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This is: Effective Altruism is an Ideology, not (just) a Question, published by Fods12 on the Effective Altruism Forum.
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Introduction
In a widely-cited article on the EA forum, Helen Toner argues that effective altruism is a question, not an ideology. Here is her core argument:
What is the definition of Effective Altruism? What claims does it make? What do you have to believe or do, to be an Effective Altruist?
I don’t think that any of these questions make sense.
It’s not surprising that we ask them: if you asked those questions about feminism or secularism, Islamism or libertarianism, the answers you would get would be relevant and illuminating. Different proponents of the same movement might give you slightly different answers, but synthesising the answers of several people would give you a pretty good feeling for the core of the movement.
But each of these movements is answering a question. Should men and women be equal? (Yes.) What role should the church play in governance? (None.) What kind of government should we have? (One based on Islamic law.) How big a role should government play in people’s private lives? (A small one.)
Effective Altruism isn’t like this. Effective Altruism is asking a question, something like:
“How can I do the most good, with the resources available to me?”
In this essay I will argue that his view of effective altruism being a question and not an ideology is incorrect. In particular, I will argue that effective altruism is an ideology, meaning that it has particular (if somewhat vaguely defined) set of core principles and beliefs, and associated ways of viewing the world and interpreting evidence. After first explaining what I mean by ideology, I proceed to discuss the ways in which effective altruists typically express their ideology, including by privileging certain questions over others, applying particular theoretical frameworks to answer these questions, and privileging particular answers and viewpoints over others. I should emphasise at the outset that my purpose in this article is not to disparage effective altruism, but to try to strengthen the movement by helping EAs to better understand the intellectual actual intellectual underpinnings of the movement.
What is an ideology?
The first point I want to explain is what I mean when I talk about an ‘ideology’. Basically, an ideology is a constellation of beliefs and perspectives that shape the way adherents of that ideology view the world. To flesh this out a bit, I will present two examples of ideologies: feminism and libertarianism. Obviously these will be simplified since there is considerable heterogeneity within any ideology, and there are always disputes about who counts as a ‘true’ adherent of any ideology. Nevertheless, I think these quick sketches are broadly accurate and helpful for illustrating what I am talking about when I use the word ‘ideology’.
First consider feminism. Feminists typically begin with the premise that the social world is structured in such a manner that men as a group systematically oppress women as a group. There is a richly structured theory about how this works and how this interacts with different social institutions, including the family, the economy, the justice system, education, health care, and so on. In investigating any area, feminists typically focus on gendered power structures and how they shape social outcomes. When something happens, feminists ask ‘what affect does this have on the status and place of women in society?’ Given these perspectives, feminists typically are uninterested in and highly sceptical of any accounts of social differences between men and women based on biological differences, or attempts to rationalist differences on the basis of social stability or cohesion. This way of looking at thing...
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