[This post is intended to be a miniature, popular version of the thesis paper I'm currently writing for my MA. I began working on it 3 months ago. My paper is a work in progress and this post will not reflect everything in the finished product.]
INTRODUCTION
Effective
altruists don’t just want to satisfy moral guidelines and do some good deeds. They want to maximize the amount of good they can do
over the course of their lifetimes. Some effective altruists think this is
morally obligated, but others just think it’s the most exciting puzzle one
could possibly try to solve.
As one might
expect, there’s a lot of uncertainty about how to maximize the amount of good
you can do. For one thing, the game plan we decide on is going to depend on our
ethical views. Subtle changes in our moral views can drastically alter the
effectiveness of a cause.
THE RELEVANCE OF VALUES: ADAM, BETTY, CARLOS
Suppose Adam is a
classical utilitarian – he believes that “good” and “bad” are determined by
weighing the costs and benefits of an action against each other. He realizes
that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of the world’s population live in
very poor conditions. So he decides to spend the rest of his life making lots
of money and donating the surplus to these people.
Another
utilitarian, Betty, believes that intelligent animals should fall into our
ethical sphere of equal consideration. If an animal can feel pain and
depression then it carries a relevant amount of utility for us to need to be
careful how we treat it. Most of the world’s sentient creatures are non-human. Betty
researches animal suffering and finds that the ones raised on factory farms
live lives not at all worth living. She discovers that the ones in the wild are
likely to regularly experience running for their lives, fighting for their
lives, starvation, injury, and disease until, at last, they are eaten alive. We
now have reasons to prioritize animal suffering over human suffering.
But wait. Carlos thinks
that just because the lower animals fall outside our sphere of equal consideration, doesn’t mean they
fall outside our sphere of any
consideration. There are a billion billion insects in the world, as well as
invertebrates and other less intelligent animals. Most of these species lay
thousands of eggs in expectation of only a few offspring reaching adulthood.
These creatures only experience a fraction of the pain that more intelligent
creatures are capable of experiencing and they can’t experience psychological
trauma, but many of them can feel some
kind of pain. Considering the farcically high number of these creatures out
there, the total amount of suffering on Earth might be dominated by insect
suffering. Carlos makes this his focus.
But it all
depends on whether one even decides to take insect suffering seriously. I mean,
one insect is so much less important than one human and who’s to say that a
million little insect pains are capable of “stacking up” to equal a single big
hunk of human pain?
Thus our three
utilitarians have different priorities because of ethical differences. But
ethical differences aren’t the half of it. Even
if two people can agree on what to value, they still might have different
ideas about how to acquire the things
they value. Say you and I both want something like “peace,” “freedom,”
“equality,” and “happiness.” I might think the best way to do that is to go
into politics and create policies right for human flourishing. You might think
that’s a waste of time and that you can do 100 times the good by just making
lots of money and donating it directly to the poor. Someone else interested in
the same values might decide the best way to have a mass positive effect on
society would be to find a cure for cancer. In order to make the right
decision, we need to understand several fields of knowledge and understand how
they interact with each other. If we overlook just one crucial piece of information, we might spend our lives optimizing in the wrong direction.
FOUR FOCUS AREAS OF EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM
There are four major focus areas of effective altruism: global poverty, animal suffering,
existential risks, and meta-effective altruism. Each of these focus areas
represents a cause or many causes that have been hailed as the most important thing one can possibly do with one’s time. Of
course, the truly optimal use of one’s time will be divided among multiple
endeavours, but effective altruists generally pick a single cause to be their
major focus.
People that
prioritize global poverty reduction think like Adam. They see millions of
people struggling and think, “this extra bit of money I have won’t do me much
good but it can change an extremely poor person’s life. I might as well give it
to the poor person.” Adam then extends this concept to all the extra money he
has and gives 10% of his annual salary to charity. He specifically chooses a
charity that is highly cost-effective so that he can get the most bang for his
buck. Remember, he isn’t trying to do some
good – he’s trying to do as much good as possible. So if he can save 1 life or
100 lives with the same amount of money, he will donate to the charity that
saves 100 lives.
