/GTWeb

Effective altruism can be used to justify ruthless capitalism and the amassing of fantastic wealth in order to someday donate this money to the people that really need it (e.g. medical treatments) in the most cost-effective manner for saving the greatest numbers of human lives.

But due to the financial resources and economic productivity of workers in developed countries, it can be argued that a life in a developed country is more valuable than one in a developing country--does this mean that it is altruistic to give rich people more money with the belief that they will be the ones to save humanity?

This line of thought puts way too much trust in the fallible rich (sort of like those who believe Elon Musk is our savior).

This concern is echoed by New York Times writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus, who wrote a wonderful portrait of William MacAskill, the de-facto founder of the Effective Altruism movement. This concern is echoed by New York Times writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus, who wrote a wonderful portrait of William MacAskill, the de-facto founder of the Effective Altruism movement.

Nick Beckstead, the philosopher at the helm of the Future Fund, remarked in his 2013 dissertation, “Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive. By ordinary standards—at least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standards—saving and improving lives in rich countries is about equally as important as saving and improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country.”

Beckstead’s comment may formalize what many philanthropists already do: the venture capitalist John Doerr recently gave a billion dollars to already over-endowed Stanford to bankroll a school for studying climate change. But such extreme trade-offs were not an easy sell. As Holden Karnofsky once put it, most people who sit down to reason through these things from a place of compassion don’t expect to arrive at such conclusions—or want to. E.A. lifers told me that they had been unable to bring themselves to feel as though existential risk from out-of-control A.I. presented the same kind of “gut punch” as global poverty, but that they were generally ready to defer to the smart people who thought otherwise.

Intended or not, Effective Altruism has a tendency to incorrectly recognize those with the most capital as those who are most equipped to tackle poverty. But I argue that the massive amount of wealth that these individuals possess (not stored within a nonprofit as they should be) is evidence for a lack of desire for philanthropy. William MacAskill, despite his various sources of income, still lives with multiple roommates. What are Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk doing with their billions? Some may say that they are simply investing it into their own properties in order to maximize good in the world, but it is at some point that you have to remove the benefit of the doubt, otherwise we will be inevitably subjugated by the rich (this will be a slow cold war of data privacy, civil liberties, etc.).

The moral and intellectual superiority that plagues many in the Rationalist and Effective Altruism communities may prevent them from seeing that letting those with money do as they please is not our best course of action--it enables technocrats to reign unchallenged.

No ideology has a worse capability to backfire on its believers more than e/acc, also known as Effective Accelerationism. Rather than focusing on the power of money to do good like EA, it focuses on facilitating an environment where technology can be innovated upon as quickly and easily as possible. This means VCs, removing regulation that, in its conservatism, may stunt new fields like artificial intelligence, and faith that a singularity won't occur. Isn't this already the status quo in Silicon Valley? It is probable that many adopt e/acc as an ideology simply because it is a means to develop and implement their technologies as quickly as possible and without looking too hard at the potential impacts on society.

The vast majority of these goups are composed of well-meaning people, but one should be very careful of ideologies that can be used to rationalize away the tyranny of big tech. It worked for Sam Bankman-Fried. He was able to amass great wealth with the moral approval of his billionaire friends only to turn on the EA community once it came time to use his wealth--to some, these modes of thought are just a means to an end.

March 2025