The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism

by Carol J. Adams (Editor), Alice Crary (Editor), Lori Gruen (Editor)

The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does is the first edited volume to critically engage with Effective Altruism (EA). It brings together writers from diverse activist and scholarly backgrounds to explore a variety of unique grassroots movements and community organizing efforts. By drawing attention to these responses and to particular cases of human and animal harms, this book represents a powerful call to attend to different voices and projects and to elevate activist traditions that EA lacks the resources to assess and threatens to squelch. The contributors reveal the weakness inherent within the ready-made, top-down solutions that EA offers in response to many global problems-and offers in their place substantial descriptions of more meaningful and just social engagement.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Vegan

312 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 2023

About the author

Carol J. Adams is a feminist-vegetarian theorist and author of books on eco-feminism and the links between species oppression and gender oppression.

Reviews

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Good it Promises, the Harm it Does might seem like a bit of a niche critique from someone who's never heard of the "effective" altruism movement. However, the type of nonsense peddled by EA is linked to greater societal norms and trends- many of which are addressed aptly in this collection. Many of us have utilitarian ethics dancing around somewhere in our belief system and many of us have also likely been harmed or have seen harm from reckless prejudice in said utilitarian outlooks.

EA proponents span a variety of movements, but most of my experience with them comes in the realm of animal rights and environmental movements. Most of the entries in this text also focus on them there. EA proponents range in level of knowledge from newer people who joined up purely because they bought the sales pitch that they will do the most good there, and big name philosophers like Peter Singer (who seems to be at a level of renown where he's unable to see outside of his own perceived genius.) I already had issues with Singer before this, but I found myself even more irritated with him after reading more examples of frankly base level ignorant judgements of his with far reaching negative effects, if only from the reach and notoriety he has.

Effective Altruists essentially claim that they're using reason and analysis to make sure that efforts and donations are funneled into organizations doing the most amount of good. Many people may already have alarm bells going off when they read that, but if you don't, that's ok, keep reading. TGIPTHID is a collection that tackles the issues with their approach from a variety of angles. One of the books biggest strengths is the varying backgrounds that the authors come from ranging from community organizers in densely populated cities to rural farm sanctuary workers and jargony academics. Each entry offers a variety of critiques and as a whole, I struggle to think of how anyone actually absorbing the info could defend EA after reading it.

As one entry mentions, the compartmentalization and numbers game are flawed from the start. Should we stop helping endangered species since there are so few of them left in comparison to larger populations of farmed animals? Do individuals ever matter? What about when that individual touches millions of lives and changes them forever? Others mention the racial make up of EA being almost entirely white, leading to a list of recommendations that reflect what the members see as most effective (which is amplified by their complete lack of understanding of data analysis.) There is an effect of how EA functions similarly to how billionaires choosing what research is important does- they choose what they like, and think is important, causing more marginalized yet important efforts to be buried and exponentially increasing the support for ineffective and/or already dominant efforts. There is also a very patriarchal element in assuming that one can actually do anything based on 100% "reason" devoid of emotion- allowing men's emotional decisions more space since they're automatically seen as more reason oriented and grounded in reality despite evidence to the contrary. One of the most frustrating things about EA that I have known about the longest is their offensively bad understanding of statistics and research. Even if one could argue that their methods and philosophy were defensible (they aren't,) they aren't even calculating things in a way that gives an accurate picture of the numbers.

All of these problems and more result in EA making recommendations for funding and effort that cause already underfunded movements to get even less funding and the most popular, wealthy, well known movements to get even more. When you're doing shoddy statistical analysis and only looking at variables without proper understanding of various effects, of course the organization with a budget of millions of dollars is "more effective" than the small community organization in a poor area. Even experts in statistics debate about how to best analyze and understand data. EA runs through it all like doing 2nd grade math offers the pure truth.

The entries of this book truly help draw attention to just how dangerous EA is. I do not blame those who are new to it and don't know better. But, the men like Singer white knuckling their way through and sniping at various efforts to try to lend more legitimacy to their self centered view of things us indefensible. Furthermore, what makes Singer so important? Since medical care for individual rescued animals - even when it results in improved medical treatment for others across the board- is a waste of money, wouldn't Singer save more lives if he died and donated each of his organs to someone in need? He could donate all of his income after death to organizations. Actually, wouldn't we be more effective if the Global North all died since we consume the most resources? Singer already argues that disabled people have less worth, will he be ending things when he, like anyone who ages and stays alive, becomes disabled?

This "rational" way of looking at these calculations in the most shallow levels is a ridiculous way to assess effectiveness. It not only can be used to go the route of fascism like my last example, but it forces people into seeing a tiny sliver of the big picture- similar to assuming that removing a human heart and tossing it onto a table gives one a picture of the function of the entire body's systems working together.

All in all, reading this book would benefit just about anyone. These ideas are all around us all the time. Unfortunately, there is no perfectly effective way to funnel money into a single org that can rid us of the stain these issues leave upon us.

This was also posted to my blog.

