Effective Altruism and the Arts

From time to time I find myself explaining Effective Altruism ideas to those who have a long history of donating to the arts. Understandably, most of the time the idea that their donations thus far have been "ineffective" rubs people the wrong way and leaves them a bit prickly to the idea of Effective Altruism.

I wanted to take a minute to share a response I wrote to a blog, mainly for the selfish reason of having an easy link to direct people towards about my opinions on EA and first world charities. This was written as a response to the blog entitled Effective Altruism Probably Isn't

I agree that the question "how many lives are saved" does lead you to the answer that you should be donating to a very singular type of cause. Though I don't think there is a problem with this. Asking how to save lives is a good and important litmus test to pass in your charitable giving. I think the key point that may be missing in wondering about supporting things that "make life worth living" is that charity isn’t about self-actualization; it is about making the world a better place.

The best way to help people give their money is to help them define their own passions and concerns and then help them find agencies which serve to promote those.

I think in this quote of yours the idea of 'altruism' is getting mixed up with self-actualization. Now don't get me wrong! I am all in favor of making life worth living and allowing everyone to peruse self-actualization. What I think is problematic is when this gets conflated with charity. Charity isn't selfish. Charity isn't about me.

because these suckers are expensive

because these suckers are expensive

I love the ballet. I was a dancer for 10 years. I donate to my local ballet because I love it and because it speaks to me on a deep and soulful level.

I don't think this is charity: it is self-interested.

These donations come out of my entertainment budget, not out of my philanthropic budget. Because these donations are about me. And that is OK! That is good! Self-care, fulfillment, and meaning in life are precious parts of being human. But that doesn't negate the fact that there are thousands, millions, of people around the world who don't get the chance to approach self-actualization. So I choose to do my charity where it will be most effective at saving lives, in the belief that those lives will have a chance to contribute to the beauty of the world. But these people will never be able to contribute if we only focus on causes that speak to our passions.

While most of these ideas aren't new to most Effective Altruists I think they bear repeating. Again and again.

I think I also fall into the relatively small camp of people that think EA values could, and probably should, be extended to the nonprofit world as a whole. I don't see anything wrong with asking yourself "is my local soup kitchen feeding the most people possible?" Notice I didn't ask if my local soup kitchen was serving the cheapest food possible, or what their overhead was. It isn't about doing things cheaply necessarily, it is about doing them effectively.

I think that getting people to ask these deeper questions of charities and their own philanthropic work is ultimately what changes the world. Arguments about diversity, AI risk, and utility aside, what is going to make impactful and lasting change is the ability to analyze and reason about our philanthropic choices.

An Illustration of My Fears

This. So much This.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

Illustration by Tara Jacoby

Every now and then I get reminded of the importance of story telling; or we can call them illustrative examples. This story reminded me of that, mainly because it clearly represents two of the things I have been thinking about recently: the things I find so wrong and so disheartening about charity work (and poverty alleviation in particular) as well as the exactly thing I fear most about the Effective Altruism movement.

Things that are fucked up and wrong: victim blaming, nonsense goals and mission statements, strong leadership that is wrong leadership, silencing of relevant leaders, over emphasis on acquiring more funding (mainly because there never feels like enough to go around) and on and on the list goes

Things I fear for EA: becoming the crazy white dudes in a conference room proposing an exciting new study on people we don't know and don't understand. Because surely a study will solve this problem; never mind that the study itself is irrelevant and dehumanizing.

Book Review: How to be Great at Doing Good; Part II - This is How We Do It


This is part two of my book review of How to be Great at Doing Good by Nick Cooney.

For better background please start with Part I

Reading the second part of How to be Great at Doing Good is like painting shellac over the top of the puzzle you just completed. You've invested time and effort into piecing together this intricate picture, and now you want it to stick - hopefully forever. The second half of this book reinforces and glues together all the little pieces we were working with in the first half. It adds some practical ways of overcoming the biases and cultural norms that hold us back from doing a lot of good.

In this chapter Cooney also introduces us to another premise [for previous premises see Part I]. While this one is only articulated explicitly a few times, it is another fundamental underlying belief of the author (and to many Effective Altruists).

    4. All lives have equal value. Animal lives also have intrinsic value.

While it sounds similar to the Bill & Melinda Gate's foundation mission statement (because, well it is) the point made in this premise is a good one, and it sets us up well to discuss the second half of the book. We, as humans, have a tendency to favor taking care of those both geographically close to us, as well as most similar to ourselves (socially, racially, economically etc). Cooney goes into a number of studies that show how true and reasons why these preferences may exist. However, he sums up how this can be harmful succinctly when he states:

[W]e provide care to those who are in front of us at the expense of the many who are not... If our goal is to reduce suffering and increase well-being, it doesn't make much difference where on the globe that's taking place and who is experiencing it.

This one bias means that frequently we overlook the greatest amount we can do because the problem is far away or involves people not like us. For example very few US based charities look for opportunities to work overseas, where their resources may go much further in helping people in their cause area. This means that these charities are not prioritizing the cost per saving a life, but prioritize helping those closer and more like themselves, or more accurately, closer and more like their donors.

This preference directly impacts a charity's ability to do the most good because they are not looking at their bottom line. Part of this is because few charities examine their work from a data-driven framework. Cooney points out that charities rarely gather data on 'cost per' - mainly because donors don't ask for it. If organizations don't have incentive to collect good useful data they frequently don't. Often they feel they don't have the resources, there is to reason to, among many other reasons.

