 So, today we're going to talk about effective altruism. Now, as, I mean, you've heard of the term effective altruism, it's been kind of in the headlines if you follow kind of newsy events over the last year, in particular regarding two events that I think the effective altruists would actually like to go away because they've got a lot of press on this and they don't get a lot of press for the things that they would like to get a lot of press on. But the one thing I think that really brought effective altruism kind of to the mainstream, if you will, is the FSB, it's the collapse, sorry, FSB, where did I get FSB from? SBF, FSB is not even dyslexic, it's the same letters but just mangled. SBF, SBF and the collapse of his crypto entity, he was a billionaire one day and basically in jail the next, committed fraud, it seems clearly committed fraud and has been prosecuted and found guilty and is going to spend a significant amount of time in jail. And SBF was a huge proponent of effective altruism, indeed he was a massive financial supporter of the effective altruism movement and the effective altruism causes and arguably he started his company in his whole crypto business as an effective altruistic act, we'll get to the context for that in a minute, how that kind of comes about. But the whole collapse, the collapse of his empire, the bankrupting of his crypto exchange and ultimately him landing up in jail all resonated with people through kind of this idea that he was the most prominent, the wealthiest, the most actively engaged effective altruist anybody had ever heard of and look at the corruption. So I don't think that's fair to effective altruism, to condemn it because of the actions of one person. So I'm not going to, we'll condemn effective altruism for other reasons. But SBF brought it right to the headlines and then again over the last two weeks effective altruism has made the headlines as a consequence of the role many advocates of effective altruism have played in the drama at Open AI. It's still not exactly clear what happened there, but it is clear that for effective altruistic reasons, it might have been that the board fired Sam Altman, it might be other people within the effective altruism movement who brought him back and but effective altruism has basically been portrayed as driving a lot of these events and behind a lot of this. Generally as a philosophy, ideology of tech, people involved in tech, although not just people involved in tech, there are quite a few academics at Oxford University and elsewhere around the world who advocates for effective altruism. It comes out of the work of some academics at Oxford, but originally from an Australian philosopher whose name for some bizarre reason has just escaped me, I count on having these available to me, but somebody in the chat will remind me of his name. So this is this is a movement that's been around for at least 10 years. It seemingly is a movement of, I'd say Peter Singer, thank you Ian, Peter Singer, the the ethicist, the Australian philosopher, altruistic philosopher. Effective altruism seems to be a movement of young people. It seems to be a movement of tech people, of super smart people. It is often associated with another movement that is very typical of Silicon Valley which is the rationalist movement and there are a lot of similarity and overlap between the effective altruism movement and the rationalist and the rational movement. Effective altruism certainly has had a big impact I think on Silicon Valley, on tech people, on the kind of tech projects that I think to some extent get funded. I think it's had a real profound impact on the valley and how the valley thinks about morality, thinks about ethics, and thinks about quote, doing good. What else I want to, so what I want to do today is I will look at, I want us to look at two effective altruism projects and then what I want to do today is try to understand effective altruism. From the perspective of one effective altruistic intellectual who I have a lot of respect for outside of his effective altruism focus and that is Scott Alexander who is, God why, Astral Codex 10, why is this webpage not cooperating, kind of doesn't really want to open, come on, open properly. Anyway, so I want to talk about Astral Codex 10. If you remember I talked quite a bit about him during COVID and then afterwards I followed his sub-stack for a few years now. I think he did some of the best work on ivermectin in terms of analyzing all the studies and then reviewing his work after the fact and I'll tell you what I like about him and that I think will be reflected also in, oh God, yeah, I'm having internet problems. I'm not sure why this new browser has problems with certain, anyway, so we will look at Astral Codex 10's decision to donate his kidney and how he was motivated to do that by effective altruism, why he did it, what he says his motivations were because I think that will tell us a lot about again effective altruism but also I want to go through how he made the decision, kind of walk through the thinking, the data he looked at because again I think this will tell us a lot about how effective altruism believes that we should make decisions in our lives, moral decisions in our lives. I mean we'll talk about what it even views as morality but how it assumes we should behave in our lives and what kind of approach we should take to that. One of the things I really, really like about Astral Codex 10, Scott Alexander, is that he is very astute when it comes to analytics and when it comes to, if you will, decision science and when it comes to probability and statistics and econometrics, medical studies and things like that and that was really good during COVID and other times but it's also in other analysis but it's also really interesting to see how he applies this to