Talk:Effective altruism

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Effective altruism/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Xx78900 (talk · contribs) 09:16, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey, I'm gonna review this for you. I was only just thinking yesterday I was going to buy a book on this topic, so this seems like a nice intro for me.Xx78900 (talk) 09:16, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Review of previous reviews

Firstly, I'm going to take a quick look at the two failed noms, and check for unresolved issues.

Unresolved issues from GA 1

• In a similar but opposing view of the first reviewer, I think listing famous philanthropists in the lede is misplaced, and thinkers who coined / popularised the idea would be a better fit, such a Singer and MacEskill. As a whole I think the lede largely fails to summarise the article, spending too much time focusing on the actions of specific philanthropists and % dollar-growth, as opposed to a more general summary of concept.

There's some really great more detailed feedback on the lede below, which I will address later. That doesn't cover the "listing famous philanthropists" issue. Someone's fixed the famous philanthropists part (thank you!), and I will make a slight adjustment now, changing

* Prominent effective altruists include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill.

to be more specific:

* Prominent philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill.

The bit about dollar growth has also been removed by someone else (thanks again!). Marking this point  Done for now, with the expectation of further improvements to the lede when i get to the detailed feedback later.

Ruthgrace (talk) 19:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Surely it should just list prominent members of the movement? And therefore should say Singer, MacAskill and Bankman-Fried, Nathan PM Young (talk) 17:23, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

if you include SBF, you should include dustin moskovitz, and maybe the Gates and Elon Musk.... putting us where we were before the good article review. I'm fine either way but I do want to get this article to good article status. welcome to use your own judgement to edit the article directly and report back here Ruthgrace (talk) 04:32, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

• "Effective altruist organizations such as Open Philanthropy prioritize evaluate causes by following the importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework (ITN framework)." This is rewritten in accordance with the first review, but is still unwieldy. "prioritize evaluate"???

Here's another crack at it. Before:

* Effective altruist organizations such as Open Philanthropy prioritize evaluate causes by following the importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework (ITN framework).

After:

* Effective altruist organizations prioritize cause areas by following the importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework.

 Done (but let me know if you intended this comment to apply to the rest of the paragraph, too)

Ruthgrace (talk) 19:59, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• The "Donation" section is still badly in need of a re-write.

 Deferred will address this when I get to the detailed feedback on this point later. Ruthgrace (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

• The line which states that avoiding "careers that do significant direct harm, even if it seems like the negative consequences could be outweighed by donations. This is because the harms from such careers may be hidden or otherwise hard to measure", was re-written in accordance with GA1, but not particularly well. What is harm in this instance? This is still remarkably vague. There is a stand alone article, so this section doesn't have to be very long, but it should at least be clear in what its saying.

This concept isn't a part of the Earning to Give article, so I moved it there, and remove mention of it from this article, since it's a pretty specific concept to earning to give. I've also moved any other details from this section that weren't in the standalone article to the standalone article, and excerpted that article here. Marking  Done for now. Ruthgrace (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

• "effective animal welfare altruists" is still in the article, but I can't find it in either of the two cited sources.

I'm changing this to effective altruists since I think it's obvious from the context that these are effective altruists who care about animal welfare.  Done Ruthgrace (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

• The history section is no longer over-repetitive, but I find it highly questionable.

 Deferred will address this when I get to the detailed feedback on this point later. Ruthgrace (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Unresolved issues from GA 2

• A specific sentence is picked out as not needing seven citations, which it still has. I am glad to see the second reviewer mentioning this, as this was a big concern of mine while reading the article. It definitely and without question falls under WP:OVERCITE.

* Removed a citation about Good Ventures (primary source).

* Removed remaining primary source citations in History section. One on the singularity institute, one on the Giving What We Can history page, 80,000 hours about us page - these all have their own articles anyways. Another on Vox Future Perfect where there was already another citation from Vox. Deleted an FTX citation from The Economist where there was already another one from The Economist.

Ruthgrace (talk) 23:01, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

* in impartiality section: removed a primary citation to Animal Charity Evaluators, and another from 80K about longtermism

* in cause prioritization section: removed some primary citations to 80K and Open Phil

* in cost-effectiveness section: removed some primary citations to Givewell and replaced with Doing Good Better book citation. removed a half sentence that cited the open phil blog.

* in counterfactual reasoning section: remove primary source citation to 80K where there's already another citation

Ruthgrace (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I stopped recording each one here but I've removed primary sources and overcitations up until the end of the Cause Priorities section. More another time! Ruthgrace (talk) 23:56, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• "Anti-capitalist and institutional critiques" was mentioned by the second reviewer as warranting it's own third level sub-heading, but all reference to such has been removed from the article, with no equivalent to replace it.

My own general comments

Having now read the article in its entirety and having checked with the previous reviews and their comments, I'm going to be honest and say that I am extremely skeptical that this article can be brought up to standard within the next week, and as a result I am quickfailing it. There is simply too much missing/wrong here.

• WP:OVERCITE is a big issue here.
• The lede doesn't give a good introduction to the concept, nor to the article broadly.
• I am also more generally concerned that the series box on the top is about evidence based practices as opposed to philosophies. Is Effective altruism purely a philanthropic venture? At the very least it should contain both an evidence based practices box and a philosophies box.
• I think that this article puts too much focus on philanthropic practice and not nearly enough on its philosophical backing.
• The body of this article is in places extremely lacking, and in others brimming with filler: I don't think a big list of notable organisations/individuals associated with Effective Altruism is either relevant or helpful here, it just bloats the article. I think a category, something like Category:Charities which practice effective altruism or something similar would be a better fit; failing that, a list article would do the job too.
• Given that I think this article is a long was from passing, I'm not going to post as thorough a review as a GAN would typically receive. That said, if the issues mentioned are dealt with in a timely fashion, ping me and I will do a second, more thorough review.

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   The prose is, in places, decidedly not clear, nor particularly concise. Also, why is (EA) in the opening sentence, when it's not used anywhere else? Is that even a thing?

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   Fails WP:INTRO

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   Some of the sources, such as those from [80000hours.org] are not independent of the subject, but rather advocate for its furthering and adoption. Also, though Singer is a Professor of Bioethics, I'm not sure that his pop-philosophy books should be quoted from, though I have no issue with his academic work being cited.

