Marginal Persuasion

Consider which direction of change would be an improvement

Here are some easy questions: Should we generally want people to be slightly more or less impartial, compared to the status quo? How about more or less attentive to scale (numbers, magnitudes, comparative importance) and cost-effectiveness?

It seems a no-brainer, right? There are interesting puzzle cases when effective impartial beneficence is pushed to extremes, and I can understand rejecting full-blown, “totalizing” views of beneficence on those grounds. But it seems important to acknowledge that the totalizers are getting something right about our moral reasons in ordinary cases, and that we clearly should want most people to move at least some steps more in their direction.

Something I find bothersome (intellectually dishonest, really) about the prominent critics of effective altruism is that they don’t seem willing to either acknowledge this or seriously argue against it. I once tried pressing Alice Crary on whether she saw any “moral risk” to discouraging effective altruism while children are dying of malaria for want of sufficient donations to EA charities, and she refused to seriously engage with the thought at all. Another time I explained how Leif Wenar’s public attacks on GiveWell were structurally analogous to bad anti-vax reasoning (and potentially similarly harmful); he later dismissed my criticism as “extreme” and otherwise refused to engage, even though my argument was both crystal clear and seemingly indisputable. (At least, I would be very curious to hear if anyone does honestly dispute the soundness of my critique!)

Impartial altruism is good and underrated; effectiveness-focus is good and underrated; attempts to quantify value are… well, highly fallible, but—if tempered with good judgment—better than the alternative of pure vibes, so I think that also qualifies as “good and underrated”.¹ All these claims have immense practical importance, and you shouldn’t lose sight of them (or encourage others to lose sight of them) even if you disagree with some of the more radical views that some of us ultimately endorse (regarding the importance of non-human animals, future generations, and tiny probabilities, etc.). Taking downstream disagreements to rule out acknowledging important points of local correctness seems a really bad mistake! (Like these “unassailable criticisms” of the drowning child argument.) You could instead just oppose the specific things you think are wrong, while holding on to the obviously good and true ideas. Seems better!

A couple of months ago, Jason Chen published his interview of me on Effective Altruism:²

Something I remember liking about the interview was the extent to which we focused on this issue of how the world clearly needs more effective altruism than it currently has. I’d love to hear critics address this claim.

And more generally: on almost any question of social or political dispute, it would be good to have more focus on the question of which direction of change would constitute a marginal improvement. The answer isn’t necessarily decisive: there might be occasions where it is worth plowing through a local minimum in order to reach a global maximum on the other side (if you’re sufficiently confident that you can make it all the way through). But it’s at least highly suggestive. And I think typically under-addressed.

1. If you think most people’s judgment is sufficiently terrible to undermine this claim, then it might be worth talking more about that and how to fix it. Personally, I’m more optimistic, but my linked post includes my suggestions for triangulating upon better judgment (give due weight to moral “guard rails”, etc.), for what it’s worth.

2. The interview was originally recorded about a year earlier. At one point I mention that I haven’t personally supported the Shrimp Welfare Project, which is (happily for a zillion-odd shrimp) no longer true.