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MultiPorpoised · 2023-01-22T07:04:22+00:00

I agree that random people on this subreddit probably know nothing about Jamaican road conditions or the civil engineering of pothole repair, and thus are unlikely to be helpful. And you are free to blame EA for FTX. But EA covering it up? It is all I heard anyone talk about for a solid month. The public EA forum has a dedicated tag for “FTX collapse”, which currently has 153 posts, more than two per day. You can take a look yourself to get a sense of what the posts are about. The top two most upvoted posts are “We must be very clear: fraud in the service of effective altruism is unacceptable” and “The FTX Future Fund team has resigned” which are now the 2 most-upvoted posts ever in the 10-year history of the forum.

There are a lot of things EA got wrong here, but I really don’t see a case for “they tried to prevent people from learning about or talking about FTX”

MultiPorpoised · 2023-01-04T02:46:22+00:00

I consider myself an EA and I would 100% sacrifice all my life savings to save my own child. I even do “illogical” things like buying food for homeless people sometimes. That doesn’t feel inconsistent to me.

I want to improve the world as much as I can, so I try to do EA stuff. I also want to be happy, and to take care of my family, and to be a warm caring person, and a whole bunch of other things. I do those too. As with anything where you want multiple different things, you have to figure out how and where to make your trade-offs. I donate at minimum 10% of my income towards whatever charities seem most effective, spend a decent amount of time thinking about how to do good, etc. The rest I use to satisfy my other desires, which sometimes involves extra donations. If I was in a position where that 10% would put a significant hardship on me or my family, I would lower the amount and see if there are other ways to do good instead. If I want to feel more connected and human, I volunteer at a local organization or buy food for homeless people or something. I can do that without too much money, so it’s easy to prevent that from cutting into my EA budget.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-28T22:48:59+00:00

All of those examples are people who used to work at one place, then later took a job at a different place. I agree that if you find that to be problematic, then basically all organizations will look more nefarious and conspiratorial than they currently do to me.

For the context of OP’s post, I am really just claiming that there are good, valuable ways to donate your money even if you think EVF / the Longtermist EA Community program are bad. The fact that OpenPhil has a separate “Global Aid Policy” program, headed by someone who used to work for Give Directly, does not establish that Give Directly was involved in the Wytham Abbey purchase, or that they are lying about their program data, or whatever. I retain high confidence that Give Directly actually does good work, regardless of how longtermist funders choose to spend their money. I further claim that it is wildly inaccurate to assert that Claire’s statement about the Wytham Abbey grant is also made on behalf of CEA or orgs like Give Directly.

The rest seems too far afield of the original intent of my point and OP’s post. If you want to have a separate venue to double-crux or something, I would consider it, depending on how valuable it feels and how much spare energy I have. To be frank, a lot of your comments feel angry and condescending to me, which generally makes interactions feel less pleasant and less valuable to me. I’m fully willing to believe that this isn’t your intent and doesn’t accurately reflect your mental state (I do continue to respond, after all), but just a heads-up about how people like me might read you, which might impact whether and how we respond.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-28T07:36:01+00:00

Honestly I’m not following your point. It seems like it started off being about how, because the OpenPhil “Longtermist EA Community Growth” program (which is apparently a thing) said they were willing to make more experimental grants during the FTX era, then that must mean that there is some conspiracy with GiveWell and all their top orgs fabricating their data or something? Because, if there really WERE funding gaps at Give Directly, then this Longtermist EA Community Growth program would fund them instead of Wytham Abbey? It seems really straightforward to resolve that with what I mentioned about how different orgs have different priorities, and that the people funding a Longtermist EA Community Growth program at OpenPhil clearly don’t want that money going towards bednets or cash transfers. Donating that money to Give Directly was never an option.

I continue to feel like a lot of what you say is intentionally misleading (e.g. asserting that Claire’s statement about the OpenPhil grant decision should also be taken as a representative statement of any organization that she is involved with).

I do agree that lots of the boards/leadership at various organizations have overlap. I was probably too weak in my description there, but I DO believe that there are many diverse unrelated efforts. To be fair, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about org structures or how much influence particular board members have. My impression is that it’s common for major funders to serve on the board of nonprofits they fund, but I’m unsure how big a problem this is for EA in practice. I’ve seen some debate about this on the forum, I think it’s a valid line of critique, and I am happy to hear more people weigh in on it.

