Just Like the Rest of Them

In the wake of the rather spectacular collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX (an abbreviation, it turns out, of "Futures Exchange") I suddenly started hearing a lot more about the philosophical concept of "effective altruism." I'd heard of effective altruism mainly through having heard excerpts of philosopher Peter Singer making the case for it on various radio shows and podcasts. Having a passing interest in philosophy, I'd also read a few articles on the topic here and there. For me, the main things that I understood about effective altruism were the concepts that everyone's well-being is of equal value and that giving should be cost-effective. The stereotypical example of this would be if I could alleviate the hunger of three families in the United States by giving $100 over some period of time, but that same $100 could alleviate hunger for 10 families of equal size in Bangladesh, I should give my money to a charity that alleviates hunger in Bangladesh. Likewise, if charity A can feed 5 people for set time with a given amount of money donated, while charity B can feed 6, then I should donate to charity B. By making these sorts of calculations, driven by whatever data is available, one can be most effective with one's charitable giving.

All in all, I hadn't put much thought into effective altruism, and so was somewhat surprised to find that news outlets were running story after story on it, based mainly on the fact that FTX co-founder and CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried was a committed effective altruist. Despite the inference being about as logically fallacious as they come, there seemed to be a rather intense questioning of whether effective altruism was all that it was cracked up to be, given that Mr. Bankman-Fried was a) a backer and b) apparently wildly dishonest and/or unethical in his business dealings. It all struck me as more than a little suspect. Republican operatives seeking to link Mr. Bankman-Fried to Democrats, and framing the entirety of the Democratic Party as dishonest on that basis, was also a straight-up logical fallacy, but an expected one; American partisan politics more or less demands that the political parties claim that any malpractice by anyone even tenuously associated with the opposing party be held up as evidence that the whole party is run by criminals and fraudsters.

And recognizing that partisan aspect to things allowed me to better understand the interest in effective altruism. There are three major schools of thought when it comes to normative ethics: deontology, utilitarianism/consequentialism and virtue ethics. Virtue ethics, because it doesn't tend to deal directly with determining how a person should act in the moment, is often shunted to the side in any number of discussions, leaving a perhaps more familiar deontology versus utilitarianism divide. A divide, it turns out, that can be just as partisan as Republicans versus Democrats. Effective altruism is generally seen as a utilitarian/consequentialist viewpoint, focused as it is on basically doing the most good for the most people, and therefore leaving certain people with a valid claim to be "moral patients" out in the cold. To use the example I cited above, the three families in the United States. If I chose to give $100 to charity B in Bangladesh, and feed perhaps 12 families there, the Americans go hungry, for no other reason than they live in a nation where it's more expensive to feed them. They might argue that there are valid reasons for casting aside equal consideration of interests, and there are a good number of philosophers who agree with them.

Overall, I am under the impression that utilitarianism is the subject of quite a high degree of distrust from people who are not themselves utilitarians. At least, here in the "industrialized West," where incomes and standards of living are fairly high, relative to the rest of the world. And I think that this distrust is playing out here, as critics of effective utilitarianism seek to undermine the idea by linking it to someone now widely understood to be a bad person. Philosophy is subject to human nature, too, I suppose.