Betty believes
saving humans is a great thing as well, but thinks that, due to the staggering
numbers of suffering animals and the incredibly poor treatment that some of
them receive both by humans and by nature, that we can do more total good by
prioritizing non-human animal needs.
Others agree that
there’s a lot of suffering in the world today, both among humans and
non-humans, but think focusing on present suffering is ignoring the big
picture. In the big picture, the present is just one generation out of
potentially countless future generations. These effective altruists believe
that it’s more cost-effective to focus on catastrophic risks that threaten to
greatly curtail or even wipe out the future of humanity. If an asteroid is set
to hit Earth in one week, our first instinct wouldn’t be to donate money to
starving people in Africa – it would be to Stop That Damn Asteroid! There’s not
much point trying to solve the world’s current issues when there’s a future
issue coming that might wipe us out for good and render our hard work moot. Sometimes
the risks they worry about seem terribly remote – but because the stakes are so
high and they involve so many billions of people, they still have what’s called
a high expected utility. This group
worries mainly about technological advances that threaten to have disastrous
consequences if not properly designed or controlled.
Lastly, there
must be a place left for talking about effective altruism, movement building,
establishing the philosophical foundations of the movement, surveying the
effectiveness of various causes, making useful recommendations to other
effective altruists, etc. Spreading effective altruism is one of the most
cost-effective uses of one’s time.
THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
In my MA thesis,
I’m investigating the possibility of a fifth area’s being able to rival these
other areas in cost-effectiveness. I’d estimate that there’s only about a 20%
probability that this fifth area actually belongs in this class, but because of
how underexplored it is and how many people it could potentially help, I think
the expected utility of researching it is high. [04/02/14 - EDIT: As I continue to research this area, my estimated probability of it rivalling the other four focus areas is lowering. I still think it's a useful area to explore and improve, however.]
The area I’m
targeting is the cultural landscape. Now, worrying about cultural issues is
nothing new, nor is worrying about how media content influences those issues.
But nobody has ever tackled this field from a strictly effective altruist
viewpoint of wanting to maximize the world’s utility. Most people are quite
satisfied when a piece of media does more good than harm, but few people ask
for anything more than that. What would happen if we developed a better
understanding of how media content affects people and then used this knowledge
to optimize cultural output?
I'm
especially interested in the persuasive power of fiction to alter viewers'
beliefs and attitudes, as I think that's the most obvious way for a work of
media to have mass effects on society. If we learn about how specific kinds of
effects on audiences are generated, we can optimize our content by designing it
so that specific kinds of consequences are created.
Someone’s always whining
about how a certain kind of media is having +Bad Effects+ on society. If we
properly understood the relationship between media and culture then why
wouldn’t we use media to engineer +Good Effects+ on society?
WHY MEDIA?
The main reason to prioritize the optimization of the cultural landscape is the fact that resolving cultural issues will foster the resolution of most other issues. It's the same sort of thinking that might lead one to prioritize education.
Adam can spend
his whole life donating 10% of his salary and he’ll wind up donating a finite
amount, let’s say $300,000. If over the course of his life, he convinces one
other person of equal wealth to follow his example, he’ll have doubled the
amount of money going to charity. If he could broadcast meta-effective altruism
to a wider audience, then that would multiply his impact many times over.
The fact that
people don’t pay enough attention to the world’s worst off individuals is a
cultural problem. Speciesism, the belief that humans are superior to non-humans
on the sole basis of species, is a cultural problem. The fact that only a
handful of the world’s leading scientists are thinking hard about existential
risks is a cultural problem. The fact that meta-effective altruist messages
don’t permeate or interest the mainstream is a cultural problem.
Raise the general
level of rationality and knowledge in a culture and watch rates of speciesism,
racism, sexism, homophobia, bias, and hostility drop. Watch more people donate
to charity, more people take animal suffering seriously, more people research
existential risks, and more people take initiative in making the world a better
place.