decision making when it comes to ethics, when it comes to morality. So that, we're going to spend most of our time going through this idea of the kidney but just to give you some more sense about, so effective altruism basically is altruistic so it says, and it's a particular form of altruism, the form of altruism, effective altruism adopt is utilitarianism. So it is a utilitarian philosophy, basically you should do, you should act in a way that maximizes the well-being of others and how do you measure well-being, the variety of different ways, one of the things they do is they measure it through reduction of suffering, they measure it through extension of life, addition of life years where those life years wouldn't have happened, so preventing death, saving people from death and so those are kind of the measures that they adopt and they're very, the thing about effective altruism is they want to be effective so they're very scientific, they're very data driven, they want to see clear results, they only support charities that way you can see those direct results and the whole idea is to live a life not just in your charity but to live a life that ultimately contributes to a better world and therefore ultimately maximizes the utility of society, that maximizes utility across society, that is the fundamental utilitarian idea and they take it very seriously. So for example there's a website called 80,000Hours.org, 80,000Hours.org, you can find it and this is what the front page of this says, you have 80,000 hours in your career, yes they've calculated that's probably what you're going to spend time at work, this makes it your best opportunity to make a positive impact on the world, if you're fortunate enough to be able to use your career for good but aren't sure how our career guide can help you, it has great new ideas for fulfilling careers that do good, compare your options, different careers and how much good they do, make a plan you feel comfortable with, it's based on 10 years of research alongside academics at Oxford and it's a non-profit and they're providing this for free, they say our career guide covers everything you need to know about how to find a fulfilling career that does good, from why you shouldn't follow your passion, don't follow your passion and why medicine and charity work aren't always the best ways to help others, it's for the practical tips and exercises and at the end you'll have a draft of your new career plan all oriented not around your passion, not about your interest, not around what really you think is going to provide you with the most fulfillment and drive you towards your values but really it's geared towards how you will do the most good as defined as some kind of utilitarian maxim that some kind of maximizing the good of the most people out there, again based on extensive research and I'm sure we could challenge a lot of the research and challenge a lot of the thinking behind this, but you know some of the people, there's a lot of people associated with it, big names, Cass Unstein, you know and a bunch of people of Silicon Valley and let me just say something before we get to this, that this is not some leftist because I know there are going to be people just oh well you know more crap on the left, a lot of the people who adhere to this consider themselves I'd say small L libertarians, a lot of the people that adhere to this are kind of a certainly right of center on a variety of different topics, for example I think I think Brian Kaplan, the libertarian philosopher is sympathetic, I think I'm not misrepresenting him by saying he's sympathetic to effective altruism, maybe more than sympathetic. Hananya, you know who I've talked about often, is quite sympathetic to effective altruism, so this is attractive to a lot of kind of people who view themselves as super rational and who have accepted what you would consider conventional morality, that is altruism and this is a way to be rationally in quotes altruistic. So one idea about choosing a career for example, which SBF took seriously was one possibility is going to finance or going to something where you know you might all love it but you can make a lot of money at it, you've really talented at it and you can make a lot of money at it and that's good because even though the career itself doesn't, from a utilitarian perspective doesn't help the world, you can then use that money to give charity and that'll help the world. So your career helped the world through the amount of money that you produced and you can use that money for charity which helps the world, so it's again all focused on what impact can I have out there in the world on other people, on their lives and again it's all systematized. So there's literally a website, an extensive website, really well, you know a nice website, it's well done, you can tell these are these smart people from Silicon Valley that probably have marketing degrees and stuff like that and a lot of articles, a lot of videos and a guide and a thing to walk through and figure out what career should you choose to maximize your potential impact on the world out there. And of course one of the interesting things and I'm curious how Brian views this, Brian Kaplan, is they're not economists and many of them have a very very weak understanding of economics but you would think that one of the primary things that are effective out to us if you really cared about life and wealth and living in poverty and helping save lives and stuff like that is one of the things they would be strong advocates for is economic freedom. Now some of them are but it's certainly not uniform, they are again this is to the credit, they are most of them are pro economic growth, they realize that economic growth is good, they don't always connect economic growth with freedom, they don't always