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   The Philosophy section is far too short, the subsection suggested by the reviewer in the GA2 isn't included.

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   It goes into unnecessary detail listing people / organisations involved, and also I'm unconvinced that the History section needs to include every work published by Singer, or the details of every relevant Vox article. Also, is the formation of a Facebook Group really notable? There's nothing formal about a facebook group.

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   I haven't given this extensive though, but I agree with GA1 reviewer that this article reeds as though pushing an EA agenda.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

   The images lack alt captions

 Done I believe I have added an alt caption to the only picture on the article. Danihab (talk) 22:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

1. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   Fail. The article has not resolved the issues raised at previous GANs, and moreover, is a very long way from being in GA condition.

Response

Thanks for the GA review! I feel vindicated in my disapproval of the direction this article has taken in recent revisions. I agree with the reviewer that there is not nearly enough [emphasis] on its philosophical backing. The philosophy section was trimmed to the bone in recent revisions. Previous versions of the philosophy section may not have been adequate enough, but at least they had more content. The reviewer noted: "Anti-capitalist and institutional critiques" was mentioned by the second reviewer as warranting its own third level sub-heading, but all reference to such has been removed from the article, with no equivalent to replace it. This may have been part of the trend in recent revisions to strip out as much philosophy as possible. Biogeographist (talk) 20:54, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it's strange that the philosophy section has been trimmed down a lot. The philosophy is such a core part of EA and it should be explained in as much detail as is reasonable. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 06:16, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

The parts about being against systemic change have been moved to the cost effectiveness section, where I thought they were the most relevant.

I think it's important to be intentional about the contents of the philosophy section. I see that people think it should be longer but no one has mentioned a specific detail that is missing... Ruthgrace (talk) 06:38, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I think all of the content in "Themes", particularly cause prio and cost-effectiveness, belong in the Philosophy section rather than the Practice section. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 06:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I have no qualms with moving content that is in other parts of the article into the philosophy section :) Ruthgrace (talk) 07:03, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey Xx78900 thanks for the review! Really appreciate your time, and the feedback is super helpful. I do intend to keep working on this and will definitely take you up on your offer to tag you in for a more detailed review once we've addressed the current issues. Hope you don't mind me asking for a few clarifications to guide us as we continue to improve the article.

1. You said the donation section is badly in need of a rewrite. Can you explain what needs to be better? Is it difficult to read? Does it have the wrong content?

2. It seemed to me that the history section in previous versions was inaccurate and made it sound like effective altruism was started by Will MacAskill and CEA, ignoring other history such as the contributions of Singer, and I spent some time trying to fix this before going up for good article review again. What should be done to make it less "highly questionable"? Should parts of it be removed?

3. Can you explain a little more about what you think is wrong with the lede? Are there parts of the lede that should be cut? Parts of the article that should appear in the lede?

4. Can you give some examples of the kind of philosophical content that you think the article is missing?

5. Can you give some examples of parts of the article that are "extremely lacking" and "brimming with filler"?

6. Can you provide some sort of guideline or example to give us a better sense of what people and organizations should be mentioned and what shouldn't?

Finally, I want to note that I moved the anti-capitalist and institutional critiques (the subsection you mentioned was missing from Philosophy) to the end of the cost-effectiveness section, following WP:CRIT by folding it into where I thought it was the most relevant.

Thanks again! Ruthgrace (talk) 07:02, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Ruthgrace, my apologies for the delay in responding to you, I've been v busy IRL this past week. I'll happily provide more comments.

1. In regards the donation section, I must first admit my bias: usually I wouldn't mention my own politics, but as a socialist, the concept of altruistic donation as opposed to radical system change seems, to my eyes, a cop-out/vanity project, and so I may be overly critical in my analyses of this article. That not withstanding, my issues with this section are as follows:

• "Many effective altruists..." - too vague. Who, or how many?
• "... significant charitable donation." - What classifies it as significant? And without a benchmark, are we to assume that they do so to a greater extent than people who do not identify as effective altruists?
• "Some believe..." - Same problem, who is some?
• The wording of "alleviate suffering through donations" implies that the act of donating directly alleviates suffering.
• "Some even lead a frugal lifestyle in order to donate more." - Again, vague. Who? How many is some? What typifies a frugal lifestyle?
• I don't think listing some organisations affiliated with effective altruistic thought is the right way of handling things, certainly not in the manner it is done so here. Rather than give two examples in depth, maybe link to two big examples, and mention that there are others.
• What is the balance of Toby Ord's income? Does he donate a pound or a million pounds? Has the amount changed with inflation?
• More generally, this section talks about how people donate "effectively", but then just lists how much they donate. What makes some donation "effective", and some ineffective?
• Also as a general point, listing people who have made a lot of money and plan to donate it, doesn't seem very different from bog-standard philanthropy, and this section doesn't explain the difference at all.

Xx78900 (talk) 11:21, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

This is great feedback and I'll be slowly addressing the points one by one over the coming weeks. Thank you!! Ruthgrace (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

So EA is for systemic change. But I don't know how to write this in the article in a way that will be acceptable https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5XeCA5gKbMakAskLy/effective-altruists-love-systemic-change Nathan PM Young (talk) 17:36, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

2:

• Where does the first sentence of the history section fit into the context of the history of the movement? Again one of the biggest problems with this article, it's just namedropping people but not explaining their relevance. To be more specific, this man "anticipated" many of the ideas. How so, and in what context? Has he been identified as advocating a philosophy that might be considered a proto-effective altruism?
• Several communities? This is vague to the point of being almost devoid of meaning imo. Moreover, I don't understand what the purpose of the bullet point list is, if not to name drop institutions linked to EA.
• The Facebook Group is a meaningless metric. Anyone can found a facebook group.
• Why list all of Singer's books? They don't belong here.
• "As the movement formed"? Why is the formation of the ideology so far into its history section? Also what defines it as a "movement"?
• Really, most of this section is just a list of things related to EA, instead of exploring the history of EA as a school of thought, how its aspects have grown and changed. The history of its popularity is not irrelevant, but its not properly explored here.
• Is "Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues" a book or a journal? Is it necessary to list every book on the topic here?
• I find it highly questionable because I find it largely not an exploration of the history of movement at all, just a list of things that are related to it arranged chronologically.

