Would You Work Harder In The Least Convenient Possible World?

[note: I don't consider myself Utilitarian and sometimes apply True Scotsman to argue that no human can be, but that's mostly trolling and not my intent here. I'm not an EA in any but the most big-tent form (I try to be effective in things I do, and I am somewhat altruistic in many of my preferences). ]

I think Alice is confused about how status and group participation works.  Which is fine, we all are - it's insanely complicated.  But she's not even aware how confused she is, and she's making a huge typical mind fallacy in telling Bob that he can't use her preferred label "Utilitarian". 

I think she's also VERY confused about sizes and structures of organization.  Neither "the Effective Altruist movement" nor "rationalist community" are coherent structures in the sense she's talking about.  Different sites, group homes, companies, and other specific groups CAN make decisions on who is invited and what behaviors are encouraged or discouraged.  If she'd said "Bob, I won't hire you for my lab working on X because you don't seem to be serious about Y", there would be ZERO controversy.  This is a useful and clear communication.  When she says "I don't think you should call yourself Utilitarian", she's just showing herself as insecure and controlling.

Honestly, the most effective people (note: distinct from "hardest working") in sane organizations do have the most respect and influence.  But that's not a binary, and it's not what everyone is capable of or seeks.  MOST actual humans are members of multiple groups, and have many terms in their imputed utility function.  How much of one's effort to give to a given part of life is a pretty wide continuum.

I did a lot of interviewing and interview training for a former large employer, and an important rule (handed down through an oral tradition because it can't really be written down and made legible) was "don't hire jerks".  I'd rather work with Bob than Alice, and I'm sad that Alice probably won't understand why.

I think the fact that the world where:

I can work extremely hard, doing things I don't particularly like, without burnouts, eat only healthy food without binge eating spirals, honestly enjoy doing exercises, have only meaningful rest without exausting my will power and generally be fully intellectually and emotionally consistent, completely subjugating my urges to my values...

is called the least convinient possible world - says something interesting about this whole discourse.

Honestly, the world where I'm already a god sounds extremely convinient. And pretending that we are there, demanding that we have to be there, claiming that we could've been there already if only I just tried harder doesn't sound helpful at all. Yes it's important to try to get there. One step at a time. Check whether it's possible to go faster occasionally, while being nice and careful towards yourself. But as soon as you find yourself actually having a voice in your head being mean to you because your are not as good as you wish to be, it seems that you've failed the nice and careful part.

Multiple related problems with Alice's behavior (if we treat this as a real conversation):

1. Interfering with Bob's boundaries/autonomy, not respecting the basic background framework where he gets to choose what he does with his life/money/etc.
2. Jumping to conclusions about Bob, e.g., insisting that the good he's been doing is just for "warm fuzzies", or that Bob is lying
3. Repeatedly shifting her motive for being in the conversation / her claim about the purpose of the conversation (e.g., from trying to help Bob act on his values, to "if you’re lying then it’s my business", to what sorts of people should be accepted in the rationalist community) 
4. Cutting off conversational threads once Bob starts engaging with them to jump to new threads, in ways that are disorienting and let her stay on the attack, and don't leave Bob space to engage with the things that have already come up

These aren't merely impolite, they're bad things to do, especially when combined and repeated in rapid succession. It seems like an assault on Bob's ability to orient & think for himself about himself.

Maybe the Effective Altruist movement should accept people like you because they’re a big tent and they’re friendly and welcoming, but the rationalist community should be elitist and only accept people who say tsuyoku naritai [? · GW]...

This is a disturbing claim, although I realize that the author's opinions don't coincide with those of the "Alice" character. Personally, I'm not a utilitarian, nor do I want to be a utilitarian or think that I "should" be a utilitarian^[1]. I do consider myself a person who is empathetic, honest and cooperative^[2]. I hope this doesn't disqualify me from the rationalist community?

In general, I'm in favor of promoting societal norms which incentivize making the world better: such norms are obviously in everyone's interest. In this sense, I'm very sympathetic to effective altruism. However, these norms should still regard altruism as supererogatory: i.e., it should be rewarded and encouraged, but it's lack should not be severely punished. The alternative is much too vulnerable to abuse.

1. ^{^}

   IMO utilitarianism is not even logically coherent, due to paradoxes with infinite ethics and Pascal's mugging.

