Effective altruists care about effectiveness. If the claim we’re assessing is “Zuckerberg is only pretending that this money will be used to do good; actually it’s a pure tax-avoidance scam and it’ll all end up being spent on his family” then sure, effective altruists care. But if it’s “Zuckerberg really is putting all this money into trying to improve the world, but his motive for doing so is that he wants to look good” then no, effective altruists shouldn’t care why he’s doing it, only what he’s doing.
… But: our visibility of “what he’s doing” probably isn’t very good, so our estimates of “why he’s doing it” may actually factor into our guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money. (E.g., if what he mostly cares about is looking good for giving away a lot of money, he doesn’t have much incentive to make sure it really does have good effects. On the other hand, if he cares about looking good for saving lots of lives, he has the incentive.) So to that extent the critics may have a point.
Here’s some less optimistic articles.
I remark that the last one is from the Daily Mail. If the Mail printed a story saying that the sky is blue, I’d look out the window to check it hadn’t actually turned green. (The Atlantic has a better reputation. I know nothing at all about the Irish Examiner.)
… But: our visibility of “what he’s doing” probably isn’t very good, so our estimates of “why he’s doing it” may actually factor into our guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money.
Our reaction to his donation isn’t only about guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money is also about shapping cultural values. If the press reacts negatively to billionaires giving away their wealth that disincentivies further donations from billionaires.
I agree. (And, in the other direction but I think probably much less important, if the press responds with uncritical adulation when a billionaire gives the impression that he’s giving away lots of money, without anyone checking what he’s actually doing with it and whether it’ll do any good, that incentivizes donating billionaires not to bother making their donations actually do much good.)
without anyone checking what he’s actually doing with it
The articles that were linked above don’t do that.
If you would want to do that you would look at Mark Zuckerberg’s past record with his donations towards education. That would need actual work on the part of the journalists. It’s much easier to do the kind of criticism where you focus on the future and speak about possible future problems.
It worthwhile for journalists to check in a year what the Chen Zuckerberg Initiative actually did but now it’s time to celebrate.
Effective Altruists & Consequentalists tend to be vain with plausible deniability, always making a show of their set of beliefs, coming into the room loudly and attracting attention always repeating “effectiveness” “consequences”. It gets annoying. I wish some would have taste.
It sounds as if you’re complaining about something someone’s written in this thread, but I’m having trouble working out what (and what you dislike about it, other than maybe a more general grievance against consequentialism or EAism). Would you care to clarify?
On the face of it your complaint is that EAs are attention-seeking and try to hijack other discussions onto their favoured hobby-horse. But I don’t see that that happened here. helldalgo mentioned a common criticism of Zuckerberg’s recent actions and disagreed with it, no part of which seems unreasonable; LessWrong introduced the topic of EA but doesn’t identify as an EA so nothing s/he wrote can possibly be an example of what you describe; I corrected what looked to me like a wrong statement about EAs, which seems like an obviously unobjectionable thing to do.
I don’t understand why EAs would care about his motives, provided his money was spent with maximum possible utility. Or, even if SOME of it was spent with maximum possible utility.
I’m not even into EA myself but I can see that it’s important to know where the money goes and how effectively it’s used.
That sentiment comes for not being in EA, for a real Effective Altruism it’s not important to know that Mark Zuckerberg spends it’s money effectively. It’s important whether or not he spends his money effectively which happens to be a different issue.
Don’t project your own aversions on EA’s.
The EA position as articulated by William MacAskill (80,000 hours/Given What We Can/ author of Doing Good Better) is:
Zuckerberg and Chan deserve enormous respect for this decision [...] Their letter about the gift suggests that they have exactly the right goal in mind, and could have been a mission statement for the social movement called “effective altruism”
On the other hand the article to which you refer are not by people of the EA movement. Those letter likely result in the loss of many lifes due to discouraging donations by wealthy people.
I would estimate education dollars invested by Zuckerberg to have a higher return than eduction dollar invested by the department of education. If Zuckerberg pays less taxes I don’t think that’s a problem when he spends it in good areas.
If you are a teachers union who doesn’t want change in the educational system but protect the status quo, Zuckerbergs announcement looks like a problem.
As far as Mark Zuckerberg wanting to engage in policy debates, it depends on your politics if you believe that’s a good thing. It might raise the chances that the Startup Visa act gets passed.
If you are a xenophobe and against immigration than Zuckerberg plans to shape policy debates to among other things build inclusive and welcoming communities is a bad thing.
So apparently transferring your stocks to a limited liability company in Delaware owned by yourself, with vague do-good objectives and in particular with no mechanisms to monitor how much these objectives are being fulfilled, is now called “effective altruism”.