Xx78900 (talk) 11:35, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm, the history of effective altruism is essentially that several related communities felt a need to create a larger movement, and ended up converging together into what is now capital letter Effective Altruism. The bullet point is that list of communities. Separately, Singer also encouraged followers of his work (who were not part of a specific community) to be a part of effective altruism. Do you have any advice on how to convey this better in the article? Ruthgrace (talk) 18:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, if it's all background (and it seems to be) I'd drop it, or if you can refine it, label it as Background, not History. It is the background to the movement, not the history of it. I would much prefer to see the history of the development of the ideology, how it has grown and evolved, and different theorists different opinions on / interpretations of it. Xx78900 (talk) 16:28, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

3. The Lede

• Is it a social movement? As in, is it labelled such by independent sources, not the advocates of the idea of EA? Because it seems (to me) to be too scattered and individual, lacking widespread adoption, and most importantly, without a clear goal, to be a social movement.
• There's nothing overly challengeable in the lede, so I would move all citations to the body, bar that for the quotation.
• That said, I personally amn't mad on the notion of opening the definition with a quote. It's not 'wrong' per se, and it certainly wouldn't interfere with a future GA nom, but I would prefer a simple explanation and this quote to be in the body.
• I think effective altruists should be bolded, not in italics.
• "Significant charitable donation" again, I hate the word 'significant' here. If it was back up in the body it would be one thing, and I actually think it would be appropriate, but as I've said above, I don't believe it is.
• "good" should be wikilinked. It should also be defined in the body, but in the lede it's fine to just leave it as is, thought it is such an open-ended term.
• Not sure if it's necessary or even helpful to have the link around "cause priorities". I expected it to explain what cause priorities were, not bring to the list of specific priorities within EA.
• I would also phrase it as something like "the promotion of global health and develeopment and animal welfare, and mitigating risks to .."
• Wikilink "impartiality"
• Don't italicise EA at the end of the lede, put it in inverted commas, 'effective altruism'. Should it be name, or phrase?

4. What is lacking in philosophy

• Now first of all it is important to note that I am far from an expert on EA philosophy or theory, so take this with a pinch of salt. Also, I would like to mention that this section is substantially improved from when I faield the review but it is still lacking.
• Though this article mentions utilitarianism in passing, I fail to see how EA is compatible with it - it seems to me to be altogether subordinate to it, as in it seems to me that EA is a form of utilitarianism.
• Why is Christianity specified? Is it many, or Christianity?
• "Effective altruism can also be in tension with religion insofar as religion emphasizes spending resources on worship and evangelism instead of causes that do the most good." I have massive problems with this sentence. Once again I ask, religion, or Christianity? Even within Christianity, what about good works focused denominations such as Methodism? Moreover, what is the most good? We have no more access to that truth than anyone, and to say that evangelism isn't "good" would be hotly contested by people who are Christian, who may argue it is the most good one can do.
• Avoid single-sentence paragraphs.
• You should probably mention veganism alongside factory farming, particularly given the emphasis on Singer in this article.
• Make an explicit link between cause neutrality and impartiality.
• Also, forgive me potentially misunderstanding the opening paragraph: It seems to me that the implication is that EA donors don't pay as much attention to effectiveness or evidence as non-profits, even if the on-profits are limited in their scope.
• What's an "evaluate cause"? Or should it say that they prioritize evaluating causes
• Neglectedness could be better explained
• "into the scale" into is the wrong preposition
• Counter factual reasoning shouldnt be linked if it just goes to ten lines underneath
• What is the importance of each of the components related to gathering information? Also, "The information required may require", should say something like "Collecting the information required may necessitate..."
• "disability-adjusted life years (DALY) reduced per dollar" Reduced or extended?
• The second paragraph of Cost-effectiveness reads like it belongs in a criticism section. Why isn't there a criticism section anyway? Without it, this article doesn't offer a full WP:NPOV
• "Since there is a high supply of candidates for such positions, however, ..."
• !!! "it makes sense" !!! Wikipedia does not advocate this position!
• The last line of counterfactual reasoning isnt sufficiently explained
• The whole counterfactual reasoning section is too narrow in its focus on that one specific example.

More to follow. Xx78900 (talk) 17:38, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

this is fantastic. i will start addressing feedback items one by one from the top. Ruthgrace (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

"Whether or not effective altruists should consider difficult-to-measure but potentially high-impact interventions such as institutional or structural change remains controversial."

This isn't true. I'm unsure what evidence is admissable here, but I can provide 10s of millions of dollars of funding towards institutional and structural change:

- pandemic preparedness candidates. https://puck.news/inside-s-b-f-s-12-million-long-shot/

- shifting philanthropy to focus on outcomes

- givedirectly pushing cash transfers

- the uptake of antimalarials and deworming worldwide. Nathan PM Young (talk) 17:28, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Ideas for improvement

I have some miscellaneous ideas for restructuring and improving the article, although I don't have time to implement all of them right now.

I've already implemented the following changes:

• Move all of the "Themes" from the "Practice" section to the "Philosophy" section.
• Move the content in the cause neutrality section into the Impartiality and Cause prioritization sections.
• Rename the "Entrepreneurship" section to "Founding effective organizations", focusing more on organizations founded for the purpose of direct impact, and move the SBF to the earning to give section.

General feedback:

