How to use the Forum (intro)

Just finding my way around this new community and learning more about Effective Altruism.

I'm based in the UK and have spent 15+ years working across education, corporate social responsibility (CSR), health and hygiene education, and international programme management.

Most of my career has focused on designing and delivering programmes that create positive social impact, particularly around health, youth development and community engagement.

Recently, I've become interested in Effective Altruism, especially questions around AI safety, global priorities and how experienced professionals from non-traditional backgrounds can contribute effectively.

I'm here primarily to learn, exchange ideas and better understand where my existing skills and experience might be useful.

I super glad to be here, Looking forward to learning from everyone. Let's make a difference TOGETHER! 

Just trying to make my way thru this new experience.  I am the "director" of a self-made project for women and children in Guatemala, Creando Mi Futuro.  We have been running for 8 years but since I'm now 86 years old and would like the project to continue after my death, we are planning to register as an NGO in Guatemala (our umbrella NGO is in California).   I have for a long time wanted to share ideas with other small non-profits; hope this might be a place to do so. 

First and foremost, I would like to sincerely thank all the people working at the CEA, as well as all likemind people working around the globe.

Mine is to seek advise. I want someone to mentor me on how to join a project or even help me start one.

I have spent almost half of my life working with non-governmental organizations on various projects.

Mainly, I have worked in HIV/AIDs, poverty reduction with rural farmers trade Union movement, and informal economy workers, or street workers.

Please, feel free to ask for my CV.

Victor Phiri 

Zambia 

Does the forum have a policy on necro posting (the act of commenting/editing "resurrecting" old material)? I didn't find it in the "how to use the forum" sequence.

Is there a way to do blog chains on the forum?  I'm thinking of something similar to the format on Ribbonfarm.com

Please consider this for the contest on criticism. (Or if this isn't the way to enter, please let me know.)

First, in the spirit of friendly critique, the organization would surely serve its goals better by stating them consistently. The name of the organization and the mission that follows right after the name are inconsistent. Altruism means leaving yourself out of your decision-making process and focusing on the good of others. Doing the most possible good--assuming one is affected by one's actions--requires including oneself in the calculus.  If each is to count for one, per Bentham, then I should count no less than others. For the sake of what follows I will assume that the second goal, doing the most good, is the organization's priority, rather than the first.

I share (but won't defend here)  a general commitment to the utilitarian goal of maximizing aggregate utility, defined as the net of aggregate happiness minus aggregate misery. This leaves many questions unanswered, of course, including the question of whether the utility in question includes that of sentient non-humans. It also leaves unaddressed the paradox put forward by Parfit, whether maximizing aggregate utility is desirable when achieved by multiplying the population by a large number while lowering the average utility by a large number, such that the aggregate gain is not quite offset. 

The starting point of my critique is the idea that what has to count for a consistent utilitarian with a platform is not the utility of a candidate action or pattern of action. What has to count, rather, is the utility of the praise, inculcation, and promotion of that action or pattern. These two things are different. (The distinction seems to have been first proposed by Mill in his Autobiography.)

To illustrate the point, what if the way to make the most difference in practice doesn't involve advocating making the most difference? How might this be the case? It might be the case if the message was likely to fall on deaf ears, a possibility raised by the Parable of the Sower in the Gospel according to St. Luke. It might be the case if the message wasn't just ignored but counterproductive, perhaps because those advocating it unintentionally made themselves look like other-worldly idealists to their fellows, so that people leaned the opposite way just to express their resentment for the advocates? Likeliest of all, perhaps, what if the standard was so high that even people who took the message seriously in theory fell so short in practice that more achievable ideals, which would have done more good if they had been achieved, were never considered?

A nuance here is that the practice of preaching “altruism” rather than doing the most good may be warranted by the very distinction I am citing here between the utility of the act and the utility of the praise. 

What I mean is this. Altruism may have evolved within New Testament ethics as a way to leverage the (supposed) fact that people fall short of the ideals they are taught in order to promote the goal of utility maximization. If I am told to put “the other guy” first, but my natural tendency is to backslide away from my ideals in the direction of over-counting my own interests, the net may be that I end up counting my own interests and those of the other guy equally, which would tend towards utility maximizing outcomes. This logic would lead us to expect that deeply utilitarian people who held a more optimistic view of human nature would be less eager to praise altruism, since they wouldn’t be as anxious to compensate for a supposed tendency to backslide towards selfishness. In that connection it is interesting to note that the more legalistic and less “turn the other cheek” ethics found in the Old Testament correlates with the absence from the Old Testament of the doctrine of Original Sin.

To end on a constructive note, perhaps the EA group should divert some of its resources into the investigation of what works, not in the sense of what activities on the part of its members and followers will maximize utility but in the sense of what kinds of education and organizing on its own part  will tend to maximize utility, leaving open the possibility that continuing to advocate doing the most good (or even retaining the name EA) is not the way to generate the most good. 

What is the most effective altruistic act that you and I can make? This if the question posed by this website, and after a few months of thought I have decided to do the following.

I will drastically reduce and  then eliminate all fossil fuel and meat consumption from my life. I don’t want to do this, I have enjoyed a life of cheap energy based on fossil fuels, but I now know that I can no longer live this way. Because of the harm it does to those less well off, future others and all life on this planet, I must stop.

Socrates said that wisdom is knowledge and we now have the knowledge that climate change is “widespread, rapid and intensifying and the world must quickly and completely curtail greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophe” (Economist Magazine‘s stark summary of the IPCC’s most recent report). If you read the  IPCC’s freely available 6th Assessment Report (or for something less heavy The Climate Book compiled by Greta Thunberg), or just watched the news, or the weather in your local area, you cannot fail to know this to be the effects of global warm are true  and immensely damaging. We have to stop dumping green house gases into atmosphere or the planet will get hotter and hotter and hotter until our civilization collapses. So will you and the rest of humanity act wisely? Socrates thought that with knowledge you couldn‘t do anything but, however I‘m not so sure.  

Whilst knowledge is wisdom, we now know it is not enough. Humans have the capacity for delusion, disbelief and selfishness, so that we can dismiss knowledge as untrue or “fake news” or think we are already doing enough or it is pointless an individual acting or its up to Governments to act. We can invent countless excuses for our own convenience. We can create a reality that suits ourselves to give us short term pleasure (and maybe pleasure that will last until we die). However, eventually the true reality comes crashing in and we are forced to acknowledge the unavoidable truth. But, by then it will be too late and the planet will be unable to recover.

When you look at the cosmic, geological and evolutionary events that have resulted in the advanced life forms on this planet, how can you not be amazed by the world? For all we know, we may be the most complex life form in the Universe - but we are currently on a path to destroy ourselves by swiftly and radically altering the planet. Do we not have a moral duty to prevent harm to others, future others and other life forms?

So, the most altruistic the most effective act you can do is to stop dumping your pollution on those least able to cope with the consequences, namely those in less wealthy countries, future others who have no voice and other life forms who have an equal right to live. You will be helping billions and billions, not to mention saving the future of our planet.

Also, at the next election, vote for the political party with the greenest agenda,