[HN Gopher] Effective Altruism Is Not Effective ___________________________________________________________________ Effective Altruism Is Not Effective Author : animalcule Score : 31 points Date : 2021-04-14 22:13 UTC (46 minutes ago) (HTM) web link (www.philosophersbeard.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.philosophersbeard.org) | skybrian wrote: | This is all about the framing. What question is being answered? | | If the question is "which charity should I donate to" then we've | already narrowed the scope to an individual's action with their | own money. (Although there are some forms of collective behavior | like crowdfunding.) The case for effective altruism seems pretty | good _within that space_. | | If you broaden your scope to all the things people could do | working together, there are other possibilities, but even they | often could use more funds. | lacker wrote: | I share some of these concerns. I was reading this book about the | Congo recently: | | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCJ62YJ/ | | It's a fascinating book for many reasons, but one relevant part | is its interviews with many locals that complain about the | influence of NGOs in central Africa. It seems quite difficult to | measure the success of an NGO in a country that is run by a | dictatorship. There are cases where an organization starts | working on a particular charitable cause, so the government | immediately routes its own funding for that cause elsewhere. Or | the only way for an NGO to operate is to pay high taxes to a | corrupt government. So your money to these charities can | essentially end up in the pocket of dictators, funding genocide. | | I think about these when reading GiveWell's analyses of charity. | Even things like mosquito nets - are we sure that these NGOs are | really providing mosquito nets that wouldn't be provided | otherwise? Or are they crowding out government spending, helping | dictators free up more of their budget for other things? Or are | mosquito nets simply the most appealing of many causes, the | wealthy donors backing GiveWell could easily fund the entire | demand for mosquito nets, and the cause is "kept alive" to enable | GiveWell to raise more funds for other, less-obvious causes? | | It's hard to do much more analysis of charities whose actions are | so remote. I wish there were a GiveWell equivalent but just | focused on giving to help the poor in California, not because I | think the poor in California are so much more deserving than the | rest of the world, but because I think we would be more able to | observe which entities were spending money effectively. | vecplane wrote: | This reads like a strawman perspective on the concept of | 'effective altruism.' | | The 'effective' part in the term is doing a lot of the heavy | lifting when it comes to the definition. It seems reasonable to | focus on actually 'effective' actions with good outcomes, rather | than comparatively ineffective virtual signalling or martyrdom. | | Becoming rich and then helping millions of people with your means | is more impactful than being poor and helping dozens. Both should | be admired and encouraged, but one is clearly more 'effective' | than the other. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-14 23:00 UTC)