EA: The Good, the Bad, and the Buggy

Effective altruists have been getting a lot of hate lately. But if you ever actually meet a group of effective altruists, even their harshest critics will struggle to maintain their anger. In person, they’re some of the most cheerful, friendly, curious, and smart people you will ever meet. Effective altruists are the opposite of the angry, self-righteous, apathetic, asocial youths who have given their generation a bad name. (And yes, strange as it seems, human beings can be angry, self-righteous, apathetic, and asocial at the same time).

Not only are EAs extraordinarily likeable; they have also made strong arguments that have causally improved actually-existing philanthropy. Mainstream charities mostly run on a combination of wishful thinking and Social Desirability Bias. As a result, they often do little good or are actively counterproductive. EAs, in contrast, closely study the evidence to figure out how to get the most bang per donor buck. This, in turn, has led to large cash infusions for three charities with demonstrably high benefit/cost ratios: deworming, anti-malaria, and Give Directly. While the typical college EA meeting is just a social club, these social clubs have ultimately made philanthropy better, especially by inspiring tech donors.

But despite their high IQs and winning personalities, EAs are sadly short on common sense. Like other humans, they’re prone to groupthink and paranoia. As a result, many have basically lost interest in philanthropy that demonstrably saves many human lives at low cost, and started obsessing about AI risk.

I’ve already explained at length why I think this is silly. But let me add that AI doomsters’ own behavior shows that deep down, they know they’re being silly. Only two doomsters have been willing to bet me; and yes, you absolutely can bet on the end of the world. The optimist prepays the pessimist, end of story.

Betting aside, if you really thought the world was likely to end, you should be going into massive debt, secure in the knowledge that you won’t have to repay it. But almost no AI doomster — EA or otherwise — does so. I know, they’ve got just-so stories about why they’re not playing the obvious strategy given their stated beliefs. The best explanation, however, is that their stated beliefs are mere lip service.

AI is such a promising technology that EA-inspired efforts to curtail it are likely to outweigh all of the good that EAs achieved back when they sensibly focused on deworming, anti-malaria, and Give Directly. That’s very sad, showing that without common sense, even high-IQ good intentions still pave the path to bad outcomes. But EAs have another set of views which, if taken seriously, wouldn’t merely strangle progress, but make humanity massively worse off: their extreme moral commitment to animal welfare.

Ten years ago, I wrote a reductio ad absurdum of the pro-animal welfare position. If all animals morally matter, what about bugs? At the time, the main response was, “Bugs don’t feel pain.” A decade later, however, plenty of EAs are just embracing the reductio, often with further bizarre epicycles. Unlike their AI doom crusade, however, I’m not even slightly worried about the real-world harm of this failure of common sense. Meat and dairy will remain legal, and bug (and shrimp!) welfare will remain fringe topics of idle intellectual curiosity. While fanatical commitment to bug welfare could easily rationalize all kinds of totalitarian horrors, even the loudest champions of this absurd position take it with a grain of salt.

Let me end by responding to all the EAs who object, “You don’t have an argument, Bryan. Not on AI. Not an bugs.” Because I really do love you guys.

First, the point of an argument is to reason from highly obvious premises to not-so-obvious conclusions. But if your conclusion is extremely non-obvious, then its denial is correspondingly extremely obvious. “If A, therefore B” only works if “Not-B, therefore not-A” isn’t more plausible.

Second, how do you find maximally obvious premises? Not via argument, which is circular, but via common sense. Science rests on the validity of perception, reason, and memory. Morality rests on the value of human well-being and prima face human rights. If you demand an argument for any of these, the right response is: “It’s obvious. The end.” Or as Thomas Reid explains in Essays on the Active Powers of Man:

And when we attempt to prove by direct argument, what is really self-evident, the reasoning will always be inconclusive; for it will either take for granted the thing to be proved, or something not more evident; and so, instead of giving strength to the conclusion, will rather tempt those to doubt of it, who never did so before.