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The Role of “Economism” in the Belief-Formation
Systems of Effective Altruism
Thomas Aitken
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Thomas Aitken Economism within EA
1 Introduction
Without trying to over-simplify what is by now a complex and multi-faceted social movement, I believe
there is still something like an intellectual core of Effective Altruism. This cannot be described in terms of
one single intellectual methodology such as “Bayesianism” or “Utilitarian Moral Philosophy” but requires
a coarser abstraction. The word I have chosen for this is Economism. Economism, as I define it, is a
broad-spectrum term that encompasses epistemic, methodological and psychological aspects. At an epis- temic and methodological level, Economism means the over-generalisation of the toolset, methodology and
ideas of neoclassical economics—in particular, Expected Utility Theory, methodological individualism, the
valorisation of “optimisation”, and a belief in the power of non-empirical formal models to represent com- plex systems. There are some ways in which EA clearly has distinguished itself from the stereotype of the
free-market-sacralising economist, such as by its starting point, which rejects at least the uber-economistic
idea that things will go perfectly fine if, on the whole, everyone just endeavours to satisfy their own interests.
On the other side of the ledger, I am also not saying that neoclassical (conventional, marginalist) economics,
as actually practised, always exhibits the flaws I will articulate. But there are clearly many connecting ties
in between.
As a mindset, Economism embodies what I call the “Formal/Comprehensive Mentality”, characterised by
its attraction to the formal and analytic, to quantification and precision, to things that can be represented
faithfully by relatively simple mathematical models—a mind that seeks to fit phenomena into such rigid
frameworks and to dismiss as incomprehensible anything that cannot be girdled in this way. Although this
mentality has immense value, I think that it cannot be applied to all aspects of understanding, especially in
more complex realms, where it tends to produce facile conclusions. What it lacks can be illustrated by means
of contrast with alternative mentalities that are more integrative, holistic and pluralist. I associate these
descriptors not with informal approaches to knowledge, per se, but approaches to knowledge that acknowledge
the importance of understanding interactions between systems, privilege emergence over atomism, promote
epistemic and methodological pluralism over a one-size-fits-all approach, knowledge as a cultural process
rather than an individual creation, and has been associated with intellectual tendencies such as Complexity
Science, Cybernetics, Ecology and Cultural Evolution. By engaging with these ways of thinking, I suggest
some issues with some of the popular ideologies of the Effective Altruism movement. I take aim at several
themes that run throughout these common ideologies: an approach to the analysis of social phenomena that
relies heavily on simple economic models, a preference for individualistic over ecological or systems thinking
(at a formal and informal level), and the use of Bayesian probability theory as a universal solvent. Each of
these themes are, I believe, interlinked and thus form the basis for a general diagnosis.
2 Economism in EA: An Overview
The coinage “Economism” is not my invention. While connections definitely can be made to earlier usage
of this term, I would prefer that my usage be understood only in the terms I specify. The purpose of this
section will be to paint the picture of what in fact I do mean.
Economism clearly has a sub-positive inflection, as I am using it, but this essay will not be an exercise
in economics bashing. I don’t pretend that I can summarise and effectively critique a church as broad as
“neoclassical economics”. My interest in economics is purely in terms of the set of methodologies, principles
and tools that have been imported from this field into Effective Altruism. My purpose is to critique the
utility of these affordances in this context. At times, the critiques will generalise as critiques of aspects of
economics itself, and so be it. But it should always at least be clear when the critique is of this kind.
As I said in the introduction, “Economism” is a vague term, and one could break it down in many different
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Thomas Aitken Economism within EA
ways. For the purposes of this essay, we will go with the same enumeration of properties I used in the
introduction:
(a) the use of Expected Utility Theory as a universal decision criterion;
(b) methodological individualism and reductionism;
(c) the valorisation of “optimisation”;
(d) a belief in the power of non-empirical formal models to represent complex systems.
These are all inter-related in some way but it is useful to separate them for ease of exposition. My agenda
in this section is simply to show how each of these themes has played a prominent role in the discourse and
methodology of Effective Altruism. The critique will come later.
A word on terminology. For those who don’t know the term, “neoclassical economics” is roughly equivalent
to ‘mainstream’ economics. It is a broad church but with common foundational roots in utilitarianism,
marginalism, and the concept of supply/demand (and many other methodological, sociological and philo- sophical aspects). It is usually compared against paradigms that go by the names Post-Keynesian, Austrian
and Marxian. Read the Wiki for more.
2.1 Expected Utility Theory
Anyone who knows anything about neoclassical economics will know that Expected Utility Theory is central
to the paradigm. Expected Utility Theory is the theory of rational decision-making centred on the concept
of “expected utility maximisation”. It is based on a paradigm that defines people in terms of “utility
functions” and future events as pairs of numbers ⟨p, U⟩ (probability and utility), and defines rationality
as the optimisation of these parameters in one-off actions. It is an indispensable component of micro- economic and even much macro-economic modelling (for example, the framework of “Representative Agent”
modelling), it is the pivotal assumption of Game Theory, and it is studied on its own as part of a branch of
economics called Decision Theory or Rational Choice Theory.
It is equally central to the paradigm (so to speak) of Effective Altruism, whose leading proponents base their
reasoning on said Decision Theory.
The principle of expected utility maximisation at the heart of Decision Theory is usually regarded to be
uncontroversially ‘correct’ as a description of how an ideal rational agent should make decisions in the real
world. I will later argue that, while immensely valuable and useful, it has a definite scope in terms of its
real-world applications that should be respected in the interests of forming rational beliefs.
2.2 Methodological Individualism
In the philosophy of science, methodological individualism refers to an approach to scientific practice whereby
the target system is studied and modelled in terms of the behaviour of individual units, with the assumption
that these low-level behaviours can be scaled up to higher-level behaviours while maintaining predictive
fidelity.
Methodological individualism is well-known as a specific hallmark of (some schools of neoclassical) economics
in contrast with other social sciences. Methodological individualism in economics is in some sense the default
starting point, given the centrality of Expected Utility Theory, with its focus on individual “rational agents”
(see above). Methodological individualism in macroeconomics reached its most extreme point at the height
of the “New Classical” and monetarist economics in the 1970s, led by figures like Milton Friedman and
Robert Lucas Jr of the Chicago School. While the star of this particular school faded with time (and lack
of empirical success), methodological individualism is still at the core of micro-economic theory (and there
are some remaining proponents of “representative agent” macroeconomics).
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