2. ^{^}

   In the sense of, trying to act according to superrationality [? · GW].

If I were Bob I'd have told her to fuck off long ago and stopped letting some random person berate me for being lazy just like my parents always have. This is basically guilt-tripping, not a beneficial way of approaching any kind of motivation, and it is absolutely guaranteed to produce pushback. But then, I'm probably not your target audience, am I?

Btw just to be clear, I think Said Achmiz explained my reaction better than I, who habitually post short reddit-tier responses, can. My specific issue is that Alice seems to be acting as if it's any of her business what Bob does. It is not. Absolutely nobody likes being told they're not being ethical enough. It's why everyone hates vegans. As someone who doesn't like experiencing such judgmental demands, I would have the kneejerk emotional reaction to want to become less of an EA just to spite her. (I would not of course act on this reaction, but I would start finding EA things to be in an ugh field because they remind me of the distress caused by this interaction.)

Alice: I think the negative impact of my rudeness is probably smaller than the potential positive impact of getting you to act in line with the values you claim to have.

It seems to me that Bob has a moral obligation to respond in such a way as to ensure that Alice’s claim here is false, i.e. the correct response here is “lol fuck you” (and escalating from there if Alice persists). Alice’s behavior here ought not be incentivized; on the contrary, it should be severely punished. Bob is exhibiting a failure of moral rectitude, or else a failure of will, by not applying said punishment.

I'm noticing it's hard to engage with this post because... well, if I observed this in a real conversation, my main hypothesis would be that Alice has a bunch of internal conflict and guilt that she's taking out on Bob, and the conversation is not really about Bob at all. (In particular, the line "That kind of seems like a you problem, not a me problem" seems like a strong indicator of this.)

So maybe I'll just register that both Alice and Bob seem confused in a bunch of ways, and if the point of the post is "here are two different ways you can be confused" then I guess that makes sense, but if the point of the post is "okay, so why is Alice wrong?" then... well, Alice herself doesn't even seem to really know what her position is, since it's constantly shifting throughout the post, so it's hard to answer that (although Holden's "maximization is perilous [EA · GW]" post is a good start).

Relatedly: I don't think it's an accident that the first request Alice makes of Bob (donate that money rather than getting takeout tonight) is far more optimized for signalling ingroup status than for actually doing good.

Hot take: Bob should be bullying Alice to do less so she doesn't burn out. 

I think this post raises important points and handles them reasonably well. I am of course celebrating that fact mostly by pointing out disagreements with it.

I wish Alice drew a sharper distinction between Bob being honest about his beliefs, Bob bringing his actions in line with his stated beliefs, and Bob doing what Alice wants. I think pushing people to be honest is prosocial by default (within limits). Pushing people to do what you want is antisocial by default, with occasional exceptions. 

And Alice's methods can be bad, even if the goal is good. If I could push a button and have a community only of people on a long term growth trajectory, I would. But policing this does more harm than good, because it's hard for the police to monitor. Growth doesn't always look like what other people expect, and people need breaks. Demandng everyone present legible growth on a predictable cycle impedes growth (and pushes people to be dishonest).

My personal take here is that you should be ready to work unsustainably and miserably when the circumstances call for it, but the circumstances very rarely call for it, and those circumstances always include being very time-limited. "I'll just take the misery" is a plan with an inherent shelf life. But the capacity to tank the misery when you need to, or to do more work with less misery, is a moral virtue [LW(p) · GW(p)] and should be recognized as such. I imagine some of Alice's frustration is that she feels like even if Bob gets less social credit than her, the gap should be bigger to reflect her larger contribution, and people use personal capacity as a reason to shrink the gap. And I think that's a valid complaint, especially if Alice worked to create that sustainable capacity in herself where it didn't exist before. 

Alice: Our utility functions differ.

Bob: I also observe this.

Alice: I want you to change to match me: conditional on your utility function being the same as mine, my expected utility would be larger.

Bob: Yes, that follows from me being a utility maximizer

Bob: I won't change my utility function: conditional on my utility function becoming the same as yours, my expected utility as measured by my current utility function would be lower.

Alice: Yes, that follows from you being a utility maximizer
 

This is a very good post and nearly all the replies here are illustrating the exact issue that Bob has, which is an inability to engage in the dialectic between these two perspectives without indignation as a defense against guilt.

