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Bill Anschell's avatar

You’re one of my very favorite writers, and I feel like I learn a lot from your column. I don’t know how you’re able to read so much, listen to so much, and write so much; your productivity is astounding, and you do it all with unique insights.

Today’s column is the first time I’ve felt you were unfair, and not just a little.

My son works for an Effective Altruist (EA) organization founded by a multi-billionaire to research how he can spend his billions of charitable dollars to do the most good. My son lives and breathes EA, and I have never heard him talk—not once--about "maximizing pleasure." He’s currently in Ethiopia leading a delegation of South Korean parliamentarians, showing them vaccination facilities and other cost-effective ways to save lives in a country that needs support; the hope is that the parliamentarians will lobby their government to increase funding for such projects. EAs tend to focus on countries where the most good can be done at the least cost, so developing countries are at the top of their list.

It’s true that many EAs are consequentialists, but not in the name of having a good time. They deal with dicey equations like how much sacrifice today is justifiable to achieve a better tomorrow. Similarly, they’ll make the difficult suggestion that resources spent to do good on the local level in this country would be better spent in another country where the dollars—and the good that can be done—go much further. That part of EA can make a lot of people uncomfortable, and understandably so, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

Aspiring EAs have traditionally had two primary career choices: working within EA to identify and promote charitable causes that give the most bang for the buck (i.e., lives saved or substantially improved per dollar spent), or “earning to give”—following the path that maximizes the amount of money they can make and thereby eventually donate. Samuel Bankman-Fried gave the EA movement a big black eye by twisting “earn to give” to allow ripping off investors and shareholders. Effective Altruists would not support any such unethical activities, and they’ve dialed down the whole “earn to give” side of the equation as a result of what he’s done. Samuel Bankman-Fried may have started as—or claimed to be—an Effective Altruist, but in no way does he represent the movement. The day his criminal activities were revealed was absolutely brutal for Effective Altruists; not only did he damage the movement in the public eye, but billions of dollars that were expected to go to charitable good vanished. To be very clear: The EA movement would have endorsed his plan to make as much money as possible to donate to worthy causes (if he ever really meant that), but they would never have endorsed the way he went about it. He can call himself an Effective Altruist, but I challenge you to find an Effective Altruist who would want anything to do with him.

I’m curious where you came up with the idea that Effective Altruism is about maximizing pleasure. Is it in writing somewhere? If not, I think you’re being grossly unfair, and I honestly don’t understand why; it doesn’t seem at all consistent with all the well-researched and unerringly fair columns you’ve posted in the past. The whole device about EAs supporting the idea of Granny being sold to sex traffickers to maximize human pleasure in the long run seems—and I hate to say this to someone as deep and thoughtful as you—completely disingenuous and terribly misleading. I challenge you to find a single Effective Altruist who would support it.

And, yes, my progeny is an Effective Altruist, and I’m very proud of him. He lives his life to achieve the most benefit for mankind (and animals as well—animal welfare is a major EA concern); he puts me to shame. "Maximizing pleasure" is part of the equation only insofar as it makes him feel good to have a positive influence on the world.

My son is based in the Bay Area, and I would love for you to get to know him to see what kind of “hate monger” he is. I’m sure he’d welcome the opportunity to talk with you about it.

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Chris Grasso's avatar

First: I am a HUGE fan. Second: this is the one and only time I’ve read something of yours and thought, “this is a terrible piece of writing.” Just to be clear, I’m not saying that because I think your conclusion is faulty. In fact, I have no idea whether you’re right or wrong because I have no training in philosophy, aside from a political theory class I took when I got my JD at Berkeley.

What I am saying is that, as a piece of analysis/persuasion, this is a failure. You start by making some very strong claims about “Ethical Altruism,” e.g., it could make you sell your granny to sex traffickers. But you never walk the reader through specific tenets of the philosophy and how they’ve been applied to do terrible things in the world. You make a remarkably general proposition about EA, then you blame it for a litany of horrible behavior.

Where is the causation analysis? Many people go to law school (or business school) and later do terrible things. Did they do them because they went to law school? Maybe, maybe not. I’m completely open to the possibility that EA is a force for awful behavior in the mold of Sam Bankman-Fried. But your piece does absolutely nothing to persuade me that EA is, in fact, the cause. It’s entirely possible that an advocate could argue (maybe fairly, maybe not), that what Bankman-Fried did was a perversion of the philosophy, not an application of it, in the same way some people pervert religion for terrible ends.

Bottom line, this feels more like a personal vendetta than an argument, and for me, that’s a serious disappointment coming from you, because you are normally so careful and methodical in the way your marshal facts and arguments.

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