The
media is the battleground on which cultural battles are fought. Due to the
dominance of the media in people's lives on a mass scale and the amount of time
people spend per day making sense of media content, we should expect the media
to play a strong role in shaping cultures - which indeed, it does.
There's
also the fact that so much money and power are invested in the global media
corporations. They rank among the most powerful and richest corporations in the
world. These corporations are cavernous potential utility mines.
HOW CAN WE USE MEDIA FOR GOOD?
There are many possibilities for using media to do good in the world. One approach is to identify changes in the content of the media that would benefit the world. Such an approach might include the optimization of artistic output, engineering the work such that it leads to the best effects on viewers that we know how to create. The content approach also encompasses statements such as "We should have less fiction programming and more non-fiction programming," "It is beneficial to have lots of competing voices in the media," "Too much violence in the media leads to a violent society," and "Fiction should avoid oversimplifying depictions of the self."
This approach can rely on a lot of very narrow scientific findings on media effects. For instance, suspense can increase the persuasive power of a story. That sort of thing. By combining a thousand little pieces of knowledge, we can start to gain an understanding of what media with positive consequences would look like. Marketers and advertisers do exactly this except that they target a different behavioural output in their audiences.
The content approach can also refer to a list of memes that are safe bets to have good consequences if circulate through the media. For instance,
Rationality is great
Science is useful and non-arbitrary
Morality is non-arbitrary
Atheism is acceptable
Breaking conventions is acceptable
Understanding cognitive biases is good
Emotional control is good
Learning is good
Receiving criticism is good
Racism is bad
Sexism is bad
Speciesism is bad
Homophobia is bad
It would also be a good idea to circulate more concrete memes specific to current issues:
Abortion should be legal
War X should not happen
Apartheid X should be stopped
Gay marriage should be legal
Marijuana should be legal
Capital punishment should be far less common
Gun control laws should be stricter
Climate change should be taken seriously
Party X should win the election
The rich should be taxed more
Alternatively, we might care about the structure and dynamics of the mass media. The relationship between content and effects is so complex that it might be too difficult to take advantage of in a hugely beneficial way. But we might be able to look at the role media plays in our lives, how we engage with it, how it's affecting us for better or worse, and how specific aspects of media connect with specific consequences on culture. This approach relates to statements such as "Writing is going to ruin our memories," "Talking on the phone and online hurt our ability to communicate with people face to face," "The optimal amount of time to spend watching television a day is 1 hour," and "We're bombarded with so many media messages that we've become overstimulated, desensitized, and alienated."
For example, media content can be useful for stimulation, relaxation, and catharsis. These are non-trivial factors to remember in our evaluation of media's worth. Perhaps TV watching is stimulating up to a certain number of viewing hours per week, but trails off beyond that point. Perhaps listening to mainstream radio in the car is more mind-numbing than it is relaxing or stimulating.
Together, these two approaches can help us optimize - or at least, know how to optimize - our system of media. The next obstacle is to find ways to influence policies, audience habits, and creative decisions toward greater wellbeing.
DETERMINING MEDIA EFFECTIVENESS
In order to
recommend specific media uses that I think lead to good consequences, I need to
have a way of recognizing a good piece of media content when I see one.
I came up with a methodology for roughly evaluating media effectiveness
and I've been applying it to various uses of media. I've also been researching
multiple fields in order to find information that informs my application of
this methodology. If I pull all the answers out of my ass, then the methodology
wouldn’t be adding any semblance of objectivity to my judgements.
Thus far some fields I've covered are the psychology of fiction, the psychology of persuasion, experimental aesthetics,
neuroaesthetics, neuromarketing, multimedia learning, audience reception studies, cultivation theory, various cultural and communications theories, etc. The more I know
about how media content affects people, the better I'll be at evaluating which
ones have good consequences and which ones have bad ones.
My method involves breaking down difficult, mysterious questions
into smaller, more answerable ones.
