254. Charity & Effective Altruism

There are 1.5 million non-profit organizations in the US. Effective Altruists try to direct people towards the good ones, but many don’t agree with their picks - maybe the problem is bigger than “picking a good charity.”

- Links for the Curious -

[dietrichmcgoogilygoo]

Great video! Since I learned what effective altruism was a couple years ago, it’s left me uneasy. It felt half like trying to tech-ify charity and half like obscenely rich people giving themselves an excuse to make as much money as possible. Still not sure how I feel but I did thunk for 13 minutes.

[KynaTiona]

Religious businesses being exempt from taxes is a blatant and unjustifiable violation of the separate of church and state, and billionaires getting to skate by with zero taxes on account of "donating" money to "charities" designed to further their own goals is just money laundering. Both these things make me very upset. >_<

[TheGemsbok]

Josh is the type of dude that ensures he's wearing a fedora and not a trilby for his fedora bit. Respect.

[poketopa]

Definitely agree! I was part of an EA club in college, and a lot of the talk of EA is focused on the utilitarian rationality rather than actually examining why and how to value things. I still think this kind of thinking has a place in the discourse, but a lot of EA thought seems to ignore (and therefore fall into) weird value traps like the utility monster (longterm-ism) and pascal's wager (AI s-factors)

[DinaBelenko]

It's amazing how organised religion can commit one fraud after another, and EA gets one guy, ONE GUY (!) and is labelled as villains forever.

[ianderk]

Here in AZ, deducting from local nonprofits is relatively easy below around $800/yr for one type of org and another $800/yr for foster care. The govt. has a pre approved list that, overall, isn’t terrible.

The foster care donation program seems pretty good, tbh, but I worry about the use of nonprofits to solve social problems the state should probably deal with directly. We give to a homelesss shelter that specializes in seniors that does excellent work and are good stewards of our money, but it seems like the state could either fund those programs directly or spend more resources dealing with the larger problem. Real estate developers get a massive tax break to build single-family homes, we get a tax break to donate to the shelters that kinda sorta shelter people who can’t afford housing, and the problem continues. It’s easy to say “stop participating, ” but that wouldn’t fix the structural issues.

[orterves]

If only there was some mechanism for ensuring the accountability of the people in charge of distributing the charity, maybe one in which all the donors could vote periodically on the people who decide where the donations go, and hold them accountable.

Oh well. Just give it all to the billionaires I guess

[ralphmumbeck]

Can I start the "Church of Myself" and then not pay taxes?
I'll pray every day ...promise 😂

[alexixeno]

I think the charitable donation system is good, it soft forces people with more wealth to donate. The issue is what is considered a charity, some things are just much too broad.

[anakimluke]

newton continues cute as always :D i love the little hand waves he does!!

[bthomson]

Why does the charity money have to go first to the very rich? And only then filtered down to THEIR choice of beneficiaries? Tax the very rich at reasonable levels ( we all know what those OUGHT to be! ) Also we are getting away from professionals! Somebodies cousins or nephew or their family dentist shouldn't be in charge! We need the expertise and far thinking of real geniuses in the fields to make sure the money is best spent!

[Xob_Driesestig]

hmmm looks like comments are being auto-deleted from "top" by youtube, but you can still find some arguments against EA if you sort the comments by "new"

[TristandKatz]

Saying that longtermism leads EAs to focus on the threat of AI is just false. AI is a huge threat today, some think even an existential threat. That's why they focus on it.

[thortaylor]

When you brought up AI risk around the 6min mark, you actively contrasted it with nuclear war risk; this struck me as odd - yes, working to reduce small chances of catastrophic risk is qualitatively different from eg. giving money to poor people directly, but "prevent nuclear war", "prevent pandemics", and "Prevent catastrophic damage caused by future AIs" are all in the same "catastrophic risk" category, and the remaining difference is the tractability and neglected-ness of the causes.

[MetsuryuVids]

I expected better from you.
I don't care about EA, and I'm not a longtermist, but calling AI Safety "speculative research" is a bad take.
AI risk is not a long-term risk, there are non-existential issues with current AI, and existential risk is something that will plausibly affect all of us in our lifetime, possibly even soon, and not to use an argument from authority, but top AI researchers and CEOs of major AI labs agree that existential risks from AI are real, and might be relevant soon.
There is a movement/cult of "accelerationism" that militantly dismisses these risks, and since EA is linked with AI risk mitigation, they are also against EA in general. This video seems awfully reminiscent of that.
If you're not already brainwashed by those zealots, I strongly encourage you to actually think about AI risk from first principles, instead of giving in to normalcy bias and dismissing it so easily.

[basiclawprof]

Fedora-wearing Atheist is an excellent cherry-picker.