• I think the tone should be more formal and encyclopedic overall, and more technical in some places. We shouldn't overwhelm the reader with EA jargon, but it's important to introduce at least the most important technical terms used by EA, to be concise and to respect the reader's intellect. For example, I changed the following sentence:
  • Before: Others include people who don't exist yet as possible beneficiaries and try to promote the long-term well-being of humanity by, for example, reducing risks to civilization, humans, and planet Earth.
  • After: Those who subscribe to longtermism include future generations as possible beneficiaries and try to improve the moral value of the long-term future by, for example, reducing existential risks.
• Although the two are related, I think it's important to decouple effective altruism from utilitarianism as much as possible. We should avoid using terms like "well-being" and "reducing suffering" as synonyms for moral value unless they're used that way in the source. For example, the 80K introduction to longtermism emphasizes the plurality of views that can support longtermism. In the example sentence above, which cites this source, I changed "long-term well-being of humanity" to "moral value of the long-term future" to reflect this.
• The three major camps of EA correspond to schools of thought regarding which beings should be considered moral patients, or can be helped in practice. The global health and development camp largely focuses on human beings in the present, the animal welfare camp adds non-human animals in the present, and the longtermist camp adds future generations. So I think the Cause priorities section belongs right after (or in) the Philosophy section as it's closely related to EA philosophy.
  • We should add sources about the beliefs and disagreements of these schools of thought. For example, Ajeya Cotra's 80K interview on worldview diversification provides a metaphor of a "train to crazy town", which could be helpful for describing these disagreements. Open Philanthropy's blog posts on worldview diversification could also be helpful.
  • We should also explain why members of the global health and well-being (non-longtermist) camp continue to focus on near-term, easily measurable causes. There are sources where Alexander Berger and Elie Hassenfeld explain their thoughts on longtermism.
  • We should explain in greater detail why AI safety and biosecurity are considered top priorities by longtermists. Right now, there's only two sentences in the longtermism/GCRs section about this. As this is a dominant view in the EA movement, I think it deserves its due weight.
• We should rename the "Practice" section to "Approaches".
  • The "Founding effective organizations" section reads like a laundry list of EA orgs. We only need a few examples to illustrate how organizations can be founded on EA principles. We can also name meta-orgs like Charity Entrepreneurship, which incubates EA nonprofits.
  • I think it would be good to add a subsection about incremental vs. systemic change to the Approaches section. This could absorb what's left of the Criticism section.
    • Relatedly, we should be consistent about whether we weave criticism into the article as a whole or put it in a dedicated "Criticism" section. Since we've been trending towards weaving it into the article, this would be going all the way.
• We can also rename the "Philosophy" section to "Core principles", since the cause priorities/schools of thought section also counts as EA philosophy.

Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 16:32, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I like your suggestions! I do think though that some of the details about longtermism should be incorporated in the longtermism article, which should then probably be excerpted here, e.g. We should explain in greater detail why AI safety and biosecurity are considered top priorities by longtermists Ruthgrace (talk) 19:07, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Yew-Kwang Ng

It seems wrong to me to mention one economist out of hundreds, especially one that I (who am pretty involved in effective altruism) have never heard of. Nathan PM Young (talk) 17:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

From Yew-Kwang Ng (citing the same source as in Effective altruism: "Thanks to his early work on animal welfare, global catastrophic risks and the measurement of wellbeing, he is credited with originating many ideas that would later be incorporated into the philosophy of effective altruism." Schweet (talk) 17:18, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Citing Muehlhauser 2013

My understanding is that Meuhlhauser, 2013, "Four Focus Areas of Effective Altruism" is a very important essay in the field of effective altruism. It was recently removed from the page by Biogeographist and Greyfell as an Internet Forum. The guideline says, "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is generally unacceptable." The Effective Altruism Forum is a place where users generate content, but it is where many of the most important essays in the field are published. It seems odd to remove the content for a topic because the leading thinkers on that topic choose to publish their works on a certain venue, and there is still much user-generated content, such as Tweets, cited on Wikipedia. I think this should be an exception to the "generally" rule-of-thumb. What do others think, ideally those with subject matter expertise? Jmill1806 (talk) 12:52, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Jmill1806 said in their edit summary restoring the forum post (which was then removed again for good reasons that I will address in a moment) that removing it "would be like disallowing a famous Reddit post on the Reddit page because it's on Reddit." That's not true; this page is not about the EA Forum (which is what is analogous to Reddit), it's about effective altruism. I understand that there are exceptions to WP:UGC and I've advocated for one exception myself: a post by William MacAskill, which I only considered an exception because MacAskill is notable enough to have his own Wikipedia article and because some relevant facts in it were not in other sources, although now that I look again at how the MacAskill post is cited, it seems to be overcited now—it's cited five times now instead of two times like it once was, and it's possible that the relevant facts are available in independent sources. So I am open to reconsidering whether that one should be an exception. As for Muehlhauser, I don't see how it's an exception: he's not notable enough to have his own Wikipedia article, and the facts that the source aims to verify are available in non-WP:UGC sources.

I don't accept that the EA Forum is a good source in general, so I can't accept restoring the Muehlhauser post on that basis. You have to view it in light of this article's long history of edits by EA enthusiasts who overcite sources like blogs and forums related to EA. (This has been discussed several times in the talk page archives.) I imagine the EA Forum seems important to those who participate in it, but those of us who don't can see that it's just another Internet forum. Biogeographist (talk) 16:35, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Biogeographist that forum posts are not considered appropriate sources on Wikipedia, and so EA Forum posts shouldn't be cited. But I think the reason why many EAs are irked by this is because the EA Forum is not "just another Internet forum". Many articles there effectively go through a peer review-like process — authors will create a draft which is shared with several others, then edits are made prior to publishing, and finally when articles are published, they are reviewed by the community as a whole using a karma system where the most dedicated EAs have far more of an ability to upvote posts than newer users, and these users have the ability to use a strong upvote to indicate even stronger approval, effectively vetting articles posted on the site.

Not all posts go through this process. The EA Forum does allow independent publishing without prior review. And, unlike traditional peer review, the articles that fail still get published; they just get published with a low karma count and in less conspicuous places. But all posts do go through the karma system, so articles can only get a high upvote count if either lots of newer users upvote it, or if a sufficient number of dedicated EAs upvote it.

I think it is clear that the EA Forum is definitively not just another Internet forum. Posts that do well on the EA Forum are, in my opinion, more vetted than many publishers require, and, for many posts, it is closer to something peer-review-like than outsiders realize. If Wikipedia were able to make isolated exceptions to its rules, I would advocate for such an exception to certain parts of the EA Forum. But I do not believe Wikipedia should make such exceptions (that seems wholly untenable), and so the EA Forum is unfortunately not usable as a source here.