Does it seem strange to you that donors aren't asking for this information? It did to me too! But according to the Money for Good surveys only 6 percent of donors spent any time whatsoever on comparing the impact of different non-profits they donated to.

The vast majority said they do care about impact, and one-third of them said they would like to see research that compared different non-profits. But saying and doing are two different things.

That is the crux of it isn't it? Saying and doing are two different things. And doing things is hard. Comparing charities isn't just hard, it is intense, extensive, analytical, time consuming work.

Cooney proposes, what I think, is a very elegant solution! Charity brokers. The same way we have stock brokers than manage our money in the complex, confusing, data driven world of finance, we need experts in the field of charities available to donors. However there is almost no one out there doing this work. and of those that are out there less than 5% of them "recommend charities based on how much good they do." Egads! What are they recommending them based on?!

Unfortunately in the vacuum of charity brokers donors turn to things like Charity Navigator, and GuideStar. Both organizations do an important job of guarding against fraudulent organizations however their ranking systems are not based on how successful a charity is. Partly because charities don't make their bottom line data readily available so donors and these sites rely on what is available. Things like the number of members on their board and the amount spend on administrative and salary costs each year. Which is a terrible way to judge a charity.

So a lack of donor demand leads to charities not collecting data, or collecting the wrong data, which leads donors who are interested in data to turn to unhelpful and inconsequential information.

It is our job as donors to help stop this Catch 22. By requesting explicit clear cost-per breakdowns and bottom line data from our charities. By letting charities know we don't care about overhead or administrative costs. By donating our money as unrestricted funds and grants without limits or specializations. It is important as donors to request this information explicitly and consistently from our organizations.

And what about those of us that work at non-profits? How can we help stop this cycle? By collecting data! Cooney specifically points out how organizations should be running tests to determine the best way to do good. Frequently non-profits think that they lack the hours, man power, and money do run such tests, and that doing so would detract from the work they are trying to do. Cooney points out that by running these tests to find out what we don't know, to find out what works best, an organization can actually increase their ability to create impact significantly and make their money go further than they ever thought possible!

Why aren't we doing all this already?

Good question! Cooney points out a large number of reasons but since this is a summary I thought I would sum up four biases that stuck out to me while reading. These are four of the biggest obstacles we face when thinking about how to do the most good.

Bias 1: We prioritize people that are most like ourselves. Be it geographically, socially, racially, econ.... wait didn't we just read this? Ya Bias 1 is essentially a counterpoint to Premise 4. Again Cooney give lots of reasons for this, but what we are mainly concerned with is that we are predisposed to care more about those like ourselves. This means we dismiss out of hand things that could be potentially do more good because they help those far away, or different from ourselves.

Bias 2: We prioritize individuals over groups. We are more likely to feel sympathy for the individual person we pass on the sidewalk or a small child we see on a pamphlet than we will have a connection to a large group or organization. This means that often it feels better to give someone a dollar than give a dollar to an organization that could stretch it to help several people. It also means that when we see our money helped 20 people we still don't get as much of an emotional payoff as when we directly help one person.

Bias 3: We don't like change. It is that simple. We don't like change. We don't like it when our local coffee house rearranges their tables, we don't like it when policies at work change, we get scared and nervous about moving. We don't like change. It keeps charities from reevaluating their work, and it keeps us from changing our giving habits. It even stops us from thinking about changing our giving habits.

Bias 4: I call this the monkey see monkey do bias. Or perhaps more accurately money see money go. We think that because many people have done a thing it is clearly a good thing. We create our own social norms around giving. Lots of people give the the Salvation Army so they must be a good effective charity, because otherwise how could they have gotten so much funding and become so large? Unfortunately everyone else is subject to the same biases we are. And when it comes to charity work, income does not equal output.

And always remember: the goal of charity is to make the world a better place.

If we loose perspective of this, we will not be able to truly create change.

Protests - A Review of Join or Die Part 2

Originally I was going to have this be part of my Links from Last Week, but I decided I had enough to say about it to justify creating a stand alone post.

Join or Die Part 2  is a fairly good discussion about attending protests from an Effective Altruist standpoint. Frequently the argument is made that going to protests is a waste of time because it 1) detracts from more effective things you could have been doing, 2) is hard to track the results of, and 3) usually doesn't create results at all. I think Zach addresses these concerns quite tidily. With my background in politics & political science I appreciated his take on all this. I also appreciate him stating that we can (and in fact try really hard to) measure complex things like the relationship between political agency and impact.

I also think that his conclusion is sound. It helps that the conclusion is a resounding 'eh, it depends.' But what he states it depends on seems pretty true. A lot of what could make a protest or political activism useful has to do with emergence, which I think ties in quite closely with the EA idea of uncrowdedness. With the clear difference that the goal is to create more crowding.

The big problem it raised for me - which is something I continually have an issue with when EAs discuss using our time - is the assumption that someone's time could have spent working and earning more money. First, most people that earn to give do not work hourly jobs. Adding one hour of work time does not mean you get a set amount of extra money you wouldn't have otherwise had. And secondly, those of us that do work hourly jobs can't just show up to work willy-nilly and get more hours. "Oh that hour and a half I added to my time sheet? Yes it was on a Saturday at 3pm when we were closed, but I decided I wanted to earn a little extra money this week." Trust me, that shit don't fly.

I understand that this is used as a way to quantify time and how we can best spend that time. But every time it is used it feels like a blatant red flag that we are out of touch with the way most people function in the world. This bothers me.