The "utilitarian" impulse motivating these world-improvers (like their predecessors) depends on the assumption of a single dimension of pre-determined ends, which can express all human goals.
There's no possibility of true disagreement or conflict between values, provided you've got the cognitive horsepower to collect the data and crunch the numbers. That's deeply implausible.
Worse, while some of their ideals and aspirations are worth thinking about, the path that the "Effective Altruist" world-improvers follow will lead to a colorless, sterile future empty of the values that make life worth caring about.
Hi Matt, my apologies—I just noticed that I misplaced this reply in the comments below back in April, although it was intended for you:
Yes, there is a powerful drive at work here to flatten moral ambiguity and complexity in order to make it legible to the project of utility maximization. In defense of the EA community, they do grapple—and quite publicly—with these questions, and many share your (and my) worry that the impulse to maximization and efficiency steers in the direction of a sterile and lifeless future. My greatest concern is with what I think is a fundamental incompatibility between, on the one hand, flourishing lives of spontaneity and dialogue with the world and, on the other, the imperatives of a large-scale project of control over the shape of history: if the latter is thought to be of sufficient importance, it is inevitable that sacrifices will be demanded of the former.
Hi Jordan, I'm repeating here the comment you'll have seen me post on another discussion site we're both on.
Having now read it, I liked it and (to paraphrase my favourite comedian, Stewart Lee, I agreed the fuck out of it). However I hanker for someone to take me as concisely and as powerfully as possible through the process whereby EA instrumentalises — or perhaps the right term is ‘objectifies’ or ‘managerialises’ ethics. I’d love to do it myself of course, but I haven’t and I’m sure it could be done better than I could do it.
I was interested to read the German philosopher you quoted, but somehow it made what you were writing a little more derivative. There’s something else that occurs to me as I write this which is that with EA — and positivism generally — their philosophical underpinnings are obsessively oriented around the obvious. In this case that
1) If you’re trying to do good, you should do as much as you can as effectively and efficiently as you can.
2) that whether or not one posits everyone weighing exactly equally in our moral thinking, moral questions can be expressed in equations. Total G = xG + yG. (Total good equals everyone’s good all added up.)
Broadly speaking, these conclusions are unarguable. I accept them, not just intellectually, but in my practical life. To borrow from an old economist, Alfred Marshall I try to have a warm heart and a cool head.
Yet I have to say that this kind of thing being paraded as deep thought both bores me and makes me suspicious that I’m really dealing with serious thinkers — for all their academic credentials. Like interminable books on leadership, particularly business leadership, there are a few precepts, and the rest is repetition.
And there’s an irony because, as EA demonstrates so amply, in pursuing obvious premises, they end up in some very strange and unobvious places — that in our widening circle of concern, we should turn our hearts, minds and scarce resources to the gazillion beings in centuries to come that will be affected by human extinction (even if our understanding of the future world we’re trying to improve, is infinitesimal).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Nicholas. You make a good point about the obviousness of it all. As I was writing this, I was often struck by the way the Anglo-American tradition had turned philosophy in the direction of reckoning with consequences, and away from the apprehension of reality born of wonder. Sometimes one must reckon with consequences—indeed, that’s a great deal of what we have to do in life. But the emphasis on the tangible and measurable aspects of the world—those which are legible to science—represents, to my mind, a remarkable narrowing of our intellectual horizons.
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”
― Dag Hammarskjold, UN Secretary-General
Penetrating essay, as an ex-EA (or at least one repulsed by the movement's shift away from its global health roots) it resonated deeply. In the process of disentangling myself from the imperative to follow the felicific calculus I've discovered spiritual practice, and it's remarkable how acquaintances who have uncritically accepted the core thesis of utilitarianism react differently to the pursuit of awakening depending on how it's framed. When described as a genuine attempt to grapple with the human condition through applying the middle way of Buddhism, i.e. accepting the inevitability of suffering and the futility of constantly seeking gratification, it's seen as irrational, yet if outlined as a method of wellbeing optimization then it's a natural addition to the memeplex. Hypothetically the utilitarian project can incorporate other moral systems into the ethical computations but as you've eloquently written there are unavoidable tradeoffs in doing so.
You might enjoy reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, which is a compelling book on how the societal trend in the West towards increasing dependence on the brain's left hemisphere and its tendency to view the world in a reductive, discrete, analytic, and disembodied way has led to the strange place we are now. We can consider effective altruism as the latest instantiation of this over-reliance of objectivity at the expense of subjectivity and with it most of what makes being human interesting.
You cover similar territory in the piece on Hannah Arendt so I suspect it'll make for an interesting read.
This essay on David Hume's skeptical humanism also comes to mind (a thinker notably absent from the exchanges on the EA forum and associated blogs):
Hi Philippe, thanks for sharing your thoughts and the article about Hume—that was an interesting read, and I can see why you make the connection. The quote you open with is right on target.
This wasn’t an avenue I could pursue here, but I do suspect that the sort of contact with reality that is encouraged by mindfulness practices is an important alternative to some of the problems with the pathologically analytical relationship with the world.
I haven’t looked much at The Master and His Emissary, but that book seems to have left its mark on many people whose thinking I admire. I may have to pick it up.
Thank you Jordan - this was a tremendous piece for me - I gained a lot from your insights and framing. I ‘resonate’ with you. It has been a long and winding path since we chose the Tree of Knowledge over the Tree of Life. We keep cycling new ways to keep kidding ourselves that we can we can work it all out and manage everything like gods..
The "utilitarian" impulse motivating these world-improvers (like their predecessors) depends on the assumption of a single dimension of pre-determined ends, which can express all human goals.
