Effective Altruism Oxford Fellowship Introduction What is EA about?

- Excitement about doing the most good - Scientific approach - Taking action Example: Education in East Africa Which works best?

- Free school uniforms - Conditional cash transfers for girls - Informing parents about benefits - Merit scholarships for girls Which works best? Background

Often our attempts to make the world a better place don’t quite work out:

- They might be outright harmful (e.g. playpumps;, more on this next week)

- They might just not make that big a difference (i.e. they’re not very effective)

- And they might be based on the wrong assumptions (we’ll come back to moral progress, for example)

All of this is particularly bad because our resources are scarce Effective Altruism

“As I and the Centre for Effective Altruism define it, effective altruism is the project of using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis… effective altruism is an intellectual and practical project rather than a normative claim… its aims are welfarist, impartial and maximising.”

– Will Macaskill Effective Altruism

Welfarist

Impartial

Maximising

Cause neutrality! Cause neutrality Cause neutrality

Cause

Intervention

Execution Effective Altruism

Intellectual project: Figuring out what “doing the most good” means and how to go about doing it Practical project: Actually doing it

We need to find a balance between the two Choosing a Focus Area

How important? Scale

How much progress can we make? Tractability

How crowded? Neglectedness

Picture taken from: Prospecting for Gold by Owen Cotton-Barratt Marginal reasoning

Absolute Marginal priority priority

Graph taken from: Prospecting for Gold by Owen Cotton-Barratt Marginal reasoning

Relevance for EA?

- Altruistic interventions - Donations Marginal - Career choice priority - EA is a multiplayer problem

Graph taken from: Prospecting for Gold by Owen Cotton-Barratt Counterfactual reasoning

“What would have happened if ...?”

- ‘Inventing’ can be modelled as ‘bringing forward in time’ - Replaceability: ○ Example: Starting versus joining a non-profit ○ Beware of jumping to naive conclusions! Comparative advantage

Picture taken from: Prospecting for Gold by Owen Cotton-Barratt Comparative advantage

Relevance to EA:

EA organisations

Career choice

Picture taken from: Prospecting for Gold by Owen Cotton-Barratt Opportunity cost

- The value of the next best alternative forgone - Relevance to career choice The Ethics behind EA Ethics

Effective Altruism - is partly an intellectual project - aims to do the most good

- What is the most good? Ethics: Moral Progress

‘The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe’ ○ Inductive argument: The moral track record of our ancestors is really bad ○ Disjunctive argument: Small probabilities of many ways to do wrong add up Ethics: Moral Progress

“Doing just a bit of philosophical study or research can radically alter the value of one’s options. So individuals, philanthropists, and governments should all spend a lot more resources on researching and studying ethics than they currently do.”

- Will Macaskill Ethics: Moral Progress

Is moral progress possible at all? ○ Nihilism as non-action guiding ○ Epistemic modesty about meta-ethics Ethics: Moral Progress

Argument for optimism regarding moral progress ○ Brief history of secular ethics ○ Recent advancements (e.g. population ethics) Ethics: Moral intuitions

Beyond point-and-shoot morality

Ethics: Moral Intuitions

Be sceptical of your moral intuitions ○ Moral intuitions often stem from unreliable sources (e.g. evolution, socialisation)

Example: Scope insensitivity Ethics: Moral Progress

‘Cause X’ ○ Unknown unknowns in moral philosophy ○ What are today’s potential ‘ongoing moral catastrophes’? Epistemic Modesty

Strong EM: Your opinion doesn’t carry any special weight

Weak EM: High confidence in real experts Epistemic Modesty

Implications ○ Limited understanding & over-confidence are dangerous: Be sceptical of your opinions ○ Treat disagreement as evidence, rather than fights ○ Beware of over-updating on ‘epistemic clones’ ○ Value the opinion of true experts (very) highly ■ Big differences in ability to acquire expertise between different fields Ethical Theories o Consequentialism: Focus on consequences o Utilitarianism: Focus on welfare, happiness, pleasure as consequences o Pluralism: Multiple value sources, eg diversity, art, knowledge o Deontology: Focus on adherence to rules, duties, rights o Virtue ethics: Focus on virtue & good character o (Moral nihilism: Nothing is morally right or wrong) Moral Uncertainty

Epistemic modesty Moral uncertainty o Normative externalism o My favourite model o Maximise expected choice-worthiness o The parliamentary model Moral Uncertainty

Implication: Look for multiple, independent arguments to inform your actions → robust strategy ○ Focus on actions that are a) assessed good by most likely ethical theories, b) that don’t cause great harm for other theories. Application: Why is Effective Altruism welfarist? ○ a) Widespread ethical agreement that more welfare is good ○ b) We can take actions to greatly increase others’ welfare without thereby violating other normative theories. Discussion Prospecting for Gold

What did you think of the framework presented in Prospecting for Gold?

- Do you have any concerns? - Anything that made you change your mind? - Anything in particular you liked?

- Why is there such a big difference in effectiveness between the most effective and median interventions? Moral Uncertainty

“Should you become CEO of a lucrative tobacco advertising company in order to do donate all the extra money you would earn?” Ongoing moral catastrophe

- In your view, where might the majority of people be wrong in their moral beliefs?

- How might we go about identifying an ongoing moral catastrophe? Epistemic modesty

- How do we determine who is our epistemic superior?