I know you’re wrong, but I can’t prove it
Why I can’t support the seductive arguments for effective altruism
Everyone’s been in this situation. A person – a friend, a professor, a relative – makes an argument with the precision of a Swiss army knife. You can feel there’s something wrong in the argument, but you can’t figure out what it is. You end up leaving the conversation flummoxed – unconvinced of the argument, but unsure of your own feelings as well.
That sums up my relationship with effective altruism. Effective altruism is a concept that rose to prominence with the work of Peter Singer. My friend wrote a great article that provides an overview of Effective Altruism. If you don’t want to read the article, here’s a brief overview of the basic idea:
Effective Altruism is a growing social movement that combines both the heart and the head: compassion guided by data and reason. It’s about dedicating a significant part of one’s life to improving the world and rigorously asking the question, “Of all the possible ways to make a difference, how can I make the greatest difference?”
The implications of this are very broad, as it means supporting causes that provide the greatest value for money and ignoring familial or nationalistic concerns that often drive charitable giving. The logic is seemingly invincible – the various thought experiments generally shatter any of your preconceived biases towards your pet causes.
GiveWell is an organization that has been at the vanguard of this movement. They are a nonprofit dedicated to using a solid evidence base to determine the most effective charities that could use more funding. I’ve been a huge fan of theirs since the onset. As someone passionate about international development, I think there’s a ton of merit to helping make the general public more aware of the evidence of impact and try to direct capital flows to the organizations doing the greatest good.
At the same time, I can’t help but feel like effective altruism misses something essential. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think the recent unrest in our country serves to highlight the issue. Since George Floyd’s death, there has been an outpouring of donations and money directed to causes promoting racial diversity and equity and ending police brutality. Corporations and individuals have donated hundreds of millions. It feels like a moment that is long overdue and a chance to create real systemic change in our country and our society.
But what would an effective altruist say about supporting racial equity? Money going towards memorial funds? Towards bail funds? Towards community enrichment and youth organizations? How do these causes compare to the tens of thousands dying of hunger daily? Or the millions dying from preventable diseases each year? One of GiveWell’s top-rated charities, Against Malaria Foundation, distributes long-lasting insecticide-treated nets that are proven to save children’s lives from malaria. By GiveWell’s estimates, the cost per under-5 death averted is $3,710.
Reed Hastings recently committed $120m to historically black universities. Let me pull out my calculator. That could avoid 32,345 deaths of children under 5. That’s 8x the total student enrollment at Morehouse and Spelman, the two HBCUs that were the focus of Reed Hastings’ donation. I struggle to see how a committed effective altruist could examine the evidence and conclude that this donation is as good as deworming or malaria bed nets. To be fair, you may say Reed Hastings was not going to donate $120m towards bed nets, so the right comparison is to no donation at all. But if Reed Hastings was an effective altruist, he should be walking through this GiveWell logic himself.
This logic seems impenetrable. Yet, the logic intuitively feels wrong - when I saw the George Floyd video, it raised enormous questions about our society and how we value humanity in all its diversity and what we are willing to accept or tolerate. There are certain intractable problems that require critical mass to overcome - if this is a moment where systemic change is possible, it feels like we should be marshaling our resources to create that better world regardless of the opportunity cost.
In my life, I support the principles of effective altruism within causes, not between causes. Whatever I care about, I want to seek evidence to determine how best to use my resources to drive change. Between causes, effective altruism feels too analytical. It’s like when advanced analytics folks roll out a new metric that tells you JaVale McGee is the best NBA player. I may not be able to disprove your argument, but the evidence exists in my eyes. When it comes to effective altruism, I may not be able to disprove the argument, but the evidence exists in my heart.