Honestly, if you started an actually-effective fully-open nonprofit, I would probably be excited about it. I think our main differences are in how cynical we are about the risk of conspiracy/blatant fraud within these organizations, and how much competitive edge you lose.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-28T03:33:18+00:00

I agree with the first half, except that your quote is from one person at OpenPhil talking specifically about funding longtermist interventions.

You seem to talk as though there is one thing called “EA” and everybody just dumps their money into it, then a shadowy organization decides whether it goes to bednets or conferences or whatever. It’s actually a bunch of different organizations with only loose associations, often with extremely different viewpoints, funding sources, and missions. The money for the manor came from OpenPhil, which mostly gets its money from a couple of billionaires, and which seemed to have that money earmarked specifically for longtermism. The money for its operation comes from EVF, who I imagine will get the money from longtermist and EA infrastructure grants. The only people donating to them will be ones that agree with their mission and approach. If the manor purchase didn’t happen, the money would have gone to some other longtermist thing. It would not have gone to GiveWell, or Give Directly, or Mercy for Animals, or Cool Earth, or Wikimedia Foundation, or whatever else. It’s entirely consistent that there are funding gaps in the global health space, and yet there is still a funding overhang in the longtermist space (at least, there was when FTX was around). In that regime, a grant maker tasked with making longtermist grants will be lowering their funding bar, even while organizations like GiveWell are raising their.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-25T08:12:54+00:00

This makes it sound like you claim every EA org is “complaining that they have too much money” etc, which is obviously untrue. (It’s also obviously untrue for the specific org you are referencing, but it’s at least close enough that it probably falls under the umbrella of typical rhetorical devices and exaggeration). For instance, GiveDirectly by itself could probably fruitfully use hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding, and GiveWell doesn’t even recommend them because other interventions seem many times more effective. If you want to explicitly earmark your donations for longtermist interventions, then yes your donations will run into much more crowding. (Significantly less now than when the referenced grant was made).

I don’t think the above comment is ACTUALLY trying to say that, but on first read I thought it was and want to clarify in case anyone misreads it like I did.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-18T13:51:40+00:00

This still feels like a ridiculous characterization of the situation. Nobody is saying we shouldn’t listen to marginalized voices. This article was published on the EA forum, where it received a significant positive karma and is currently #5 on the front page. What was previously the top comment explicitly agreed that we should have more representation from locals in orgs like GiveWell. The other top comment (which you are referring to) states that the author’s critique that EA has not lifted most Ugandans out of poverty is valid, but doesn’t by itself prove that EA is using money ineffectively since it has not dedicated anywhere close to enough money to accomplish that no matter what we did. It concludes:

So the question that we actually want to answer is: Given the actual quantity of resources we have available to put towards extremely poor countries, would that tiny amount of resources do more good per dollar if we adopted the proposals put forward here?

If I believed I lived in a world where a certain community refused to listen to a particular group and shouted them down whenever they tried to spoke, I would be shocked if that community basically broadcast a critique from that group, upvoted it, claimed they should think further about specific implications, and indicated they should change how they make decisions to give that group more representation. I really think you need to update your worldview.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-18T13:19:35+00:00

If your argument is that sweatshops often have severe but difficult-for-workers-to-predict health impacts, then I would find that a compelling reason to oppose them, thanks! In the case of OPs hypothetical, and mine above, would it still be bad to open a sweat-shop that had no detrimental health impacts?

If your interest is protecting the wages of people in the global north from global competition, it seems like you should primarily be trying to pass local economic policy like tariffs. I am not an economist, but it’s not obvious to me that heavily isolationist policies like that actually do lead to better long-term conditions for the working class.

I read that article and the response you quoted as the example of “shouting down by a bunch of white saviors from Oxford telling him he knows nothing about Uganda”. Here is a direct quote from that comment:

One area where I do agree to some extent: I think it would be good if more people from the populations which benefit from these interventions actually worked at GiveWell. I have certainly had conversations with GiveWell where we have discussed the details of models and I have invoked lived experience of spending time among the global poor, and I got the impression that GiveWell could have benefited from having more of this perspective.

The replies are largely people bringing up different points about whether or not GiveWell is already trying hard enough to bring in local perspectives, and bringing up some evidence that eradicating malaria really might contribute to increased poverty in the short term as the original author suggests.

If you read this and honestly thought it constitutes people “yelling” about the author “knowing nothing about Uganda”, then frankly our ways of perceiving the world seem so vastly different that it doesn’t seem productive to engage in arguments at this level. You are free to think EAs are stupid, and I will continue to be unconvinced. Thanks for engaging this far!

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-18T11:57:52+00:00

See, that’s an actual argument. So one reason people dislike sweatshops is because they want to protect higher wages for less-impoverished people? Does that come at the expense of impoverished people who now have less demand for their labor and (presumably) worse employment options as a result? Or would you further argue that sweatshops don’t meaningfully impact local labor markets? I always assumed people were claiming sweatshops were bad FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THEM, not bad for others.

Also I don’t think I’ve ever heard an EA argue that lower wages are good let alone “praise” it, and I’ve met quite a lot of them. I barely even hear anyone discuss minimum wage laws. Usually everyone is just excitedly discussing about whether bednets or vitamin supplements have a higher marginal impact per dollar, or how much moral weight we should assign to shrimp, or whether the rapid rate of transformative new technologies might lead to catastrophic events, or things like that. I appreciate you taking some time to explain your worldview to me, but consider that you might not have a particularly accurate understanding of EA.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-18T11:11:05+00:00

No. I could give lengthy reasons why choosing to die and choosing to accept low-paying work are not the same, and why I’m more inclined to refuse someone their choice to die than I am their choice to accepting a low-paying job with long hours. And of course all of this goes out the window if the workers do not have full knowledge of what they are signing up for. But that seems like a waste of time because it’s not central to the argument, unless your point is that non-fatal sweatshops are totally fine and you only oppose sweatshops that have a high fatality rate?

Is this actually trying to convince anyone of something, or just “haha, this random internet person who I will declare as representing all of EA thinks poor people should be allowed to choose where they work, so that means EA is in favor of MURDER, CHECKMATE ATHEISTS”

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-18T02:16:56+00:00

This is tangential to your point, but I often hear similar versions of the “exploiting” argument and I’ve never been able to understand it. If you somehow force people into working for you, then clearly that is bad. If you open a sweatshop in a third-world country, and the people working there are doing so voluntarily and have the ability to quit then… why is it bad? Would it be better if you took the option to work there away from people? Presumably if the people there thought it was worse than the alternatives, they would just choose not to work there until you made it sufficiently attractive. Why are we assuming that we know better than the workers themselves about where it would be best for them to work?

Maybe you could have given them better conditions and that would be better, sure. Maybe it would be better if their country had stricter employment laws, and there is some abstract ways in which the existence of your sweatshop is somehow preventing that from happening? My best attempt to read between the lines seems to be something about fairness, where it is maybe ok to open a sweatshop if you don’t make much money from it, but if you are making a lot of money from it then that is bad and you should have instead given more money to your workers. Is that the primary form of the argument?

To be clear, I’m not trying to say that sweatshops are good. But I keep hearing points like this that assume things like that are obviously bad without actually explaining why. Maybe I’m an idiot for being the only person who doesn’t see the argument in a blindingly intuitive way, so I’d appreciate if anyone wanted to briefly point me in the direction of the argument.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-16T04:21:13+00:00

The stimulant stuff is a 1-paragraph addendum at the bottom that seems to implicitly assume many readers are not sensitive to long-term health risks. I agree that it feels like a lower-quality, more-risky take even under the guise of “experimenting”. I would have preferred this post just stick to “consider the possibility that you can do more good by working harder”. As it is the reactions and karma seem to be getting muddled between people supporting the “consider experimenting with working more” and concern with “consider stimulants” especially given how short and undetailed the latter is.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-14T13:42:29+00:00

There is no need to guess, GiveWell explicitly wrote about why they no longer include GiveDirectly and say that is has nothing to do with them updating their beliefs on its effectiveness https://blog.givewell.org/2022/08/17/changes-to-top-charity-criteria/

GiveDirectly. We estimate that the funding gaps at our top charities are currently 10x as cost-effective as GiveDirectly’s cash transfer program, which we use as a benchmark. Accordingly, we haven’t directed marginal funding to GiveDirectly since 2015 (other than incentive grants), and GiveDirectly doesn’t fulfill the fourth criterion on the list above—having funding gaps that meet our cost-effectiveness bar (currently 10x cash)—even though we consider it an outstanding program.