To borrow from a
past post:
Effectiveness =
Strength of Impact x Quality of Impact
In other words, we want the effects of our media uses to be both
as large and as good as possible.
How might one
evaluate the strength of a media project's impact?
I’ve come up with
this list of 5 questions we can ask ourselves to determine a work’s impact. In
answer to each question, we might answer “High,” “Medium,” or “Low."
- How many people does the project reach?
- How significantly does it impact the people it reaches?
- How likely are the people it impacts to spread this impact?
- How long lasting is its impact?
- How grave was the issue pre-impact?*
[*The fifth question is only relevant to some consequentialist
views, but many effective altruists would value this question as an indicator
of the value of a media project.]
Answering these
questions gives us a rough idea of the degree to which a media project can
impact the world. But none of these answers tell us whether the impact in
question is positive or negative.
How might one
evaluate the goodness or badness of a media project’s impact?
I’ve come up with
this list of 3 questions we can ask ourselves to determine the quality of a
work’s impact. In answer to each question, we can choose a value from a 7-point
scale: -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3. This is because we don't want to just
distinguish between very good and slightly good initiatives. We also want to
distinguish between good and bad initiatives.
- How much does it increase the accuracy of people's models of reality?
- How much does it improve people’s quality of life?
- How much more likely does it make people to act altruistically toward others?
This is a very
rough method of determining effectiveness but it at least reduces the problem to
answerable questions. I’ve now applied this method to 8 case studies, with
justifications for my decisions posted on this blog.
[04/02/14 - EDIT: I no longer see the above method as particularly useful to me and don't intend to include it in my paper. I think my approach can be useful for clarifying and organizing intuitions but it doesn't elevate art evaluation above the level of intuitions and heuristics.]
DELIVERABLES
My analysis of
these case studies has helped me clarify my intuitions and realize what I still
have left to learn.
The research
question currently on my mind is, “How reliable are traditional criteria of
artistic greatness at predicting good consequences?” In my case studies, I
found myself scoring an art house film, Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, identically to James Cameron’s Avatar – except My Winnipeg
reaches less people and thus gets less done. I could think of no real basis in
the context of my method for scoring the art house film extra points for
artistic greatness. I’m currently looking for research on whether traditional
criteria such as profundity of ideas, emotional impact, timelessness,
popularity, originality, and others actually have concrete benefits on viewers,
or whether they’re entirely useless.
I’m also looking to
develop concrete recommendations that dictate specific actions. One aspect of that is
developing a list of unusual ideas that are safe bets for effective altruists
to disseminate through the media. For instance, utilitarianism, anti-speciesism,
Thaler and Sunstein’s notion of “nudges,” and rationality. These ideas might be
misunderstood and used in bad ways, or they might raise the general level of
rationality and thus help resolve cultural issues. Do we have reasons to favour
one prediction over another?
Additionally, I would like to get others to apply my method to the same 8 case studies I chose, so that I can compare my answers to theirs. I suspect that answers would largely converge but I would like to prove this.
Finally, I plan to use many of the facts I'm learning about the psychology of fiction and multimedia learning to my advantage. I intend to weave psychological insights from the fields I'm researching into my paper. For an example, read the introduction of my post on the construction of disbelief. I may complement some sections of my paper with bits of fiction that help illuminate the key points and demonstrate how the fiction version affects readers differently.
Finally, I plan to use many of the facts I'm learning about the psychology of fiction and multimedia learning to my advantage. I intend to weave psychological insights from the fields I'm researching into my paper. For an example, read the introduction of my post on the construction of disbelief. I may complement some sections of my paper with bits of fiction that help illuminate the key points and demonstrate how the fiction version affects readers differently.
RECAP
- Effective altruists want to do as much good as they can possibly do.
- People aren't sure exactly how to do that.
- Until we're sure, it's worth exploring new possibilities.
- The possibility I'm exploring is the media-culture relationship.
- I think it has a lot of potential because of how resolving cultural issues leads to the resolution of other issues.
