(Crosspost) Is Effective Altruism just a giant meme?

By cryptopsyfan69420 @ 2024-10-05T23:33 (–18)

I have a "friend" on a small vegan forum who made a post critiquing what he believes to be some issues in the EA movement. I will provide a link as well as paste here his post. He is curious to see what responses to his criticisms are. You can respond either here or make an account there if you are so inclined. There is also a little bit of discussion going on there, if you're interested in reading it and jumping in.

https://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?p=52449#p52449

As someone who strongly advocates for the principles and ideas of effective altruism, I have no shortage of criticisms of the movement. Here are a couple (may add more later).

The "most effective charities" probably aren't very effective to begin with.
Wanna guess how much it costs to save a life with the most effective charities? Right now, the top charities on EA Charity Evaluator GiveWell can save a life for about five grand a piece.

Let's not act like that isn't a lot of money for a majority of people. I think where a lot of EA members go wrong is that they sort of downplay that and try to make it as though it isn't much money (It only costs a few thousand dollars!) which frankly is pretty tone-deaf because to the average person that's a small fuckin' fortune. I've noticed that a lot of EA members are kind of confused when people are baffled by that number, as if to think.

The main reason why it costs so much is mainly because of diminishing returns; Looking at GiveWell reports from 2010 via the Wayback Machine, these charities (and similar ones no longer listed) were able to save lives for a few hundred bucks (and yes, I accounted for inflation). The low hanging fruit for this was picked a long time ago, and it's getting more and more expensive to save lives with these charities.

Of course it's still good to fund them, but I do question the usefulness of funding charities that deal with things like Mosquito Netting (most notably the Against Malaria Foundation), when really it would very likely be more effective to just cut out the middle man and exterminate mosquitoes as a whole, which not only would free up a lot of donation money but would also remove all the other issues that come with mosquitoes. CRISPR technology should be on the EA agenda brah brah.

It's also an opportunity cost. Effective Altruism is all about doing the most good, and taking into consideration such opportunity costs. The opportunity cost here of focusing too much on human related issues consequentially leads to...

Not focusing much on animal rights issues.
As much funding as human charities get to the point of being well beyond diminishing returns, effective animal charities get comparatively little funding. These charities could benefit hugely from millions of dollars of funding, which would help immensely with the reduction of animal suffering, which one of the largest causes of suffering on the planet, and one of the most overlooked (and most importantly, one we can very easily do something about).

Yes, folks in the EA community do often bring up animal welfare as a serious concern, but it often seems to get overlooked despite how much good someone can do simply by donating a thousand bucks a year and being a casual advocate. I theorize that the reason why it isn't promoted much is because discussing animal rights issues personally troubles people with their own actions (whereas no one is necessarily personally responsible for children getting malaria) and they don't wannt turn off potential converts. But think of it this way, you're mostly going to be appealing to people in the "rational" community, and if somone who claims to be rational is turned off by the notion of considering his or her day to day actions may not be ethical, that person probably isn't rational to begin with. And let's not even get started on climate change.

"Earning to give" is not only morally dubious, but kind of stupid.
Of course it depends on your career. If you're in a lucrative but useful career like in STEM or Medicine, and donate a large amount of your income that's perfectly fine, and in fact I encourage it, and really should be the main method of attack for the movement. But alas, a large pillar of Effective Altruism is taking on morally grey but highly lucrative jobs such as those in banking and finance and donating the vast majority of the income to charity.

It's probably to do with the fact that being in finance (banker, consultant, whatever) is pretty much something any jackass can do. Pushing money around, dealing with people, risk assessment, you can pretty much just turn your brain off really, especially compared to technical fields. But banking is not only not a very useful job, it's also incredibly morally dubious to work for companies that do fuck all for the world aside from scam customers and invest the money in fossil fuel industries and terrorist organizations. Like OK, yeah, better you have the job than some schmuck who wouldn't donate anything and would spend the money on cars and luxury homes, but there are other jobs you can get that are not only useful, but comparative in their income.

There's also the idea that if you're in the bank or whatever you can influence it more to be less shitty, but I have my doubts about that. First of all, the reason why these banks are so rich is because they do shady shit (leaving you with less to give), so it's probably counterproductive in a sense, and secondly, the chances of you making a change like that in an evil as fuck industry are ridiculously tiny it's not even worth considering. Really, it's easier and more effective to encourage people to use local/community banks if possible instead of one of the big names (even the least shitty giant bank is still incredibly shitty).

Another element to consider is that finance is one of the few fields where your alma mater is relevant. With STEM or Med School, alma mater isn't particularly relevant (as long as it's accredited), since the licensing is what really matters, and anyone with enough intelligence and hard work can achieve it. But there isn't any sort of licensing or certifications in the financial fields, so employers have to sift through tons of applications quickly, and just use top schools as a sort of shorthand (whether or not a more "prestigious" education is actually meaningful). I'm bringing this up because it's pretty absurd how the EA community just pushes this aside and just sort of operates under the assumption that Ivy League education is a given. Yeah sorry, not everyone is in a position like that. Again, the tone deafness.

But I reiterate, if we're talking about a person who is seeking a university level education, STEM and Med school are the best options. In STEM, you could engage in things like green infrastructure and research, and Medicine, obviously you''ll be saving and improving lives. Both of these are potentially highly lucrative, and you're actually doing something good and useful, effectively doubling your positive impact.

And if you don't quite have the chops to do something like that, no problem. I just tell people, go into vocational training, get something that pays like 70-80k a year, and donate 10k a year to effective charities and you should be set. Those jobs (plumber, welder, electrician, etc) are useful as hell too!

Anyway, what are YOUR thoughts on the EA movement? Any criticisms you wanna add? Any disagreements with me?