Okay, a summary of my attitude towards EA is that EA rationally follows from a set of weird premises that are not shared by most people and certainly not by me. I do not have any desire to maximize utility in a way that considers utility for every human being equally. I prefer increasing utility for myself, my family, friends, countrymen, and people like me. Every time I pay for electricity for my computer rather than sending the money to a third world peasant is, according to EA, a failure to maximize utility.
Also, I believe that most cases of EA producing very counterintuitive results are just examples of cases where the weirdness of EA becomes obvious.
Every time I pay for electricity for my computer rather than sending the money to a third world peasant is, according to EA, a failure to maximize utility.
I’m sad that people still think EAers endorse such a naive and short-time-horizon type of optimizing utility. It would obviously not optimize any reasonable utility function over a reasonable timeframe for you to stop paying for electricity for your computer.
More generally, I think most EAers have a much more sophisticated understanding of their values, and the psychology of optimizing them, than you give them credit for. As far as I know, nobody who identifies with EA routinely makes individual decisions between personal purchases and donating. Instead, most people allocate a “charity budget” periodically and make sure they feel ok about both the charity budget and the amount they spend on themselves. Very few people, if any, cut personal spending to the point where they have to worry about, e.g., electricity bills.
As far as I know, nobody who identifies with EA routinely makes individual decisions between personal purchases and donating. [ … ] Very few people, if any, cut personal spending to the point where they have to worry about, e.g., electricity bills.
So I think most EAs have come to the point where they realise that small trade offs and agonising over them displace other good things, so they try and find a way of setting a limit by year or whatever. But you know many people agonise and make trade offs, its just that often it isn’t giving to the poor that’s the counterfactual, it’s saving or paying the mortgage, or buying a better holiday or school for their children or whatever. If you don’t think like that, then you have everything you need?? http://www.givinggladly.com/ and http://www.jefftk.com/index have documented going on this journey of living well with generosity. Sounds like it might be worth a read :)
edit: Soz Ben, I think I put this comment in the wrong place!
As far as I know, nobody who identifies with EA routinely makes individual decisions between personal purchases and donating.
As I said before, it is possible that some of a group doesn’t believe the logical consequences of its own positions. That doesn’t make them immune from criticism based on those logical consequences.
It’s true, of course, that EA proponents don’t do this, but that only shows that EA is unworkable even to EA proponents. If you have a charity budget, there’s no good principled reason why you should restrict your donation to your charity budget. Arguments I’ve seen include:
You need to be able to make money to perform EA and going poor would be counterproductive—true, but most of the money you spend on personal entertainment is not being used to help you make money.
You would find it psychologically intolerable to not spend a certain amount of money on personal entertainment. But by this reasoning, the amount you should spend on charity is an amount that makes you uncomfortable, but just as much uncomfortable as you can get without long term effects on your psychological health and your motivation to donate. (It also means that your first priority should be to self-modify to have less psychological need for entertainment.) Also, it could be used to justify almost any level of giving, and in the limit, it’s equivalent to “I put a higher value on myself, just for a slightly different reason than everyone else who ‘doesn’t value people equally’ puts a higher value on themselves.”
EA states that it is good to spend money on charity, but being good is not the same thing as having a moral obligation to do it; it’s okay to not do as much good as you conceivably could. I find this explanation unconvincing because it would then equally justify not doing any good at all.
Okay, a summary of my attitude towards EA is that EA rationally follows from a set of weird premises that are not shared by most people and certainly not by me. I do not have any desire to maximize utility in a way that considers utility for every human being equally. I prefer increasing utility for myself, my family, friends, countrymen, and people like me. Every time I pay for electricity for my computer rather than sending the money to a third world peasant is, according to EA, a failure to maximize utility.
Also, I believe that most cases of EA producing very counterintuitive results are just examples of cases where the weirdness of EA becomes obvious.
I’m sad that people still think EAers endorse such a naive and short-time-horizon type of optimizing utility. It would obviously not optimize any reasonable utility function over a reasonable timeframe for you to stop paying for electricity for your computer.
More generally, I think most EAers have a much more sophisticated understanding of their values, and the psychology of optimizing them, than you give them credit for. As far as I know, nobody who identifies with EA routinely makes individual decisions between personal purchases and donating. Instead, most people allocate a “charity budget” periodically and make sure they feel ok about both the charity budget and the amount they spend on themselves. Very few people, if any, cut personal spending to the point where they have to worry about, e.g., electricity bills.
I do know—indeed, live with :S—a couple.
So I think most EAs have come to the point where they realise that small trade offs and agonising over them displace other good things, so they try and find a way of setting a limit by year or whatever. But you know many people agonise and make trade offs, its just that often it isn’t giving to the poor that’s the counterfactual, it’s saving or paying the mortgage, or buying a better holiday or school for their children or whatever. If you don’t think like that, then you have everything you need?? http://www.givinggladly.com/ and http://www.jefftk.com/index have documented going on this journey of living well with generosity. Sounds like it might be worth a read :)
edit: Soz Ben, I think I put this comment in the wrong place!
As I said before, it is possible that some of a group doesn’t believe the logical consequences of its own positions. That doesn’t make them immune from criticism based on those logical consequences.
It’s true, of course, that EA proponents don’t do this, but that only shows that EA is unworkable even to EA proponents. If you have a charity budget, there’s no good principled reason why you should restrict your donation to your charity budget. Arguments I’ve seen include:
You need to be able to make money to perform EA and going poor would be counterproductive—true, but most of the money you spend on personal entertainment is not being used to help you make money.
You would find it psychologically intolerable to not spend a certain amount of money on personal entertainment. But by this reasoning, the amount you should spend on charity is an amount that makes you uncomfortable, but just as much uncomfortable as you can get without long term effects on your psychological health and your motivation to donate. (It also means that your first priority should be to self-modify to have less psychological need for entertainment.) Also, it could be used to justify almost any level of giving, and in the limit, it’s equivalent to “I put a higher value on myself, just for a slightly different reason than everyone else who ‘doesn’t value people equally’ puts a higher value on themselves.”
EA states that it is good to spend money on charity, but being good is not the same thing as having a moral obligation to do it; it’s okay to not do as much good as you conceivably could. I find this explanation unconvincing because it would then equally justify not doing any good at all.