Reimagining Effective Altruism (should George take the job?)
Yes. This is yet another essay about effective altruism as if there isn’t enough discourse about it online. :)
We’ll be referencing various articles and writings by Brain Berkey, Erik Hoel, William MacAskill, and Bernard Williams in this short series of musings about the place of moral theories in practical applications & contradictions within the EA community.
First, we describe act-utilitarianism as discussed in Utilitarianism, for and against by Smart and Williams. Act-utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory that states a “person’s act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that situation.” Jeremy Bentham, the founder of classical utilitarianism, claims that the ultimate goal of moral action is to maximize overall happiness and pleasure, which he calls “utility.”
Bernard Williams, in his section arguing against utilitarianism, gives us two examples (summarized):
George, a Ph.D. in chemistry, is offered a job researching chemical warfare. He is morally opposed to such war research, but if he does not take the job, another candidate who is less morally opposed to the concept will take the job (therefore, do a more fervent job). (p.85)
Jim is offered the choice of shooting one person to save a group of 20 arrested people. Pedro, the head of the police, tells him that if he does not take the honor of killing one person, he will kill all 20. (p.86)
In the utilitarian framework, it seems quite obvious to choose the path of taking the job or shooting the individual, yet, as Williams argues, we must question why this is so obvious. He says that it is less of what is right or wrong but more so the type of reasoning that lead to this thinking—for example, it ignores how it would make an individual feel in a situation.
In addition, “all causal connexions are on the same level, and it makes no difference, so far as that goes, whether the causation of a given state of affairs lies through another agent or not” (Smart and Williams, 1973, p. 83). Bernard says that because the agent's identity does not matter in deciding if an action should be taken, utilitarianism is not a good moral framework for individuals to live by.
Effective Altruism
Brian Berkey, in his paper Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism, summarizes the general philosophy of Effective Altruism into four main statements:
EA1: There are strong moral reasons for well-off people to address moral issues based on fundamental values
EA2: These fundamental values include impartially promoting increasing welfare, quality of life, and so on for individuals (what Brian Berkey calls “Cosmopolitan Impartiality”)
EA3: There are strong reasons to prefer giving to those that help these values most efficiently
EA4: You should employ the best empirical decision-making—your decisions should be evidence-based. (Berkey 2)
Such depiction of Effective Altruism, as opposed to where the movement initially emerged from, can also be portrayed as “corrective for cognitive biases.”
To prove the point that Effective Altruist is not as narrow as one may seem to perceive it, Brian Berkey brings up the 2015 survey of seld-identified effective altruists. Among them, 56% identified as utilitarians, with another 13% identifying as non-utilitarian consequentialists and 8% as deontologists or virtue ethicists.
As long as one is oriented towards short-term goals, one can reasonably reconcile the ethical theories. Kantians’ desire to satisfy the beneficence requirement in an “effective manner” can align with the utilitarian desire to make the greater good and with virtue ethicists to X. Despite having different reasons for particular actions, we can climb the mountain of real-world ethical challenges together in an effective manner.
An interesting question arises, however, in the recently popularized discourse on whether effective altruism should embody longtermism. Longtermism focuses on prioritizing the long-term (i.e., the future). There is a wide range of what “the future” can mean to someone and how important it is: for example, to some, current world issues should be prioritized over the future, while others believe that time within the next century is the most important to prioritize. In MacAskill’s What We Owe the World, he calculates the “infinite” value in prioritizing future generations. However, MacAskill advocates mainly for weak longtermism, which is the belief that the future is more important than how we currently value it (not necessarily more important than the present). On the other hand, someone like Elon Musk likely believes more in strong longtermism, which believes that the long-term future matters the most and risky steps must be taken to ensure it is a utopian future (Samuel, Vox 2022).
Brian Berkey claims that nothing in the core commitments of effective altruism requires them to adopt any particular position on the controversial issues of balancing out the prioritizing present and future, including mitigating existential risks. The narrow focus on the distant future that longtermism requires, usually by means of disregarding the present, appears incompatible with Kantian’s belief in the importance of treating all individuals as “ends in themselves,” or virtue ethicists emphasize on the cultivation of moral character that promotes immediate flourishing. Eventually, within the Effective Altruists community, this can raise several questions regarding the most effective thing to do, not only in methods but also in terms of long-term and short-term goals. How effective is an effective altruist community if the goals of people inside it contradict each other?
There is some form of inherent contradiction between longtermist ideals and EA ideals, yet they commonly coexist in the same communities, and many individuals believe in both.
It is also ironic that the long-termist ideals coexist so commonly with EA ideals because they often refute their core commitment to induce structural, institutional reforms for the future. The same lack of desire to pursue institutional reform is also a primary critique of EA.
The question arises: to what extent does this contradictory, morally sound theory of Effective Altruism represent what actual effective altruists believe in? In theory, Effective Altruism might reconcile many, or at least be accepted as not the best but morally sound theory resulting in productive action. Does it practice?