I can't get too angry about 'missions.' The Asters, etc, built public libraries. It seems to have been a good thing - but, to admit, it eventually became a tax burden on everyone and now they aren't as big an asset as they once were. Perhaps they didn't lead a natural lifecycle? Perhaps when the super-rich stopped being interested in funding them, they should have been shuttered?
Many of the world's greatest treasures are the result of rich people (or those not personally wealthy but who otherwise had command over large resources) patronizing top artisans or grand projects and so doing in large part because strongly motivated by a desire to show off and gain prestige and status - an inherently competitive endeavor benefiting from the incentives resulting from strong competition - and perhaps with some eye to also having the fame of their name associated with a lasting legacy into the far future, which encouraged an emphasis on the particularly beautiful and durable, which couldn't but incentivize innovation, progress, the pursuit of excellence, and the cultivation of talent in the arts used for those projects.
It would perhaps be fun to argue with an Effective Altruist as to whether the Medicis or Julius II ended up making better utilitarian use of their money doing what they did as opposed to adding some QALYs to their local needy populations (they did that too, though obviously not as much as they could).
At the very least, it seems to me that they made the right decision in terms of not allocating 100% of these resources to the needy of their time and place, or to the R&D of their time, such as it was. But current EA patrons don't seem to be interested at all in leaving Sistine Chapels for our own distant descendants to admire. If Julius II was right, then maybe these guys are wrong.
> It would perhaps be fun to argue with an Effective Altruist as to whether the Medicis or Julius II ended up making better utilitarian use of their money doing what they did as opposed to adding some QALYs to their local needy populations
I'm sure EAs have argued https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ to death, although unlikely to any good. The older tradition has potent ammunition for arguing against allocating 100% of said resources to the needy in Matthew 26:11.
Limiting charitable giving to the poor to 10% might be a feature in a Malthusian environment. Art is the only thing that lasts in that incentive structure.
On the Torenberg piece, one needs to distinguish between sincerely held luxury beliefs and preference falsification. One good property of the secret ballot is that it helps make that distinction. Here in San Francisco, we didn't see a lot of public elite outrage against the removal of ability-based admissions to Lowell High School; but the recall of the school board members who pushed that removal was so broadly supported, across every economic and geographic segment of the city, that it's very likely the case that many if not most elites privately opposed it and voted accordingly.
Kessler doesn’t like that some of his fellow citizens advocate for things he thinks are weird and that will cause tax revenues to be spent that otherwise wouldn’t be. Fair enough. I probably agree with him in particular cases. But it’s an odd view of citizenship that limits advocacy to things that are at least budget neutral and that aren’t “quirky.” Most things cost money to do. Moreover, women’s suffrage, for example, was considered quirky at one time, as was, a longer time ago, the idea of a self-regulating market.
A member of the elite, Torenberg, denounces elites for being hypocrites. Apparently not all of them are., but lots of people are hypocrites. Not especially noteworthy. And the observation about the utility of hypocrisy is in part tautologically true. If acting on my belief causes harm then by definition I will be better off if I don’t act on it. It is made to seem non-empty by assuming that someone must act on my belief. But that's false. There is no necessity that either I or anyone else act on my beliefs.
Finally, The idea that victimization inevitably leads to inaction or loss of agency seems misguided. Lots of Christians feel victimized by American culture but they have been anything but inactive. Malcolm X in his earlier years had “agency” and led a hustler’s life. In prison, he read books and became persuaded that he was victimized but that belief didn’t lead to inaction or a loss of “agency.” Quite the opposite, whatever you think of his politics.
"It seems to be a fad among 21st-century billionaires that they come up with grandiose “missions.” See Peter Thiel or George Soros or Bill Gates or Samuel Bankman-Fried."
Or it's a different value system. If you care nothing for descendants, family name, or the accolades of history; if you believe that people in the future are an idiocracy and people in the past were blinkered fools; then the right answer is to do whatever makes you feel the best right now, and if EA makes you feel 'meta-ennobled' so that even the dollars you spend are better spent and you are a greater person for them, then that's the answer. After all, all those QALY's that could have been assembled in 1515...
Kessler makes some valid points and I’m glad you pointed to the full article.
On twitter, EA advocates exclusively mocked the line where he says calling for future pandemic spending is like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. EA has a point here too, since future pandemics are a legitimate long-term concern, not something we can assume will never happen again.
