Effective Local Altruism
By MatthewK @ 2024-09-28T05:14 (+4)
Nate Silver and Zvi Mowshowitz object to EA's impartiality: treating everyone equally - no matter if they are far away - means spending resources in a way that puts you and "your people" at a disadvantage, which may cause issues later.
From https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2024/09/27/book-review-on-the-edge-the-future/#more-23968 :
...But that is not the only reason you need spatial and knowledge-based partiality.
Civilization would not run, people would not survive or reproduce or even produce, the social contract would collapse, if you did not favor and exchange with and cooperate uniquely with those around you beyond what you do with strangers halfway around the world. All that, and real competition, is necessary. Those strangers are not only people too but also certified Popes, so please treat them right, but that does not mean full equal standing. The alternative is not game theory compatible, it is not fit, it does not long survive.
There is little virtue in being too virtuous to sustain that virtue, and indeed if that is a thing you are thinking of as virtuous than you have chosen your virtues poorly.
[Silver:] And even if I think there’s something honorable about acting morally in a mostly selfish world, I also wonder about the long-term evolutionary fitness of some group of people who wouldn’t defend their own self-interest, or that of their family, their nation, their species, or even their planet, without at least a little more vigor than they would that of a stranger. I want the world to be less partial than it is, but I want it to be at least partially partial. (6653)
Yep.
My main response to this is that more prosperous, innovative, technologically advanced, and free countries around the world is good for "my group" and me personally, though I would be sympathetic to arguments that we should focus our global development money on countries that are more likely to become US allied democracies than the ones which will become CCP-allied dictatorships.
A secondary response is that instead of Zvi and Nate saying "we aren't EAs because we think its important to care for local issues so our altruism can be sustainable and strengthen ourselves and our communities" there should be a branch of EA that says "we are EAs who look for the most effective interventions locally, making our altruism sustainable and strengthening ourselves and our communities."
The logical conclusion I see from the thinking above is to create GiveWell_USA, GiveWell_Canada, GiveWell_NewYork... etc. What are the most tractable+important+neglected charitable funding opportunities for improving the health+wealth of the USA/Canada/New York/etc?
Even more locally, let's consider the University level. I'm at Northwestern University. If I were to pick a change to NU that would most strengthen us for the least money, an idea would be be buying a ton of dry-erase markers to put in all the classrooms with white boards (I've been in multiple classes where the professor tries to write but finds all the markers are dried out!) Buying and donating dry-erase markers for NU could be considered a Local EA intervention. I've also heard some good things about UV disinfectant lights, but I haven't looked into it much.
At a larger scale, YIMBYs and other activists are trying to strengthen their communities, though often in an innumerate way, and often they become trapped in intractable politics.
Zvi's work fighting the Jones Act can be considered a sort of Effective Local Altruism for the US, but that's not the sort of project that can absorb large amounts of funding.
If I wanted to strengthen the US with my donation, what should I do with it? I don't know! I wish I did! At a minimum, donating to underfunded schools seems like a solid choice: there would be no political battles and it would result in smart and educated people who are healthier and more productive. A real answer would involve lots of spreadsheets.
And if you decide where to donate based off of the expected impact calculations in a spreadsheet, then according to me, you're an EA.
Mjreard @ 2024-09-28T20:22 (+21)
Quoted Zvi here seems to fail at some combination of thinking on the margin and distinguishing means and ends. GiveWell_USA is also not what Zvi's take implies you should do.
Quoted Zvi emphasizes that functioning, long-run-sustainable groups/societies are necessary for achieving big things in the world. If you wholly neglect in-group beneficence, your group will fail, and you'll fail at whatever big thing you were trying to do. This is true and I think any sensible EA acknowledges it.
What is not true and potentially down-right-silly, is saying that in-group beneficence must therefore become your terminal goal. I fear that's what this post suggests.
If your terminal goal is global well-being, you should do whatever amount of in-group beneficence maximizes global well-being. And crucially, it is extremely implausible this amount is 100% of your effort or anything close to that. People watch Netflix and buy Range Rovers – these do nothing for their communities, yet no one worries the communities where people do these things are at risk of failure. In fact, the leisure hours and number of nice cars are often how community success is measured. That's because these consumer goods are treated as terminal goods. Other things can fill that role with similarly low risk to group sustainability.
I think quoted Zvi is attacking a strawman EA who neglects all his relationships and investments to give his last scrap of food to the poor right now. Yes, that strawman EA's movement won't last long. EAs with good jobs getting promotions donating 10% or building highly-functional, well-paying non-profits are not that straw man though. They just notice that the marginal income/effort others put towards nicer cars and bigger houses can be applied to something more meaningful.
Separately, I don't think GiveWell_USA is what Zvi's quote has in mind. Neighbors and co-nationals are arbitrary groupings in more ways than just morally. I think Zvi's suggestion is to invest in especially reciprocal and compounding relationships for you and your people defined by some measure you care about. For most people this is a cluster of family and close friends, for rationalists, I think it's other rationalists, maybe churches, I don't know. I suppose you could choose the US as your tribe, but reciprocity is going to be a lot weaker than in the previous examples and will thereby suffer from Zvi's critique. An American Patriots Union building lots of tiny homes for the American homeless [1] might well see it's coffers and membership run dry after a few decades of none of the people they housed feeling particularly inclined to join or otherwise help the APU in particular. Nothing about the beneficiaries being American made this inherently more reciprocal than bednets for foreigners.
If what you want is a guide on how to build a group that endlessly accumulates social capital and never deploys that capital to any end in particular, I think the partnership of major law/consulting/finance firms or the major political parties are the right models to work with. I just don't think those groups' practice of self-interest is worthwhile compared to saving lives.
- ^
let's say hypothetically this is the most QALYs/$ you can do in the US
MatthewK @ 2024-09-29T17:45 (+1)
I guess I don't really understand Zvi and Nate here. Having a healthy community is important, and becoming a monk and starving yourself decreases the amount of positive impact you can have. EAs know this and consider sacrificing long-term resources for short term donations/impact a mistake.
Good point about nationalities being arbitrary and not really reciprocal.