Optimizing Differently
... is different from not optimizing at all
People are often surprisingly hostile to the very idea of moral optimizing, presumably because it’s more gratifying to simply act on vibes and emotional appeal (or they don’t want to be on the hook for moral verdicts that go against their personal interests). But they can’t very well admit this as the reason, so they’re left casting about for a rationalization. One that I sometimes hear people land on is that optimizing inevitably narrows the range of eventual selections, when there are instead good reasons to prefer diversification.
For some reason (cough), these critics never consider the possibility of optimizing for diversification.
It’s especially perverse to defend vibes-based philanthropy on diversification grounds, because vibes are highly correlated across the population. It’s not hard to predict that vibes-based givers will donate lots to puppy shelters, and nothing to shrimp welfare or longtermist projects. Neglected tropical diseases will remain neglected in comparison to the “Make a Wish” Foundation or anything else that affects photogenic local children in narratively appealing ways.
It’s interesting to think about what “optimizing for diversification (at least in part)” would look like, and how you evaluate the results compared to more traditional (welfare-optimizing) effective altruist priorities. (In general, I’d be happy to see a wider range of reasonable-seeming optimizing movements.) But it sure would not look anything like the status quo’s vibes-based approach.
Wrapping up, I’d say that if you have any coherent values at all, you should prefer to see them realized more rather than less optimally. Shockingly large numbers of people evidently do not care to see their values realized optimally. I’m not sure whether this is more commonly due to instrumental irrationality or just not even possessing sincere coherent values to begin with. What’s your best guess?
How do you feel about satisficing? It seems to block out the most obviously inefficient options (like Make-A-Wish donations), allows for a fairly diverse range of options, and stops people from being paralyzed with guilt because they accidentally donated to the 3rd most efficient charity instead of the 1st most efficient. (I take it that even hardcore EA-esque utilitarians will want to avoid this, because people who are paralyzed with guilt aren't optimizing their altruism well.)
Are dog and cat shelters a good example of low-return giving? Just based on my knowledge of cat rescue organizations in my city, the cost of taking a cat off the streets and getting it neutered, vaccinated, and ready for adoption, is around $300. That's a pretty low price for saving a life.
It's definitely a much higher return than giving money to your alma mater or to an arts organization. Depending on your relative valuation of cat life-years vs. human life-years, it might even be in the ballpark of the $3000 it takes to save a human life in a very poor country.