Even though I concur with Biogeographist that forum posts shouldn't be used as sources on Wikipedia, I don't consider the EA Forum to be anything like other Internet fora, and I think it is a shame that Wikipedia must use broadly scoped rules rather than allow independent exceptions where it would make sense, like with the EA Forum. — Eric Herboso 20:11, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Eric Herboso, those are important considerations. On further reflection, I agree that not all Internet forums are equal; those that consistently enforce a code of conduct and content guidelines and that have a good reputation system like, for example, Stack Exchange (which is technically a Q&A website) are not the same as those that are just a free-for-all. Still, I think the WP:UGC guideline is right that even a site like Stack Exchange or the EA Forum shouldn't automatically be considered an appropriate source, since the minimal standards are so low even though some posts are very good, and each post has to be evaluated individually. I hope it was clear in my previous comment that I do think individual posts like MacAskill's or Muehlhauser's could be considered acceptable sources with good supporting arguments, but what I don't accept is the argument that the EA Forum is a reliable source in general therefore any given post is an appropriate source, especially when better sources are available for the same claim. Biogeographist (talk) 15:22, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't mind the notion that the EA forum isn't a good source. In fact, I probably agree. But I do think that sometimes makes it *really hard* to explain useful facts about EA. Honestly, sometimes I try and add things here which are against the common EA narrative, but they are still removed for lacking sources 2A02:C7C:393C:4200:759F:E3BA:828B:FA24 (talk) 09:37, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your clarification and further reflection, Biogeographist. I absolutely agree that "even a site like Stack Exchange or the EA Forum shouldn't automatically be considered an appropriate source, since the minimal standards are so low even though some posts are very good, and each post has to be evaluated individually," and I would also reject the claim that "the EA Forum is a reliable source in general therefore any given post is an appropriate source, especially when better sources are available for the same claim." We might be on the same page now. Jmill1806 (talk) 14:48, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Citing EA Forum on sexual misconduct

I'm new to Wikipedia as an editor, so I want to approach this with humility. I wish to discuss how I've added context to the sexual misconduct issue presented in the lead section: I explained that the community responded by discussing how to create a better environment, which I deem as relevant info to understanding the reaction by effective altruists, and I used the EA Forum as a reference. I understand the point that using a forum as evidence for general statements is not typically accepted, but the situation I highlighted seems different because, in order to explain how the community reacted to the situation, it is intuitive to reference the community's reaction. In this case, the context of the citation relies not on specific details of the reference, but on the mere existence of the discussion within it. I'm open to different opinions on this, and please try to see if that is reasonable. Pedro Araújo Writes (talk) 05:02, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

An EA Forum post titled "If you'd like to do something about sexual misconduct and don't know what to do..." (emphasis added) with caveats like "The post is not attempting to persuade anyone who isn't already convinced that it's worth taking action" and "It's just my take on what might be helpful to do", and with comments by only 3 people, is not exactly impressive evidence of noteworthy "conversations inside the community" that would be worth mentioning in this article, even leaving aside the problem that it's WP:UGC. Biogeographist (talk) 12:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

The article starts by citing two other articles written by members of the community discussing the issue, "Share the burden" (which had 51 comments) and "Things that can make EA a good place for women" (which had 30 comments). That was the reason I chose to cite this article rather than the other two. If that's the problem, I could cite those two. You also mentioned WP:UGC, but isn't it associated with the reliability of the information? (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) In this case, the statement I presented in the lead section simply acknowledges that the community has discussed the issue, which it has as demonstrated by the citations, so there doesn't seem to be a problem of trustworthiness. Pedro Araújo Writes (talk) 21:06, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

OK, I didn't look at the other 2 posts you mentioned because the links to them were very easy to overlook. Those 2 seem to be more relevant since they show discussion, but it would be much better to have a good secondary-source summary of the discussion instead of just pointing to the discussion on an Internet forum. It's not just an issue of verifying the claim, but also of showing that the claim is noteworthy enough to mention. I'm not sure how to evaluate the latter without a secondary source. For now, I will restore your addition with the 2 alternative citations. But I'm not sure that I would defend it if someone else reverts it again. Biogeographist (talk) 03:28, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

User:19h00s removed the sentence "Propelled by the situation, members of the community discussed how to create an environment more capable of preventing and fighting sexual misconduct" and its references. I am noting the removal here, where the sentence and its references were previously discussed. Biogeographist (talk) 15:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it's definitely a worthwhile topic to cover, but the EA forum is simply not a reliable source. I read through all the conversations here, but there is no way in my mind that a self-described internet forum - no matter how respected or widely read/praised it may be - can be the sole source of validation for the information that it was cited for in this case. If another editor were able to find a reliable, notable, secondary source that details the fact that there were conversations within the EA community about combatting sexual misconduct, then you could use that as the establishing source. But as it was used in the article before I made edits, those sources essentially served to validate original research. Reading through forums and deciding to frame what was said there as a larger trend among the movement is as "original research" as it gets, imo. 19h00s (talk) 15:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

EA Forum in Google Scholar

News related to the above discussion: Earlier this month, Google Scholar has started to return some EA Forum posts for some searches. This is relatively unusual, as Google Scholar only very rarely returns results from any fora. While this does strongly support that some articles on the EA Forum don't fall into the same category as other forum posts, this does not necessarily mean that we may use EA Forum posts that are listed on Google Scholar as a proper reliable source. According to WP:SCHOLARSHIP, EA Forum posts might still fail in terms of citation counts (although articles with no citation counts may still count as a reliable source in some situations). They may also count as WP:PREPRINT, which makes them generally unsuitable — but, in some cases, WP:SPS does apply, meaning isolated EA Forum posts may arguably be considered reliable. If we honestly can't cite something except by going through the EA Forum, and if the EA Forum article is listed by Google Scholar, and if the author has other articles listed by Google Scholar, then I think there may be a good argument for citing the EA Forum in that specific case. — Eric Herboso 15:36, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Long-form Effective Altruism posts should be citable. They're much more similar to academic papers than to Reddit posts, often coming with their own citations and peer review. Papers published in scientific journals are also "user-edited", so clearly discretion is intended with regards to this Wikipedia guideline. I agree that the Effective Altruism forum *looks* like a traditional internet forum, but what matters is the content and the process used to generate that content, not the aesthetics. KingSupernova (talk) 05:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

When you say "Effective Altruism posts" I assume you mean EA Forum posts. The "About" page of the EA Forum shows that it is just a typical Internet forum. It says nothing about a scholarly peer review process that I can find. Papers published in scientific journals are also "user-edited". No, they're not; they are edited by selected experts. And nobody is claiming that the aesthetics of the EA Forum is the problem! The process is the problem. EA Forum posts, long-form or not, are not automatically reliable sources. Biogeographist (talk) 16:44, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Criticism

This article is missing a criticism section. (There's been sporadic discussion of that above, but maybe development of it can be centralized.) Most articles about well-known philosophies have one (Existentialism, Rationalism), and even before the FTX debacle, people have levied plenty of criticisms of EA. Ones that come to mind: A culture of elitism and impenetrability to outsiders (counterargument: donating money to the arts, and not to charity, is elitist), including poor or non-white people, and associated parochialism and naivete about how the world works. Insufficient focus on the arts and beauty, which could conceivably give lives more quality, long term. "Telescopic philanthropy" to far-away places, with a callous disregard for domestic needs. The permitting of doing harmful things to an end (mentioned a bit in the existing FTX section). The discouragement of focusing on "pet causes" rather than the largest problems. Criticisms of its highly calculated utilitarianism (why not leave the child to drown and sell the suit to donate to a charity which can save more children?).

