Second, I enjoyed this. It articulates well a lot of my problems with EA and the rationalist movement - two things I should note that I'm actually broadly sympathetic to and actually do have a lot of value, even if I am uncomfortable with a lot of the particulars.
At the risk of filling your comments section with too many words, I'll boil them down to this. Long before Scam Bankman Fried I found the earn to give concept troubling for a simple reason: I've read history. I know the selling of indulgences when I see it. No one is more susceptible to religion than the devoutly irreligious.
But my overall difficulty with the rationalist movement is the simple truth that it doesn't matter how smart you are if you're not as smart as you think you are.
Dang! You put this so eloquently and aptly that now I’m feeling like I didn’t need to write a 2400-word article! I agree with you: EA makes an important contribution when it encourages charities to work on underserved problems and check that their interventions actually help. But there are so many potential pitfalls! And don’t even get me started on longtermism, which prioritizes potential people over, you know, actual people. Terrible idea.
You and Ed are both right that there’s a danger when people aren’t as smart as they think they are--in fact next week’s post will be about this!
Ditto on the longtermism. Using that logic, you could enslave everyone alive and put all of the wealth into a fund for the future billions and billions. (And then you could just keep using that logic to keep them enslaved in something like a reverse ponzi scheme.) That's not how morality works.
I resisted putting this into the article, but on the Astral Codex Ten blog, someone sincerely suggested that it would improve overall happiness from a utilitarian point of view if every girl and woman of childbearing age were forced to give birth to one child per year (more lives equals more utility) until she either dies or reaches menopause. It should be obvious to anyone who is not an evil robot that that is not a recipe for happiness!
"SBF, for example, donated millions to candidates on both sides of the aisle, essentially canceling out his donations’ impact..."
I think the SBF political donations were not so much about helping any particular politician win re-election—more like getting politicians and PACs (on either side of the aisle) to support legislation that was favorable to SBF's crypto empire. His $40 million for Democrats is a matter of record; he says he contributed a similar amount to Republicans in "dark" money, and he did that because "reporters freak the f___ out" (SBF quote) when anyone donates to Republicans.
So really, if SBF was attracting investors to Bitcoin by appealing to EA sentiments, what was actually happening is that their investments were buying political favors that made Bitcoin more profitable. Which, I guess, in a roundabout way would make more money available for SBF's EA ventures. In theory.
A cynic might look at all this and imagine that all this EA stuff was a marketing ploy—not that some substantial chunk of investor money didn't go to EA and do some charitable good, but that a much more substantial chunk went to political graft and funding lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Anyway, great post. I always think of something my mother used to say: "Charity begins at home". I have a general distrust of large, remote charitable institutions with lots of overhead, even as I recognize that all of them are having some degree of positive effect. It is the nature of institutions and the humans who operate them to eventually prioritize self-dealing.
I agree completely. What matters is how we treat the people we encounter in our own lives; all other charity is gravy.
And you are right about SBF; I suspect he donated on both side of the aisle because he wanted to buy politicians who wouldn’t regulate crypto. I remain agnostic about whether he started out idealistic and became corrupted, or whether he was a scammer from the beginning. But in either case his story illustrates the pitfalls of EA.
The majority of my charity dollars goes to a cat shelter, the work and mission are simple and clear, and the results tangible. Much also goes to several public radio stations, Wikipedia, local zoos, and the local food bank. Living in San Francisco for years gave me a difficult relationship with panhandlers, and so I don't like to do anything which feels like I might be helping to perpetuate the problems. My volunteer work (giving rides to old people) is rewarding and immediate.
Your point about panhandlers in San Francisco is well taken--I’m reminded of an amusing study that was done in Iowa (I think) by a team of New Yorkers who wanted to show that New Yorkers are much more friendly and helpful than their reputation suggests. The researchers tried to replicate a typical New York neighborhood by placing confederates all around an Iowa neighborhood. The confederates repeatedly accosted or otherwise bugged passers-by, as would be the typical street experience of a New Yorker. At the end, there was a researcher who pretended to be in trouble and asked for help. The researchers found that the Iowans were much LESS willing to offer help than New Yorkers were. Their conclusion is that we have a limited tolerance for being harassed on the street, and the daily life of supposedly friendly midwesterners doesn’t challenge this tolerance the way urban life does, hence the appearance of greater friendliness. All this is by way of saying that panhandlers in Europe are a very different matter than those in San Francisco.
And bless you for helping your older clients on their errands and with other tasks!