[Anya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am involved in EA and came to this book honestly. I was very open to hearing critiques of EA from intellectuals and non-economists. Most essays in this book were disappointing.

The essays can be roughly categorized into three types: 1) criticizing EA as doing more bad than good because they fund the wrong things (i.e., don't fund grassroots activists), 2) essays broadly against utilitarianism, 3) essays broadly against capitalism (EA supports incremental change rather than radical reform).

For future readers, know that this book focuses on animal welfare. It doesn't really mention global health, development, cash transfers, or other more 'classic' parts of the EA movement. AI and longtermism is briefly analyzed as techno-optimist bullshit.

But, okay, that's fine by me. I was excited to hear criticisms of EA's animal welfare funding.

And yet I was still disappointed. Authors often stated their point without supporting it. Several essays argued something like "EA should fund more grassroots Black vegan activists and not doing so is racist." Well, okay, what are EAs missing by not funding grassroots activists? What are the specific examples of how this has gotten EA projects into trouble or made them less effective? Do you have any quotes, numbers, or anecdotal or qualitative evidence to support that claim? Specific argumentation would have been so helpful! I have no way to evaluate the authors' claim besides "funding grassroots sounds like a nice thing to do"...but how does this compare with what EA currently funds?

Many essays just felt like intellectual Marxist masturbation. Some authors were uninformed about what EA does.

And the best essays were towards the end, about animal sanctuaries and Esther the pig. These were specific essays focusing on very moving parts of the animal welfare movement. I deeply enjoyed these essays.

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best chapters include the Introduction, chpts. 1, 2, 5, 10, and 16. The better articles were attuned to the specific failures of EA, and how they relate (quite fundamentally) to the way EA interfaces with charities and the public. A few of these articles do feel hastily written, and the perspectives given were almost all American and Latin American (with a lot of focus on animal welfare). The philosophical articles were mainly just recitations of the authors objections to utilitarian or Kantian ethical systems, and weren't nearly as sharp as the other articles, with the exception of chpt. 16. Worth reading if you care about effective altruism.

[Zeynep İnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars! Spending the last 9 months in the EA circles, I really liked the criticisms brought forward in this book. Some essays were quite weak, while I LOVED some others.

[Georgie Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

buy this book for anyone in your life who gets sucked into the cult of EA or longtermism!! this critical collection is long overdue and absolutely necessary showing the moral corruption of the movement to be indisputable.

[Jacob Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easily my favorite thing in here is the tale of Fred the goat, the hero America needs. Fred escaped from an auction house (where animals are sold, primarily, to be slaughtered), came back a year later to force open the gate so other animals could escape, and—when they were recaptured—came back the next day to try to free them again. Now, is this story true? I have no idea. But I'm definitely ready to buy a Fred the Goat t-shirt and/or plushie, in case any animal rights orgs are looking for merch ideas.

Anyway. For the most part, this book is poorly argued. Three patterns that I have problems with:

1) It uses emotionally compelling anecdotes to highlight what would be lost if the charities that Effective Altruists tend to deem relatively "ineffective" were defunded. I feel like the authors want to contrast an empathy-driven approach with a cold-blooded (faux-)rational EA approach. But you can and should tell emotionally compelling anecdotes about EA-aligned charities too; such stories reflect a crucial part of the motivation for giving to any charity: you have empathy for the beings the charity would help. But unless you're going to be arbitrarily selective with your empathy, you're going to have to acknowledge that the number of worthy beneficiaries exceeds the resources you have to spare, and you're going to have to prioritize. Someone who empathizes with both Esther (a pet pig discussed in the book, whose life cost more than half a million dollars to save), and the more-than-a-hundred-million pigs that are raised in miserable conditions and slaughtered each year in the US, needs a way to decide which tragedy is more urgent.

2) Some essays use guilt-by-ideological-association arguments. There's a chapter that essentially says trying to count animals (by which I mean e.g. determining that there are 5.3 million deer in Texas) reflects an insidious animals-as-property mindset. EA uses statistics about animals; statistics about animals have often been collected for horrible purposes; so, it's implied, EA is misguided. But you can make practically any human concept sound problematic with an argument like this: written language has been a tool of colonization; empathy has been applied selectively in order to justify atrocities (think of Nazi propaganda that accused Jews of cruelty to animals, or mobs that lynched Black men for alleged crimes against white women); etc. The solution is not to get rid of writing or empathy or math, but to identify and protect against the ways they are misused.

3) Some authors are fixated on the capitalist system as the root of all evil and think EA reinforces that system. I have two objections to this. One is that it is a classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The other is that it puts way too much faith in the notion that reorganizing the entire world on the basis of some vaguely-specified and unproven set of principles will solve all our problems. Lots of things sound like they would work perfectly until you actually try them, and only then do the problems materialize. We see all the evils of capitalism because we have lots of experience living under capitalism. It's easy to imagine that one's idealized form of anarchism/communism/whatever would have fewer problems, but all the actual attempts to put these ideologies into practice on a large scale seem to have turned out either worse or not unambiguously better than capitalism. (I'm not saying there's no better system, just that it's reckless to pin all one's hopes on any particular revolutionary change.)

