Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience

For someone who claims to read a lot it&#x27;s odd that he would use a passage from an unrelated source to describe the motivation for EA. Why not just read some of the direct sources and their motivations? The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer is quite short and accessible. Maybe it&#x27;s easier to attack straw men...<p>Having read Singer, I&#x27;d say that the motivation is to take the sense of &quot;doing good in the world&quot; and apply reason to it. There&#x27;s a kid drowning in a pond in front of you and there&#x27;s a kid drowning on the other side of the world. Why do we act differently, Singer asks? From there he goes on to build an ethical case that it&#x27;s our _obligation_ to give significantly more to charity.<p>I don&#x27;t recall Singer ever advocating for earning ever more money, nor certainly doing so at the expense of others. And I&#x27;m fairly certain Singer would strongly object to deferring giving to some uncertain future point.<p>Setting aside this article, where&#x27;s all the hate for giving to charity coming from? Guilty consciences? Shouldn&#x27;t we as a society celebrate and encourage giving? It seems the alternative more often then not is to accumulate.

Many aspects of Effective Altruism have been helpful, but Earning to Give is not one of them.<p>When Effective Altruism started gaining traction in the early 2010s, Earning to Give was a poster child of EA recommendations, hailed as a counterintuitive yet rational outcome of utilitarian analysis. It has long been considered mainstream in Effective Altruism and was advocated heavily by the organization 80,000 Hours, which provides career advice for people wanting to do good in the world.<p>It&#x27;s not a bad thing to earn money in ethical ways and then also donate money to good causes. Unfortunately, one of the specific examples that gets the most attention is to go into high-frequency trading (instead of another career) so you can earn money to donate.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;80000hours.org&#x2F;career-reviews&#x2F;trading-in-quantitative-hedge-funds&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;80000hours.org&#x2F;career-reviews&#x2F;trading-in-quantitativ...</a><p>Although 80,000 Hours no longer emphasizes Earning to Give, it has never taken public responsibility for the damage it has done by steering young people toward career decisions that prioritize Earning to Give and for broadly legitimizing Earning to Give in EA circles.

Thinking about the counterfactual for a bit: if EAs weren&#x27;t EAs, who would they be?<p>* Finance professionals who gave less to charity?<p>* altruistic folks who gave to poorly validated charities?<p>* Changemakers who decided instead to go for the money and thereby reify the social structures of their lives?<p>* Regular people who thought less hard about ethics, e.g. giving vegetarianism or veganism a go?<p>* Regular people who never considered becoming megalomaniac crypto scammers?<p>And whether EA is good or bad <i>as a whole</i> depends on the characteristics and composition of this counterfactual group. IMO, that&#x27;s pretty hard to get a good grip on.

I know EA&#x27;s who earn six figure salaries but take the average salary of the country (UK) and donate the rest. So you will find anecdotal evidence supporting both getting rich and not getting rich.<p>But let&#x27;s say people <i>do</i> get rich and donate to charities to have a clean conscience... is this a bad thing? EA is not a reason to do outright immoral actions to donate to charity but out-competing a colleague for a promotion? Leaving a job after 6 months to take double the salary elsewhere? I think these are all decisions I&#x27;ve personally taken for EA-based reasons and donate a fixed 10% per month so yes ultimately I&#x27;ve ended up richer <i>but</i> I fund more charities and that seems like a good thing.<p>Building ponzi schemes to redirect money from investors to charities is never okay.

The idea that there&#x27;s a big demand for a fig leaf that excuses getting rich strikes me as extremely wrong. I don&#x27;t think that there are a significant number of people in the world who are like, &quot;I&#x27;m all set to get rich, except oh no I need to find some excuse for getting rich otherwise someone will be mean to me and I can&#x27;t deal with that, oh thank god, it&#x27;s Effective Altruism, now I can get rich.&quot;<p>To a first approximation, everyone on this site regularly participates in threads talking about how to maximize their compensation, without anyone feeling a particular need for a fig leaf.

A lot of defense of EA on this thread follows the same chain of thought: &quot;what&#x27;s wrong with doing the most good? What&#x27;s wrong with Peter Singer&#x27;s philosophy of doing so? Have you read The Life You Can Save?&quot;<p>It&#x27;s like trying to defend against criticisms of religious fundamentalism by saying &quot;What about the teachings of Love and Kindness by Jesus? Have you ever read the Bible?&quot;<p>The literal words of the Bible doesn&#x27;t matter as much when people who claim to follow it in the earnest are also doing the most harm. You need to have a conversation internally first to figure out what your ideology is, otherwise it just looks like avoiding responsibility to the &quot;outsiders&quot;.