economic economic growth with individual rights because I don't think the conception of individual rights they would have one but they are very much behind the yes in my backyard movement, they are very much behind the pro build, pro growth, pro tech, pro the future. So they're not part of this demerist for the most part, demerist climate change is going to kill us all, AI you know maybe they're on the AI front they are but for the most part they tend to be very pro science, pro technology, pro growth. So the progress movement that I know Jason Crawford who I've interviewed on the show before is very much a part of, the progress movement has a lot of effect about us in it. So these are not your typical lefties who want to shut everything down for the sake of mother nature or mother earth or something like that. These people want at least claim to want human life on planet earth to be better but that's it that's their moral imperative. There's another page that you can go to if you're so inclined give what you can give what we can dot org and here you can go and you can pledge as you know whatever you can however much you can a meaningful portion of your income they would like a meaningful portion but they they will accept only 10% if that's that's what you want to do they will accept 10% and they will make it very easy for you they will auto deduct it from your checking count or whatever and then they will allocate it to the most efficient effective effective altruism charities possible and they again beautiful website a lot of information they specify all the research they've done how that research works what that research is focused on they've got giving guides they've got the whole thing I mean wow I mean I really wish some of our objectives websites with this good you know this detailed this effective I mean they it's these are pros they know what they're doing all right so that's kind of a broad you know sense what effective altruism is how it's known again the idea is utilitarian ideas to help the world so let's delve into this idea of which I'm sure you've all had thoughts about you've all considered which is and I don't know why this is doing it I think Substack has some kind of quirk in it let's let me let me try something different I've got this website open with okay it opened it now all right so here's the thing about if you're an altruist in particularly if you're an effective altruist and driven by science all of us have two kidneys but we don't really need two kidneys in order to live you know with one kidney we do fine and we'll get into some of the stats around one kidney in a minute but the reality is we have two kidneys and we could give up one kidney and a lot of people do this for family members and they they donate a kidney somebody has a kidney disease the kidneys are failing they need a kidney transplant kidney transplants are very effective there's a lot of science behind them they've done many times they add significant numbers of years for the person who's receiving the transplant the body we now have techniques on how to do this transplant transplant without the body rejecting the kidney and um and and you know we we know that this is done now years ago maybe 10 years ago somebody showed me an article about a guy who took his altruism seriously and donated kidney and we like laughed and how nutty and crazy he is and how wow I mean it seemed to me at the time all right this is like you know nobody does this like this guy's weird this guy's completely insane like I know people who do it for loved ones family members and even then it's hard because of you have to match blood types but for somebody to just donate a kidney to a stranger just donate a kidney to go to whoever that's weird and unusual and and and sacrificial and altruistic and doesn't make any sense to me when my life is a standard doesn't make any sense and thought okay well you know there are people who take the altruism seriously but they're not that many right it turns out that that guy wasn't an aberration at least not today not in the world we live in today that they are this is quite popular among the effective altruist community the many of them have donated a kidney because it makes sense if you're an altruist and they take their altruism seriously so here's the here's the thinking behind this so I want to go through hopefully you find this interesting but I want to go through I do anyway Astro Codex has 10s reasoning he says years ago you had an article by a guy who had given up his kidney donated a kidney um and I'm glad you're keeping your kidneys Jennifer absolutely I'm keeping mine without anticipating anybody's going to need them I just like having my kidneys um anyway he describes Matthew Matthew what's his name Matthew Dylan Matthew Dylan Matthew is well known I guess he's also well known in the E.I effective altruism community at six years ago Matthew's donated a kidney and he described it as quote the most rewarding experience of his life and and this is this is the paragraph that really had an impact on Astro Codex a ten he said as I'm as I'm no doubt the first as I'm no doubt the first person to notice being an adult is hard you're constantly faced with choices about your career about your friendships about your romantic life about your family that have deep moral consequences and even when you try the best you can you're going to get a lot of these choices wrong and you more often than not won't know if you got them wrong or right you just won't know because you don't have an alternative universe where you did the other thing and you maybe you should have picked another job where you could do more good notice the standard maybe you should have gone to grad school maybe you should have moved to a new city so I selfishly deeply gratified to have made at least one choice