This is great! I myself started doing the Trial Pledge this year and then the 10% Pledge a few months later! I wonder, though, how one could achieve a wholesale reorientation in ordinary people's thinking about ethics/morality might be needed here: a shift away from ethics as merely a negative project of <not doing stuff> or doing the bare minimum of moral decency towards a positive project of <positively doing good stuff> and doing more and more of what one has more (weightier) moral reasons to do, without it being too maximising and demanding/exhausting. Perhaps memes or a really good movie or TV show might be needed to gradually influence people's conception of morality for the better over time! 🤔
Great stuff Richard! Do you primarily give to animal or human charities? I tend to think animal charities are thousands of times more effective, and so probably better to give to.
Mostly human charities. On the more speculative side, I see the strongest case as being for EA community building, as it plausibly creates a "multiplier effect" increasing donations for all the other EA causes. I'd also prioritize x-risk / longtermism over animal welfare. But I do give some to animal charities too, largely as a form of moral hedging.
Yeah, community building is good. I recently argued the SWP is better than longtermist orgs https://benthams.substack.com/p/rebutting-every-objection-to-giving. But I think definitely you'll get more bang for your buck if you have most of your donations go to animals and longtermism.
I thought that was the weakest section of your post. It's very strange to rely on intuition to justify dismissing longtermism *in favor of shrimp* (!) -- presumably the reason why it "seems wrong" to prioritize longtermist causes is just that the potential benefits are not as salient; that's not the sort of intuition that one should give any weight to. (We also know that people are very bad at thinking intuitively about probability.) If you're going to "shut up and multiply" on behalf of shrimp, why not on behalf of future people?
I think I reject both. Shrimp has ripple effects given the probability of many simulations and various other tail risks like spreading shrimp farming to space. And it's hard to believe that, say, giving to prevent 10,000 negative utility monsters from being tortured viciously for a dollar is lower impact than longtermism stuff.
Shrimp welfare seems weird, but only because of bias and systematic ethical errors.
This is great! I myself started doing the Trial Pledge this year and then the 10% Pledge a few months later! I wonder, though, how one could achieve a wholesale reorientation in ordinary people's thinking about ethics/morality might be needed here: a shift away from ethics as merely a negative project of <not doing stuff> or doing the bare minimum of moral decency towards a positive project of <positively doing good stuff> and doing more and more of what one has more (weightier) moral reasons to do, without it being too maximising and demanding/exhausting. Perhaps memes or a really good movie or TV show might be needed to gradually influence people's conception of morality for the better over time! 🤔
Congrats! And yeah, I think the distinction between "reactive vs goal-directed ethics" is really important: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/reactive-vs-goal-directed-ethics
EA needs more marketers / cultural influencers to figure out how to better popularize the most important ideas :-)
Great stuff Richard! Do you primarily give to animal or human charities? I tend to think animal charities are thousands of times more effective, and so probably better to give to.
Mostly human charities. On the more speculative side, I see the strongest case as being for EA community building, as it plausibly creates a "multiplier effect" increasing donations for all the other EA causes. I'd also prioritize x-risk / longtermism over animal welfare. But I do give some to animal charities too, largely as a form of moral hedging.
Yeah, community building is good. I recently argued the SWP is better than longtermist orgs https://benthams.substack.com/p/rebutting-every-objection-to-giving. But I think definitely you'll get more bang for your buck if you have most of your donations go to animals and longtermism.
I thought that was the weakest section of your post. It's very strange to rely on intuition to justify dismissing longtermism *in favor of shrimp* (!) -- presumably the reason why it "seems wrong" to prioritize longtermist causes is just that the potential benefits are not as salient; that's not the sort of intuition that one should give any weight to. (We also know that people are very bad at thinking intuitively about probability.) If you're going to "shut up and multiply" on behalf of shrimp, why not on behalf of future people?
Quick argument:
1. Anything with plausibly compounding positive "ripple effects" strictly dominates anything that lacks such ripple effects. [See https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/seeking-ripple-effects ]
2. Stunning shrimp has minimal chance of compounding ripple effects, compared to other causes.
Therefore,
3. Stunning shrimp is strictly dominated by other causes.
I think I reject both. Shrimp has ripple effects given the probability of many simulations and various other tail risks like spreading shrimp farming to space. And it's hard to believe that, say, giving to prevent 10,000 negative utility monsters from being tortured viciously for a dollar is lower impact than longtermism stuff.
Shrimp welfare seems weird, but only because of bias and systematic ethical errors.
I agree with your last sentence, I just think it applies equally to flimsy dismissals of longtermism!
Yeah plausible.