The Effective Altruism Rabbit Hole
No.132: Mon 13 Feb?2023
Hi it’s David here.
Never judge a book by its cover.
Understanding what goes on underneath the skin of another person is always an interesting way to learn more about them.?
This week’s newsletter is written by Giles Jepson, our Chief Operating Officer, who discusses effective altruism, visual essays and the power of having a laugh.
I was curious to hear what he thinks and I am curious to hear what you think.
David Alberts (Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer?at BeenThereDoneThat)
Subscribe to the School of Athens on LinkedIn?here
The Effective Altruism Rabbit Hole
Hi, it's Giles here.
Providing inspiration is a key reason for producing our newsletter and you never know where it might lead. Last year, Nikki Crumpton, our CSO, authored one that introduced the website 80,000 hours. It is part of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, and it caught my eye. Having clicked on the website, it?drew me into the EA rabbit hole, resulting in me unexpectedly (and naively) signing up for their introductory 8 week course.
The course taught me a lot, but maybe not exactly in the way that I was expecting. There were four of us and a trained facilitator. Strangely (or at least I found it strange) three out of the four participants were from the charitable sector, who already had some knowledge about EA and the altruism space. They also held strong opinions. In the world of learn-it-all and know-it-all’s, they were definitely in the latter category. I was clearly in the don't-know-anything-at-all bucket, which I think proceeds the learn-it-all stage.
The facilitator used a series of open-ended questions to explore and challenge different aspects of EA. One participant insisted on using the hand up emoji, where rather than speaking spontaneously, a virtual hand goes up, waiting for the facilitator to give the go ahead to speak. It drove me nuts. Before each session, there was some significant reading and the facilitator was keen to test out how seriously you took it. Straight up the facilitator asked me “who was the individual who is recognised as playing a key role in preventing a nuclear attack during a false alarm incident in the early 1980’s?”. Clearly, I couldn't answer it beyond “I think he was a Russian general”. Even before I could finish my sentence, the virtual hand goes up. Not only did my fellow participant get the answer correct (the Soviet military officer, Stanislav Petrov), but she also went on to describe how she and her family celebrate Petrov day every year. Wow! She was not only a know-it-all, but a do-it-all!
Despite my various tribulations, I learnt a lot about EA. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and at least, I now know what I don’t know! The one thing that drew me to it and I still very much admire is the use of data and objectivity to cut through the noise and determine where the best use of resources should be applied.?Pudding.cool?follows this principle. It is a collection of writers who specialise in visual essays. Combining data and a visual approach to examine different topics in an objective way.
The recent explosion in interest in AI has catapulted the topic into the collective consciousness. EA calls it out as the biggest existential threat to humanity, based largely on the lack of international cooperation, policy planning and significant underfunding in investment AI safety systems. One particular AI debate is around closed vs open source systems. Emad Mostaque is the founder of?stability.ai, who recently launched stable diffusion, an open-source text to image AI model. He is firmly in the open-source camp and his recent interview with Peter Diamandis is a fascinating insight into the current state of AI, its potential and his philosophy.
William MacAskill is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. He also co-founded the nonprofits?Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Y Combinator-backed?80,000 Hours. His recent podcast with Tim Ferris is a great introduction to EA and the various philosophies that sit within it..
The challenge with EA is that discussions about existential risks to humanity don’t lend themselves to a particularly joyful and lighthearted conversation. Mark Twain is quoted as saying “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter” and I think there is a lot of truth in that. David Baddiel’s father, Colin, died in 2022 and he published the resulting eulogy in?The Times?(there's a paywall, so we have provided the video with Baddiel's voice over in the highlights below). It is insightful, heartwarming, full of love and very, very funny. It is probably as good a guide to altruism than any course.
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As always, we are curious to hear what you think.
Giles Jepson (Chief Operating Officer at BeenThereDoneThat)
Supporting Articles
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2 年Makes me think of an unfriendly "who is funding you?"