I'll try drafting a couple paragraphs but I would appreciate input. Ovinus (talk) 20:20, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes this would be very useful to the article. Also as an aside, that was so funny to read lmao Xx78900 (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

(I'm glad you enjoyed it.) I've added some stuff and rearranged a part of the "Incremental versus systemic change" section to go in the "Criticism" section. I'm not great at writing about controversial topics (I tend to mildly "invigorate" them—which is perhaps appropriate for historical topics, but not for modern issues), so I hope others can help. I've also removed the {{example farm}} tag, because I think the article is a lot better since it was added, due to the work of others. Plus, philosophy articles are one of the few places where manifold examples create a more informative, and ultimately neutral, text. Ovinus (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with removing the example farm template just yet - while I agree with you that from a philosophical perspective mroe examples can be useful, my concern is for the History, Cause Priorities, and Approaches sections, wherein I think there are a lot of businesses/organisations listed to the point of redundancy. You may have noticed above my grievance about a Facebook group's inclusion in particular. Xx78900 (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

That’s fair, especially regarding the organizations thing. Undid my removal Ovinus (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Once it comes out, this may be a good book to really round out the criticism section, or at least to enumerate the main objections. Ovinus (talk) 00:17, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm with you on the Facebook group. Is it time to remove it? (I'm pretty new here and still trying to get to grips with all the rules and norms.) Schweet (talk) 18:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Everything in the criticism section can and should be moved into the body of the article. I've tried to address some of the POV issues but there's still a lot there. It makes the article non-neutral and have significant POV issues that the main body of the article reads like a promotion piece and relies heavily on self-serving statements of proponents of effective alturism while relegating the significant and well-sourced criticism of the movement as not actually supporting or adhering to its stated values to a criticism section at the end. The criticism section is probably the best-sourced part of this article. It's my understanding that while Wikipedia doesn't ban criticism sections, but that the preference is to just work critical material into the article. There's also a preference for third-party sources rather than first-party sources. The heavy citations to William MacAskill, who seems to be considered a founder of the movement, is a significant issue. A more neutral POV article would not confine negative information about the article's subject which is well-sourced through reliable, fairly unbiased, third-party sources to a criticism section while allowing the article to be dominated by first-party sources and promotional/normative content. For more on this generally, see for instance the discussion in Wikipedia:Criticism and Template:Third-party. Nogburt (talk) 13:50, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Most of what Nogburt said has been discussed on the talk page in the past (see the archives), and at one point there was a criticism section that was subsequently completely integrated into the article, and that criticism is still in the body of the article. But then someone came along and added a new criticism section with further sources. (Was it Ovinus? I forget.) Apparently some people like separate criticism sections? This sequence of events led to the awkward current situation where we have an "Other criticism" section since some criticism is integrated into the article and some is in the separate section. I support integrating all the criticism into the article. Biogeographist (talk) 15:37, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Biogeographist that the criticism should be integrated into the article. See Criticism: "In most cases separate sections devoted to criticism, controversies, or the like should be avoided in an article because these sections call undue attention to negative viewpoints." Schweet (talk) 16:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Schweet: I think you intended to link to WP:Criticism, from which that quotation is taken. Note that WP:Criticism is an essay, that is, just an opinion, and not a Wikipedia guideline. Even if it's true that criticism sections should be avoided "in most cases" (which is questionable), one still has to give reasons why this article is one of those cases and is not an exception. Citing the essay alone does not make a sufficient argument. I'm not worried about the criticism section attracting "undue attention to negative viewpoints", and I would guess that the critics don't think that attention to their criticisms is undue. In this case, I think it's best to try to integrate the criticism into the article because that is what has already been done for other criticism, because it's relevant to other sections and makes better sense in context, and because it's part of an ongoing history of dialogue and experimentation (as opposed to, say, a criticism section in an article about a book, where the book is already published and doesn't go on adapting and creating new history in response to criticism: books don't change once published, but effective altruism is a work in progress). Biogeographist (talk) 17:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Biogeographist: Fair enough (and yes, wrong link - sorry!) Thanks for starting work on this. I have some ideas for finishing integrating the 'Other criticism' section:

1. Remove the 1st paragraph given that these two criticisms are covered in more depth above (under Cause Prioritization and immediately prior to that sentence)?

2. Move the 2nd paragraph to the end of History, given that 3 of the 5 references are from after the FTX bankruptcy (and the other 2 seem a bit redundant and out of date)?

3. Move the 3rd paragraph to the end of History, given that it's already mentioned there? And maybe shorten it given that it's based on one article (which the other citation is commentary on)? Schweet (talk) 10:25, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I moved the content as you suggested but didn't do any further editing. Regarding #1, I agree this is redundant now; it was initially a summary of the criticism section, and an IP editor appended the reference in this edit; I deleted the sentence but moved the reference to the further reading section. Regarding #2, this paragraph has references dating back to 2015, so it doesn't comfortably fit in post-2022 history; since it is the only remaining paragraph in the section, I renamed the section to "Movement demographics". If there is more information on EA demographics in reliable sources, perhaps the section could be expanded so it is more precise than "Look! Rich white people!" (but without trying to deflect the criticism). Biogeographist (talk) 16:47, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nogburt: You say, "There's also a preference for third-party sources rather than first-party sources." Yes, but the third-party tag is used to "identify articles that name sources, but that are biased because every source named has a very close connection to the subject, such as the manufacturer of a product." (Template:Third-party). That's very clearly not the case with this article. But I do agree that it feels like more non-primary sources are needed and I've just corrected the two places that were tagged as such. Schweet (talk) 18:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

References

It seems the most concrete concern about neutrality, first party sources, has been improved (and potentially didn't apply in the first place). Given that there is also no definitive rule in favor of or against criticism sections, I would remove the NPOV tag if there is no objection within 3 weeks from now. SoerenMind (talk) 10:31, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. From my perspective, the article is biased in favour of Effective Altruism, and is definitely relying too heavily on primary sources still. Xx78900 (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

While there are still primary sources, can you give a few examples of primary sources that contribute to a non-neutral POV of the article? And if there are any other neutrality issues, can you explain what those are?SoerenMind (talk) 11:30, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Lacking sufficient discussion of association with FTX?