in my life then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt was the right one that's his choice to give the kidney anyway Astro Codex 10 says he read this and was inspired by it and it really moved him and and so he started to look at the stats you know what's involved in giving a kidney I mean this is what effective altruists do they look at the data so he says okay well the risk of death and surgery is 3.1 in 10,000 or 1.3 in 10,000 if like me you don't suffer from hypertension so the risk of death is 1.3 in 10,000 for comparison that's a little higher in a little lower respectively than the risk of a pregnancy related death in the US the risk isn't zero this is still major surgery but death is extraordinary where instead there's no good evidence that donating reduces your life expectancy at all so you could do this and not reduce your life expectancy and the risk of dying is only I emphasize only 1.3 in 10,000 I don't know 1.3 in 10,000 for a optional procedure because this is major surgery I mean that's not trivial it's not zero it's not one in 100,000 optional procedures I'm curious other forms of medical procedures that people do kind of that are optional plastic surgery other things I wonder what what the risk of death is in those circumstances that would be interesting to measure anyway you see how the thinking was 1.3 10,000 that's not a lot it's like dying and giving birth and that never had almost never happened so and then it says the procedure does not increase your risk of kidney failure but the average donor still has only a one to two percent chance of that happening the vast majority of donors 98 to 99 percent don't have kidney failure later on and those who do have to kill a failure you've only got one then get bumped up on the list to get a donation themselves because they gave a donation they get bumped up to the top of the list to get a donation so this is the data so then he goes deeper in well but to get the cat I mean this is I'm just giving you this is in a sense of how these people's minds work okay but it turns out that to to get a kidney transplant you need to have a CT a CAT scan of the abdominal so and it turns out that you know CAT scans we know have radiation the radiation of a CAT scan like this increases your odds of dying from cancer caused by the radiation by 1 in 660 you know it's still low but it's significant it's not clear how you measure that it's not clear exactly what that means it's not clear how right that is it when I read this for the first time it kind of scared me a little bit because I've had several CAT scans now I'm really worried because several CAT scans that means you know anyway I don't have cancer I'm pretty sure of that right now I've done pretty much every test to tell and I don't have cancer right now but we'll test again next year and see right um anyway so okay but so that's kind of a risk okay so he talked to the doctor and the doctor said okay if you really consider about that we can do an MRI instead of a CAT scan whoa all right there's one risk eliminated and then what about um you know what about um this kidney failure and uh you know and he goes through the whole analysis of how much of the kidney you you you you need as you get older and what are the chances that your kidney will fail because you've only got one and it's working harder a whole statistical analysis and the bottom line is there are a lot of studies about this and the chances according to him the chances of you actually dying because you only have one kidney instead of two are basically very very small again pretty negligible pretty negligible so he decided this year to do it you know it takes a lot of you know you go through hell in order to just be accepted as a donor blood tests scans psychological evils psychiatric evils all kinds of evils they take you through you know it's it's a major hassle yeah you know he got it done in New York he had a flight in New York from California twice just that would turn me off the whole thing I mean just the time think of the time you're consuming to do that but he figured you know um it'll extend somebody's life by let's say 10 years so it's 10 life years to extend somebody to extend to buy 10 life years through charity you would have to probably give up about donate about ten thousand dollars in Africa you know so it's ten thousand dollars of this or maybe you could do both you could save two people ten life seems like a worthwhile thing to spend all this energy and time and effort there was one line here that I thought was really interesting that surprised me that he would admit it let me see if I can find this um because um let me see if I can find this it was uh it was important I thought because it tells you a little bit um I mean here's a is a good line and not the line I wanted I'll find out one as well um oh here it is here it is um and she says um well one of the things he says is um you know when I talk to my EAA friends effective altruism friends the reaction was at least and told them that he was getting a kidney transplant the reaction was at least cool wow but pretty often it was oh yeah I donated two years ago want to see my skull most people don't do interesting things unless they're in a community where those things have been normalized I was blessed with the community where this was so normal that I could read a vox article about it and not vomit it back out so here's a community that supports people donating their kidney it's a community supports altruistic acts and that's important to it because he wants the support of this community there's a there's a there's a number of things in this article that he writes that are very second-handed like you donate a kidney you get instant altruism credit like there's no there's no um like other motive that could drive you to donate a