I would estimate education dollars invested by Zuckerberg to have a higher return than eduction dollar invested by the department of education.
Why? It seems to me that the department of education has better incentives.
So apparently transferring your stocks to a limited liability company in Delaware owned by yourself, with vague do-good objectives and in particular with no mechanisms to monitor how much these objectives are being fulfilled, is now called “effective altruism”.
Yes, pledging future charity donations without specific mechanisms about achieving objectives is part of what the “Giving What We Can Pledge” is about. Applauding people for pledging to give effectively is a key EA value.
Why? It seems to me that the department of education has better incentives.
What incentives do burocrats at the department of education have in your opinion?
In my view those burocrats have incentives to try to centralize educational policy. Otherwise they have incentives to protect the status quo instead of innovating.
Radical innovation seldom happens at the place where people are invested in the status quo. Plurality is very important for society to work well.
Applauding people for pledging to give effectively is a key EA value.
If I understanding correctly, he just pledged to donate to himself, in the form of a for-profit company set up in the closest thing to tax haven you can find in the US.
Where is “effective” part? Where is the “giving” part?
What incentives do burocrats at the department of education have in your opinion?
They have an incentive to appease the elected officers who put them in that position, who in turn have an incentive to appease their electorate. Not terribly strong incentives, but that’s what keeps democracy up and running.
What incentives does a billionaire without accountably to the users of the school system have?
They have an incentive to appease the elected officials who put them in that position
Do you think that an official in the department of eduction get’s promotions based on whether what he’s doing is prefered by congress?
It’s likely much more problematic to cross the teachers unions.
I think civil society is an important part of functioning democracy. That means it’s good when there are indepent well-founded players who aren’t maximizing their profits.
What incentives does a billionaire have?
Mark has an incentive that when Max is old enough to read the letter himself and critcally evualte it, he doesn’t think his father is an asshole.
Legacy is important.
Do you think that an official in the department of eduction get’s promotions based on whether what he’s doing is prefered by congress? It’s likely much more problematic to cross the teachers unions.
Aren’t school boards elected at a local level in the US?
Anyway, you seem to objection is overly general. Yes, the principal-agent problem exists in the government, but unless Zuckerberg is planning to personally oversee each individual grant given to each individual school or teacher, then he is going to hire some bureaucrats to do it, and he the principal-agent problem will occur again, with the difference that elected officials have some accountability to their constituents who substantially overlap with the users of the school system, while Zuckerberg is accountable only to himself.
I think civil society is an important part of functioning democracy. That means it’s good when there are indepent well-founded players who aren’t maximizing their profits.
I think that making public services such as education dependent on the benevolence of rich people with significant political interests is a step towards aristocracy and away from liberal democracy, but whatever floats your boat.
Mark has an incentive that when Max is old enough to read the letter himself
herself
critcally evualte it, he doesn’t think his father is an asshole. Legacy is important.
Legacy is warm fuzzies. And politicians seek it too, in fact even more than billionaires, since they lack billion dollars to leave to their children.
Aren’t school boards elected at a local level in the US?
I don’t see how that’s supposed to argument for the department of education being well-funded. The department of education does happen to be a federal agency.
but unless Zuckerberg is planning to personally oversee each individual grant given to each individual school or teacher,
I think that sentence illustrates a core bias of the current system. The current system will try to fund schools or teachers while bringing the field forward might also need a lot of investment into elearning.
I think that making public services such as education dependent on the benevolence of rich people with significant political interests
I’m not saying that there should be no government spending in eduction. I’m advocating plurality. Some spending by the government and some by private hands.
Legacy is warm fuzzies. And politicians seek it too, in fact even more than billionaire
Politicians also seek legacy but they are heavily constrained by realpolitik. Mark can give out money to optimize for leaving a legacy in a way that politicians can’t.
Masters in education have been shown to be worthless when it comes to teacher performance.
Performance metrics on the other hand seem to work.
Currently due to the power of teachers unions people with a masters in eduction get unfairly payed more money. Most schools don’t pay well performing teacher more. If you leave it to the department of education that likely won’t change.
When Mark however gives out grants he’s quite free to finance performance-based teacher pay.
They have an incentive to appease the elected officers who put them in that position
No, they don’t. They only have an incentive not to screw up so greatly as to get fired. You overestimate the influence that elected officials have over civil servants.
Not terribly strong incentives
More importantly, you can just look at the outcomes. They are… not great.
What incentives does a billionaire without accountably to the users of the school system have?
Legacy.
And if by “users of the school system” you mean the kids or the parents, no one is accountable to them. Their only effective choice of influencing the system is Exit.
