Critiques of EA – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode I sit down with David Thorstad to delve into three series from his blog, Reflective Altruism, that challenge various aspects of EA. We discuss the unexpected tension between existential risk pessimism and the astronomical value thesis, whether EAs are exaggerating the risk of human extinction, and how both society and the EA movement should think about billionaire philanthropy.

Episode Transcript

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Show Notes:

• David's Blog: Reflective Altruism 
• The three series's we discuss:
  • Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils
  • Exaggerating the risks
  • Billionaire philanthropy
• David's academic website
• David's Recommendations:
  • Amia Srinivasan and her book The Right to Sex
  • The Good It Promises
• Other things mentioned:
  • Existential risk and growth
  • Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
  • The Musk Foundation's website

In this episode, Nick and James discuss whether EA is an ideology. James argues that the EA community privileges certain questions, framing of questions, theoretical frameworks over others, in a way that may lead us to overlook alternative cause areas or ways of doing good.

Episode transcript.

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Other Links:

• Effective Altruism is a Question (not an ideology), Helen's original EA Forum post that James wrote a response to.
• Effective Altruism is an Ideology, not (just) a Question, James' response
• James' personal blog

Vaden and Ben, hosts of the podcast Increments, join Nick for a heated debate friendly discussion on the expected value/subjective probability style of reasoning used in the EA community, their alternative approach of critical rationalism, and how this disagreement effects the EA project of trying to do the most good.

Episode transcript.

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Other Links:

• Increments, Vaden and Ben's podcast
• The Bayesian Mindset by Holden Karnofsky
• Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics by Andrew Gelman and Cosma Shalizi
• Data on forecasting accuracy across different time horizons and levels of forecaster experience
• Our guests:
  • Vaden's personal website
  • Ben's personal website

In this episode, Carla and Luke discuss their paper Democratising Risk which lays out their critiques of the field of existential risk. They argue that the field is dominated by a particular paradigm, the Techno-Utopian Approach (TUA), which is unrepresentative of the general public's values, and may even lead to a higher risk of large scale catastrophes.

We also discuss the possible structural reforms that the EA community could make to make decision making more democratic and less centralized.

Full transcript of the episode is here.

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Other Links:

• If you have never heard about EA here is a good place to start.
• Sam Bankman Fried and the FTX Collapse
• Democratising Risk: In Search of a Methodology to Study Existential Risk
• Democratising Risk - or how EA deals with critics
• EA structural reform ideas
• How effective altruists ignored risk
• Learn more about our guests:
  • Carla's Personal Website
  • Luke's Twitter
• The EA community does not own its donors' money - A EA Forum post made after this conversation was recorded arguing against some of Carla's structural reform proposals.
• Guest Recommendations: 
  • Chaos Computer Club
  • Extinction Rebellion
  • Hélène Landemore
  • James C Scott