There's no possibility of true disagreement or conflict between values, provided you've got the cognitive horsepower to collect the data and crunch the numbers. That's deeply implausible.
Worse, while some of their ideals and aspirations are worth thinking about, the path that the "Effective Altruist" world-improvers follow will lead to a colorless, sterile future empty of the values that make life worth caring about.
Nicely put Matt. Thx
Hi Matt, my apologies—I just noticed that I misplaced this reply in the comments below back in April, although it was intended for you:
Yes, there is a powerful drive at work here to flatten moral ambiguity and complexity in order to make it legible to the project of utility maximization. In defense of the EA community, they do grapple—and quite publicly—with these questions, and many share your (and my) worry that the impulse to maximization and efficiency steers in the direction of a sterile and lifeless future. My greatest concern is with what I think is a fundamental incompatibility between, on the one hand, flourishing lives of spontaneity and dialogue with the world and, on the other, the imperatives of a large-scale project of control over the shape of history: if the latter is thought to be of sufficient importance, it is inevitable that sacrifices will be demanded of the former.
Hi Jordan, I'm repeating here the comment you'll have seen me post on another discussion site we're both on.
Having now read it, I liked it and (to paraphrase my favourite comedian, Stewart Lee, I agreed the fuck out of it). However I hanker for someone to take me as concisely and as powerfully as possible through the process whereby EA instrumentalises — or perhaps the right term is ‘objectifies’ or ‘managerialises’ ethics. I’d love to do it myself of course, but I haven’t and I’m sure it could be done better than I could do it.
I was interested to read the German philosopher you quoted, but somehow it made what you were writing a little more derivative. There’s something else that occurs to me as I write this which is that with EA — and positivism generally — their philosophical underpinnings are obsessively oriented around the obvious. In this case that
1) If you’re trying to do good, you should do as much as you can as effectively and efficiently as you can.
2) that whether or not one posits everyone weighing exactly equally in our moral thinking, moral questions can be expressed in equations. Total G = xG + yG. (Total good equals everyone’s good all added up.)
Broadly speaking, these conclusions are unarguable. I accept them, not just intellectually, but in my practical life. To borrow from an old economist, Alfred Marshall I try to have a warm heart and a cool head.
Yet I have to say that this kind of thing being paraded as deep thought both bores me and makes me suspicious that I’m really dealing with serious thinkers — for all their academic credentials. Like interminable books on leadership, particularly business leadership, there are a few precepts, and the rest is repetition.
And there’s an irony because, as EA demonstrates so amply, in pursuing obvious premises, they end up in some very strange and unobvious places — that in our widening circle of concern, we should turn our hearts, minds and scarce resources to the gazillion beings in centuries to come that will be affected by human extinction (even if our understanding of the future world we’re trying to improve, is infinitesimal).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Nicholas. You make a good point about the obviousness of it all. As I was writing this, I was often struck by the way the Anglo-American tradition had turned philosophy in the direction of reckoning with consequences, and away from the apprehension of reality born of wonder. Sometimes one must reckon with consequences—indeed, that’s a great deal of what we have to do in life. But the emphasis on the tangible and measurable aspects of the world—those which are legible to science—represents, to my mind, a remarkable narrowing of our intellectual horizons.
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.”
― Dag Hammarskjold, UN Secretary-General
Penetrating essay, as an ex-EA (or at least one repulsed by the movement's shift away from its global health roots) it resonated deeply. In the process of disentangling myself from the imperative to follow the felicific calculus I've discovered spiritual practice, and it's remarkable how acquaintances who have uncritically accepted the core thesis of utilitarianism react differently to the pursuit of awakening depending on how it's framed. When described as a genuine attempt to grapple with the human condition through applying the middle way of Buddhism, i.e. accepting the inevitability of suffering and the futility of constantly seeking gratification, it's seen as irrational, yet if outlined as a method of wellbeing optimization then it's a natural addition to the memeplex. Hypothetically the utilitarian project can incorporate other moral systems into the ethical computations but as you've eloquently written there are unavoidable tradeoffs in doing so.
You might enjoy reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, which is a compelling book on how the societal trend in the West towards increasing dependence on the brain's left hemisphere and its tendency to view the world in a reductive, discrete, analytic, and disembodied way has led to the strange place we are now. We can consider effective altruism as the latest instantiation of this over-reliance of objectivity at the expense of subjectivity and with it most of what makes being human interesting.
You cover similar territory in the piece on Hannah Arendt so I suspect it'll make for an interesting read.
This essay on David Hume's skeptical humanism also comes to mind (a thinker notably absent from the exchanges on the EA forum and associated blogs):
https://aeon.co/essays/hume-is-the-amiable-modest-generous-philosopher-we-need-today
Be well
Hi Philippe, thanks for sharing your thoughts and the article about Hume—that was an interesting read, and I can see why you make the connection. The quote you open with is right on target.
This wasn’t an avenue I could pursue here, but I do suspect that the sort of contact with reality that is encouraged by mindfulness practices is an important alternative to some of the problems with the pathologically analytical relationship with the world.
I haven’t looked much at The Master and His Emissary, but that book seems to have left its mark on many people whose thinking I admire. I may have to pick it up.
-Patrick
Thank you Jordan - this was a tremendous piece for me - I gained a lot from your insights and framing. I ‘resonate’ with you. It has been a long and winding path since we chose the Tree of Knowledge over the Tree of Life. We keep cycling new ways to keep kidding ourselves that we can we can work it all out and manage everything like gods..
Hi Joseph, thanks for reading—and I'm glad you found it helpful to your thinking!