No, they don’t. They only have an incentive not to screw up so greatly as to get fired. You overestimate the influence that elected officials have over civil servants.
Why would people hired by Mark Zuckerberg to fix the school system do any better? It’s not like they are making him any money. Their incentive is just to spend the money allocated to them while pretending to be doing something useful. Civil servants have similar incentives, but at least civil servants need to please elected official who in turn answer to the populace, while Zuckerberg’s employees only need to please their employer who answers to no one.
More importantly, you can just look at the outcomes. They are… not great.
As opposed to the outcomes of charity-funded school systems?
And if by “users of the school system” you mean the kids or the parents, no one is accountable to them. Their only effective choice of influencing the system is Exit.
Why would people hired by Mark Zuckerberg to fix the school system be any better
Because he, presumably, would select them by different criteria and because he can fire them much much easier than a politician can fire a union-entrenched educrat.
while Zuckerberg’s employees only need to please their employer
This is precisely what creates an opportunity for him to be effective.
As opposed to the outcomes of charity-funded school systems?
Effective altruists care. I’m not even into EA myself but I can see that it’s important to know where the money goes and how effectively it’s used.
On a more cynical note, I’d say this looks utopian. Here’s some less optimistic articles.
Effective altruists care about effectiveness. If the claim we’re assessing is “Zuckerberg is only pretending that this money will be used to do good; actually it’s a pure tax-avoidance scam and it’ll all end up being spent on his family” then sure, effective altruists care. But if it’s “Zuckerberg really is putting all this money into trying to improve the world, but his motive for doing so is that he wants to look good” then no, effective altruists shouldn’t care why he’s doing it, only what he’s doing.
… But: our visibility of “what he’s doing” probably isn’t very good, so our estimates of “why he’s doing it” may actually factor into our guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money. (E.g., if what he mostly cares about is looking good for giving away a lot of money, he doesn’t have much incentive to make sure it really does have good effects. On the other hand, if he cares about looking good for saving lots of lives, he has the incentive.) So to that extent the critics may have a point.
I remark that the last one is from the Daily Mail. If the Mail printed a story saying that the sky is blue, I’d look out the window to check it hadn’t actually turned green. (The Atlantic has a better reputation. I know nothing at all about the Irish Examiner.)
Our reaction to his donation isn’t only about
guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money
is also about shapping cultural values. If the press reacts negatively to billionaires giving away their wealth that disincentivies further donations from billionaires.I agree. (And, in the other direction but I think probably much less important, if the press responds with uncritical adulation when a billionaire gives the impression that he’s giving away lots of money, without anyone checking what he’s actually doing with it and whether it’ll do any good, that incentivizes donating billionaires not to bother making their donations actually do much good.)
The articles that were linked above don’t do that. If you would want to do that you would look at Mark Zuckerberg’s past record with his donations towards education. That would need actual work on the part of the journalists. It’s much easier to do the kind of criticism where you focus on the future and speak about possible future problems.
It worthwhile for journalists to check in a year what the Chen Zuckerberg Initiative actually did but now it’s time to celebrate.
Neither did I claim they did.
The first article definitely mentions his past education donations.
Effective Altruists & Consequentalists tend to be vain with plausible deniability, always making a show of their set of beliefs, coming into the room loudly and attracting attention always repeating “effectiveness” “consequences”. It gets annoying. I wish some would have taste.
It sounds as if you’re complaining about something someone’s written in this thread, but I’m having trouble working out what (and what you dislike about it, other than maybe a more general grievance against consequentialism or EAism). Would you care to clarify?
On the face of it your complaint is that EAs are attention-seeking and try to hijack other discussions onto their favoured hobby-horse. But I don’t see that that happened here. helldalgo mentioned a common criticism of Zuckerberg’s recent actions and disagreed with it, no part of which seems unreasonable; LessWrong introduced the topic of EA but doesn’t identify as an EA so nothing s/he wrote can possibly be an example of what you describe; I corrected what looked to me like a wrong statement about EAs, which seems like an obviously unobjectionable thing to do.
What am I missing?
I don’t understand why EAs would care about his motives, provided his money was spent with maximum possible utility. Or, even if SOME of it was spent with maximum possible utility.
That sentiment comes for not being in EA, for a real Effective Altruism it’s not important to know that Mark Zuckerberg spends it’s money effectively. It’s important whether or not he spends his money effectively which happens to be a different issue. Don’t project your own aversions on EA’s.
The EA position as articulated by William MacAskill (80,000 hours/Given What We Can/ author of Doing Good Better) is:
On the other hand the article to which you refer are not by people of the EA movement. Those letter likely result in the loss of many lifes due to discouraging donations by wealthy people.
