The Singer/Crary EA Debate

Some thoughts

Open to Debate’s July debate between Peter Singer and Alice Crary, on the topic ‘Does the Effective Altruism Movement Get Giving Right?’, is now online. I was invited to participate as one of four “outside experts” to ask a question towards the end of the debate.

Watching the debate unfold, I was very struck by how intellectually incurious and closed-minded Alice Crary was about EA (thought this wasn’t surprising given her written work on the topic). She would respond to Peter’s points by saying things like, “That all sounds very reasonable, so you just must not really be an effective altruist, as I mean it.”¹ One is left with the impression that she’s never actually spoken with an effective altruist before (just group polarization via sharing tendentious characterizations with other haters, I guess).²

Crary’s overarching framing took the form of a dilemma: either EA is incapable of considering any evidence beyond RCTs (this seemed to be her core definition of EA), or else there is nothing distinctive about EA. Her underlying reasoning, as emerged at a few points, rested on the observation that EA doesn’t tend to fund the social justice advocacy of her political allies. Apparently the only possible explanation is that EA is blinded by an RCT-obsessed methodology. (Extrapolating a bit from her written work: Demands for evidence constitute moral corruption because proper moral sensitivity lets you just see that her friends’ work ought to be funded.) EA is “grievously harmful”, because it shifts attention and resources (incl. the moral passions of the smartest college students) away from social justice activists.³ As such, it ought to be abolished.

At 49:12, I got to ask my question about what each debater saw as the greatest potential “moral risk” of their advocacy on this topic. Singer gamely highlighted Angus Deaton’s critique of aid, while explaining why he ultimately remained unconvinced of it. Crary (@52) just dogmatically asserted that my question (i.e., to even consider the possibility that she might be wrong) “presupposed” something that she “didn’t agree with.”

Part of my question was cut from the recorded video, but in the live event I specifically highlighted how a great many children’s lives have been saved as a result of EA principles leading many of us to prioritize the Against Malaria Foundation over other causes; so her wish to “abolish” EA would presumably result in many more children dying of malaria. So I was curious whether she was at all troubled by this cost. Alas, to be troubled one would first have to think about possible trade-offs, and that evidently remains something that Crary is resolutely unwilling to do.

A few other points that jumped out at me:

• Crary (e.g. @23:30) objects to early EA organizations (e.g. GiveWell) saying, in effect, “Don’t listen to other charity evaluators, listen to us, because we’re using reason and evidence to tell you how to do the most good.” Singer (@46) responds that GiveWell was right to mark this contrast! Previous evaluators like Charity Navigator used financial metrics like overhead ratios that are entirely disconnected from what actual impact the charity’s programs are having. Insofar as others are now starting to follow GiveWell’s lead and consider effectiveness, EA deserves credit for that.

• Crary (@38:21) objected to “earning to give” on the purely rhetorical grounds that it positions rich people as “saviors” of the poor, and “situates the global poor in something like the position of new colonial subjects.” I found this so slimy. This is not the language or argument of someone who wants to help the global poor and is looking, in goal-directed fashion, at how best to achieve this valuable end. Rather, it’s the vibescrafting of a political actor who wants to manipulate their audience through non-rational rhetorical association. But I agree with her that it marks a striking contrast between effective altruists and critics like her.

• Peter Singer’s comments were all very sensible, as one would expect. He especially stressed that EA is about evidence, not just about RCTs. Some projects can be quite speculative. Singer flagged that expected value reasoning can be quite open to “moonshots”. (It’s really striking how many critics fail to understand this.)⁴ Still, he noted, it is important to do follow-ups and be guided by evidence of some sort because otherwise you risk overinvesting in debacles like Playpumps.

1. See, e.g., @47:20: she grants that Singer’s view is “really reasonable” and “sounds right”, but just doesn’t match her internal caricature of effective altruism. Her concluding remarks repeat her impression that Peter Singer is not an effective altruist. It’s bizarre!

2. Compare her mischaracterization (@10:40) of longtermists as “concluding” that the prevention of x-risks is a moral priority that “might justify any means, however terrible.” (This is a “conclusion” pushed by critics like Emile Torres. If you read actual longtermists, their practical conclusions are about where to direct one’s discretionary time and money—not fantasizing about committing atrocities for the “greater good”—and of course there are good reasons for this.) It’s especially weird to hear this objection from anti-capitalists, some of whose 20th century forebears notoriously did some pretty terrible things when they gained power!

3. She also seems very offended that the co-founders of GiveWell had no previous experience in philanthropy, and yet presumed to tell her “expert” allies how they could do better. There seems a lot of background entitlement and resentment shaping her concerns here.

4. I think it stems from political dogmatism: many critics seemingly cannot imagine that a reasonable person of good will would not share their boundless a priori optimism about anti-capitalist politics. So the “only” possible explanation for why EA doesn’t fund their political projects is that EA must not be willing to consider anything beyond narrow RCT-supported interventions. Cognitive dissonance presumably prevents these critics from noticing how inconsistent their explanation is with the entire field of longtermist projects.