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The Problem with Effective Altruism - Persuasion Community
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A critical perspective on the Effective Altruism movement relevant to AI safety discussions, since EA has heavily shaped AI safety funding priorities and community norms; useful for understanding critiques of the broader ecosystem surrounding AI safety work.
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Importance: 35/100opinion piececommentary
Summary
A critical analysis of the Effective Altruism movement, examining its philosophical foundations, institutional failures, and potential blind spots. The piece argues that EA's utilitarian framework and technocratic approach may lead to problematic prioritization decisions and a concentration of influence among a small elite.
Key Points
- •EA's heavy focus on speculative long-term risks (like AI existential risk) may divert resources from more tractable near-term humanitarian problems
- •The movement's concentration of wealth and decision-making power among a small group raises concerns about accountability and democratic legitimacy
- •EA's utilitarian calculus can lead to counterintuitive or morally troubling conclusions when taken to extremes
- •The FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried scandal exposed potential ethical contradictions within the EA community's 'ends justify means' reasoning
- •Critics argue EA fosters insularity and groupthink rather than genuine pluralistic moral reasoning
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| EA Global | Organization | 38.0 |
| Giving What We Can | Organization | 62.0 |
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[Yascha Mounk](https://www.persuasion.community/s/yascha-mounk/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=menu)
# The Problem with Effective Altruism
### A partial defense.
[](https://substack.com/@yaschamounk)
[Yascha Mounk](https://substack.com/@yaschamounk)
Sep 19, 2024
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[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uGCq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f6c4b78-47fb-4189-bbca-3eae500e60b0_5028x3418.jpeg)(Photo via Getty Images.)
When I was a visiting fellow at Oxford two years ago, I heard a story about effective altruism I keep going back to whenever somebody mentions Sam Bankman-Fried (one of the philosophy’s early champions) or colonizing Mars (one of its advocates’ principal obsessions).
According to the story, a classmate lent one of the most vocal advocates for effective altruism her toaster while they were both graduate students at Oxford. She reminded him to return it a week later, and a month later, and three months later, to no avail. Finally, invited to his apartment for a social gathering, she spotted the toaster on the kitchen counter, covered in mold.
“Why on earth didn’t you return the toaster to me?” she asked, in frustration.
“I ran the numbers,” he responded. “If I want to do good for the world, my time is better spent working on my thesis.”
“Couldn’t you at least have cleaned the damn thing?”
“From a moral point of view, I’m pretty sure the answer is no.”
I have no idea whether the story is true. Being just a little too perfect, I suspect that it is probably exaggerated, and possibly completely made up. But I share it here because the attitude it encapsulates goes to the core of how the movement of effective altruism went wrong—and why the original intuition that gave rise to it might just be worth rehabilitating.
Let me explain.
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