The final chapter does a decent job of addressing my third point above. It argues there is a "third way" beyond "revolution and reform" called "non-reformist reforms" that "make more immediate gains without compromising the larger goals of social movements for radical change."

Providing caring multispecies communities for formerly farmed animals at sanctuaries is perhaps the most striking example of non-reformist reforms in the animal advocacy movement. These sanctuaries not only provide meaningful, safe spaces for the nonhuman residents in their care, but also help us reframe and reimagine our relationships with animals, which have traditionally been relations characterized by power and control.

That seems like a good thing. I just don't think all efforts need to take this form; it is reasonable to hedge our bets between purely reformist endeavors and ones with more radical aims.

Which brings me to my main point of sympathy with the book. Some of the authors point out how charities that don't get much EA funding, like animal sanctuaries, can have benefits that are hard to predict or quantify. The chapter on Esther the pig does a particularly good job of this, noting how many people their fundraiser reached and that it likely "spawned countless discussions about the compassion for all life", among other things. It also points out:

EA, predicated on the principle of utility, which includes being reasonably certain of the consequences of our actions for the greatest number of those effected, would mean that the film Blackfish should not have been made, as it was produced to highlight the horrendous conditions of one killer orca whale, Tilikum. Yet this work, inspired by the desire to help one animal, had the sweeping effect of almost eradicating SeaWorld and the other similar aquatic circuses.

I think the right way to respond to this kind of uncertainty is not to give up "the principle of utility"; rather, it's to recognize that maximizing utility requires devoting some resources to things that look non-optimal, to protect against the inevitability that some of your utility estimates will be wrong. In other words, diversify.

And if everyone made their charitable giving decisions based on the recommendations of a few EA organizations, I think there would be a huge risk of insufficient diversification. Monocultures are dangerous; they magnify the impact of any mistaken belief (and there will always be mistaken beliefs when humans are involved). Defunding all animal shelters because a spreadsheet determined they have lower expected value than funneling all the money into a plant-based meat corporation, for example, would probably be unwise.

I think that sort of monoculture is something to be vigilant against as any movement grows. But is it really a big issue for EA right now? I don't know, but this book didn't convince me it is. Some essays have a particular grievance with the prominent EA organization Animal Charity Evaluators, and one notes "ACE estimates that it has influenced donations of over $10 million to its ranked charities in 2020 (and over $24 million from 2014 to 2019)". Not to detract from the importance of ACE's work, but, that sounds like a drop in the bucket of all charitable giving—$10 million is less than 1/1000th of the $16.14 billion that GivingUSA estimates Americans gave to "Environment/Animals" charities in 2021.

(crosspost)

[Martin Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I'm a former publisher of two of the editors and know about the gestation of this book. I'm also very predisposed to agree with them on the intellectual and practical problems associated with EA, and I likewise lament the way EA has distorted animal advocacy, its notions of effectiveness, and where and how it concentrates its resources. Apart from some unnecessary ad hominem observations, I generally welcomed the observations and arguments: some made in grief and/or disappointment, others made with more rigor and/or anger. Ironically, the book's strength—its range of tonal registers, rhetorical styles, and situation-led arguments—will also likely be the reason why, to quote Amia Srinivasan in the foreword, "There is every possibility . . . that Effective Altruists will ignore what these voices have to say—or fail to take the time to understand what their significance might be." The book as a whole lacks the data and recitation of logical presumptions regarding outcomes and the calculations of effectiveness; instead, it is passionate, advocative, occasionally sloppy and emotive, and frequently enmeshed with individuals and communities of animals and advocates that don't fit ordered arrangements of sufferers awaiting relief from philosopher-experts.

[Benny Nicholson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really do understand the vision and love a lot of the writers' (carol adams and amia srinivasan come to mind) other work but the result is a sweet tomatoes-esque buffet with 50 dishes but most of them are ass and also the same and yet none of them go well with each other. I suppose this is a useful jumping off point but this scatterbrained we-are-who-we-are-because-we-are-not-ea approach is frustrating.

and to be clear I'm just as critical of ea as some of these authors. that's why these shallow critiques frustrate me. ea has deep-rooted problems and epistemic blind spots that displace grassroots activists and entrench evil structures. but I don't walk away from here with a clearer vision of what an alternative movement for animal liberation would look like which is what I'd expect for a book of this length. you could say that's a big ask, but I have genuinely found some of carol adam's other work to be that revolutionary.

srinivasan intro and adams, de lima, halteman essays are all very good. but if you really want a jumping off point for understanding why ea goes wrong, chappell's smooth-brained critique of this book and the ensuing discourse on the open philosophy forum is a good place to prompt questions.

tl;dr the realest haters hate with love, hate their own hating, and in their hating they find love

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent engaging collection of essays "calling out" those who present themselves & their companies' philanthropy as "doing good," while trying to gaslight the recipients & potential recipients of the philanthropy.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly this collection of essays was not well edited and very repetitive overall. Overly philosophical for my taste, full of typos, and just not very engaging. I wish this had been edited differently.