Most people, including myself, are more Bob than Alice, but I've had a much easier time integrating my inner Alice and engaging with Alices I meet because I rarely, if ever, feel guilt about anything. Strong guilt increases the anticipated costs of positive self-change, and makes people strengthen defense mechanisms that boil down to "I don't owe anyone anything!" to avoid confronting that cost. Ironically this creates people who think they're not predisposed towards guilt, but absolutely are.

Don't get me wrong, Bobs often have pretty understandable reasons to be the way they are. A lot of Bobs got out of religious groups that were really aggressive with the guilting. But understandable reasons to be in an undesirable state does not increase the desirability of that state!

Having met a number of Alices, I think they need to invest more in the consequences of the manner in which they try to get other people to improve. I understand their frustration but the aggressiveness is really so counterproductive and just makes Bobs even worse. Bobs unfortunately need to be treated with kid gloves to get them to improve without feeling in danger of self-guilt-torture.

I am mostly like Bob (although I don't make up stuff about burnout), but I think calling myself a utilitarian is totally reasonable. By my understanding, utilitarianism is an answer to the question "what is moral behavior." It doesn't imply that I want to always decide to do the most moral behavior.

I think the existence of Bob is obviously good. Bob is in, like, the 90th percentile of human moral behavior, and if other people improved their behavior, Bob is also the kind of person who would reciprocally improve his own. If Alice wants to go around personally nagging everyone to be more altruistic, then that's her prerogative, and if it really works, I am even for it. But firstly, I don't see any reason to single out Bob, and secondly, I doubt it works very well.

I am genuinely confused why this is on lesswrong instead of EA. What do you think the distribution of giving money is like on each place, and what do you think the distribution of responses to drowning child is like on each?

No human being is a full utilitarian. Expecting them or yourself to be will bring disappointment or guilt.

But helping others can bring great joy and satisfaction.

The answer is obviously yes to Alice's question.

We should work harder in the most convenient world. The premise basically states that Bob would be happier AND do more good. He's an idiot for saying no, except to get bossy, controlling Alice off his back and not let her gaslight him into doing what she wants.

But is this that world? Probably not the least convenient/easiest. Where is it on the spectrum? What will lead to Bob's happiest life? That is the right question for Bob to ask, and it's not trivial to answer.

Alice and Bob sound to me very like the two options of my variant 8 [LW · GW] of the red-pill-blue-pill conundrum. We can imagine Alice working as she describes for the whole of a long life, because we can imagine anything. A real Alice, I'd be interested to see in 10 years. I think there are few, very few, who can live like that. If Bob could, he'd be doing it already.

If in World A, the majority was an Alice ... not doing the job they loved ( imagine a teacher who thinks education is important, but emotionally dislikes students) , unreciprically giving away some arbitrary % of their earnings, etc...

Is that actually better than World B? A world where the majority are Bobs, sucessful at their chosen craft, giving away some amount of their earnings but maintaining a majority they are comfortable with.

I'm surprised Bob didn't make the obvious rebuttals:

1. Alice, why aren't you giving away 51% of your earnings? What methodology are you applying that says 50% is the best amount to give, can't any arbitrary person X, giving 51% and working harder than you, make the same arguments you are making to me, to you?

2. I've calculated that investing my earnings ( either back into the economy via purchasing goods or via stocks), will lead to the most good as I'm actually incentivized to prioritizing the growth of my investments (and commiting to donating it all after my death), whereas I cannot ensure the same for any orginzation I donate to.

Where Alice's argument is very strong, I would say is that she is arguing that being Generative, is a virtue, closely tied to Generosity.

The implication ( which Bob argues could be harmful/counterproductive) that follows is that if being Generative is a Virtue ( or a precurser to the virtue of Generosity) that implies that Sloth is a Sin, or atleast a prerequsite/enabler for the Sin of anti-Generosity - basically Greed.

Of course, telling someone that they are being too slothful, may or may not be counterproductive - which is effectively Bob and Alices discussion.

Perhaps, Bob is arguing from a principle of "do no harm" that doctors operate under, and so he would avoid harming people by calling them slothful. Essentially, he wouldn't pull the lever in this application of the trolley problem.

