Direct critiques of effective altruism have tended to take a form ill-suited to persuade the sort of person who is excited about it. One critique points somewhat vaguely at the virtues of intuition and first-hand knowledge, and implies that thinking is not a good way to make decisions. Others have criticized effective altruism's tendency in practice towards centralization and top-down decisionmaking, and implied that making comparisons across different programs is immoral. What's missing is a critique by someone sympathetic to the things that make effective altruism appealing: a desire to follow the evidence wherever it leads, use explicit methods of evaluation whenever possible, and be sensitive to considerations of scope.
I am going to try to begin that sympathetic critique here by looking at GiveWell, a nonprofit that tries to recommend the best giving opportunities. GiveWell is a good test case because it is now fairly central to the effective altruist movement, and it has been unusually honest and open about its decisionmaking processes. As it has developed and grown, it has had to deal with some of the tensions inherent in the effective altruist project in practice.
In the course of implementing effective altruist ideals, GiveWell has accumulated massive conflicts of interest, along with ever-larger amounts of money, power, and influence. When I hear this discussed, people generally justify it by saying that it is in the service of a higher impact on the world. Such a standard allows for a lot of moral flexibility in practice. If GiveWell wishes to be held to that standard, then we need to actually hold it to that standard - the standard of maximizing expected value - and see how it measures up.
That’s an extremely high standard to meet. GiveWell’s written that you shouldn’t take expected-value calculations literally. Maybe any attempt to maximize impact by explicitly evaluating options should be scope-limited, and moderated by common sense. But if you accept that defense, then the normal rules apply, and we should be skeptical of any organization whose conduct is justified by the fully general mandate to do the most good.
We can’t have it both ways.
GiveWell has recently written about coordination between donors. GiveWell wrote that up to explain why it recently recommended that a major funder commit, in some circumstances, to not fully funding the charities GiveWell recommends to the public, based on concerns of crowding out other donors. My post is largely a response to this. Continue reading