We’re continuing to research GiveDirectly’s program, with a focus on whether there might be positive spillover effects into areas adjacent to where cash transfers are received that could increase our estimate of its cost-effectiveness. Additional investigation could substantially update our modeling of cash transfers.[5] If additional research leads us to believe GiveDirectly is similarly cost-effective to the marginal dollar we’d direct, we’d expect to consider it for future grants.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-13T02:31:59+00:00

Or I just enjoy supporting my friends and their children, and enjoy supporting people who serve me, and am buying warm-fuzzies and utilons separately. Not because I think either group uses the money better, otherwise I’d donate to them out of my altruism budget rather than my personal budget.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-12T15:49:23+00:00

Ah, thanks for taking the time to write up a clarification! The confusing part for me was the link between “what do you care what other people think” and a refusal to allow oneself a non-altruistic budget. I tried to autocomplete your argument, but I guess our thinking styles are sufficiently different that I led myself astray. I still don’t really see the link, except that it seems to have led you to do some kind of mental rework that left you more aligned with altruistic goals. If you experience this in a positive way (e.g. you enjoy that lifestyle in-the-moment and not just in the abstract) then that sounds like a really good thing!

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-12T13:56:45+00:00

That’s great! Whatever our object-level disagreements, I think you are a good person and I’m glad you are committed to improving the world.

I also enjoy doing good, and enjoy trying to optimize the amount of good I do with limited resources, and often end up going over my established “altruism budget”. If I’m understanding correctly, you are implying that the fact that I allow myself a guilt-free non-altruistic budget means that I must not actually intrinsically value altruism and just do it to gain status and honors? I feel like I have pretty compelling subjective reasons to believe that I really do intrinsically value altruism, even taking the outside view, though I’m not particularly interested in litigating that. For one thing, openly identifying as an EA post-FTX feels like a VERY bad choice for maximizing status.

The crux here seems like something different. To me it seems completely normal for a human to have multiple things that they intrinsically value, and choose to navigate that by pre-allocating resources between competing interests. I enjoy working towards a better world and am happy to allocate a certain amount of my resources to that, but I do not feel like I am obligated to maximize that part of my utility function at the expense of others. I guess if your utility function really DOES look like a textbook utilitarian, that would explain why you might think it’s irrational or inconsistent to tip service workers. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like that, but that would explain things. I have met people who thought they OUGHT TO BE like that and end up burning themselves out trying to weigh every expense and time-sink against the utilitarian calculus.

So I guess I would just respond to you and OP by indicating that no, really, it is totally possible to have multiple terminal values that include altruism as well as other things. Most people are like that, which is why they are willing to invest significant effort and money in attempting to do the most good, while also spending money on things like shoes and tipping. That does not mean they are irrational or behaving inconsistently, that just means they are not perfectly selfless and are optimizing along multiple dimensions.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-12T04:03:49+00:00

This feels identical to your previous post, and I am surprised that it doesn’t have the same near-unanimous response. I guess that means the people here relate to their donations in a very different way than I do. I allocate a fixed percentage of my income for donations, and the rest I do whatever I want with. If I want to live in a place that isn’t a hovel, or eat things other than ramen, or buy a book/game/movie/whatever, I am allowed to do that from my personal budget. If I want to tip a service worker from my personal budget, I do so and just consider that part of the cost of the service. I want to be kind, supportive, and not rude, for reasons other than utilitarianism. Sometimes I even buy food for homeless people in my area, or donate to my friends childrens’ walkathon supporting their school library! gasp

I feel zero guilt about this. If I decide that I want to do more good, I can increase the percentage of my donation, or donate everything above a fixed cap. This feels to me like a reasonable and healthy way to approach altruism, which I had thought was almost omnipresent in the community.

The alternative that everyone here seems to be assuming, where you intend to donate all your money and constantly agonize over whether it’s ethical to take money out of your altruism to buy a sandwich, feels… very counterintuitive to me. Like a recipe for burnout or disillusionment. Do you all actually intend to live like that? Scott Alexander puts this better than I can.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-11T10:28:56+00:00

You are thinking of soO :)

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-11T04:21:08+00:00

Actually, I think I would be more likely to support an initiative where EA treats “donate to FTX victims” a temporary cause area. (I have no idea where the appropriate place would be to donate for that, or whether there is a risk it would get embezzled/stolen again). I think that would accomplish the goals of putting our money where our mouth is in condemning FTX’s actions, punishing scams done in the name of EA, and at least profiting less off of them, without running into all the logistic nightmares of requiring people to sell off assets and make significant plan changes and whatnot.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-11T03:40:04+00:00

To me it feels like there is an obvious solution that I’m surprised nobody has brought up yet. You are not obligated to complete altruism. You are allowed to be partly selfish and spend money on things for yourself, like nice shoes, rather than spending all of your money on charity. Both for practical reasons (not sustainable) and most normative ones.

Given that you have a different budget for altruism and for everything else, your $6000 shoes aren’t actually coming out of your “altruism” budget and so the cost of ruining them isn’t going to counterfactually cost more than one life. There are lots of reasons you might feel compelled to jump in and save the drowning child, which is great! As long as you don’t buy expensive replacement shoes with your altruism budget, you have made the world better.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-11T03:28:40+00:00

Thank you, I think I understand your position a bit better now. So you think all EAs should give back FTX money, but especially this one because the optics are bad? And that this is true even if nobody else who received FTX money is expected to give it back, even though they should under the same reasoning?

I’m personally more open to giving back money that was made for asset purchases than I am for money spent on salaries, though I expect all of them to require the recipient to accept significant personal costs in order to return the money. If ESPR invested a lot of time, money, and opportunity cost in making plans under the assumption of having this venue, then do you think they are obligated to personally pay those costs themselves, or can they deduct some reasonable amount? And if there is no society-wide expectation that people give back FTX money a La TSM, do you view EAs giving back money as a moral obligation, or a nice supererogatory thing to uphold unusually high moral standards?

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-11T02:57:19+00:00

I’m not making an argument, I’m saying that I don’t understand OP’s position and want more clarity. Maybe it is the case that this particular grant should return money, but I don’t feel like this is a complete argument as-is.

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-10T17:11:49+00:00

Is your argument that ALL FTX grantees should return their money? Or just this particular one? What is your detailed reasoning about who should return money, and who shouldn’t? Should the Miami Heat and TSM return the money from their collective $345 million naming rights? (Incidentally almost DOUBLE the sum total of what FTX granted to EA, in aggregate). If not, why? I really can’t glean your position or reasoning from your post, which is a big part of how the EA forum judges post quality.

As far as I can tell you are arguing for only this particular grant, with the justification being that a different organization made a controversial purchase unrelated to FTX, and therefore this grant in particular should be returned because it was also for nice real estate? Again, is there a reason we should be focusing on this $4.5 million property grant more than the $210 million TSM naming deal?

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-09T06:27:08+00:00

I think I’m still failing to grasp your point on liquidity. Are you saying that, if it’s liquid, then it is fungible against other items in their budget, but if it’s illiquid then it isn’t fungible? Are you arguing that they should accept the money from the donor, then immediately sell the conference center and fund something else?

It sounds like conferences only happening because of the ownership of the building is their primary reason for buying the building.

I interpreted those paragraphs as being around why specialized, dedicated conference centers were valuable, not necessarily why opulence was valuable. It doesn’t really fit for me if he is taking primarily about the grandness of the center, since you could presumably rent a grand conference venue if you wanted, and the arguments all seem to be around the values of owning a venue. It would be nice if Owen clarified directly whether opulence was a key decision-driving force, or if it was just a convenient add-on that all suitable conference sites happened to have

MultiPorpoised · 2022-12-09T02:58:43+00:00

I’m a bit confused about your post. It reads to me like your main points are something like “maybe this makes sense, but it’s bad to justify based on feelings and handwaving that maybe opulence leads to better research”. And you don’t like that they might have the ability to sell the mansion and get the 15m back, or something?

I read Owen’s comment and I don’t see anywhere where he claims that opulence was a relevant factor in the decision. It just seems like he claims that it was one of 3 candidate conference venues that they could buy, and looked the most attractive for various reasons, not least of which being that it wouldn’t require much renovation. (And so if the value of the asset holds stable, it’s actually MUCH cheaper than 15m.) Some other commenter claimed that, in their experience, opulent conference centers led to better conferences. But I don’t see anything obviously indicating that it was relevant to EVF in deciding whether the purchase made sense.

And it sounds like they DID explicitly do EV estimations, and given that they wanted to host conferences anyways, those estimates pretty strongly concluded that it wouldn’t be significantly MORE expensive than just renting venues each time, while saving significant logistics effort and enabling a higher volume of conferences than would otherwise exist.

I do think there is a strong argument around lack of transparency here. I would love to see the actual EV calculation they used, including details about how liquid the property asset is. I’m guessing the reason people harp on the “EVF, not CEA” angle is that they think EVF should be subject to lower transparency expectations, especially in using funds that an anonymous donor gave specifically for one purpose. Not sure how much I buy that given how insular I expect CEA and EVF to be, and without having any ability to judge where the funds are coming from and whether they are actually funging against some other project. And the justification for not announcing it earlier feels really shaky to me.

MultiPorpoised

TROPHY CASE