Whereas, Alice is arguing from a principle of, inaction is also an action, and so she views the non-action of not pulling the lever as worse than explicitly pulling the lever.

Or, she has a belief of the amount of net harm, being in the favor of risking harm via calling Bob slothful.

There is a compromise position, of establishing some kind of sufficient condition for determining how someone would respond to the points made above. Funny enough, people are having that very discussion about where to even post this article.

So, props for a job well done.

I think this line of argument works okay until this point.

Alice: ... In the least convenient possible world, where the advice to rest more is equally harmful to the advice to work harder, and most people should totally view themselves as less fundamentally unchangeable, and the movement would have better PR if we were sterner…

Okay. Let's call the initial world Earth-1, with Alice-1 talking to Bob-1. Let's call the least convenient possible world Earth-2. Earth-2 contains Alice-2 and Bob-2. They aren't having this exact conversation, because that's not coherent. But they exist within the hypothetical world, having different hypothetical conversations.

Alice: ... would you work harder then?

Bob: I just kind of don’t really want to work harder.

Alice isn't very clear about what she means by "you" here, and Bob isn't thinking through the Earth-2 hypothetical completely.

Sure, if we isekai'd Bob-1 into Earth-2, he wouldn't immediately want to start working harder. His emotions and beliefs are formed in Earth-1 where (Bob claims) advice to work harder is more harmful, people are less fundamentally changeable, and the movement would have worse PR if it was sterner. Bob-1 will inevitably take some time to update based on being in Earth-2, traversing the multiverse isn't part of our ancestral environment. This doesn't prove that Bob-1 isn't utilitarian, it proves that Bob-1 is computationally bounded.

However, Alice is not specifying an isekai hypothetical, so the question she is asking is whether Bob-2 would work harder in Earth-2. Now, Bob-2 would be getting more RLHF to work harder, and less RLHF to rest more. RLHF would be more effective on Bob-2 because he is fundamentally more changeable. Also, working harder would increase the status of Bob-2's tribe, and I assume that Earth-2 humans still want to be in high status groups because they sure do in Earth-1.

I think Bob-2 would work harder in Earth-2, and would want to work harder. In other words:

Ma'am, when the universe changes, I change. What do you do?

“Maybe the Effective Altruist movement should accept people like you because they’re a big tent and they’re friendly and welcoming, but the rationalist community should be elitist and only accept people who say tsuyoku naritai - there’s a reason this is on LessWrong and not the EA forum”

As the EA community has become less intense, sometimes I’ve wondered whether there would be value in someone starting an LW or EA adjacent group that’s on the more intense part of the spectrum.

I definitely see risks associated with this (people pushing themselves too hard, fanaticism) and I probably wouldn’t want to be part of it myself, but I imagine that it could be a good fit for some people.

I have to wonder if you are posting this here in order to play Alice to our Bobs, distanced by writing it as a parable.

I think Bob's answer should probably be.

Look, I care somewhat about improving the world as a whole. But I also care about myself as well. 

And I would recommend you don't go out of your way to antagonize and reject allies with a utility function similar enough to yours that mutual cooperation is easy. 

The number of people who are a genuine Alice is rather low. 

Also, bear in mind that the human brain has a built in "don't follow that logic off a cliff" circuit. This is the circuit that ensures crazy suicide cults are so rare despite the huge number of people who "believe" in heaven. (evolution. For whatever reason, people that always took beliefs 100% seriously didn't survive as well.) It's a circuit to not take beliefs too seriously, and it might be something like a negotiation between the common sense heuristics part of the brain and the abstract reasoning part. That's the sort of hackish compromise evolution would make, given a common sense reasoning part that was reliable, but not too smart, and an abstract reasoning part that was smart and not reliable. 

Hello Firinn, 

I can relate to this post, even when I was never part of the EA-movement. When I was younger, I did join a climate-organization, and also had an account on kiva.org. And I would say there was a lot of guilt and confusion around my actions at that point, whilst simultaneously trying to do a lot of 'better than'-actions. 

Your post is very extensive, and as such I find myself engaged by just reading one of the external links and the post itself. Therefore, my comment isn't really a comment to the whole post, but sees the post through one entry-point I thought might be valuable. I hope it is still useful to the thematic you had in mind.

