Note: if you've come here because you would like to give your first impression of effective altruism, then introductions are here and here.
Note2: Robin Hanson has outlined some problems with exposing misalignment between others' actions and professed beliefs about charity.
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Today, Robin Hanson wrote a blog post that explains the importance of outside criticism.
Friendly local criticism isn't usually directed at trying to show a wider audience flaws in your arguments. If your audience won’t notice a flaw, your friendly local critics have little incentive to point it out. If your audience cared about flaws in your arguments, they’d prefer to hear you in a context where they can expect to hear motivated capable outside critics point out flaws
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If you are the one presenting arguments, and if you didn’t try to ensure available critics, then others can reasonably conclude that you don’t care much about persuading your audience that your argument lacks hidden flaws.
This raises the question: who are the best critics of effective altruism?
Ben Kuhn has given some criticism but he's an insider. (Since countered by Katja.) Geuss has written some helpful criticism but he's also involved with effective giving. Giles has passed on some thoughts from a friend. These critics have been heroic but they are few in number. It figures, as most of us aren't incentived to say bad things about a movement with which we affiliate, and if we were forced to, we might still pull some punches.
So what about outsiders? Well, 80,000 Hours have received some criticism on earning to give. They also debated some socialists. But these discussions were brief and narrowly focussed clashes between entrenched political ideologies. Others have targeted us for criticism that was so vitriolic that it was hard to find the constructive parts, such as William Schambra, Ken Berger and Robert Penna and the always sarcastic RationalWiki. Edit: also some criticism by Scott Walter.
So several years into our movement, that's all we have to show for criticism. A few insiders and a few fanatics? It's not to say we can't harvest some insights from there - by god we should try. But one would hope we have more.
If we cast the net wider, Warren's son Peter Buffett has debated William MacAskill on the effectiveness of charity, which is kind-of cool. There are more general aid critics: William Easterly, who is a fairly thoughtful economist and Dambisa Moyo, who I know less about. But these they don't really get to the heart of what we care about - if most aid is ineffective, then it would just be important to research it even harder.
Alternatively, we can look at more narrowly focused critics. LessWrong is often mentioned as a useful source for criticism, and it has usefully challenged philosophical positions held by some effective altruists. Its founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky has challenged hedonistic utilitarianism and some forms of moral realism in the Fun Theory sequence, the enigmatic (or merely misunderstood) Metaethics sequence and the fictionalised dilemma Three Worlds Collide. But these mostly address utilitarians and spare other effective altruists. Of course, Eliezer no outsider to effective altruism - he played some part in founding it. The most upvoted post on LessWrong of all time was in fact feedback from Holden Karnofsky about its sponsor-organisation MIRI. Again, the relevance of this to most EAs is a stretch.
In turn, Holden Karnofsky has recieved suggestions for GiveWell might react to philosophical considerations by LessWrong veterans like Paul Christiano, Carl Shulman, Eliezer and Nick Beckstead. Again, all insiders.
So here's how I sum up our problem. Almost all of our critics are insiders. Barring a couple of heroic attempts at self-criticism, we've primarily attracted criticism about donating and earning to give. We've also offended a couple of fanatics, and I don't have a strong view on whether we've learned from those. This is unsurprising. Taking self-criticism is hard and endorsing it or writing it is harder. Eliezer would say it feels like shooting one of your own men. Scott Siskind says, "Criticizing the in-group is a really difficult project I’ve barely begun to build the mental skills necessary to even consider. I can think of criticisms of my own tribe. Important criticisms, true ones. But the thought of writing them makes my blood boil."
But criticism seems especially important now as effective altruism is growing fast, our culture is starting to consolidate on the Facebook group and here and as we model it in the popular talks and introductory materials that we give to new community members.
To develop the effective altruist movement, it's essential that we ask people how we've failed, or how our ideas are inadequate.
So an important challenge for all of us is to find better critics.
Let me know if there's any big criticm that I've missed, or if you know someone who can engage with and poke holes in our ideas.
