https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism
Sorry for another non-sneer NSFW post. But thought this article on EA might be interesting, I certainly learned a few things about the early history of EA. It does sneers itself at EA people for example (even if it ends on a positive note):
“I know E.A.s who no longer seek out the opinions or input of their colleagues at work, because they take themselves to have a higher I.Q.”
It goes nicely from ‘Why shovel shit if you can become rich and pay 20 people to shovel shit?’ to ‘Ow god human extinction! The light of human consciousness! Halp! … worrying about climate change? AGI! engineered pathogens! Nanomachines son, that is what going to kill us all. Get yer ass to Mars! (TBH: I made those last 2 up) Or worse, we might not develop AGI at all!’ And then in a move which will shock nobody, surprise motherfuckers EA does cryptocurrencies! (and suddenly they can’t find capable people to shovel the shit).
Warning it is very long (about half a moldbug ;) ), and starts of a bit gonzo and slow.
very good article. not itself a sneer as you say, but much to sneer at though, at least in observations & quotes:
“In the week I spent in Oxford, I heard almost nothing about the month-old war in Ukraine. I could see how comforting it was, when everything seemed so awful, to take refuge on the higher plane of millenarianism.”
“He warned her, however, that it was ‘pretty easy to justify anything on altruistic grounds if your reasoning is skewed enough.’”
“I get a lot of joy thinking about the early stages—every day for lunch we had Sainsbury’s baguettes with hummus, and it felt morally appropriate”
Absolutely sums up what a farce EA has become. Seems early criticisms that EAs adjacency to capitalists would corrupt it have been validated. Nick Beckstead is on the board of FTX now and SBF (and the desire to capture more people like him) really seems to have an outsized impact on the direction of the movement as a whole.
It’s incredibly funny to me that the most concrete example of an EA engaging with actual political systems is SBF attempting to get crypto deregulated, there is acknowledgment of how atomized their action is but absolutely no attempts to change that.
Lots of talk of future human lives but absolutely zero focus on how our current systems might dictate their quality.
Edit: I’ve been thinking more about the aesthetic preferences of the movement as well and I feel it lends credence to the criticisms of it as a quasi religion. It allows these people to absolve the guilt of witnessing the suffering around them (and their responsibility in its perpetuation) by framing any action on it as inefficiency, therefor immoral when compared to the actions that EA presents them. By partaking in almost performative personal austerity they can continue to enjoy high status jobs and the trappings afforded by them, I’d be curious how many earn to give people are still living on the 25k a year.
The idea of them devolving into an IQ contest is really ironic and hilarious.
Good article but this sentence was unintentionally hilarious. To what standard is doing your own laundry considered being ‘frugal’???
also fun to realize that Sam B-F is basically holding up about half the crypto market at this point. existential risk comes home to roost
[deleted]
I have drunk in pubs where just the act of ordering a pint of water would have a good chance of getting the landlord to throw you out and in rougher ones where you’d be risking a kicking. If you were spotted filling the glass from a can you’d definitely be out and possibly barred.
MacAskill seems to be going a bit more mask-off about X-Risk these days.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/william-macaskill-beginning-history
The article seems to imply there are two camps, the ones dealing with current issues and the “longtermist” who are trying to deal with future issues but aren’t future issues directly proportional to current issues?
We know issues like famine have structural consequences for hundreds of years. If you really do care about the trillions of humans that are going to be born in the future, instead of burrying coal for them to use why not help their “ancestors” - the poor of today?
The fact of the matter is that it’s better to give the tools for future humans to solve future problems instead of trying to solve them now. Those tools are going to be increasing the human and technological capital stock of the future by investing in poverty reduction and education today.
took me a long time time to read, but worth it. good article