I focused on Child in the Pond and have used that as my pivot point - as well as reading the whole interaction between 'Alice' and 'Bob'. 

Imagining being in the pond situation does fill me with emotions that would steer me towards taking action to alleviate the immediate suffering. But there are two things I believe that the Child in the pond text gets conflated, and which might also be relevant for the interactions between 'Alice' and 'Bob'.

The two are:
1. 'Why' you save the kid from drowning, but why you can't "save" lives. 
2. And relatedly, why focusing on money as a metric for saving lives, can fuel the same situations the text implies we should avoid.

1. 'Why' you save the kid from drowning, but why you can't "save" lives. 
To take the conflation first.

Why do you save the kid from drowning? Many might be motivated by 'compassion' - to want to alleviate the perceived suffering of the child. You perceive the situation, interpret it, feel an emotion, and you choose to act on it. Acting on this emotion, seems like the best course of action - the situation might be complex, there are a lot of things you don't know, but to do this would be 'the moral thing to do'. 

But there is quite the leap between having the physical abilities, and being in a situation where you can save a child from drowning, and what the Child in the Pond text talks about, namely 'saving lives'. It says:

Now think about your own situation. By donating a relatively small amount of money, you could save a child’s life.

In other words, an arbitrary link is made between a situation in which you can 'act' to save a child from drowning, to a situation in which you can 'pay' to save a child. 

But if it were the same, you could, If you so desired, save the toddler in the pond by simply pulling out your 'magical card of FixEveryProblem', swipe it, and the problem would be solved. If you really wanted to help more, you might even get the option of getting the toddler a 'good, caring parent', one/two/three very good friends and the premium helping package where they have healthy, fulfilling and enriching lives for themselves and everyone they come into contact with.

But you can't. You can't pay to save the toddler. You have to be there, see the situation, understand it, be willing to act and decide to act. An action that might naturally be followed up by you caring for the child and bringing it to its caretakers (what happened there btw..?), whilst dealing with the reactions the toddler has to the situation, be it anything from loud screaming, crying, to gut-wrenching misery and getting water on your face and clothes, or maybe even puked on. Do you still do it? Yes, I hope you would.


Yes, it is a conflation. It is also made a lot worse by the use of the word 'save', and the implicit 'guarantee' it hinges on your money - that it 'saves' lives.
If your only goal was to 'save' lives, the most rational choice I can see would be to try to minimize the amounts of people getting born - as every person 'born' is only guaranteed to 'lose' their life. You might buy for the vaccines, but they get lost in transport, or destroyed by an earthquake. Losing your life, on the other hand, is guaranteed. Remove religious elements like Jesus, and you have the perfect antidote for human suffering: Antinatalism. 

- You can't 'save' lives, you can only 'prolong' life.

- You can't pay to prolong life, there are certain acts/resources that prolongs a life, alleviates various kinds of suffering and even increases well-being. 

This might seem like a small problem by itself, but it creates a lot of stumbling-blocks when communicating effectively, because donating money isn't an action that save children from certain illnesses by itself.

2. And relatedly, why focusing on money as a metric for saving lives, can fuel the same situations the text implies we should avoid.

As I pointed out above, there is a conflation between the drowning child and donating money. It compares apples and oranges, it conflates two different things and compares them as being the same. 

Now, in the same text, there is this story of the child Wang Yue dying in the streets, despite numerous people seeing her. What does this have to do with money? Well, if you start to argue that 'money' saves lives, then going to work on time, and leaving 'saving the person' to someone working in a charity, or to those paid by society to take care of her (Parents?), might arguably be the correct choice of action. 

To a charity, the expression 'Money saves lives' is true in the sense that you create a product with ingredients like: distinct causal connection between an action and a result - Give us money >> less children die of malaria.
If you save the child Wang Yue, you might not have a product team, a PR team, a photographer or a film-crew on the ready to create a product that people can buy. In other words, you aren't guaranteed to make money. And since money saves lives, losing money might start looking akin to losing lives.

And it seems like both Alice and Bob have unwittingly bought into the concept of Money=lives. 
What actually prolongs lives, isn't money, but resources, genetics and luck. You need resources like time, effort, skill, innovation, dedication, will, focus, materials, care, understanding and cooperation, to name a few. Money doesn't create these resources, it is used to direct them


System lens:

Alice: You know, Bob, you claim to really care about improving the world, but you don’t seem to donate as much as you could or to use your time very effectively. Maybe you should donate that money rather than getting takeout tonight? 