kidney other than altruism so you get straight out altruistic credit for doing it um so uh he thought that was really cool right again a second-handedness that I guess it should not be surprising that it comes uh that it comes from an altruist here's the way here's the way he writes about about the the trade-off right this is um he says kidney donation is only medium effective as far as altruism goes medium effective interesting the average donation buys the recipient about five to seven extra years of life beyond the current factual of dialysis it also improves quality of life from about 70% of a healthy average to about 90% non-directed kidney donations can also help the organ banks solve allocation problems around matching donors and recipients of different blood types so you know it it's it's somewhat beneficial he says that this is great my grandfather died of kidney disease and 10 to 20 more years with him would have meant a lot but it only costs about five to ten thousand dollars to produce this many quality life years through bog standard effective altruistic interventions like buying mosquito nets from malaria regions in Africa so you know you're indifferent between giving a kidney or giving ten thousand dollars for mosquito nets in Africa it's about get you the same stuff I mean think about the mental gymnastics that you're going through in order to justify ripping your body apart going through major surgery he describes his recovery from surgery which is not not pleasant at all it's major abdominal surgery now of course effective altruists measure everything they look at the most effective thing how they're using their money the most effective way constantly evaluating alternatives which is to the credit it's the goal that is very problematic he writes to quote I worry that people use suffering as a heuristic for goodness remember we've talked about this a lot when we talked about altruism that ultimately for many people it's suffering that is the heuristic for altruism for goodness for good action well he was about the same thing he wants this is kind of a an altruism that takes the other seriously is not focused on the suffering of the individual although if they really care about the other again you would think they would focus much more on economic freedom and economic liberty as as their primary focus but anyway so he says mother Teresa becomes a hero because living with lepers in Calcutta slums sounds horrible so anyone who does it must be really charitable regardless of whether or not the lepers get helped this is by the way Kant's argument Kant makes the argument that if you meet somebody who's happy and successful be aware because they they're probably not moral because they're probably not altruistic they're probably selfish and that's a dangerous person so happiness success well being is associated with selfishness suffering suggests charity suggests helping others suggest not thinking of yourself right now he says he goes on to say this heuristic the heuristic of suffering isn't terrible if you're suffering for your charity then it must seem important to you and you're obviously not doing it for personal gain now that's interesting how how again the mental gymnastics it's important to you but it's not for personal gain what does it mean if something is important to you but not a personal gain does he associate personal gain only for money about money or is personal gain a broader concept but if it's important for you to you doesn't it also mean that you view it as a personal gain if you do charity in a way that benefits you then the personal gain aspects start looking suspicious the problem is the people like if you're enjoying yourself you're having fun you really love what you're doing you know helping other people then it looks suspicious the problem is the people I'm quoting from him the problem is the people who evaluate it from a suspicion to an automatic condemnation it seems like such a natural thing to do and it encourages people to be masochists sacrificing themselves pointlessly in photogenic ways instead of thinking about what will actually help others in other words the standard that you should practice is what other people think and says other people have this bad heuristic you should match that heuristic and he says this isn't good not because you don't care about what other people think but because you might not be as an effective and altruistic as you should be in terms of helping other people then he says getting back to the point kidney donation has an unusual high ratio of photo this is unbelievable kidney donation has an unusual high ratio of photogenic suffering to altruistic gain so why do a effective altruist keep doing it I can't speak for anyone else but I speak for myself it starts with wanting just wants to do a good thing that will make people like you more instead of less it starts with wanting just wants to do a good thing that will make people like you more instead of less it would be morally fraught to do this with money since any money you spend on improving yourself image would be denied to the people in malaria regions of Africa who need it the most but it's not like there's anything else you could do with that spare kidney so in other words he's doing this to make people like him more to make people admire him more now this is surprising of of astral code extent he is a psychiatrist he's well respected well regarded he's got this unbelievably successful sub stack he's made I'm sure a lot of money off the sub stack and then very very well professionally he's married seemingly happy but at the end of the day think about deep the second handedness must go if he's giving his kidney because it has an unusual ratio of photogenic suffering to altruistic gain he really values the photogenic suffering I mean the fact that