The only way to get rich with a clean conscience is to use your money to buy social status at cool charities (like the MIT media lab) while keeping most of it for yourself. There&#x27;s no way that starving kids in Africa can offer the kind of status that semicharitable PR foundations do. For one thing, they can&#x27;t write articles like this

So there are some assholes doing EA. Maybe even it&#x27;s a majority. Maybe even the organisations that front it are all &quot;look how amazing we are&quot;.<p>Is EA actually... bad? It would seem at worst it&#x27;s not as good as advertised.<p>If 10% of the followers donate 10% of their income to charity, isn&#x27;t that a massive win?<p>I&#x27;m not part of EA myself, like many I&#x27;m mildly annoyed by the arrogance but also feel like that&#x27;s not enough to substantially criticise a movement.

Not sure what the end-game is in this line of thinking but the consistent narratives against both charitable giving or government intervention to produce institutions of social assistance can not be good for the unfortunate and marginalized.

This is <i>not at all</i> what Effective Altruism is about. If you&#x27;re getting crazy rich and giving 50% of it away to <i>cost-effective</i> charity than you&#x27;re likely doing a tremendous net-amount of good.<p>It&#x27;s not as if you get a bunch of free stuff the moment you say I am doing something for <i>EA</i> purposes.

I do not think this is convincing in any way. And I very much dislike people assigning cynical motivations for the moral preferences of others.<p>Any activity can be described this way. &quot;Working in a soup kitchen?&quot; &quot;I bet you are doing this because it makes you feel superior to all the others who do not volunteer, right? And also, you feel less guilty seeing homeless people now, after all you are already doing <i>something</i>, so there is no reason to feel obligated to them aswell&quot;.<p>I am sure that there are many entirely sincere EA enthusiasts, wanting nothing more than see their money be used to better the lives of others. Spending time organizing, fundraising, optimizing charity, doing outreach, some of it might even be &quot;hard work&quot;, done gladly without receiving any praise or compensation. On the other hand a friend of mine is regularly getting up at 2am to drag the injured, freezing, decrepit and mentally ill into a place where they can get some semblance of help. To me it is clear who is actually more deserving of respect and who does more to improve the lives of people.<p>If everything you have is money, all problem look like they are solved by spending.

Why would it be wrong to get rich without doing things which you should be ashamed of later, and helping people that need it?<p>I think it&#x27;s normal charity that should be considered conscience laundering. You give money to the Red Cross and feel good about yourself, and ignore the fact that the money is embezzled or squandered without helping anyone. It&#x27;s people that don&#x27;t care where the charity money goes or the long term consequences of it when it does at least go to someone in need that should be criticized.

This gets part of the way there I think. A lot of EAs have issues with scrupulosity, &quot;pathological guilt&#x2F;anxiety about moral or religious issues&quot;[1]. It&#x27;s not so much that any of them have really done anything to feel bad about, it&#x27;s just that they tend to be the kind of people with a tendency to be very hard on themselves about ever smaller things.<p>The article doesn&#x27;t accuse them of doing anything bad exactly, but it&#x27;s kind of... in the background? And even if the article writer didn&#x27;t intend that, a lot of people, when they discuss this type of thing do intend it. That being rich is somehow bad, or means you did something bad, or reflects poorly on your moral fiber. Which I want to point out is a huge assumption and should be drawn out and pinned to the ground as something worthy of discussion.<p>My own (more extreme) take is that not only have none of them done anything to feel bad about, but that most of them are living hugely net social positive lives and would have been even if they never gave so much as a dime to charity.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Scrupulosity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Scrupulosity</a>

We are certainly in the regime where an increasing Gini coefficient is bad overall towards all of society and we need less inequality and not more.<p>If your philosophy tries to contradict that, you need to figure out why your philosophy is wrong, not double down on counterintuitive reasoning as to why it is right.<p>If you can&#x27;t see why and don&#x27;t have your eyes open as to why this is obvious, I can&#x27;t help you.

Good Conscience is liberating.<p>Humans really are afraid to be punished, they&#x27;ve all been kids at some point, the fear of being bad is deeply ingrained.<p>In practice, the more important and beneficial part is to be seen as good by others. If someone can convince enough people, they will have little doubts about themselves.<p>As a rule, I consider any advertisement of virtue as suspicious.

