The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism Paperback – 12 May 2023

Criticism of Effective Altruism is rarely welcomed, and this seemed to follow the path of the small group of nonprofit leaders that were broadly accepted at its inception. For many who entered "Effective Animal Advocacy" they were already doing research and finding the most effective things for their nonprofits to do, whether it was handing out leaflets because it was deemed cost effective, or "saving" animals from certain forms of suffering on farms, whilst often creating new problems associated with those solutions (for instance keel bone injuries, interactions with wild bird colonies and disease, or genetically manipulating animals to better fit an ideal).This tended to follow the preferred thinking at HSUS, The Humane League and GAP (where they were helping people to feel good about eating animals), the irony being that the more farmed animals that are forced into existence, the more "good" they'll be able to do with their interventions.In time despite the binary of effective vs ineffective, pragmatic vs puritan, "welfare" vs abolition, friendly vs unfriendly, corporate vs grassroots, Effective Altruists found more utility in taking over most parts of animal advocacy with their own preferred unified views. They were "vegans" (among other things like welfatarians, reducetarians, bivalvegans, flexitarians), even though most disliked the term and the moral connotations, in a further twist of irony, the reduced dietary view of veganism became a badge for people like Sam Bankman-Fried and their "altruistic" persona. Whilst animal rights became a generic part of animal advocacy, rather than an important part of moral pluralism, and "abolition" was something EAs might do in the future, but it at least had to be hidden for now, because it was too extreme, just like anyone who objected to the core focus of philanthrocapitalism in cell based ag and plant products, or slow growing, free ranging or gassing chickens. Whilst EAs simply aligned with conventional systems of power to use in service of animals (they claimed), and as part of "mainstreaming" efforts instead of looking for sites of resistance and contention.It's difficult to get Effective Altruists to think about things that might dilute their power, which they have spent so much time accumulating, and most donors don't seem to particularly rate the animal advocacy cause area despite comparatively large sums flowing into it, so allowing a small group of leaders to control funding, recommendations and narratives (many cycle through a small group of organisations, sit on each others advisory boards, and basically signal EA and the trust network). Billionaires like Dustin Moskovitz are celebrated for funding animal welfare despite his admitted lack of personal concern, instead it is supposed to show how he is driven by rationality rather than how he feels about a cause area. The same is true of Holden Karnofsky at Open Philanthropy. Perhaps people might think that because of this cluelessness they would have taken care when entering a cause area, but this wasn't so, conducting negligible foundational work and basically supporting the prevailing views of Peter Singer and a handful of Pragmatic Pork advocates, who divided the vegan movement to essentially control it. Whilst other aspects of animal advocacy, such as welfare (or illfare) were a good fit for them. Perhaps they needed to be seen as radical, and doing "what works", willing to break things and movements in order to impose their preferred views and narratives.Hopefully this series of essays will galvanise support to push back against Effective Altruism, though whilst the same leaders remain in place essentially dictating the state of play (despite whatever principles they claim to have) it seems unlikely. Though perhaps that could be a start, at least in terms of bringing in new people to help direct funding in a more inclusive and democratic way.I definitely recommend this book, and suggest people are careful of organisations that don't challenge the narrative of Effective Altruism, but try to find a place where they can just get along beside them, largely by "not being political" and letting the various harms slide by.

The book does not seriously engage with effective altruism. The reader is informed that cost-benefit-analysis is a racist practice, and that receiving/encouraging charitable donations from wealthy people makes you complicit in the evils of capitalism. The most serious problem of the book is its failure to recognise, discuss or mention trade-offs, the idea that someone might have to make a constrained choice based in existing realities to do the most good possible is completely alien to the authors.