First, the corgi butt poem is divine. Really. I really liked this column and have found the writing of Anand Giridharadas, especially his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, very powerful on this topic. He writes about rich people who use philanthropy to white wash their bad behavior. The Sacklers, who owned and ran Purdue Pharma, are a prime example of this phenomenon. Also, there are problems we could easily solve in this country if people paid more taxes, instead of keeping their money and donating it where they want to. As usual, I'm thinking of giving everyone access to affordable health care. We could do that, like very other economically-developed country does, but we choose not to. Why we make that choice is complicated (politics, racism), but that we do makes me so angry. Business owners who donate could start with philanthropy at home--pay your workers well and make sure they can afford to take care of their health problems. Ditto for supporting public education--we could do this as a country if we chose to, but we don't, and charity doesn't make up the difference.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment and the book recommendation! You make the interesting point, too, that many societies fund helping the less fortunate through taxes rather than through charity, which reminds me of the Jewish idea of tzedakah, which translates not as “charity” but as “justice.”
I do know that both my kids had to do service projects as part of their IB (in Czechia and in Switzerland), and a major difficulty in finding a project--besides the language barrier--was that there are nowhere near as many charities in countries with a social safety net. There isn’t the need.
Love the idea that "charity" is "justice." Bryan Stevenson, who wrote JUST MERCY, wrote: "The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice." We have that postcard pinned to our kitchen billboard.
Mental and emotional well-being is not so easily quantifiable, but giving to and serving others right in front of you addresses that important metric!!
Oh, my gosh! Well, I'm sorry you were left with only my rather mediocre caption. 😂 But I'm nevertheless glad to have won!
I don't really have one particular favorite, but I actually really appreciate the work your friend's charity (Unchained At Last) does, helping to end child marriage. I would be thrilled for you to give the donation to them. Thank you so much for this -- it made my day!!
First, danke for the plug.
Second, I enjoyed this. It articulates well a lot of my problems with EA and the rationalist movement - two things I should note that I'm actually broadly sympathetic to and actually do have a lot of value, even if I am uncomfortable with a lot of the particulars.
At the risk of filling your comments section with too many words, I'll boil them down to this. Long before Scam Bankman Fried I found the earn to give concept troubling for a simple reason: I've read history. I know the selling of indulgences when I see it. No one is more susceptible to religion than the devoutly irreligious.
But my overall difficulty with the rationalist movement is the simple truth that it doesn't matter how smart you are if you're not as smart as you think you are.
Dang! You put this so eloquently and aptly that now I’m feeling like I didn’t need to write a 2400-word article! I agree with you: EA makes an important contribution when it encourages charities to work on underserved problems and check that their interventions actually help. But there are so many potential pitfalls! And don’t even get me started on longtermism, which prioritizes potential people over, you know, actual people. Terrible idea.
You and Ed are both right that there’s a danger when people aren’t as smart as they think they are--in fact next week’s post will be about this!
Ditto on the longtermism. Using that logic, you could enslave everyone alive and put all of the wealth into a fund for the future billions and billions. (And then you could just keep using that logic to keep them enslaved in something like a reverse ponzi scheme.) That's not how morality works.
I resisted putting this into the article, but on the Astral Codex Ten blog, someone sincerely suggested that it would improve overall happiness from a utilitarian point of view if every girl and woman of childbearing age were forced to give birth to one child per year (more lives equals more utility) until she either dies or reaches menopause. It should be obvious to anyone who is not an evil robot that that is not a recipe for happiness!
Along with that last point: despite what rationalists may believe about themselves, they're just as driven by emotion as the rest of us.
They just believe their emotional reaction is rational.
Yup!
"SBF, for example, donated millions to candidates on both sides of the aisle, essentially canceling out his donations’ impact..."
I think the SBF political donations were not so much about helping any particular politician win re-election—more like getting politicians and PACs (on either side of the aisle) to support legislation that was favorable to SBF's crypto empire. His $40 million for Democrats is a matter of record; he says he contributed a similar amount to Republicans in "dark" money, and he did that because "reporters freak the f___ out" (SBF quote) when anyone donates to Republicans.
So really, if SBF was attracting investors to Bitcoin by appealing to EA sentiments, what was actually happening is that their investments were buying political favors that made Bitcoin more profitable. Which, I guess, in a roundabout way would make more money available for SBF's EA ventures. In theory.
