Effective Altruism, Sam Bankman-Fried and the temptations of certainty
If you catch me ranting you can tell me to stop.
The other evening I was at a dinner. The food and ambience were amazing, but I found myself ranting at a stranger about Effective Altruism (EA). Brought to wider attention by the recent downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), one of its billionaire figureheads, EA is a movement focused on making philanthropy more evidence-based and “objective”. It is strongly influenced by utilitarianism and philosophers like Peter Singer. Many adherents “earn to give”, pursuing high salaries and then giving away a lot of their income to causes that can prove their impact. At best EA encourages generosity and attempts to weed out poor practice in the charity sector through insisting on a robust evidence base for interventions. My rant did not, of course, focus on the “at best”.
Ranting is unusual for me, hobbled as I am by the ability to see things from many angles. It might have been because I felt like a fish out of water round a table of hedgies and finance guys and this kind of low-level discomfort can bring out a judgey, contrarian side.
I have learned to be suspicious of the urge, when it does come, the delicious rush of self-righteousness. It usually means I have an unexamined opinion, that I want people to think I’m clever, and that I am in the mood to win. None of these things are good for my soul. Afterwards, sheepishly, I went digging to understand what it was about Effective Altruism which was pressing my buttons so much.
Most helpful was this long, thoughtful and (to my eyes) very fair piece in the New Yorker, which pulled me right out of rant mode. It paints a picture of a group of morally serious people (and I tend to like those, unless they are judgey and/or No Fun) wanting to become more generous and trying to do so honestly and with accountability. Not SBF, it seems, but (Some? Most? of ) those around him. Different ethical lenses and anthropology than mine, clearly, but if I’d never been exposed to Christianity I might have landed where they are.
The male- heavy vibes and the libertarian whiff from the strong association with crypto are not my thing, but that is not reason enough to be sneery. Disliking people because they are different from me is exactly what I am trying to grow out of. It is undeniable that the EA community have achieved a lot, and any attempt to increase generosity and alleviate suffering should be respected. One of the unlovely tendencies I want to resist is critiquing how other people are trying to do good. Being the hypocrisy police is really enjoyable, but ultimately a dead end. It is usually displacement activity for when I’m feeling challenged. And I was challenged. EA made me want to give more.
As my self-righteousness ebbed, though, I was still left with some disquiet. Part of the instinct of EA is the urge to design out uncertainty. EAs want to give but they want a high level of control as they do so. My fear is that there is an implicit aim here: with enough evidence and data we can be certain we are Good People, that our lives mean something. What is measurable gets managed, as the saying goes, and what is immeasurable? Too uncertain to spend on our time on. SBF was giving so much money to EA causes that the fact he was terrible to work with and a fraudster might have seemed too light to tip the scales. The quote that comes to mind is from Camus: “if you have no character you have to apply a method”. Methods are so appealing. They make things feel clear, safe, equitable. They are incredibly useful for some things. Not character though. Not soul growth. These things require a surrender of the thing a method is good for: certainty.
An addiction to certainty comes up again and again with my coaching clients. I often draw on David Rock’s SCARF model to help people think through their own semi-conscious motivations, and that of their team. Rock posits that humans have five deep psychological needs; Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. Like all models, it is flawed, but a useful frame for reflection. All five are powerful drivers, but discomfort with uncertainty shows up, usually unexamined, in almost everyone.
In the people I work with, stuckness can often be traced to the fact that moving towards the life our soul longs for requires uncertainty, and that is psychologically uncomfortable1. I have come to believe an inability to tolerate uncertainty is one of the biggest barriers to Fully Aliveness.
I have spent more than a decade working in and around the third sector. Many wealthy philanthropists and foundations who are not explicitly EA display the same instinct for control as Bankman-Fried and friends. My guess is many of them feel conflicted by the power they hold, even guilty, and one of the ways they deal with those uncomfortable feelings is by (understandably) seeking certainty. They want to know they are having an impact. Anyone one who has delivered a charitable project will have experienced having to spend almost as much time reporting on impact as they have attempting to serve their beneficiaries. And anyone who has written or received such a report will know it is all in the presentation. The system discourages honesty and transparency.
