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Another Critique of Effective Altruism - LessWrong
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jsteinhardt
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A 2014 LessWrong post by Jacob Steinhardt (later an AI safety researcher) critiquing EA methodology; relevant for understanding historical debates about rationalist/EA community epistemics and decision-making culture that influenced AI safety movement norms.
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Summary
Jacob Steinhardt critiques the EA movement for over-focusing on 'tried and true' career paths like earning-to-give, making overconfident claims without deep research, and relying on narrow analytical tools that undervalue complex flow-through effects. He argues these patterns stem from an implicit message that shallow analysis suffices for high-impact decisions, discouraging deeper investigation of potentially higher-value but less obvious opportunities.
Key Points
- •EA over-focuses on default career paths (finance/software earning-to-give) due to their predictability and extrinsic rewards, potentially missing higher-impact alternatives.
- •The movement makes overconfident claims without sufficient background research, undermining credibility and decision quality.
- •Over-reliance on narrow analytical tools leads to undervaluing 'flow-through' or indirect effects of interventions.
- •The underlying problem is an implicit culture of shallow analysis being treated as sufficient for high-stakes career and giving decisions.
- •GiveWell is cited as a positive counterexample, demonstrating that rigorous, self-critical EA practice is possible.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| EA and Longtermist Wins and Losses | -- | 53.0 |
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x This website requires javascript to properly function. Consider activating javascript to get access to all site functionality. Another Critique of Effective Altruism — LessWrong Effective altruism Personal Blog 28
Another Critique of Effective Altruism
by jsteinhardt 5th Jan 2014 7 min read 109 28
Cross-posted from my blog . It is almost certainly a bad idea to let this post be your first exposure to the effective altruist movement. You should at the very least read these two posts first.
Recently Ben Kuhn wrote a critique of effective altruism . I'm glad to see such self-examination taking place, but I'm also concerned that the essay did not attack some of the most serious issues I see in the effective altruist movement, so I've decided to write my own critique. Due to time constraints, this critique is short and incomplete. I've tried to bring up arguments that would make people feel uncomfortable and defensive; hopefully I've succeeded.
Briefly, here are some of the major issues I have with the effective altruism movement as it currently stands:
Over-focus on “tried and true” and “default” options, which may both reduce actual impact and decrease exploration of new potentially high-value opportunities.
Over-confident claims coupled with insufficient background research.
Over-reliance on a small set of tools for assessing opportunities, which lead many to underestimate the value of things such as “flow-through” effects.
The common theme here is a subtle underlying message that simple, shallow analyses can allow one to make high-impact career and giving choices, and divest one of the need to dig further. I doubt that anyone explicitly believes this, but I do believe that this theme comes out implicitly both in arguments people make and in actions people take.
Lest this essay give a mistaken impression to the casual reader, I should note that there are many examplary effective altruists who I feel are mostly immune to the issues above ; for instance, the GiveWell blog does a very good job of warning against the first and third points above, and I would recommend anyone who isn't already to subscribe to it (and there are other examples that I'm failing to mention). But for the purposes of this essay, I will ignore this fact except for the current caveat.
Over-focus on "tried and true" options
It seems to me that the effective altruist movement over-focuses on “tried and true” options, both in giving opportunities and in career paths. Perhaps the biggest example of this is the prevalence of “earning to give”. While this is certainly an admirable option, it should be considered as a baseline to improve upon, not a definitive answer.
The biggest issue with the “earning to give” path is that careers in finance and software (the two most common avenues for this) are incredibly straight-forward and secure. The two things that finance and software have in commo
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