A cynic might look at all this and imagine that all this EA stuff was a marketing ploy—not that some substantial chunk of investor money didn't go to EA and do some charitable good, but that a much more substantial chunk went to political graft and funding lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Anyway, great post. I always think of something my mother used to say: "Charity begins at home". I have a general distrust of large, remote charitable institutions with lots of overhead, even as I recognize that all of them are having some degree of positive effect. It is the nature of institutions and the humans who operate them to eventually prioritize self-dealing.
So, I donate money and time to local things.
I agree completely. What matters is how we treat the people we encounter in our own lives; all other charity is gravy.
And you are right about SBF; I suspect he donated on both side of the aisle because he wanted to buy politicians who wouldn’t regulate crypto. I remain agnostic about whether he started out idealistic and became corrupted, or whether he was a scammer from the beginning. But in either case his story illustrates the pitfalls of EA.
The majority of my charity dollars goes to a cat shelter, the work and mission are simple and clear, and the results tangible. Much also goes to several public radio stations, Wikipedia, local zoos, and the local food bank. Living in San Francisco for years gave me a difficult relationship with panhandlers, and so I don't like to do anything which feels like I might be helping to perpetuate the problems. My volunteer work (giving rides to old people) is rewarding and immediate.
Your point about panhandlers in San Francisco is well taken--I’m reminded of an amusing study that was done in Iowa (I think) by a team of New Yorkers who wanted to show that New Yorkers are much more friendly and helpful than their reputation suggests. The researchers tried to replicate a typical New York neighborhood by placing confederates all around an Iowa neighborhood. The confederates repeatedly accosted or otherwise bugged passers-by, as would be the typical street experience of a New Yorker. At the end, there was a researcher who pretended to be in trouble and asked for help. The researchers found that the Iowans were much LESS willing to offer help than New Yorkers were. Their conclusion is that we have a limited tolerance for being harassed on the street, and the daily life of supposedly friendly midwesterners doesn’t challenge this tolerance the way urban life does, hence the appearance of greater friendliness. All this is by way of saying that panhandlers in Europe are a very different matter than those in San Francisco.
And bless you for helping your older clients on their errands and with other tasks!
First, the corgi butt poem is divine. Really. I really liked this column and have found the writing of Anand Giridharadas, especially his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, very powerful on this topic. He writes about rich people who use philanthropy to white wash their bad behavior. The Sacklers, who owned and ran Purdue Pharma, are a prime example of this phenomenon. Also, there are problems we could easily solve in this country if people paid more taxes, instead of keeping their money and donating it where they want to. As usual, I'm thinking of giving everyone access to affordable health care. We could do that, like very other economically-developed country does, but we choose not to. Why we make that choice is complicated (politics, racism), but that we do makes me so angry. Business owners who donate could start with philanthropy at home--pay your workers well and make sure they can afford to take care of their health problems. Ditto for supporting public education--we could do this as a country if we chose to, but we don't, and charity doesn't make up the difference.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment and the book recommendation! You make the interesting point, too, that many societies fund helping the less fortunate through taxes rather than through charity, which reminds me of the Jewish idea of tzedakah, which translates not as “charity” but as “justice.”
I do know that both my kids had to do service projects as part of their IB (in Czechia and in Switzerland), and a major difficulty in finding a project--besides the language barrier--was that there are nowhere near as many charities in countries with a social safety net. There isn’t the need.
Love the idea that "charity" is "justice." Bryan Stevenson, who wrote JUST MERCY, wrote: "The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice." We have that postcard pinned to our kitchen billboard.
Wonderful post!
Thanks!
Mental and emotional well-being is not so easily quantifiable, but giving to and serving others right in front of you addresses that important metric!!
Yes! Feeling happy and connected is a value, even if we can’t precisely measure it!
SBF now has a Substack. I wonder if he is the first major grifter with a platform?
Whoa. I confess that I hope he gets roasted in the comments in perpetuity--and makes no money.
Charity contest entries go here:
Caption:
"HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS: WATCH FOR URINE"
or, alternately
"ICY CONDITIONS: WATCH FOR URINE"
Ty, you were the ONLY person who responded to the challenge, so you win! Please name your favorite charity, and I will donate $100!
Oh, my gosh! Well, I'm sorry you were left with only my rather mediocre caption. 😂 But I'm nevertheless glad to have won!
I don't really have one particular favorite, but I actually really appreciate the work your friend's charity (Unchained At Last) does, helping to end child marriage. I would be thrilled for you to give the donation to them. Thank you so much for this -- it made my day!!