Published on September 20, 2024 5:41 PM GMT
Effective altruism (EA) defines itself as "a philosophical and social movement that advocates taking actions which maximally benefit sentient beings, as determined by evidence and reason."
In practice, effective altruists advocate making as much money as possible and then donating a (ideally large) percentage of it to charity. They also advocate choosing charities based on systematic evaluation of their effectiveness, in order to maximize the benefit of their dollars.
EA has its roots in the philosophical theory of utilitarianism, which can be briefly described as the moral principle that one should take actions which maximize the well-being of all affected individuals. EA is often motivated by arguing that the classic "trolley problem" is an analogy for modern life, and then positing a utilitarian approach as the solution.
In the trolley problem, there is a runaway trolley barreling down a track towards five people who cannot get out of the way in time. You are standing in front of a lever which would divert the trolley onto a side track, but there is an unaware worker on the side track who would be killed if you do so. Do you pull the lever?
Effective altruists argue that this is the type of decision we are constantly faced with in the modern world. People are suffering and dying and those of us living in a situation of relative wealth and comfort must recognize that our action or inaction can make things better or worse. We should pursue the course of action which maximizes the good that we can effect in the world. Therefore, if we are in the position to do so, should we not pull the lever and save five lives, even though one may still die?
For example, getting a high paying job may contribute to income inequality, but if you donate a substantial amount to highly effective charities, then on the balance you are doing more good than harm. Or, getting elected for political office may require you to pander to lobbyists and corporate interests, but if you can push through legislation that addresses climate change or some other social good, then on the whole you are doing more good than harm. Lever pulled, lives saved.
Effective altruists then go on to describe systems and methods for determining exactly how to measure "good" and determine what action produces the "most" good. Here I am only concerned with the core motivations, so I won't go into details on any of that.
The Problem
The thing about moral decision making is that it requires some criteria on which to base an evaluation. We call this criteria values.
You cannot derive values from a purely logical standpoint, such as by asserting that you should pull the lever because 5 > 1. Why should we care at all? We know that we value life, but we don't really know what that means as a mathematical statement. And we might be able to explain how the value of life was created in our minds through the process of evolution, but that does not show whether this value is good or bad, or tell us whether or not we should adopt it.
Our values are derived from the physical sensations in our body that we call emotion, which arises automatically in response to whatever is happening right now. Healthy values fulfill our emotional needs, and unhealthy values do not.
Moral decision making is achieved through a complex combination of logic and emotion. Logic is used to analyze and reason about a situation, while emotion is used to understand what is desired or not desired. Without the emotional input, we cannot really tell what is good from what is bad.
If we think about the trolley problem with the full capacity of our intelligence, both logic and emotion, we find that it is secretly a Zen koan in disguise. If we do nothing, we watch helplessly as five people die and feel terrible. If we pull the lever, we are responsible for killing an innocent person and that also feels terrible. It turns out that the lesser of two evils, no matter how we define "lesser", still feels evil. How can we call that good? To fully engage with the hypothetical situation is to admit that it is a paradox, and maybe there can be no answer.
The Solution
I think the trolley problem is a brilliant analogy to our present condition. And while I think in its purest form the trolley problem is essentially unanswerable, when thinking about our present condition we can extend the analogy to add more context.
For one, how did it get to be that we are here standing in front of the lever while everyone else is out on the tracks? It's important to understand how we arrived at the place where we are forced into making this kind of decision.
For two, we are not facing one trolley problem, which we could probably deal with, but a continual succession of them, even if we are not aware of it. This is the real moral weight of the argument motivating EA--we are constantly pulling the lever or not, and facing every conceivable variation and extra complication of the basic dilemma that one could imagine.
The key insight found within our emotional response to the trolley problem is that having power over people's lives feels bad. Instead of trying to solve the endless succession of trolley problems, what if we tried to prevent ourselves from having to face them in the first place? What if it's not actually about making "less evil" decisions, but about how many or how few of those kind of decisions you have to make?
What's actually going on here is that we have completely forgotten how to let go of the lever and walk away.
It's time we admitted that the mere fact of making a lot of money or holding positions of authority is maintaining a system of oppression that is backed up by police, prisons, soldiers, and weapons of mass destruction. It is not merely that power corrupts, but that power is itself corrupted. I don't think it feels good to have power over other people's lives. Do you?
If we take the time to understand the emotional basis of effective altruism, we will find that is in emotional tones of guilt, fear, and anger. We feel we are caught in a perpetual trolley problem which we just can't seem to escape.
What if we chose to follow emotional tones of joy, love, and connection and see where it took us? And not in words and ideas as liberals do, but in the felt experience of our bodies. That is, what if we started following our conscience instead of trying to lead it where we think it should go?
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