When Rationalists Reinvent Religion

August 12, 2015
by Adam Lee

I enjoyed this story by Dylan Matthews on Vox about effective altruism, an idea I’m all in favor of and wanted to say more about.

EA is the philosophy that we should use science, rather than warm fuzzy feelings or guesswork, to direct our charitable giving where it will do the most good. Compared to the enormous need in the world, the amount of money and energy available for charity is small to begin with, and too many of those scarce and precious dollars and volunteer hours have been squandered on feel-good projects that made no lasting difference. (Celebrity-run charities seem especially susceptible to this problem.) Meanwhile, humbler and cheaper interventions, like bed nets or deworming pills or iodine supplements – or even just giving money to the poor directly – can have far more of an impact, using the standard measure of DALYs.

So far, so good; there’s nothing here I’d argue with. As a universal utilitarian, I want to do the most good I can with the finite resources I have available. But effective altruism has a dark side, capably if unflatteringly showcased by the Vox article.

Specifically, many of EA’s most fervent advocates are wealthy, white, male, tech-obsessed futurists, and that shapes their view of what counts as a “pressing” problem. A large number of them argue that existential risk, or X-risk – extinction-level events for the human species, like meteor impact, alien invasion, or the emergence of evil artificial intelligence – ought to take precedence above all else. As Matthews’ article puts it: