By John Halstead, Stefan Schubert, Joseph Millum, Mark Engelbert, Hayden Wilkinson, and James Snowden. Cross-posted from the Centre for Effective Altruism blog. A direct link to the article can be found here.
Abstract
In this paper, we discuss Iason Gabriel’s recent piece on criticisms of effective altruism. Many of the criticisms rest on the notion that effective altruism can roughly be equated with utilitarianism applied to global poverty and health interventions which are supported by randomised control trials and disability-adjusted life year estimates. We reject this characterisation and argue that effective altruism is much broader from the point of view of ethics, cause areas, and methodology. We then enter into a detailed discussion of the specific criticisms Gabriel discusses. Our argumentation mirrors Gabriel’s, dealing with the objections that the effective altruist community neglects considerations of justice, uses a flawed methodology, and is less effective than its proponents suggest. Several of the criticisms do not succeed, but we also concede that others involve issues which require significant further study. Our conclusion is thus twofold: the critique is weaker than suggested, but it is useful insofar as it initiates a philosophical discussion about effective altruism and highlights the importance of more research on how to do the most good.
Upvoted. Maybe this is just what's typical for academic style, but when you address Gabriel it seems you're attributing the points of view presented to him, while when I read the original paper I got the impression he was collating and clarifying some criticisms of effective altruism so they'd be coherent enough they'd affect change. One thing about mainstream journalism is it's usually written for a specific type of audience the editor has in mind, even if the source claims to be seeking a general audience, and so they spin things a certain way. While criticisms of EA definitely aren't what I'd call sensationalistic, they're written in a style of a rhetorical list of likes and dislikes about the EA movement. It's taken for granted the implied position of the author is somehow a better alternative than what EA is currently doing, as if no explanation is needed.
Gabriel fixes this by writing the criticisms of EA up in a way that we'd understand what about the movement would need to change to satisfy critics, if we were indeed to agree with critics. Really, except for the pieces published on the Boston Review, I feel like other criticisms of EA were written not for EA at all, but rather a review of EA for other do-gooders as a warning to stay away from the movement. It's not the job of critics to solve all our problems for us, but being a movement that is at least willing to try to change in the face of criticism, it's frustrating nobody takes us up on the opportunity given what blindspots we may have and tries to be constructive.
Thanks for the comment! We do go to some length to make clear that we're unsure whether Gabriel himself endorses the objections. We're pretty sure he endorses some (systemic change, counterfactuals), but less sure about the others.