Tyler Cowen is a fan of effective altruism—especially as a focal point for bright, ambitious young people.
He also has some reservations:
1. Some figures have a rather “rah rah moral philosophy” stance, thinking that philosophy can guide or rule all of our normative decisions.
2. Values make sense within a local bubble of meaning. There’s not a universal perspective, a theory of value that makes sense in the view from nowhere.
3. Unbounded commensurability isn’t a thing.
See Cowen (1996) “What do we learn from the Repugnant Conclusion?”:
annas-archive.org/md5/5f1f515c59951f3a98aea7183e8ad5ca
Summarised by Peter McLaughlin: forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8wWYmHsnqPvQEnapu/getting-on-a-different-train-can-effective-altruism-avoid
4. “Demographics is destiny”, but some EAs seem unaware of this. The movement sees itself as apolitical, but its default path is to blend into the US Democratic Party.
Will EA memes scale gracefully? What will the “stupider” version look like?
5. Many EAs don’t appreciate how much they could learn from religious traditions. And how much EA is a competitor to these traditions—the latest evolution of Christian values.
twitter.com/peterhartree/status/1615183309897666561
6. In the Q&A, Tyler praises effective altruism as a valuable package of truths, half-truths & generative mistakes.
Small extremist communities can be sources of great value. You just have to be extreme on the right dimensions. And not get too big.
C.f. Nietzsche on Platonism.
The above comes from his December 2022 talk at the University of St Andrews.
Video, audio and transcript here:
forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NdZPQxc74zNdg8Mvm/tyler-cowen-on-effective-altriusm-december-2022
Some people—especially in Oxford EA circles—devalue & dismiss post-2000 Tyler due to his “not very EA” comms style.
I’ve told >5 people—who should know, but didn’t—that Tyler is the only person who co-authored a paper with Derek Parfit (on discount rates). Sad.