Related: The perspectives on Effective Altruism we Don't Hear by Jess Whittlestone. The Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
Having met Geoff Anders, the executive director of Leverage Research, and its other employees multiple times, and taking it upon myself specifically to ask pointed questions attempting to clarify their work, I can informally relay the following information[1]:
Leverage Research has and continues to successfully raise funds for its own financial needs without doing broad-based outreach to the effective altruism community at large. Leverage Research seems confident in its funding needs for the future to the point at which they won't be sourcing funds from the effective altruism community at large anytime soon.
Given that Leverage Research considers itself an early-stage, non-profit research organization, whose research goals pivot rapidly as its researchers update their minds on what is the best work they can do in the face of new evidence and developments, Leverage Research perceives it as difficult to portray their research at any given time in granular detail. That is, Leverage Research is so dynamic an organization at this point that for it to maximally disclose the details of its current research would be an exhaustive and constant effort.
Because of the difficutly Leverage Research has in expressing its research agenda accurately and precisely at any point in time, and because they've sourced their funding needs from private donors who were provided information to their own satisfaction, Leverage Research doesn't perceive it as absolutely crucial that they make specific financial or organizational information easily accessible, e.g., on its website. Personally, I haven't ever privately contacted Leverage Research seeking a disclosure of, or access to, such information. I have no knowledge of how such interactions may or may not have gone between other third parties, and Leverage Research.
The information available under the 'Our Team' heading on Leverage Research's website seems to overview only its employees who head its executive functioning, and individuals who oversee its largest projects. At any given time, Leverage Research works with several researchers, both from within and from outside of the effective altruism community, who pursue projects. Leverage Research allows researchers it takes on as part of its team, either temporarily or permanently, to pursue their own research agenda. Based on its own goals, Leverage Research lets its associated researchers pursue their research in a freeform manner, rather than assigining tasks and measured goals with a heavy hand. Leverage Research seems to do this on the basis of the belief that enabling researchers with this greater independence will, directly or indirectly, more effectively lead to the fulfiilment of the organization's medium- and long-term goals.
Leverage Research often hires a number of interns, or researchers, on a trial basis, to assess whether the independent research goals and findings of its prospective associates will be consistent with the goals and mission of the organization. The changing nature of its team, and the relative independence of each (subgroup of) researcher(s), is in large part why Leverage Research finds it difficult to do justice in expressing its research goals.
Much of Leverage Research's time and human resources is taken up by helping build the effective altruism movement. Effectively, this breaks down to Leverage Research assisting or collaborating with other organizations on events and projects. Such organizations include the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Center for Applied Rationality, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. The details of such projects and events could be confirmed by representatives from either Leverage Research, or another of these organizations.
Additionally, Leverage Research has taken sole responsibility for organizing the Effective Altruism Summit for the years 2013 and 2014, an undertaking which delivered with impressive results. Personally, I believe the 2014 Effective Altruism Summit was quite successful. These Summits have been unusual conference-style events for a unique social movement for which there is no prior infrastructure, or logistical support, for organizing events so ambitious in attendance, and diverse in content. In hindsight, it's my impression the effective altruism community at large underestimated how much effort, dedication, and person-hours worth of work were required of Leverage Reserach to wholly plan and throw such events.
[1] I take full responsiblity for any of this information if it's incorrect, inaccurate or mistaken. This is from my memory alone, based on personal correspondence with individuals affiliated with, but not necessarily employed by, Leverage Research. I will defer to representatives of Leverage Research on this information, and redact or correct this comment accordingly. I remain reticent out of concern not to misrepresent Leverage Research, so all further questions should be addressed to a representative of that organization, and not my person. I have no past or present affiliation with Leverage Research.
Thanks - I knew they were involved in the EA Summit but I didn't know they were the sole organizers. I also knew they weren't soliciting donations. I partially retract my earlier statement about them! (Also I hope I didn't cause anyone any offense - I've met them and they're super super nice and hardworking too)