Effective altruism
In the Style of Blaise Pascal's Provincial Letters
The moment the Effective Altruist perceived me, he came forward with his eyes fixed on a book which he held in his hand, and accosted me thus:
“Would you not be infinitely obliged to any one who should open to you the gates of paradise? Would you not give millions of gold to have a key by which you might gain admittance whenever you thought proper? You need not be at such expense; here is one—here are a hundred for much less money.”
He waved The Most Good You Can Do, by Peter Singer, and pointed at the library of Effective Altruist books, with authors such as William MacAskill and Nick Bostrom, and titles such as What we owe the future and Deep Utopia.
“Truly,” said I, “Can a way to paradise by found with these?” and I eagerly set myself to reading.
Having read through the books, I concluded that becoming an Effective Altruist and finding the way to Salvation required that I live a sparing life. For, if I were to drink a latte, could that money not be used more profitably to give a mosquito net to the very poorest?
By the time I met him again, my mind was filled with the anguishing visions of drowning children in shallow ponds. For each small luxury I permitted myself, a child could be saved in Bangladesh or some other far-away country. I began by raising this objection.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” the Effective Altruist assured me. “You can drink as many lattes as you desire. It only suffices you become very wealthy so you can give sizable sums to the very poorest.”
“So I can permit myself some luxury?”
“Assuredly,” he said, projecting imagery of private jets and private islands owned by fellow EAs. We can buy luxurious palaces and abbeys and hold parties there. We can attend Eleven Madison Park, the ultra-luxurious vegan restaurant where the tasting menu runs $438 per person. Our doctors have crunched the numbers, and they find the math works out: these are all canny investments to spend thousands of dollars to recruit the next Sam Bankman-Fried.”
“Does not this run counter to the spirit of the movement?” I worried, “Does this not make it look hypocritical?”
“Only in the eyes of those who don't know math,” the Effective Altruist assured me, for we must keep our eyes on what really matters for our Salvation: Future people. And of course, Effective Altruists in particular.”
“So, what about the present poorest in the world?”
“Only a smokescreen to recruit sentimental individuals!” he assured me. “Billions and billions of future people will outweigh the concerns of the present ones. That is, if we aren't all annihilated by AGI before we get to that point.”
Now it became clear to me: the private islands, palaces, luxury dinners and sumptuous parties—it all made sense with one's eyes firmly fixed upon the future, and staving off an AGI apocalypse, while also funding AI. For AI will highly likely bring great benefits to humanity, with the small probability of a general apocalypse where we do not survive. Fortunately, the EA's doctors have worked out the numbers, and have found that we must steam ahead.
“My good sir" said I, ''you oblige me very much. My only regret is that I did not know this sooner, as it will induce me to pay considerably more attention to your authors.”
This reminds me of the libertarians who poke fun at Bernie Sanders for being a millionaire, taking it to implicitly discredit his egalitarianism.
While it's obviously fine to criticize behavior you think poorly of (in either case!), I do worry - in both cases - about the rhetorical role such discourse plays, if the mockery acts as a *substitute* for seriously engaging with the "discredited" target's ideas and arguments. (Mockery can be employed against counterintuitively true positions about as easily as it can against false ones. Careful argument is what's needed to actually distinguish the two -- as I hope philosophers generally would agree.)
If you're at all interested in following this up with a more substantive post sometime, I'm always curious to hear which of the claims in my below-linked post critics of effective altruism actually disagree with (and why):
https://rychappell.substack.com/p/what-effective-altruism-means-to
I have always thought EA was a reductio ad absurdum for number crunching utilitarianism. I realise that is wishful thinking on my part; I have met enough EA acolytes. I also have trouble believing there are any actual numbers involved in the calculation.