Ineffective Altruism: Are there ideologies which generally cause there adherents to have worse impacts?
By Nathan Young @ 2019-10-17T09:24 (+1)
Let's imagine that establishment liberals dominated funding councils across the world and time and again made poor decisions in regard to maximising wellbeing. It would then be worth think if there was a specific way to aid them in making better ones. Are there ideologies which time and again cause people to make significantly worse choices than a typical person?
RyanCarey @ 2019-10-17T09:35 (+13)
Many infamous ideologies have impaired decision-making in important positions leading to terrible consequences like wars and harmful revolutions: communism, fascism, ethno-nationalism, racism, etc.
richard_ngo @ 2019-10-17T14:13 (+14)
Agreed - in fact, maybe a better question is whether there are any ideologies where strong adherence doesn't lead you to make poor decisions.
Pablo_Stafforini @ 2019-10-18T12:03 (+8)
Pinker lists ideology as one of his five "inner demons" in The Better Angels of our Nature, together with predatory violence, dominance, sadism and revenge.
SamuelKnoche @ 2019-10-18T07:07 (+3)
Effective altruism, I hope.
anonymous_ea @ 2019-10-18T19:31 (+1)
While I think that was a valuable post, the definition of ideology in it is so broad that even things like science and the study of climate change would be ideologies (as kbog points out in the comments). I'm not sure what system or way of thinking wouldn't qualify as an ideology based on the definition used.