other people admire him for it and then he says still it's not just about that all of this calculating and funging takes a psychic toll your brain uses the same emotional heuristic as anyone else's no matter how contrarian you pretend to be deep down it's hard to make your emotional track emotions track what you know is right a lot of objectives would sympathize with that and not what the rest of the world is telling you so the nice thing about this is there's no you don't have to calculate the amount of research you have to do is limited it's pretty simple you give up a kidney doesn't do you much harm by giving it up and somebody else benefits and it's clean it's simple it's straight out altruism without all the heuristic brain damage that these people go through now of course he describes this time at the hospital which is very unpleasant he describes the solid effects side effects that are very unpleasant I just don't see how you you don't weigh this at all and but at the end of the day what matters is he helped somebody else I do find this interesting at the end of the article he writes in polls 25 to 50 percent of Americans say they would donate a kidney to a stranger in need which is weird because there's a hundred thousand strangers on a waiting list for kidney transplants constantly many of them five thousand or forty thousand die each year because they aren't enough kidneys says five to forty thousand people strangers in need that your kidney could help so it is interesting that they say that are they saying it a virtue signal but these are anonymous surveys are they saying it to virtual signal to themselves which I think a lot of virtue signaling is not about other people but it's to yourself it's virtue signaling to yourself it wouldn't take a large percentage of those 25 to 50 percent to take it seriously donate a kidney to a stranger and solve the problem of course the problem could be solved as astro codex 10 acknowledges simply by creating a market for organs as Millay is claiming he's going to do in Argentina make it legal to trade in organs to sell your organs and then you would solve this problem for good and to astro codex 10's credit he acknowledges that I guess what's sad about this whole thing I mean he's got another article where he describes all the good effective altruists have made in the world they they have the calculation they know how much money they've given as a movement they know what it's gone for they know how much lives have saved they've they've uh you know they've saved 200 000 lives they've uh uh you know reduced the occurrence of malaria significantly I mean they have they have detailed lists of this stuff I mean yeah say there are 200 000 lives mostly from malaria treated 25 million cases of chronic parasite infection given 5 million people access to clean drinking water supported critical trials for both malaria vaccine that has been approved and one that's in track supported additional research into vaccines of a syphilis malaria and other things supported teams giving development of economics there also big on animal welfare so they they're big on not having animals not suffer in commercial farming they're big on the AI and all the all the protections and restrictions on AI although one of the big biggest effective altruist people out there is this Eliezo something who who is uh do I I attended a kind of a panel that he was on the world's gonna end AI is gonna kill us all there's no question about that and you're very doom and gloom but yet he's credited for a lot of the AI development a lot of the people in I I admire him the effective altruists have created all kinds of control to prevent AI from going nuts and killing us all um on top of that they've they've done stuff in biotech they've done stuff in a bunch of different things so they have a whole list of other benefits judo judo judovsky something like that yes um so according to astro code extend they've done a lot of good in the world in terms of by their standards helping others for the dollars that they invest um and you're good I mean if you're gonna give the charity do it effectively figure out what effectively means to you I still think the most effective charity possible to if you care about human life and you care about poverty is to promote to promote liberty and to promote freedom um but here you get concrete human lives you here you get concrete chickens who are not suffering anymore because they're free range now here you get concrete saving the world from AI so uh obviously they value that more than others there's also a portion of effective altruism that cares about the distant future like a million years from now and that is completely paralyzing and ridiculous there's no it's hard enough to do the heuristics the math the probabilities on effect being effective today in in a in a period of time you can project into the future they don't want to project generations in the future was completely ridiculous so here's the thing what's really tragic about this movement is here are really a lot of very smart people but they're not just smart the people who take their ideas seriously the people who want to do what they believe is right and good they are diligent and they are thoughtful and they are you know they they they want to align their emotions with their values they they uh and they want to they want they they they take whatever ethical code they have this idea of utilitarianism which i think is fought with contradictions and conflicts and problems but put that aside i'm sure they've got answer to every everything i with it's a good answer another different question and then they go all in on it and they're committed to it and overall their ideology is not the kind of ideology where you fear people going all in like you know the nazis were all in the communists