This was the experience I had with climate organizations and kiva.org as well, that this conflation is very rampant. Ironically, people would on the one hand say that 'capitalism' is wrong, whilst on the other saying that donating is good. Which is odd. 
If Capitalism is inherently unsustainable, how does monetizing more of human life, values and needs, create more sustainability? 

Human resources like care, time, understanding, empathy, love, cooperation, friendships, intelligence, wisdom, skill etc. are interconnected with each other, and don't grow due to money. Money might give you access to certain resources - but the resources aren't there due to money.

A different kind of communication:

Reading the argument between Bob and Alice reminds me of discussions that go in circles. In a way, the issue they are arguing might be a totally different one, but finding out 'what is going on' needs a different approach.
I remember hearing about this process where people with different political views were to have a talk, but instead of the usual 'debate format', they were to explain how they got to believe what they believed in. It lead to much higher levels of mutual understanding and respect, but I haven't seen this replicated in the national debates.


Conclusion:

One thing is the conflation I spotted, which ties to a lot of conflicts, that seem like they are conflicts on one level - but are really about something else. But knowing that the issues are more 'fundamental' might not feel that reassuring, which is why I presented the point about a kind of communication that might bring more understanding and respect, whilst still exploring disagreements or different points of view. 
My hope is for more understanding in general, and to see various skills people have applied in ways that increase felt meaning for the people participating in disagreement - as well as anyone listening to it.

Kindly,
Caerulea-Lawrence

I feel like the crux of this discussion is how much we should adjust our behavior to be "less utilitarian", to preserve our utilitarian values.

The expected utility that a person created could be measured by (utility created by behavior) x (odds that they will actually follow through on their behavior), where the odds of follow-up decrease as the behavior modifications become more drastic, but the utility created if followed through increases. 

People are already implicitly taking this account when evaluating what the optimal amount of radicality in activism is. If PETA advocates for everyone to completely renounce animal consumption, conduct violent attacks on factory farms, and aggressively confront non-vegans, that (theoretically) would reduce animal suffering by an extremely large amount. But in practice almost nobody would follow through. On the other hand, if PETA mistakenly centers their activism on calling for people to skip a single chicken dinner, a completely realistic goal that many millions of people would presumably execute, they would also be missing on a lot of expected utility.

Alice is arguing that Bob could maximize expected utility by shifting his behavior to a part of the curve that involves more behavior change, and therefore utility, and less probability of follow-through. Bob is arguing that he's already at the optimal point of the curve. 

Alice strikes me as the poster child for the old saying about good intentions and roads to hell. Ultimately, I think she ends up causing much more harm via the toxic and negative experience those around her have than any good she can do herself.

So I basically know Alice is right, yet I mostly act like a Bob. I'm probably neither a true rationalist (I am acting on emotions instead of the truth) nor a strong effective altruist. I donate money because it makes me feel good, volunteer mostly for the fuzzies and engage with my local EA group because it's a strong community with amazing and brilliant people.

Yeah, deep down I'm a selfish human. I don't think I'll change that about myself. But EA has still enabled me to have a large positive impact trhough effective giving and that's a net positive.

Strong upvote for this post! While I'd caution against linking this sequence to the Effective Altruism forum and movement in general - because I don't think placing explicit and extremely strong moral *obligations* about action makes for a healthy, self-confident or outward looking mass movement - I would definitely encourage Firinn to write more LessWrong posts in this vein. 

The LessWrong community should be very enthusiastic about more articulate narratives and discussions on exemplary actions motivated toward saving the whole entire world! Posts digging into the notion of habitually taking such extraordinary actions are personally some of my favorite type of content on the site and are very inspiring. Props to OP for articulating very well a sense of staunch dedication, and also for using lots of handy hyperlinks. 

I couldn't read this straight. Alice is being an absolute asshole to Bob. This is incredibly off-putting. 

I think you could have communicated better if you had tried to make Alice remotely human.

I think I get what you are trying to do with this, but I only got it after reading comments. 

The correct moral choice is for both people to lower their EA contributions to 0%.