The idea that you can excuse your poor behavior by donating to charity to effective altruism is a poor take on the concept.<p>How you got rich is important, because damages as well contributions must be accounted for.<p>The notion of &#x27;end justify the mean&#x27; probably just means you end up being a docuhebag instead of contributing anything meaningful.

I dont think Charity has much of a track record compared to commerce. There are some edge cases where market failures create situations where progress is stuck but those are lots of times governance problems. Telling people how to govern themselves is at least as fraught as the idea that just showering money on non-profits will do anything useful, so it&#x27;s a tough one. I think non-profits are a way to increase the velocity of money which increases commerce, so while I think a lot of altruistic posturing is bullshit, if it gets people to spend money instead of hoarding it, that is an overall good thing, but for the wrong reasons.

This certainly isn&#x27;t true for some of the founders of effective altruism, like Peter Singer, who gives away money as he earns it (as opposed to promising to give it away in the future) and isn&#x27;t rich (by First World standards).

The one and only billionaire who gets to die with a clean conscience is Chuck Feely. Dude <i>was</i> a billionaire. Gave it all away. Now he’s an ordinary $2 millionaire. All other billionaires should be ashamed.

As someone who is not rich (as in I need to keep working to live, though I&#x27;m quite comfortable), I don&#x27;t feel any animosity towards those that are. Am I doing it wrong?<p>The headline seems to imply that gaining wealth is inherently a slimy thing to do. I just don&#x27;t buy it. And if those people choose to donate some of that wealth, that seems strictly better than just being wealthy on its own.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s just so difficult for people to get ahead these days that they start to focus more on what other people have and become bitter?

Saying &quot;Effective Altruism Is about Getting Rich with a Clean Conscience&quot; is the same as saying &quot;Vegetarianism is about breaking into animal shelters and letting all the animals out&quot;.<p>What a rude and erroneous way to summarize a complex movement comprised of so many different activities and points of view.

Honestly &quot;Effective Altruism&quot; is just another empty set of words. See all the No-True-Scotsman fallacies in this comment thread alone. Unless there&#x27;s an explicitly codified standard of behavior, the words are meaningless.<p>&quot;Effective&quot; by what standards? &quot;Altruism&quot; according to who? One person&#x27;s altruism is another&#x27;s abuse. Safe Injection Sites for drug addicts are a good example, on one hand they are &quot;altruistic&quot; in trying to prevent deaths of drug addicts and hopefully steer some toward rehab programs. On the other hand they bring crowds of junkies to whatever neighborhood they&#x27;re in, likely making life more dangerous for any residents&#x2F;businesses.<p>Is the use of imminent domain to build public infrastructure &quot;effective altruism&quot; when it bulldozes peoples&#x27; homes for a new road?<p>Most of the time calling something &quot;effective altruism&quot; is just the time-honored tradition of projecting a veneer of righteousness onto an action, and sometimes an attempt to shut down counterarguments that are pointing out negative impacts.<p>It&#x27;s just the new, trendier &quot;making the world a better place&quot;.

JC wisely said that rich people&#x27;s chances of ending up in heaven are pretty low.<p>It was my own country that severed the last ties that the Western world had with medieval society&#x27;s focus on the afterlife and overruled the Bible on economics. To quote Madonna we live in a material world.

This feels a lot like the old canard that there&#x27;s no such thing as altruism because altruistic people get joy out of acting altruistically and thus their altruism is really just selfishness. Which is ridiculous because the act of taking joy is itself the altruism, i.e. an altruist is the type of person who can take joy in things that benefit others rather than themselves, the joy doesn&#x27;t negate the altruism, it is the altruism.<p>That being said EA has clearly gone completely off the rails and FTX should be the final nail in the coffin. It&#x27;s become a way for nerdy people to do stats and thought experiments and pretend they&#x27;re doing something altruistic. EA will never be net positive given the massive negative that&#x27;s been done by SBF and FTX.

&gt; here’s my take on effective altruism: I think it’s a justification for being ambitious, for getting as rich as possible, and (in many cases) by any means possible, and keeping your conscience clear along the way.<p>Can someone explain to me what happened here? The last I knew about EA was from a JRE podcast in 2017 with macaskill, where his ideas were to spend currency where it had the greatest impact and with the greatest efficiency while presenting the least friction to give, and I recall these ideas and the charity being supported by thinkers like Sam Harris and others. Now I&#x27;m reading connections with sbf and future now and you&#x27;d think macaskill had gone full dark side. Macaskill&#x27;s wiki says he wrote a book about longtermism which seems fine on its face but I&#x27;ve only read negative things about here on HN.<p>Without knowing more, Seems like people are being reactionary to me. What&#x27;s the scoop?

