Effective Altruism Making Waves

I've only been doing this for a few weeks, so not yet. I'm archiving all the emails I get, so eventually I should have a reasonable trend estimate. I've set a reminder to check in on this in six months.

It should be possible to scrape from twitter for earlier dates.

From my feedly since July 13th 2018 there have been at least 1650 tweets with the phrase"effective altruism" and 128 with the phrase "effective altruist".

As a side note it seems that there are a higher proportion of negative tweets with "effective altruist" than "effective altruism".

In relation to short / medium term, i am saying that short term gains are more geared toward welfarism and *veg* approaches rather than projects such as rights / anti-speciesism in terms of anti-exploitation. So whilst we could view conventional EAA interventions as part of a bigger picture, we're not exploring these issues as part of how they fit together in a broader context, particularly in terms of different moral theories or how it is that different perspectives aim to reduce suffering. In the sense of what is funded / emphasised through effective altruism then there are conflicting overarching ideas which in my view need to be considered and resolved in order to be inclusive / representative.

For most organisations which already fit with "pragmatism" this is a bit of a non-issue. However, for those which are more politicised they can be marginalised in relation to how funding is allocated and how powerful alliances are constructed around ideology. This i would argue has happened with most of the large considered to be EA aligned organisations. This to me overlooks how narrow the framework for intervention actually is. To illustrate this point we can look at where problems have arisen with organisations ACE has considered evaluating such as A Well Fed World.

"Declined to be reviewed/published for the following reason(s):

• They disagree with Animal Charity Evaluators’ evaluation criteria, methodology, and/or philosophy.
• They do not support Animal Charity Evaluators’ decision to evaluate charities relative to one another."

Despite this outcome they don't appear a good fit for conventional EAA because the work they do is difficult to measure and the groups they support as part of their work so small it is difficult to measure their impact going forward (positive or negative). However, that potential impact is diminished (in terms of including different perspectives) further by favouring resourcing conventionally aligned organisations over those not part of the EAA family (which isn't to say they don't tacitly accept EA principles) which then grow at a much faster rate potentially crowding out other ideas and organisations. For those resourced and largely ideologically aligned i'm thinking of Animal Equality, The Humane League, Good Food Institute, Mercy for Animals, ProVeg, Reducetarian Foundation, Albert Schweitzer Foundation, Open Cages, Compassion In World Farming.

What happens here is that EAs tend to point toward funding directed toward cat / dog rescues over farmed animal protection, and it is correct to note how egregiously disproportionate that continues to be. However, within the somewhat delicate and nascent space of farmed animal protection, funding a small number of ideologically aligned groups has been disruptive in the movement as a whole (for instance affordability in terms of conferences, sponsorship, outreach and so on), and this impact hasn't been factored in (though it remains to be seen whether the new ACE Effective Animal Advocacy project will address some of these issues, though perhaps only implicitly). A further issue would arise that if it doesn't happen and if EA Funds doesn't shift beyond Lewis' general considerations then the new panel for EA Funds will present a missed opportunity. Lewis might be concerned about whether people would be a good fit and could agree on certain issues, but it seems unfortunate that conclusion was drawn before an attempt made to really challenge the foundation of EAA, for instance in relation to normative uncertainty. However, here it depends on what time Lewis would have to oversee that, and i suspect not enough to make it a viable possibility which i think illustrates the reason that underpins the new approach.

Traditionally, organisations that are more challenging to the "mainstream" have often struggled for funding (so therefore by the lights of many aren't very successful), and are often too small for Open Philanthropy to consider, or EA Funds at least up until now because of the time constraints involved in doing so (time spent per dollar donated). Indeed, it is challenging to present a case for many organisations, other than it is important to have multiple perspectives / organisations in a movement format, though, as Lewis pointed out in relation to EA Funds he also worries about discord. But this isn't a reason not to do that more challenging work, and neither are time constraints. If anything, these are fundamental considerations that ought to have been incorporated at the inception of EAA and the Open Philanthropy Animal Welfare Program, but it doesn't appear to me they ever really were. Partly because it appears EA leaned heavily on conventional organisational leaders of the larger animal organisations prior to EAA, and there isn't much evidence those leaders took those types of considerations onboard either. Particularly i'm thinking Paul Shapiro, Wayne Pacelle, Nick Cooney, Bruce Friedrich, Matt Ball who largely preferred an agenda and approach grounded in "pragmatism", something which was quite appealing to many utilitarians but not to rights advocates, who became unflatteringly associated with terms such as extremist, fundamentalist, absolutist, puritan, hardliner in the associated rhetoric. Their value further diminshed because a lack of pragmatism seemed to become equated with a lack of effectiveness.

None of this is to say that it is "wrong" to fund any of the top or standout ACE charities (for instance) from an EA perspective, but taken together it's a stretch even for effective altruism. So from my view funding is disproportionate, but this also reflects the view of the EAA trust network presumably. If we had a better idea of who exactly that was, including who the CEA was consulting then it would be easier to point out where adjustments could be made, so we might have diversity of viewpoints and representation within an EA framework, or we could at least consider how it is that it could function differently given a variety of scenarios / counterfactuals. Otherwise we have no real idea of how effective we are being collectively, we are instead looking at things from a fairly conventional EAA view, which from my perspective is loaded toward de-politicised short terms gains associated with "veg" and welfare approaches.