Why The Hell Are So Many Arguments Against Effective Altruism Incoherent Rambles Filled Only With Emotionally Tainted Words, Snark, and Air Quotes
A rant
I’m not a fan of emotivism. I think saying “murder is wrong” is substantively different from saying “boo! murder.” Moral statements are not just emoting. But one challenge to this thesis comes from a lot of critics of effective altruism.
It really, really seems like they’re just emoting. Robinson says
The first thing that should raise your suspicions about the “Effective Altruism movement” is the name. It is self-righteous in the most literal sense. Effective altruism as distinct from what? Well, all of the rest of us, presumably—the ineffective and un-altruistic, we who either do not care about other human beings or are practicing our compassion incorrectly.
Really, the name? It’s a bad thing that movements have nice-sounding names? Does Robinson object to being called pro-choice, because pro-lifers would deny that they’re actually enabling more choice by allowing murder.
The title of the article by Penna and Berger is “The Elitist Philanthropy of So-Called Effective Altruism.” The subtitle is just invective.
The superficially enticing “logic” of effective altruism ultimately leads to a moralistic, hyper-rationalistic, top-down approach to philanthropy that can kill the very altruistic spirit it claims to foster.
They also say
We believe a more accurate phrase for this concept is “defective altruism” and will therefore use that term for the remainder of this article.
It is sadly thus that the very human impulse to help others and the mantra of Charity Navigator since its inception—that people should become informed donors and give with their heads as well as their hearts—have been infused with logic so cold that even Mr. Spock would cringe upon hearing it.
it is not moral, but rather, moralistic in the worst sense of the word.
This approach amounts to little more than charitable imperialism,
In GiveWell’s case, this bizarre approach
Lots of snark, and very few arguments, as I noted in my review of the article. Robinson even made the title of his article “Defective Altruism,” in quite a childish move. Yet this seems to be common in many unserious critics (most of the critics are unserious). This article makes it sound like effective altruists are some rising dark force.
These ideologies scare me, and I want to engage with them seriously — not because I believe in them, but because they are seemingly rational, relying on the language of science, moral philosophy, and statistics. They are increasingly influential among policymakers, intellectuals, well-funded institutions, and the richest men in the world. Their ubiquity makes them pernicious and hard to combat. To take them on, we must critique their philosophical foundations, their rhetoric, and their material impacts simultaneously.
In many of the articles, it seems like it hasn’t even occurred to the authors that they’re supposed to be making an argument. Instead, they seem like they’re just venting about how frustrated they are by effective altruism. Well, morality being demanding is very frustrating sometimes, but that’s no reason to replace arguments with snark and air-quotes-filled rants.
Lots of the others seem to focus more on the genuineness of the EAs motivations. They ignore the vast number of lives saved by EA, and focus on other ancillary points. Reminds me of this image.
This is generally sneered at when applied to other movements. If someone said “I vote republican because democrats are self-righteous and moralizing,” we wouldn’t think that was a good reason. And yet this seems to be what a huge number of the critics of EA do.
This is, while not conclusive, some evidence that the critics of EA have little of substance to offer. If much of what they say simply involves being snarky, they likely have few substantive critiques to level.
This is a rather frustrating trend. When a person characterizes EA as having some property, and then mock that property, it may seem like they’re devastatingly critiquing EA, when really they’re just being snarky.
For an argument against EA to succeed, it should show either
We do not have significant moral reasons to make the world better.
EA doesn’t do it well.
(The second one wouldn’t be a critique of the idea that we should do good better, but it would dispute current methods of the movement, so it’s fair game as a critique).
But so few critiques of EA take this shape. The critics are so badly confused, their arguments so poor. It’s often very frustrating to review.
I think the best explanation of why critics so often resort to such childish methods is that they just don’t have a lot to say that substantively critiques the movement.
I started writing a critique of https://unherd.com/2022/09/effective-altruism-is-the-new-woke/ but it just lacks substantive arguments.
"Longtermism is an unashamedly nerdy endeavour, implicitly framed as a superhero quest that skinny, specky, brainy philosophers in Oxford are best-placed to pursue — albeit by logic-chopping not karate chopping."
Just a lot of snark.