This article seems unduly slanted towards more theoretical and academic aspects of its subject. At this point in time, effective altruism is most notable for its association with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. Relegating discussion of that association to a criticism section seems to give undue weight to other less notable aspects of effective altruism. Discussing a philosophy that is primarily known for its real world impact and associations should give due and substantial weight to that impact and those associations.

Just Nogburt (talk) 15:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with you that it is most notable for its association with FTX. There has been a long push towards academicizing the article. But as someone who has largely stepped back from this article, I would say WP:SODOIT Xx78900 (talk) 19:31, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the history section is currently too focused on books, but I don't think a whole paragraph on FTX is justified in the current scheme. In the scope of all the history of effective altruism, I think it would be useful to mention the bankruptcy of FTX, but maybe just in a paragraph on reputational issues from 2022 onwards. Does that seem reasonable? Jmill1806 (talk) 15:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Why is a paragraph about FTX not justified? FTX was the largest fraud in the history of the world, in terms of number of victims. The existence of FTX alone discredits the effective altruist movement. The movement strived to do maximum good in the world that exceeds the bad, and FTX alone caused the movement to achieve exactly the opposite of its stated goals. SBF and Caroline stole billions of dollars and instead of buying houses or cars, they gave the money to politicians and charities supporting EA. No matter what the remnants of EA do from here on out, it's unlikely they will ever be able to do anything close to offsetting the millions of lives the movement ruined. I'd actually argue that there should be more discussion about FTX, not less. Quintin3265 (talk) 12:11, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

the millions of lives the movement ruined? {{Citation needed}}, my friend. Also, the comment to which you are responding is outdated; it refers to an older version of the article, and the article has been restructured since then. Biogeographist (talk) 22:33, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not like if EA were officially endorsing unbridled "the end justifies the means" strategies, it seems like they rather warn against it ("Effective altruism does not mean supporting ‘ends justify the means’ reasoning [...]", https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism). Even William MacAskill, that is known for the "earning to give" strategy, warned against this kind of "naive calculation that justify harmful action", and stated before the FTX fraud that "violating rights is almost never the best way of bringing about positive longterm outcomes" (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WdeiPrwgqW2wHAxgT/a-personal-statement-on-ftx). Alenoach (talk) 15:34, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

POV template

Can the Point Of View maintenance template at the top of the article now be removed ? Alenoach (talk) 04:09, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Effective altruism ≠ utilitarianism

An edit to the lead section that I reverted equated effective altruism with utilitarianism. This is not correct; for example:

Many take effective altruism to be synonymous with utilitarianism, the normative theory according to which an act is right if and only if it produces no less well‐being than any available act (see UTILITARIANISM; WELL‐BEING). This is a category mistake. Effective altruism is not utilitarianism, nor is it any other normative theory or claim. Instead, effective altruism is the project of using evidence and reason to try to find out how to do the most good, and on this basis trying to do the most good [...] Since effective altruism is a project rather than a normative claim, it is possible for one to both adopt this project as well as accept a nonwelfarist conception of the good (or indeed to adopt multiple projects, some of which involve promoting welfarist good and some of which involve promoting nonwelfarist good).

— Pummer, Theron; MacAskill, William (June 2020). "Effective altruism". In LaFollette, Hugh (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 1–9. doi:10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee883. ISBN 9781444367072. OCLC 829259960. S2CID 241220220.

Biogeographist (talk) 22:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Effective altruists (term)

@Recursing: Welcome to Wikipedia! In your edit summary for this edit, you wrote: ‎Usage of "effective altruist" as a noun is not very common for most people pursuing the goals of effective altruism. I don't know what is your verifiable evidence for that claim, but ample evidence that the usage of the term effective altruists (plural) as described is common enough in the published literature in general can be seen, for example, in the Google Scholar search results for the term. I have found many examples in other bibliographic databases as well over the past few years. More importantly, the term effective altruists is used repeatedly in this Wikipedia article, so it needs to be succinctly defined at the start to avoid confusion. Biogeographist (talk) 01:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Biogeographist thank you so much for all your work on Wikipedia!

I definitely agree that it's sometimes used, and it seems I was wrong in thinking its usage is "not very common".

But it still seems to me that not everyone uses that term, and I would keep "sometimes". I really don't know how to prove the negative that it's not always used, besides quoting internet forums and other non-reliable sources.

E.g. It seems to me that https://www.effectivealtruism.org, incl. https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism, and https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ don't use the term, also I think this Google Scholar search result has articles using "effective altruism" but not "effective altruist(s)"

I'll leave it to you to consider if "sometimes" is an accurate characterization Recursing (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

"Such criticism has been described as not intellectual, but visceral"

Asto77 added the following sentence, which I removed:

Such criticism has been described as not intellectual, but visceral.