I don’t have a WSJ subscription, so I can’t get the full context from Andy Kessler’s article. But that quote is intellectually uncharitable in the extreme, and I am disappointed to see you list it as FIT-worthy.
My point was not at all about whether the article is correct. FIT-worthy writing is supposed to persuade and inform, not to score points with the writer’s own team. An article referring to EA concerns as “robot invasions or green nanotech goo” is obviously not intended to persuade anyone sympathetic to EA.
Kessler is not a FIT. Maybe it was not a wise choice. But when a prominent EA exponent like SBF gives lots of money to ordinary political campaigns, I think calling baloney sandwich on the movement has some merit.
The article's argument is incoherent. The EA folks are doing two things:
1. spending private money on their more "out there" pet causes like AI safety research
2. advocating for spending tax money on pandemic prevention
Now (1) may be foolish, but as you say, they can spend their money as they deem fit, and I know of no EA initiative that is trying to get tax money for AI safety. For (2) the question is whether you think pandemic prevention is a legitimate public good or not, and one likely to be undersupplied absent political advocacy efforts. I would claim that it is, on both counts, and I think you'd get agreement on that well beyond EA circles, especially after COVID.
Another way to look at it is: are EA billionaires making better use of their money and influence than more typical billionaires on the left or right? It's hard to argue that private spending on AI safety is less prosocial than on giant yachts (see the recent New Yorker article on the yacht business if you want a look at what real foolishness can be), or that advocating for pandemic prevention is less prosocial than advocating for the usual causes billionaires advocate.
"the question is whether you think pandemic prevention is a legitimate public good or not, and one likely to be undersupplied absent political advocacy efforts."
I think it is, just like I think true national security is. But I don't think that the way to get more is to give more money and power to the military-industrial complex. Similarly, I don't want to see more money and power given to the medical-industrial complex who did such a crappy job with COVID.
I can't get too angry about 'missions.' The Asters, etc, built public libraries. It seems to have been a good thing - but, to admit, it eventually became a tax burden on everyone and now they aren't as big an asset as they once were. Perhaps they didn't lead a natural lifecycle? Perhaps when the super-rich stopped being interested in funding them, they should have been shuttered?
Many of the world's greatest treasures are the result of rich people (or those not personally wealthy but who otherwise had command over large resources) patronizing top artisans or grand projects and so doing in large part because strongly motivated by a desire to show off and gain prestige and status - an inherently competitive endeavor benefiting from the incentives resulting from strong competition - and perhaps with some eye to also having the fame of their name associated with a lasting legacy into the far future, which encouraged an emphasis on the particularly beautiful and durable, which couldn't but incentivize innovation, progress, the pursuit of excellence, and the cultivation of talent in the arts used for those projects.
It would perhaps be fun to argue with an Effective Altruist as to whether the Medicis or Julius II ended up making better utilitarian use of their money doing what they did as opposed to adding some QALYs to their local needy populations (they did that too, though obviously not as much as they could).
At the very least, it seems to me that they made the right decision in terms of not allocating 100% of these resources to the needy of their time and place, or to the R&D of their time, such as it was. But current EA patrons don't seem to be interested at all in leaving Sistine Chapels for our own distant descendants to admire. If Julius II was right, then maybe these guys are wrong.
> It would perhaps be fun to argue with an Effective Altruist as to whether the Medicis or Julius II ended up making better utilitarian use of their money doing what they did as opposed to adding some QALYs to their local needy populations
I'm sure EAs have argued https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ to death, although unlikely to any good. The older tradition has potent ammunition for arguing against allocating 100% of said resources to the needy in Matthew 26:11.
Limiting charitable giving to the poor to 10% might be a feature in a Malthusian environment. Art is the only thing that lasts in that incentive structure.
On the Torenberg piece, one needs to distinguish between sincerely held luxury beliefs and preference falsification. One good property of the secret ballot is that it helps make that distinction. Here in San Francisco, we didn't see a lot of public elite outrage against the removal of ability-based admissions to Lowell High School; but the recall of the school board members who pushed that removal was so broadly supported, across every economic and geographic segment of the city, that it's very likely the case that many if not most elites privately opposed it and voted accordingly.