were all in these people are less harmful put it that way at least to the rest of us they might be harmful to themselves but to the rest of us and they're smart they love science they love technology they they want to apply a reason they are part of what's called the rationalist community which is again an attempt to apply reason primarily through statistical analysis unfortunately but facts data knowledge two problem solving the problem they want to solve for is morality and the tragedy here is i mean really the tragedy here is that they've just accepted a conventional morality they've accepted a false morality they've accepted you know i think the best version maybe of this false morality a false morality nonetheless they and many of them let's be clear many of them have been exposed to iron rand this is the kind of community that has probably read iron rand met objectivists again jason crawford knows a lot of these people um certainly no of rand no vile shrugged and yet and i think maybe part of that is is is astro code extends admitting that he cares what other people think a certain conventionality a certain second-handedness which almost always goes with altruism because altruism is of course about the other and therefore you care about what the other thinks it's the other you're trying to please but it's a shame it's tragic i mean one of famous says these people are not very creative but they are outside of their effect of altruism they are these many of them are founders of internet companies many of them are innovators many of them are tech entrepreneurs a lot of them at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence right now at ai these people are creative they're not creative when it comes to this particular area in their life but i i view as tragic more than anything else i see the immense human potential that exists here the the the the talent that they have and they're devoting it to something that is completely wrong self-destructive not even benevolent i'm not going to give my kidney to a stranger for the simple reason that you know it's not worth it for me the hassle the pain the risk they might claim there's no risk but i don't completely buy their stats of of living with just one kidney instead of two i intend to live a long life like you know i might need to particularly as you go along your kidneys become less effective and two is better than having one and if one goes out i don't want to rely on somebody else donating a kidney to me and what if as jennifer says you know somebody i love as kidney failure and then i i would donate the kidney because their life is important to me but there's so many possibilities that relate that work in my personal values versus helping a stranger help a stranger is not that important to me i'm way to focused on my own life my own values my own happiness choosing a career so that i can maximize the benefit to other people why choose the career to benefits my own happiness so the whole framework is wrong the utilitarianism is wrong but here's a group different than let's say the christian altruists the mother to risa type altruists who are not necessarily suffering or explicitly suffering or suffering to the extent that a mother to risa would suffer but it's still acting altruistically and what's amazing about them is doing so consciously most people have their altruism but they don't dwell on it and think about it and strategize around it and plan around it these people do i don't know i guess i'm i'm impressed by their commitment wish we had more rational egoists effective egoists as don will describe them who were this committed and i wish our movement was this big had this kind of money and was focused on teaching people to think in the right way so that they could bring themselves out of poverty think in the right way so they could demand their own liberty and their own freedom and make the world richer think the right kind of way so that first and foremost could make their own life happier better more effective oh jean says i'm just going to read this because this seems super relevant jean says funny effective altruism was part of my path to objectivism an objectivist friend pointed out how bill gates the businessman did way more for the world than big gates the philanthropist that was a huge mental shift yeah and here's the thing your friend got it from me because i'm the one who made a big deal out of that comparison in my talk on the morality of capitalism 12 15 13 14 years ago and since i've repeated it 100 and something times so that is my stick the bill gate stuff so tell your friend to stop stealing my stuff no please steal my stuff as much as you can the more you steal the my stuff the better and i i i take it as a compliment but anyway the more important thing is yes that's one step in the shift but the second step in the shift is it's not about changing the world it's about your own life it's about your own happiness it's about your own success it's about the one life that you have that ends at some point and is gone and disappears and you don't get it back might as well when you're living it make the most of it that's what it's about and that's not captured by that bill gates example the bill gates example is to show that that people seem to care more about hating selfishness hating the benefit you get than caring about the good you do out there which is a point scott alexander makes in his essay as well and why he says the nice thing about kidney is they can't say i benefited from it i did not benefit from it so you can make the claim that his is pure altruism which is what makes it wrong which one makes it evil it's a wrong choice to give a kidney to a stranger you better have really really good explanation father that is rationally in your self-interest to do it i don't see it i don't see it