[LINK] EA Has A Lying Problem

Note: there also discussions of this taking place on the Effective Altruism forum, which I think makes more sense as the central-repository for discourse.

http://effective-altruism.com/ea/169/a_response_to_ea_has_a_lying_problem/#comments

I'm pretty split on this. I found the quotes from Ben Todd and Robert Wiblin to be quite harmless, but the quotes from Jacy Reese to be quite bad. I don't think it's possible to judge the scope of the problem discussed here based on the post alone. In either case, I think the effort to hold EA to high standards is good.

Relevant sequence: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)

This seems reasonable, but the interpretations of the quotations seem to be in some cases, extremely uncharitable.

Ben's statement could easily be construed to mean: run your criticism by us first, and we'll point you to where it's been discussed - because otherwise we'd probably not bother responding independently to all the various public criticisms, as it wastes our time with a repetitive task.

The Robert Wiblin quote is taken out of context, and the comparison to marriage makes it clear that he's not advocating "you can quit any time you feel like it".

The Reese issue is more complex, and potentially worse, and I won;t address it.

And Gleb's missteps are mostly indefensible, but this article seems to question his motives unfairly. He seems to be trying (not always well) to go down a path that he may still think is ultimately helpful. (I'd advise him to reread how to actually change your mind, and hope he can make a major change.) Will and others have done enough to disavow him, this isn't helpful. So I'm not defending him, but the attack here seems simply mean spirited, and ultimately is exactly the type of time-wasting circular firing squad that the Ben's earlier quotes were trying to get people to avoid.

Edit: All that said, the post pointed out an important issue, and at the very least, the critique of using the number of GWWC pledges as a metric which is distorting behavior is something I'm fully in agreement with Sarah on.

Another note I forgot to add: the first quote, about criticism, sounds like Ben Todd being extremely open and honest regarding his motives.

The writer and those in the article seem to hint that lying is ineffective.(in the long run) Then it is a matter of efficiency, not lying or integrity. But it appears that it is not, and this is simply a rationalization. Cognitive dissonance with "not lying/integrity" and "efficiency".

Nice article. This sure puts the earlier criticism of Tyro Gfvchefxl in perspective - I think on the whole, Tyro's attitude has been a lot more honest than what's now surfacing from these other orgs. The ideas that "internal critique is bad for the organization, and who cares about critiques when we're getting pledges anyway" and "thinking that pledges should be taken seriously is just autism (but only when we say so!)" are just terrible and could easily backfire politically on the movement as a whole. Needless to say, that would lead to a significant loss of utility.

Sarah's post highlights some of the essential tensions at the heart of Effective Altruism.

Do we care about "doing the most good that we can" or "being as transparent and honest as we can"? These are two different value sets. They will sometimes overlap, and in other cases will not.

And please don't say that "we do the most good that we can by being as transparent and honest as we can" or that "being as transparent and honest as we can" is best in the long term. Just don't. You're simply lying to yourself and to everyone else if you say that. If you can't imagine a scenario where "doing the most good that we can" or "being as transparent and honest as we can" are opposed, you've just suffered from a failure mode by flinching away from the truth.

So when push comes to shove, which one do we prioritize? When we have to throw the switch and have the trolley crush either "doing the most good" or "being as transparent and honest as we can," which do we choose?

For a toy example, say you are talking to your billionaire uncle on his deathbed and trying to convince him to leave money to AMF instead of his current favorite charity, the local art museum. You know he would respond better if you exaggerate the impact of AMF. Would you do so, whether lying by omission or in any other way, in order to get much more money for AMF, given that no one else would find out about this situation? What about if you know that other family members are standing in the wings and ready to use all sorts of lies to advocate for their favorite charities?

If you do not lie, that's fine, but don't pretend that you care about doing the most good, please. Just don't. You care about being as transparent and honest as possible over doing the most good.

If you do lie to your uncle, then you do care about doing the most good. However, you should consider at what price point you will not lie - at this point, we're just haggling.

The people quoted in Sarah's post all highlight how doing the most good sometimes involves not being as transparent and honest as we can (including myself). Different people have different price points, that's all. We're all willing to bite the bullet and sometimes send that trolley over transparency and honesty, whether questioning the value of public criticism such as Ben or appealing to emotions such as Rob or using intuition as evidence such as Jacy, for the sake of what we believe is the most good.

As a movement, EA has a big problem with believing that ends never justify the means. Yes, sometimes ends do justify the means - at least if we care about doing the most good. We can debate whether we are mistaken about the ends not justifying the means, but using insufficient means to accomplish the ends is just as bad as using excessive means to get to the ends. If we are truly serious about doing the most good as possible, we should let our end goal be the North Star, and work backward from there, as opposed to hobbling ourselves by preconceived notions of "intellectual rigor" at the cost of doing the most good.

She does eventually give an example of what she says she's talking about - one example from Facebook, when she claimed to be seeing a pattern in many statements. Before that she objects to the standard use of the English word "promise," in exactly the way we would expect from an autistic person who has no ability to understand normal humans. Of course this is also consistent with a dishonest writer trying to manipulate autistic readers for some reason. I assume she will welcome this criticism.

(Seriously, I objected to her Ra post because the last thing humanity needs is more demonology; but even I didn't expect her to urge "mistrusting Something that speaks through them," like they're actually the pawns of demons. "Something" is very wrong with this post.)

The presence of a charlatan like Gleb around EA is indeed disturbing. I seem to recall people suggesting they were slow to condemn him because EA people need data to believe anything, and lack any central authority who could declare him anathema.