Note: if you've come here because you would like to give your first impression of effective altruism, then introductions are here and here.
Note2: Robin Hanson has outlined some problems with exposing misalignment between others' actions and professed beliefs about charity.
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Today, Robin Hanson wrote a blog post that explains the importance of outside criticism.
Friendly local criticism isn't usually directed at trying to show a wider audience flaws in your arguments. If your audience won’t notice a flaw, your friendly local critics have little incentive to point it out. If your audience cared about flaws in your arguments, they’d prefer to hear you in a context where they can expect to hear motivated capable outside critics point out flaws
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If you are the one presenting arguments, and if you didn’t try to ensure available critics, then others can reasonably conclude that you don’t care much about persuading your audience that your argument lacks hidden flaws.
This raises the question: who are the best critics of effective altruism?
Ben Kuhn has given some criticism but he's an insider. (Since countered by Katja.) Geuss has written some helpful criticism but he's also involved with effective giving. Giles has passed on some thoughts from a friend. These critics have been heroic but they are few in number. It figures, as most of us aren't incentived to say bad things about a movement with which we affiliate, and if we were forced to, we might still pull some punches.
So what about outsiders? Well, 80,000 Hours have received some criticism on earning to give. They also debated some socialists. But these discussions were brief and narrowly focussed clashes between entrenched political ideologies. Others have targeted us for criticism that was so vitriolic that it was hard to find the constructive parts, such as William Schambra, Ken Berger and Robert Penna and the always sarcastic RationalWiki. Edit: also some criticism by Scott Walter.
So several years into our movement, that's all we have to show for criticism. A few insiders and a few fanatics? It's not to say we can't harvest some insights from there - by god we should try. But one would hope we have more.
If we cast the net wider, Warren's son Peter Buffett has debated William MacAskill on the effectiveness of charity, which is kind-of cool. There are more general aid critics: William Easterly, who is a fairly thoughtful economist and Dambisa Moyo, who I know less about. But these they don't really get to the heart of what we care about - if most aid is ineffective, then it would just be important to research it even harder.
Alternatively, we can look at more narrowly focused critics. LessWrong is often mentioned as a useful source for criticism, and it has usefully challenged philosophical positions held by some effective altruists. Its founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky has challenged hedonistic utilitarianism and some forms of moral realism in the Fun Theory sequence, the enigmatic (or merely misunderstood) Metaethics sequence and the fictionalised dilemma Three Worlds Collide. But these mostly address utilitarians and spare other effective altruists. Of course, Eliezer no outsider to effective altruism - he played some part in founding it. The most upvoted post on LessWrong of all time was in fact feedback from Holden Karnofsky about its sponsor-organisation MIRI. Again, the relevance of this to most EAs is a stretch.
In turn, Holden Karnofsky has recieved suggestions for GiveWell might react to philosophical considerations by LessWrong veterans like Paul Christiano, Carl Shulman, Eliezer and Nick Beckstead. Again, all insiders.
So here's how I sum up our problem. Almost all of our critics are insiders. Barring a couple of heroic attempts at self-criticism, we've primarily attracted criticism about donating and earning to give. We've also offended a couple of fanatics, and I don't have a strong view on whether we've learned from those. This is unsurprising. Taking self-criticism is hard and endorsing it or writing it is harder. Eliezer would say it feels like shooting one of your own men. Scott Siskind says, "Criticizing the in-group is a really difficult project I’ve barely begun to build the mental skills necessary to even consider. I can think of criticisms of my own tribe. Important criticisms, true ones. But the thought of writing them makes my blood boil."
But criticism seems especially important now as effective altruism is growing fast, our culture is starting to consolidate on the Facebook group and here and as we model it in the popular talks and introductory materials that we give to new community members.
To develop the effective altruist movement, it's essential that we ask people how we've failed, or how our ideas are inadequate.
So an important challenge for all of us is to find better critics.
Let me know if there's any big criticm that I've missed, or if you know someone who can engage with and poke holes in our ideas.
Related: The perspectives on Effective Altruism we Don't Hear by Jess Whittlestone. The Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
I suppose I could be counted among those "outside critics" the topic mentioned. What surprised me, however, was that I expected to find an article eschewing the role of criticism and suggesting ways of removing critics, inside and outside the ranks of its members. This is what one often encounters in organizations that feel threatened by anything but the most complementary remarks on what they are doing. In addition, I stopped by this site for one, and only one, purpose. To briefly describe my thoughts about a world where "altruism" would be a superfluous term, not to criticize anything about what people are, perhaps must, do in the world we have now, as it is given. In that, I always regard any tasks which even temporarily mitigate the amount of suffering or damage caused on this planet as essential if we are even to tread water for awhile.
Actually, however, I don't regard myself as a critic at all. I don't really know enough about your group to even begin to presume I could judge it in any general or particular way. I also did not regard my one, and only, post (a comment on the topic "What is effective altruism") as a "critique" in any real sense of that term. But I did think it might be useful to offer a view of a world beyond charity and altruism. I've always regarded such portraits as useful, if for no other reason than the opportunity permitting one to check what they are doing to be sure they are not closing important doors to the future even as they open doors in the present. So, that was my reason for coming and making that post.
My own job however, as I define it, is not related to the here and now, except as I and the newspaper I steward suggest things that might be done in the here and now that would substantially alter the underlying reality we have all come to accept as the normative script for the future. That I think is a mistake that is made all too often. We refer to the reality of the present as if it were the only possible reality, and often refer to it in invariant terms such as "human nature". I don't agree with that position at all, and regard it as one of the most persistent and pernicious obstacles to changing our reality and the obvious future it offers us. I happen to think reality is an alterable feature of the human project, and subject to rewrite if we wish to do that. The old scripts, the ones that have been written for us and handed to us, are only 'real' as long as we accept them as reality and tacitly consent to them. In any case, that's how I view the matter.
On a personal level, I might actually offer a critique on the concept of "altruism" but I won't. I'll only briefly mention that for me, altruism (our habits and practices of it) implies a dependency on unaccountable individuals and institutions to set the priorities and provide for the essentials of survival to the people of the world. My view is that, when it comes to essentials, that is a job societies and civilizations as a whole should be doing. Whether they do it or not is beside the point. The fact remains, they should be. I regard it as a core function of having a society in the first place. And so, you will understand that I view charity and altruism as an obstacle to understanding that and rewriting the scripts of reality that would make it so. All, without for one minute disregarding how essential charity and altruism are at the moment and that they need to at least be supported even in the midst of demanding that we transfer large swatches of what they do to the public responsibility form managing and delivering such basic services.
But that's just my personal view on these matters, and I've really no intention of posting anything to that effect or arguing the case further. But I did think the piece on omoiyari and a world without need for welfare or altruism or anything like those might be useful in some way. I hope it is, and wish you all the best. omoiyari, Red Slider