I would estimate education dollars invested by Zuckerberg to have a higher return than eduction dollar invested by the department of education. If Zuckerberg pays less taxes I don’t think that’s a problem when he spends it in good areas. If you are a teachers union who doesn’t want change in the educational system but protect the status quo, Zuckerbergs announcement looks like a problem.
As far as Mark Zuckerberg wanting to engage in policy debates, it depends on your politics if you believe that’s a good thing. It might raise the chances that the Startup Visa act gets passed. If you are a xenophobe and against immigration than Zuckerberg plans to shape policy debates to among other things build inclusive and welcoming communities is a bad thing.
So apparently transferring your stocks to a limited liability company in Delaware owned by yourself, with vague do-good objectives and in particular with no mechanisms to monitor how much these objectives are being fulfilled, is now called “effective altruism”.
Why? It seems to me that the department of education has better incentives.
Yes, pledging future charity donations without specific mechanisms about achieving objectives is part of what the “Giving What We Can Pledge” is about. Applauding people for pledging to give effectively is a key EA value.
What incentives do burocrats at the department of education have in your opinion? In my view those burocrats have incentives to try to centralize educational policy. Otherwise they have incentives to protect the status quo instead of innovating.
Radical innovation seldom happens at the place where people are invested in the status quo. Plurality is very important for society to work well.
If I understanding correctly, he just pledged to donate to himself, in the form of a for-profit company set up in the closest thing to tax haven you can find in the US.
Where is “effective” part? Where is the “giving” part?
They have an incentive to appease the elected officers who put them in that position, who in turn have an incentive to appease their electorate. Not terribly strong incentives, but that’s what keeps democracy up and running.
What incentives does a billionaire without accountably to the users of the school system have?
Do you think that an official in the department of eduction get’s promotions based on whether what he’s doing is prefered by congress? It’s likely much more problematic to cross the teachers unions.
I think civil society is an important part of functioning democracy. That means it’s good when there are indepent well-founded players who aren’t maximizing their profits.
Mark has an incentive that when Max is old enough to read the letter himself and critcally evualte it, he doesn’t think his father is an asshole. Legacy is important.
Aren’t school boards elected at a local level in the US?
Anyway, you seem to objection is overly general. Yes, the principal-agent problem exists in the government, but unless Zuckerberg is planning to personally oversee each individual grant given to each individual school or teacher, then he is going to hire some bureaucrats to do it, and he the principal-agent problem will occur again, with the difference that elected officials have some accountability to their constituents who substantially overlap with the users of the school system, while Zuckerberg is accountable only to himself.
I think that making public services such as education dependent on the benevolence of rich people with significant political interests is a step towards aristocracy and away from liberal democracy, but whatever floats your boat.
herself
Legacy is warm fuzzies. And politicians seek it too, in fact even more than billionaires, since they lack billion dollars to leave to their children.
I don’t see how that’s supposed to argument for the department of education being well-funded. The department of education does happen to be a federal agency.
I think that sentence illustrates a core bias of the current system. The current system will try to fund schools or teachers while bringing the field forward might also need a lot of investment into elearning.
I’m not saying that there should be no government spending in eduction. I’m advocating plurality. Some spending by the government and some by private hands.
Politicians also seek legacy but they are heavily constrained by realpolitik. Mark can give out money to optimize for leaving a legacy in a way that politicians can’t.
Masters in education have been shown to be worthless when it comes to teacher performance. Performance metrics on the other hand seem to work.
Currently due to the power of teachers unions people with a masters in eduction get unfairly payed more money. Most schools don’t pay well performing teacher more. If you leave it to the department of education that likely won’t change. When Mark however gives out grants he’s quite free to finance performance-based teacher pay.
No, they don’t. They only have an incentive not to screw up so greatly as to get fired. You overestimate the influence that elected officials have over civil servants.
More importantly, you can just look at the outcomes. They are… not great.
Legacy.
And if by “users of the school system” you mean the kids or the parents, no one is accountable to them. Their only effective choice of influencing the system is Exit.
Why would people hired by Mark Zuckerberg to fix the school system do any better? It’s not like they are making him any money.
Their incentive is just to spend the money allocated to them while pretending to be doing something useful. Civil servants have similar incentives, but at least civil servants need to please elected official who in turn answer to the populace, while Zuckerberg’s employees only need to please their employer who answers to no one.
As opposed to the outcomes of charity-funded school systems?
Aren’t school boards elective in the US?
Because he, presumably, would select them by different criteria and because he can fire them much much easier than a politician can fire a union-entrenched educrat.
This is precisely what creates an opportunity for him to be effective.
So do tell, what do you think is the problem?