The main discussion forum for effective altruism, where members post about charity, ethics, long-term risk, and community decisions.
HN links it for debates on EA, including the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics and the FTX fallout; commenters point to it for internal discussion.
In this thread:
Bingo card (and their rebuttals):
– Effective altruists donate money and think it’s the most effective way to do good. [1][2]
– They think that exploiting people is fine if money is given to a good cause. [3][4][5]
– They think they are so much morally-superior/better than us. [3]
– Sam Bankman-Fried is a thief and he self-identified as an EA, so EA must be bad as a whole. [4][6]
– It’s dangerous because it’s an “end justifies the means” philosophy. [4][5]
– If it’s not perfect then it’s terrible and has no merit whatsoever. [7][8][9]
– They think they are so smart but they just stole the idea of donating part of the income from Christians. [10][11]
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[1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/faqs#objectionsto-effective-altruism
[2] “80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term”: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/
[3] What We Owe The Future (EA book): “naive calculations that justify some harmful action because it has good consequences are, in practice, almost never correct.” and “it's wrong to do harm even when doing so will bring about the best outcome.”
[4] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1591218028381102081.html / https://xcancel.com/willmacaskill/status/1591218028381102081
[5] The Precipice (EA book): “Don't act without integrity. When something immensely important is at stake and others are dragging their…
(A nit, but the quote was from the body of the post, not a comment on the post.)
A decent subthread on this on the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=xa84YyhuAyh9u2ko5
The money came from a grant from OpenPhil for the purpose. EVF didn't publish a cost-benefit analysis my knowledge, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=3yeffQWcRFvmeteqc] suggests it would plausibly cost £1~2M a year to hire similar venues. That said, whether it's worth it to purchase a dedicated venue depends a lot on how much use the venue actually gets.
Ultimately, "we were getting ripped off" is a financial judgement made by CEA. I don't think it really has a great deal to do with the wider effective altruist movement tbh.
I understand the worry, but what's the alternative? Doing nothing? Every day, we are confronted with the facts, and we have to make a decision. Doing nothing could be one of them. I am highly convinced doing something is better than nothing, and the somethings I've found (not all the things, but some things) are Effective altruism.
If you have better proposals, name them, let us discuss and maybe we can do even better!
(the movement is really open about this -- which is one of the reasons some people have seemingly weird beliefs -- simply because some people said 'You should be instead doing X!!', where X was saving humanity from existential risks; maybe you should be shouting at us 'You should be instead doing Y!!', where Y is your idea, and if you're right we sincerely, truly hope you can change our minds)
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
It drives me crazy that everything in SF is designed to either be kid-focused or adult-focused. There's very few places where you can have a serious conversation with a collaborator while with your kids. Dogpatch Hub (right by YC) is one of the few exceptions - excellently stocked kids space, snacks, WiFi, and comfy chairs for adults to work.
I've been working on something similar at Mox (the effective altruism coworking space in the mission) as part of my (joyful parenting)[https://joyfulparentingsf.com/] efforts but it won't be ready until winter when their 1st floor renovations are done.
Others who feel the same way may also be interested in this old post i wrote about (how to be productive before your baby turns one)[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xocdNsa8At3bmQKm3/how-be-productive-before-your-baby-turns-one] on the EA forum
Another similar idea is mission hedging.
If there is a company that you believe is causing some harm, you can buy shares of that company and donate any proceeds to a charity that cancels out that harm.
For example, if you are worried about climate change, you can buy shares of an oil company and pledge to donate the proceeds to an organization lobbying for a carbon tax.
If the oil company does well, the carbon tax lobby will need more financing, which you'll be in a position to provide as a shareholder of the oil company.
This idea was developed by economist Brigitte Roth Tran: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2017042pap.pdf .
Hauke Hillebrandt also has a great write up: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iZp7TtZdFyW8eT5dA/a-generalized-strategy-of-mission-hedging-investing-in-evil
But what is "Effective Altruism"? Is it a charity? A movement? Both?
The link https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fd3iQRkmCKCCL289u/Effectivealtruism.org circles back to itself, with no simple explanation.
The "intro" from the front page has 2800+ words and isn't clear either: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism
That intro is itself prefaced with a paragraph in italics that recommends a whole "handbook" for a "more thorough introduction". I'm afraid to click on that for fear it leads to a whole library of volumes discussing general ideas about life, freedom, religion and other minor and trivial concepts.
Why can't organizations' blogs have a simple, clear and easily accessible "about us" link that describes what they do in one sentence.