One response to this real problem is to double down on metrics, push for “objectivity”, obsess over measurement. These funders keep one sceptical (skeptical?) eye brow cocked at all times. It seems the responsible thing to do. I get the instinct. At the most extreme EA end, donors are explicitly seeking to see from the “point of view of the universe”, a phrase used by Singer after Henry Sidgwick, to indicate a sort of complete all knowing objectivity.
The other response is to lean into relationship. Get to know some leaders whose character you trust, who are clearly seeking excellence and improvement and have dedicated their working life, not just their money, to solve a problem. Then fund them and let them get on with it. To do this, wealthy donors have to surrender some control and certainty, and the ego-drive that says they know best. It requires an investment of time and emotional energy, not just money, and rich people are often short on those. It also means they cannot watch the work with the eye of the universe, but as one part of a very human team. When I have seen this happen, the most effective and innovative activity often follows.
As well as being better for the work, I think this approach is better for the donor. Wealth brings soul-danger. It has its own formation, shapes hearts and minds in certain directions. All the wisdom traditions teach this, but it’s so unpalatable we (and I include my privileged self in this) mainly ignore it. Any philosophy that encourages its adherents to earn as much as they can in order to give it away needs to to reckon with this. I sometimes pray a line from proverbs “give me neither poverty nor riches”, but half of me doesn’t mean it. I could do some good with those riches, I think. Just a wee bit more. The deceitfulness of wealth says control is possible, certainty is within our grasp. With enough money, power, data and evidence we can be as gods.
It is the way this story forms us, then, that I fear. EAs call to responsibility and generosity is laudable, and one I could do with heeding more. Not so its myth of objectivity and control. Who gets to be the eye of universe, think that is the role they are called to play? It’s no accident many EAs hail from Silicon Valley.
Conversely, all three of the things my scriptures tell me endure (faith, hope and love) repel certainty. They cannot dwell with it. They require a measure of surrender. The sooner I can wean myself off these addictions, the better for my soul. Control (or, more accurately, the illusion of it) is not the same thing as wisdom. It makes wisdom harder. As hard, maybe, as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
What else I’m up to
I’ll be teaching on this Contemporary Spirituality course with Advaya in the spring, curated by
, alongside John Vervaeke and a bunch of other interesting people.As you read this I’m on retreat at a convent in Kent. One of my tiny practices is to put a poem on my email out-of-office, which forces me to to go looking for a new, appropriate poem and also hopefully blesses those who receive it. This Wordsworth was my choice this week and you might enjoy it too. It can obviously be read as a comment on creativity (which often needs constraints) but I think it’s message holds true more widely:
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
.
When clients are able to really hear themselves, they often recognise the implicit story they have been telling: Better to be secure and unhappy then set out for the life my soul is longing for and not know the outcome. Better to stay here safe than risk failure, betrayal or being seen as foolish. Hope is too painful, and so is possibility. The opposite is too, of course, in the long run, but a false sense of control and certainty can numb for a good long while before we realise.
Before the SBF story broke I had EA explained to me by a family member who had some involvement in it. Along with admiration, I felt some disquiet which I found difficult to put into words. You have done it here so well Elizabeth. Indeed, ‘Control .... is not the same thing as wisdom. It makes wisdom harder’. Thank you.
Thanks for the thoughtful reflections!
Your comment that people generally and EAs in particular have an urge to design out uncertainty is fascinating. I think my experience of the EA community over the last 10 years or so has been seeing it move to be more willing to take bets on more uncertain proposals as long as the upside pay-off is big enough. Perhaps particularly in cause areas outside of global health and development where the evidence base doesn't allow much certainty anyway.
To me there is something that feels honouring to Jesus in gathering and evaluating as much information/data as possible when making decisions around which organisations to give to (or careers to pursue) and using that to try and make the decisions that help as many of those who God deeply cares for in the most substantive ways. Even if this involves things feeling a bit heavy or cold and calculating, as I guess the potential beneficiaries deserve it, even if it feels stodgier to me. However, still acknowledging that some things we'll have to assess are not as apt for quantified analysis and so we'll have to use some softer approaches of evaluating whether they're good bets e.g. evaluating the soundness of a theory of change, or (as you suggest) the character/skills of the project's leaders. Though lots of my Christian friends still find my views on all of this controversial!