What the cited source says is: "Effective altruism has many enemies, and while there are certainly philosophical arguments against it, much of the opposition is not intellectual but visceral." I find it difficult to accept this as worthy of an encyclopedia article, because it's just a claim in an opinion column in a student newspaper and is unsupported by evidence. The author fails to provide examples of opposition that "is not intellectual but visceral". Perhaps there's a Wikipedia guideline that's relevant, but my memory fails me at the moment. Biogeographist (talk) 03:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. You are right. It's an interesting and probably a true point, but there are not enough good refs. to include. Asto77 (talk) 09:52, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Now my brain is more awake and I realize that WP:RS is basically the relevant guideline. Biogeographist (talk) 16:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Heading "EA choices sometimes unpalatable"

I removed the "EA choices sometimes unpalatable" heading that Asto77 recently added. It doesn't strike me as a good summary because it's very WP:POV: Whose choices? Unpalatable to whom? And the subheading was at the beginning of the "Impartiality" section, and I'm not sure that the introduction to the section needs a subheading at all. For now, I moved all the relevant content under the "Criticism of impartiality" subheading. By the way, MacAskill's response to the Picasso scenario in 2015, recounted in that section, was obviously very utilitarian, but I'm not sure that he would give such a (dogmatically?) utilitarian response today about how effective altruists should behave in that scenario, judging based on how he has been more assiduous about differentiating EA from utilitarianism in more recent writings, e.g. in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics article on EA. Biogeographist (talk) 18:31, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I am not the only one who has noticed the discrepancy between MacAskill's response to the Picasso scenario and his later writings on EA: see this comment in the EA Forum. If MacAskill has somewhere explicitly responded to this discrepancy, it would be great to add a sentence about it to the relevant paragraph in this Wikipedia article. Biogeographist (talk) 22:30, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Trimming biased "criticism" section

As seen in the "criticism" section above on this talk page, the "criticism" section of the article appears to have been added not due to any particular criticism that was noteworthy enough to address, but simply because an editor felt that the article "needed" a criticism section, and then went looking for criticisms to support it. This is an... odd approach to editing, to say the least. Many articles on Wikipedia about various philosophies and social movements do not include any particular "criticism" section, so there is no a-priori need for one here.

Of course if there are noteworthy criticisms of the movement, then they should be mentioned, and indeed there are quite a few mentioned in the "controversies", "criticisms of impartiality", "notable publications and media", "criticisms of cause prioritization", "cost-effectiveness", "incremental versus systemic change", "long-term future and global catastrophic risks", "founding effective organizations", and "other prominent people" sections, along with the last paragraph of the introduction. In fact, out of 28 total sections and subsections of the article, 13 of them contain criticism of Effective Altruism. This is a substantially larger fraction than in comparable articles.

Many of those criticisms are reasonable and well-cited. In contrast, three out of the four criticisms in the standalone "criticisms" section are nonsensical.

• EA is composed of about 30% women, which is much better than most adjacent fields; for example it's about twice as many as among Wikipedia editors. 76% are white, which is the base rate among the American population and therefore exactly what we'd expect to see from a welcoming and inclusive movement. And the provided sources do not back up this claim; the Vox article only makes a vague insinuation that "linking EA to programmers will not do much to bring more people from diverse backgrounds into the fold", which as the previous statistics show does not appear to be correct, and the Atlantic article simply claims the movement is non-diverse and then links to an EA forum post summarizing survey results that do not particularly back up that claim.
• "Using math to justify actions" describes every technical field, ever. If this criticism doesn't apply to economists, political scientists, wall street traders, engineers, climate scientists, actuaries, game theorists, etc. then it doesn't apply here either. Additionally, it's unclear how this is supposed to be a criticism, since surely "avoiding checking the math when deciding what to do" is worse?
• "Some gatherings and events are closed to outsiders" is also a typical feature of pretty much every social and professional group, ever. And in fact some cursory research into the subject suggests that many if not most EA events are open to the public. The citation for this criticism also does not back it up; the "cult-like" accusation in the Bloomburg article was levied at the rationalist community, not effective altruism. (While related, they are entirely separate movements. Most people in one do not identify as the other, and there are significant philosophical disagreements between the two.)

These criticisms are embarrassing. At best they fail a cursory check for basic logical validity, at worst they are actively deceptive. I have removed them.

(The accusation of hypocrisy for high spending and the purchase of Wytham Abbey actually makes sense, so I left it alone.)

KingSupernova (talk) 06:49, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I didn't write any of the content that was removed, although I edited it after it was added. In general, I agree that what KingSupernova removed was weak, but the objection "Using math to justify actions" describes every technical field, ever is as biased a misinterpretation of that sentence as anything that was in the criticism section. The point of that poorly written sentence (and it was even more poorly written before I edited it, although clearly it wasn't edited enough if it could be misinterpreted so badly) is the "being used to justify self-serving spending" part, not the "math" part. There may be something worth salvaging there, but as I didn't add that sentence myself I'm not very motivated to try to fix it. I haven't critically examined the other objections above, which I hope are not as wrongheaded as the "Using math to justify actions" misinterpretation. Biogeographist (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

The general "their decisions seem kinda self-serving" criticism is reasonable, hence why I left in the section about the Wytham Abbey purchase. The ridiculous part is the implication that using math is somehow relevant to this. If they were self-serving in the same ways, but *avoided* using math to justify those decisions, would that be better? Doesn't seem like it. KingSupernova (talk) 04:22, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

"Differences from utilitarianism" section

Asto77 added the following text under the heading "EA differences from utilitarianism":

Some argue that utilitarianism "commands" people to do good, whereas under EA some people have a "duty" or "obligation" to do good.

Toby Ord has contrasted utilitarians as "number-crunching" with most effective altruists being "guided by conventional wisdom tempered by an eye to the numbers".

References

I removed this because I don't think it says anything clear and important about the difference between EA and utilitarianism. But I agree it would be useful to have a subsection about this under "Impartiality". I don't have time to rewrite this now but will try to get to it soon. If you have other suggestions about such a section before I return, feel free to provide them here. I haven't yet read MacAskill's chapter in the Norton Introduction to Ethics that is cited, but I have read his chapters in the International Encyclopedia of Ethics and in Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, which were published around the same time. With all these sources (and perhaps others), we can write something better. Biogeographist (talk) 02:55, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

OK, I read MacAskill's chapter in the Norton Introduction to Ethics, and actually I didn't find it helpful on this issue, because in that chapter he's just arguing for obligations that could motivate people to pursue the goals of effective altruism, even though he notes at the beginning: "As defined by the leaders of the movement [...] effective altruism is a project, rather than a set of normative commitments." So it's like he's saying that EA as prominently defined doesn't make claims about obligations, but he's going to argue for claims about obligations that would make one want to engage in the project of EA. In contrast, there are (at least) a couple of other publications by MacAskill that I mentioned above that explicitly address the issue of differences from utilitarianism. I added a sentence in this edit that may satisfactorily address the issue based on those sources. Biogeographist (talk) 20:57, 1 January 2024 (UTC)