The Nonlinear Library EA - There are no massive differences in impact between individuals by Sarah Weiler
Mar 14, 2024
32:00
Welcome 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: There are no massive differences in impact between individuals, published by Sarah Weiler on March 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Or: Why aiming for the tail-end in an imaginary social impact distribution is not the most effective way to do good in the world
"It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others."
attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Tomasik 2014(2017)
Summary
In this essay, I argue that it is not useful to think about social impact from an individualist standpoint.
I claim that there are no massive differences in impact between individual interventions, individual organisations, and individual people, because impact is dispersed across
all the actors that contribute to the outcomes before any individual action is taken,
all the actors that contribute to the outcomes after any individual action is taken, and
all the actors that shape the taking of any individual action in the first place.
I raise some concerns around adverse effects of thinking about impact as an attribute that follows a power law distribution and that can be apportioned to individual agents:
Such a narrative discourages actions and strategies that I consider highly important, including efforts to maintain and strengthen healthy communities;
Such a narrative may encourage disregard for common-sense virtues and moral rules;
Such a narrative may negatively affect attitudes and behaviours among elites (who aim for extremely high impact) as well as common people (who see no path to having any meaningful impact); and
Such a narrative may disrupt basic notions of moral equality and encourage a differential valuation of human lives in accordance with the impact potential an individual supposedly holds.
I then reflect on the sensibility and usefulness of apportioning impact to individual people and interventions in the first place, and I offer a few alternative perspectives to guide our efforts to do good effectively.
In the beginning, I give some background on the origin of this essay, and in the end, I list a number of caveats, disclaimers, and uncertainties to paint a fuller picture of my own thinking on the topic. I highly welcome any feedback in response to the essay, and would also be happy to have a longer conversation about any or all of the ideas presented - please do not hesitate to reach out in case you would like to engage in greater depth than a mere Forum comment :)!
Context
I have developed and refined the ideas in the following paragraphs at least since May 2022 - my first notes specifically on the topic were taken after I listened to Will MacAskill talk about "high-impact opportunities" at the opening session of my first EA Global, London 2022. My thoughts on the topic were mainly sparked by interactions with the effective altruism community (EA), either in direct conversations or through things that I read and listened to over the last few years.
However, I have encountered these arguments outside EA as well, among activists, political strategists, and "regular folks" (colleagues, friends, family). My journal contains many scattered notes, attesting to my discomfort and frustration with the - in my view, misguided - belief that a few individuals can (and should) have massive amounts of influence and impact by acting strategically.
This text is an attempt to pull these notes together, giving a clear structure to the opposition I feel and turning it into a coherent argument that can be shared with and critiqued by others.
Impact follows a power law distribution: The argument as I understand it
"[T]he cost-effectiveness distributions of the most effective interventions and policies in education, health and climate change, are close to power-laws [...] the top intervention is 2 or almost 3 orders of magni...
Or: Why aiming for the tail-end in an imaginary social impact distribution is not the most effective way to do good in the world
"It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others."
attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Tomasik 2014(2017)
Summary
In this essay, I argue that it is not useful to think about social impact from an individualist standpoint.
I claim that there are no massive differences in impact between individual interventions, individual organisations, and individual people, because impact is dispersed across
all the actors that contribute to the outcomes before any individual action is taken,
all the actors that contribute to the outcomes after any individual action is taken, and
all the actors that shape the taking of any individual action in the first place.
I raise some concerns around adverse effects of thinking about impact as an attribute that follows a power law distribution and that can be apportioned to individual agents:
Such a narrative discourages actions and strategies that I consider highly important, including efforts to maintain and strengthen healthy communities;
Such a narrative may encourage disregard for common-sense virtues and moral rules;
Such a narrative may negatively affect attitudes and behaviours among elites (who aim for extremely high impact) as well as common people (who see no path to having any meaningful impact); and
Such a narrative may disrupt basic notions of moral equality and encourage a differential valuation of human lives in accordance with the impact potential an individual supposedly holds.
I then reflect on the sensibility and usefulness of apportioning impact to individual people and interventions in the first place, and I offer a few alternative perspectives to guide our efforts to do good effectively.
In the beginning, I give some background on the origin of this essay, and in the end, I list a number of caveats, disclaimers, and uncertainties to paint a fuller picture of my own thinking on the topic. I highly welcome any feedback in response to the essay, and would also be happy to have a longer conversation about any or all of the ideas presented - please do not hesitate to reach out in case you would like to engage in greater depth than a mere Forum comment :)!
Context
I have developed and refined the ideas in the following paragraphs at least since May 2022 - my first notes specifically on the topic were taken after I listened to Will MacAskill talk about "high-impact opportunities" at the opening session of my first EA Global, London 2022. My thoughts on the topic were mainly sparked by interactions with the effective altruism community (EA), either in direct conversations or through things that I read and listened to over the last few years.
However, I have encountered these arguments outside EA as well, among activists, political strategists, and "regular folks" (colleagues, friends, family). My journal contains many scattered notes, attesting to my discomfort and frustration with the - in my view, misguided - belief that a few individuals can (and should) have massive amounts of influence and impact by acting strategically.
This text is an attempt to pull these notes together, giving a clear structure to the opposition I feel and turning it into a coherent argument that can be shared with and critiqued by others.
Impact follows a power law distribution: The argument as I understand it
"[T]he cost-effectiveness distributions of the most effective interventions and policies in education, health and climate change, are close to power-laws [...] the top intervention is 2 or almost 3 orders of magni...