Another point against the intersection of EA and HN: it seems to agitate souls very much. I guess every age has its religion... and moral justification for its deeds.

Is it a bad thing?

My thoughts exactly. Apparently making a blog post explains it better than comments on pro-EA posts so kudos to you

Who determines what &quot;the most good&quot; is and by what metrics? Is this where charity meets authoritarianism?

Isn’t it all about spamming trolley problems until people give up on rational thinking about ethics completely?

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Being woke is about enjoying priviledge with a clean conscience

Being woke is about enjoying privilege with a clean conscience

“It’s my big number.” I tell people it’s OK to be rich.”

A lot of mental gymnastics that could have been avoided if one just read Ayn Rand...

A lot of charity is performative. I have been forced to attend absolutely disgusting gala events where rich people sell one another discounted items, donated as tax deductions via the companies they run, and give speeches about how important it is to help the poor. Beyond the base gluttony, the feeling of being a &quot;good person&quot; is the point of all of it, and to absolve themselves of the fact that much of the wealth there is built on the backs of working people via usury, swindle and vice. Infuriating.<p>This is why Jesus said:<p><i>&gt; Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.</i>

I want to highlight that this opens with<p>&gt; based on […] some quick reading I’ve done on the topic<p>and is dominated by a quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide.<p>There are much better considered critiques of effective altruism than this article.

I&#x27;m sorry, is there a problem with my browser? Did I miss 90% of the &quot;article&quot;? Or is it just an assertion and a quote from a book? Because I see a grand total of 0 arguments for or against the thesis that is being made, just &quot;I think EA is this. Here&#x27;s a quote by Douglas Adams.&quot;

Not sure that those claiming to be pursuing &quot;Effective Altruism&quot; have a conscience. If they did, then it seems they would not need to invoke this term to describe their actions, or in this case, their &quot;promised&quot; actions and stated intentions.<p>Long before the internet, and the means to make up language and spread the most nonsensical ideas to millions of people across the globe in milliseconds, people, some of whom became wealthy, acted altruistically.<p>One does not need wealth to practice altruism. Many people do it instinctively.<p>To suggest or even imply that altruism not backed by wealth is insignificant or even less significant is not a novel idea, nor is it non-obvious. It is, of course, deeply cynical. We can expect such unoriginal &quot;thinking&quot; from those entranced by the so-called &quot;tech&quot; industry.

Effective Altruism is a lipstick on a pig.

If I am doing wrong in order to perform good deeds I am setting myself up for a lifetime as a failure. This is like the mafia leader that gives to the church. Good deeds can never pay back the evil anyone has ever committed. The solution is only found in the blood of Christ.

&quot;[...] It is sadly thus that the very human impulse to help others [...] have been infused with logic so cold that even Mr. Spock would cringe upon hearing it. One iteration of this tendency is in the idea of “effective altruism.” We believe a more accurate phrase for this concept is “defective altruism” and will therefore use that term for the remainder of this article.&quot;<p>Quoted from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssir.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;entry&#x2F;the_elitist_philanthropy_of_so_called_effective_altruism#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssir.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;entry&#x2F;the_elitist_philanthropy_of_...</a>

In EA I see a bunch of people who are struggling to break free of the mindset of utilitarianism, because they are so entrenched in it that their only ability to criticize its application is itself utilitarianism. That is, if the only way you have to say that something is good is that it is &quot;high value&quot;, then you are forced to evaluate all actions in terms of their value, and then I guess you can go and choose the highest value ones according to that system. But there are in fact wholly distinct ways to make moral judgments which are incompatible with that.<p>&quot;But&quot;, they say, &quot;that&#x27;s got to be the most valuable way of knowing what to do, basically by definition&quot;. No, you&#x27;re just doing that thing again: you&#x27;re measuring your measuring sticks using the same system, and then measuring your way of measuring measuring sticks using the same system again, ad infinitum.<p>&quot;But isn&#x27;t that better? Your moral system must be worse than that.&quot; Yeah, mine&#x27;s worse _in your system_. But it&#x27;s better _in mine_, and to me you seem like... well.... a self-absorbed buffoon who found a way to fetishize utilitarianism and wealth-maximization and reason themselves out of any imperative to feel empathy or consideration for, like, the people or communities around you.