Kessler doesn’t like that some of his fellow citizens advocate for things he thinks are weird and that will cause tax revenues to be spent that otherwise wouldn’t be. Fair enough. I probably agree with him in particular cases. But it’s an odd view of citizenship that limits advocacy to things that are at least budget neutral and that aren’t “quirky.” Most things cost money to do. Moreover, women’s suffrage, for example, was considered quirky at one time, as was, a longer time ago, the idea of a self-regulating market.
A member of the elite, Torenberg, denounces elites for being hypocrites. Apparently not all of them are., but lots of people are hypocrites. Not especially noteworthy. And the observation about the utility of hypocrisy is in part tautologically true. If acting on my belief causes harm then by definition I will be better off if I don’t act on it. It is made to seem non-empty by assuming that someone must act on my belief. But that's false. There is no necessity that either I or anyone else act on my beliefs.
Finally, The idea that victimization inevitably leads to inaction or loss of agency seems misguided. Lots of Christians feel victimized by American culture but they have been anything but inactive. Malcolm X in his earlier years had “agency” and led a hustler’s life. In prison, he read books and became persuaded that he was victimized but that belief didn’t lead to inaction or a loss of “agency.” Quite the opposite, whatever you think of his politics.
"It seems to be a fad among 21st-century billionaires that they come up with grandiose “missions.” See Peter Thiel or George Soros or Bill Gates or Samuel Bankman-Fried."
This reminds me of the discussion that Jim O'Shaugnessy had with Johanathan Bi on the Infinite Loops podcast recently: https://www.infiniteloopspodcast.com/johnathan-bi-girard-desire-and-modernity-ep116/.
Or it's a different value system. If you care nothing for descendants, family name, or the accolades of history; if you believe that people in the future are an idiocracy and people in the past were blinkered fools; then the right answer is to do whatever makes you feel the best right now, and if EA makes you feel 'meta-ennobled' so that even the dollars you spend are better spent and you are a greater person for them, then that's the answer. After all, all those QALY's that could have been assembled in 1515...
Kessler makes some valid points and I’m glad you pointed to the full article.
On twitter, EA advocates exclusively mocked the line where he says calling for future pandemic spending is like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted. EA has a point here too, since future pandemics are a legitimate long-term concern, not something we can assume will never happen again.
I don’t have a WSJ subscription, so I can’t get the full context from Andy Kessler’s article. But that quote is intellectually uncharitable in the extreme, and I am disappointed to see you list it as FIT-worthy.
Thanks for the link.
My point was not at all about whether the article is correct. FIT-worthy writing is supposed to persuade and inform, not to score points with the writer’s own team. An article referring to EA concerns as “robot invasions or green nanotech goo” is obviously not intended to persuade anyone sympathetic to EA.
Kessler is not a FIT. Maybe it was not a wise choice. But when a prominent EA exponent like SBF gives lots of money to ordinary political campaigns, I think calling baloney sandwich on the movement has some merit.
It strikes me that giving money to politicians is neither an effective nor an altruistic use of money.
The article's argument is incoherent. The EA folks are doing two things:
1. spending private money on their more "out there" pet causes like AI safety research
2. advocating for spending tax money on pandemic prevention
Now (1) may be foolish, but as you say, they can spend their money as they deem fit, and I know of no EA initiative that is trying to get tax money for AI safety. For (2) the question is whether you think pandemic prevention is a legitimate public good or not, and one likely to be undersupplied absent political advocacy efforts. I would claim that it is, on both counts, and I think you'd get agreement on that well beyond EA circles, especially after COVID.
Another way to look at it is: are EA billionaires making better use of their money and influence than more typical billionaires on the left or right? It's hard to argue that private spending on AI safety is less prosocial than on giant yachts (see the recent New Yorker article on the yacht business if you want a look at what real foolishness can be), or that advocating for pandemic prevention is less prosocial than advocating for the usual causes billionaires advocate.
"the question is whether you think pandemic prevention is a legitimate public good or not, and one likely to be undersupplied absent political advocacy efforts."
I think it is, just like I think true national security is. But I don't think that the way to get more is to give more money and power to the military-industrial complex. Similarly, I don't want to see more money and power given to the medical-industrial complex who did such a crappy job with COVID.
I know of various 'charities' lobbying for AI safety and regulations.