EA - Effective altruists are already institutionalists and are doing far more than unworkable longtermism - A response to "On the Differences between Ecomodernism and Effective Altruism" by jackva

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Effective altruists are already institutionalists and are doing far more than unworkable longtermism - A response to "On the Differences between Ecomodernism and Effective Altruism", published by jackva on February 21, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is the long-form version of a post published as an invited reply to the original essay on the website of the Breakthrough Institute.Why I am writing thisAs someone who worked at the Breakthrough Institute back in the day, learned a lot from ecomodernism, and is now deeply involved in effective altruism’s work on climate (e.g. here, here, and here), I was very happy to find Alex’s essay in my inbox -- an honest attempt to describe how ecomodernism and effective altruism relate and differ.However, reading the essay, I found many of Alex’s observations and inferences in stark contrast to my lived experience of and in effective altruism over the past seven years. I also had the impression that there were a fair number of misunderstandings as well as a lack of awareness of many existing effective altruists’ efforts. So I am taking Alex up on his ask to provide a view on how the community sees itself. I should note, however, that this is my personal view.While I disagree strongly with many of Alex's characterizations of effective altruism, his effort was clearly in good faith -- so my response is not so much a rebuttal rather than a friendly attempt to clarify, add nuance, and promote an accurate mutual understanding of the similarities and differences of two social movements and their respective sets ot ideas and beliefs.Where I agree with the original essayIt is clear that there is a difference on how most effective altruists think about animals and how ecomodernists and other environmentalists do. This difference is well characterized in the essay. My moral intuitions here are more on the pan-species-utilitarianism side, but I am not a moral philosopher so I will not defend that view and just note that the description points to a real difference.I also agree that it is worth pointing out the differences and similarities between ecomodernism and effective altruism and, furthermore, that both have distinctive value to add to the world.With this clarified, let’s focus on the disagreements:Unworkable longtermism, if it exists at all, is only a small part of effective altruismBefore diving into the critique of unworkable longtermism it is worth pointing out that “longtermism” and “effective altruism” are not synonymous and that -- either for ethical reasons or for reasons similar to those discussed by Alex (the knowledge problem) -- most work in effective altruism is actually not long-termist.Even at its arguably most longtermist, in August 2022, estimated longtermist funding for 2022 was less than ⅓ of total effective altruist funding.Thus, however one comes out on the workability of longtermism, there is a large effective altruist project remaining not affected by this critique.The primary reason Alex gives for describing longtermism as unworkable is the knowledge problem:“But I want to focus on the “knowledge problem” as the core flaw in longtermism, since the problems associated with projecting too much certainty about the future are something effective altruists and conventional environmentalists have in common.We simply have no idea how likely it is that an asteroid will collide with the planet over the course of the next century, nor do we have any idea what civilization will exist in the year 2100 to deal with the effects of climate change, nor do we have any access to the preferences of interstellar metahumans in the year 21000. We do not need to have any idea how to make rational, robust actions and investments in the present.”This knowledge problem is, of course, well-known in effective altr...