In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

Scott Alexander · 28 Nov 2023

Others here said this too

The best opportunities to do good are the ones almost nobody is paying attention to.

Their wordsThese skewed priorities are the exact problem that effective altruism exists to solve - or the exact inefficiency that effective altruism exists to exploit, if you prefer that framing.

Also said by Holden Karnofsky

Read the piece on astralcodexten.com ↗

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Scott Alexander did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
The best opportunities to do good are the ones almost nobody is paying attention to.

Their wordsThese skewed priorities are the exact problem that effective altruism exists to solve - or the exact inefficiency that effective altruism exists to exploit, if you prefer that framing.
Our reading
Effective altruism's scandals are minor next to its record, and its ratio of accomplishments to scandals is as good as that of any large institution.

Their wordsI think EA’s track record of accomplishments vs. scandals is as good as any of them, maybe better.
Our reading
Movements are coalitions, and often the same people hold both of a movement's priorities rather than trading one off against the other.

Their wordsMovements are coalitions. Sometimes this means different people with different priorities choose to work together. But other times it means the same people tend to share both priorities.
Our reading
The people who can be moved by deaths from neglected tropical diseases are the same people who can be moved by pandemics and by AI risk, because both come from reasoning about importance rather than from the news.

Their wordsAnd I notice that the tiny handful of people capable of caring about 200,000 people dying of neglected tropical diseases are the same tiny handful of people capable of caring about the next pandemic, or superintelligence, or human extinction.
Our reading
Effective altruism's work on the far future is not a bait and switch hiding behind its work on global health; both halves are worth defending.

Their wordsEA has done a great job working on this (see list of accomplishments above), and I think the AI and x-risk people have just as much to be proud of as the global health and animal welfare people.

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.