather than giving marginally more funding to an over bloated arts department at your local public university.

The claim that effective altruism advocates against careers in the non profit sector is particularly baffling. EA’s argue that some people are better suited to earning lots and donating it. Others, however, are better suited to working in non profits. Obviously if no one else was working in non profits, the highest value option would be working in non profits.

When deciding what one should do, it is unwise to merely consider the question, “What if everyone did this.” If a friend advises that you leave venue A to go to venue B where it’s less crowded, the correct response would not be “but if everyone did that then venue B would be just as crowded. It would be similarly absurd to object to the advice “never take the first slice,” on the grounds that everyone following that injunction would bring about universal starvation. Acting at the margins involves assuming people will continue acting the way they are now, and deciding how you will act based on that.

The authors, not put off by the dizzying array of poor arguments up to this point continue, writing

“Furthermore, we anticipate that defective altruism inevitably will move us toward a more centralized form of giving where the experts decide where the money goes, rather than individual donors. As Friedman accurately notes, the defective altruism distribution plan “requires a level of expertise that few individuals have.” Thus, over time, we would require a very centralized and top-down approach to marshal and manage social investment and charitable giving decisions in a manner acceptable to the proponents of this approach.”

You might expect that at this point they would present an argument against centralization, against relying on experts to decide where to give. Indeed, it seems natural to rely on the advice of experts to decide where one should give. Few of us have the time or energy to conduct deep investigations to determine which charities are the best, or which problems are worth focusing on. Much like in medicine we generally defer to doctors, it would be reasonable to defer to charitable experts when deciding where to donate.

You would be wrong to expect that. They merely assume the reader shares some intuitive revulsion at terms like “top down” and “centralized,” hoping such phrasing will invoke in the mind of the reader images of the worst abuses of bureaucracy. However, beyond using terms of abuse to describe its nature, no argument is given for why top down charitable giving is even a bad thing. It’s as if it never even occurs to the authors to present arguments against the suppositions of effective altruism—they just assume that using frightening language to describe it will deter readers from supporting effective altruism.

The authors conclude with

“Charity Navigator does not judge whether one type of charity is better than another, because we rely on the intelligence of our users to make charitable decisions that are best for them and the causes they care about—decisions informed by both heart and head. That—and not Big Brother in the guise of defective altruism—comprises the informed giving that we think truly honors the altruistic spirit.”

Other than invoking Orwell there is, once again, no argument given in this paragraph. Charity Navigator, the organization that the authors of the article work for, fails to distinguish analyze whether particular causes are good, instead analyzing whether particular charities are effective at achieving certain causes. This is, however, a bug not a feature. It seems a minimal requirement for an organization that analyzes charities is being able to adequately distinguish between a charity that effectively shits on the floor of lots of people and one that effectively saves lives. To the extent that it leaves questions of whether to give to the floor shitting charity or the against malaria foundation up to the enlightened reader, one wonders what the point of the organization is. If we can use 1000 dollars to either save a life or to buy three books for affluent children, we should use them for the former. Had those who gave to bednet distribution not focused on doing the best, and merely donated to charities they cared about, millions more would be dead and hundreds more would have malaria.

This criticism of effective altruism reads less like genuine criticism and more like a stream of invective. The best summary of it would be “effective altruism is elitist, zealous, superficially enticing, hyper-rationalistic, top-down, cold, Spockesque, defective, moralistic, imperialistic, alarming, insulting, banal, bizarre, impossible and Orwellian.” Thus, I shall respond to it with my own stream of invective. The author’s approach to philanthropy is foolish, callous, scope insensitive, demonstrative of either an unwillingness or inability to do math, and reflective of poor reasoning. The fact that it is the default approach to charity is responsible for a trail of corpses big enough to fill a continent. This bizarre cause relativism is sufficiently defective that it is unable to distinguish between saving lots of lives at a low cost and shitting on the floor.

I think it’s clear which approach is the defective one.