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.
This is a good paper and well done to the authors.
I think section 3 is very weak. I am not flagging this as a flaw in the argument just the area that I see the most room for improvement in the paper and/or the most need for follow up research. The authors do say that more research is needed which is good.
Some examples of what I mean by the argument is weak:
Why I think more research is useful here:
Note cross-posting a summarised comment on this paper from a discussion on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/798404410293244/permalink/1021820764618273/?comment_id=1022125664587783
This appears to be demonstrably false. And in very strong terms given how strong a claim you've made and how I only need to find one person to prove it wrong. We have many non-utilitarian egalitarian luminaries making a concerted effort to come up with exactly the metrics that would tell us, based on egalitarian/priorian principles, what charities/interv... (read more)