Prof. Calum Carmichael takes issue with a “simplistic” and “tired” take of Effective Altruism

A response to Emma Goldberg’s What if Charity Shouldn’t Be Optimized?

By Calum Carmichael, PANL Perspectives, February 2025.

For some time now, The New York Times has published an annual Holiday Giving Guide. In it, several opinion writers introduce charities they believe deserve our attention and donations for being effective in using the dollars they receive. Most of their recommendations are for charities that address the immediate needs of people facing adversity, both globally and domestically – needs tied to health, education, security and human rights. Accordingly, it’s not unusual for the recommendations to include charities identified as high-impact and cost effective by GiveWell or other research organizations associated with Effective Altruism.

In contrast with this tradition, last December the newspaper published a freestanding article What if Charity Shouldn’t Be Optimized? by Emma Goldberg, one of its business features writers. In it, she argues that donors shouldn’t be swayed by the types of recommendations found in the Giving Guide, particularly those based on quantitative evidence of cost effectiveness.

Why shouldn’t donors be swayed and charity optimized?

Goldberg offers two reasons for her argument. First, heeding such recommendations would diminish donor agency and self-expression. In Goldberg’s words:

• “Equipped with tools to measure our calories, steps, working hours, wasted hours, water intake and sleep cycles, we have now been exhorted to measure our charitable impact too … to donate our money cautiously, rationally, to the charities that promise to make a dollar go the furthest”; and “essentially … you do not get to feel good for having done anything at all.”
• “Outsourcing our choices about charitable giving to empirical guides … can … short circuit the painful process of paying attention”; and “charitable giving gets at what we choose to let into our hearts, what fires up our empathy … extending the deepest sources of meaning in our own lives toward others.”
• “We need charitable causes that make people’s lives feel meaningful, radiant, sacred … institutions that lend life its texture and color, and not just bare bones existence.” Citing author Amy Shiller, Goldberg writes, “At a time when we are under enormous pressure to optimize our time, be maximally productive, hustle and stay healthy (so we can keep hustling), we need philanthropy to make pleasure, splendor and abundance available for everyone.”

Goldberg’s second reason is that such recommendations – particularly those based on evidence of cost effectiveness – are inspired and thus tainted by Effective Altruism (EA). Again, in her words:

• “EA applied the sheen of good will (altruism) to a brand of thinking (optimization) that had already taken over the way we eat and exercise, work and live.”
• “For billionaires who made their money by crunching numbers, Effective Altruism extends that into the way they give away their money, too. It is a data-loving engineer’s mode of do-gooding, for the first generation of ultra wealth created by engineers.”
• But “there’s a more fundamental critique of Effective Altruism …. On top of being a philanthropic approach, it’s also, sneakily, a moral claim. The giving justifies the earning; it’s a permission slip for the accumulation of vast sums of wealth … – as long as they give some of it away. EA fits comfortably into an era of widening inequality, as the fortunes of the world’s richest have grown, and so has their ability to shape ideas for the rest of us.”

I realize there’s a risk in re-assembling direct quotes of an author. But I’ve done this here in the hope of making her reasoning clear and preserving her rhetoric and voice.

But it’s not so simple with donors

My sense is that Goldberg’s rhetoric has been strengthened but her reasoning and argument have been weakened by categorizing donors and their motivations using two false dichotomies.

The first would divide donors between those who are reflective, who consult their hearts and give where the very act will offer them the most meaning and fulfillment, as opposed to those who are “hyper-rational,” who consult and defer to the research of others and give where the expected results will be tangible and go furthest. From her perspective, recommendations like those in the Giving Guide are pressuring donors to move from the first category to the second, restricting their ability to find meaning in their giving.

Her second dichotomy would divide donors between those who give empathetically and selflessly, from those who give strategically as a means or license to pursue their own benefit – something she ties to Effective Altruists, specifically those who are or who aspire to be wealthy.

As I see it, donors and their motivations are far more diverse and complicated than what these two dichotomies suggest.

Selfless or selfish?

Let’s start with the second dichotomy. Goldberg depicts EA as an approach to philanthropy that fosters self-interest and justifies wealth accumulation. Such a depiction is simplistic and by now a very tired one. To form a more comprehensive understanding of EA – its origins, the diversity and debates within it, the criticisms it has attracted and their counter arguments, and how many of those criticisms generalize to the philanthropic sector as a whole – I encourage her, as well as all interested readers, to start by consulting the five-part series I prepared for PANL Perspectives that has been compiled into one document here.

EA is not a “one-size-fits-all template.” It preserves choice in the types of causes that donors could support albeit within the confines of cost effectiveness, and it doesn’t deny them the opportunity to give beyond those confines. It’s not “the dominant way to think about charity” as she claims: witness the high proportion of personal donations in Canada and the US going to religious organizations, some of which will undoubtedly have come from Effective Altruists.

Sure enough, EA offers career advice for those wanting to match their skills with jobs likely to generate a high social impact. But that advice focuses not on high-paying jobs that would allow them to give more, but rather on jobs that would enable them to work directly on major problems, whether through nonprofits, charities, social enterprises, universities, think tanks, governments, political organizations or private enterprise. And, yes, among its adherents are several very wealthy individuals from the tech sector (including, I assume, some engineers). But the overall income profile of the EA community is far more commonplace, although demographically it is younger, more educated, more secular, more white and more male than the population as a whole.

And as to Goldberg’s claim that EA sits comfortably with income inequality and enables its wealthy adherents to gain prestige and influence – it’s simply wrong to tie such criticisms to EA specifically. They’ve long been made against so-called “big philanthropy” generally, particularly in the US: see for example Lucy Bernholtz, David Callahan, Anand Giridharadas or Rob Reich, among others, and the counterarguments offered by Beth Breeze. It’s ironic, therefore, that Goldberg uses the campaign to repair and rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral as an example of donations that defy the criteria of EA. Ironic, because she ignores criticisms that the wealthy used those donations to gain personal prestige and influence: see for example Joel Shannon or Ollie A. Williams.

From my perspective, all decisions about where and how much to donate are unavoidably self-referential: that is to say, connected to our identities, priorities and learned behaviours. Our motives are probably inscrutable even to ourselves, at least in part. But whether they’re selfless or selfish, lying somewhere in between or across other categories, I don’t think we can say with certainty either for ourselves or for others.

What’s more important – better expected outcomes for beneficiaries or greater personal fulfillment for donors?

Let’s turn to the first dichotomy. Rephrasing it along these lines echoes the preceding paragraph. In deciding how much and where to donate, are we acting out of philanthropy (φιλάνθρωπος) – a regard for others, their needs and what will allow them to live and to live better? Or are we acting out of philautia (φιλαυτία) – a regard for ourselves, our interests, what feels “meaningful, radiant, sacred” to us? Is it about them? Or is it about us? Or again – to avoid perpetuating a false dichotomy – is it a blend of the two, or perhaps about something totally different?

Might it be that at least for some people these categories are interdependent or indistinguishable? Let me illustrate. Using Goldberg’s terminology – “what we choose to let into our hearts, what fires up our empathy … extending the deepest sources of meaning in our own lives toward others” – thereby serving philautia – may involve addressing the basic needs of others and directing our resources to where they are likely to do the most good where the needs are great and would otherwise go unaddressed – thereby also serving philanthropy.

For some, evidence of cost effectiveness may help them decide how to direct their donations, thereby facilitating rather than suppressing their agency and self-expression, complementing rather than short circuiting the “painful process of paying attention” of who is most in need and of what. This might lead them, for example, to donate not to the local children’s hospital whose flyer, complete with touching photographs, just arrived in the mail, but rather to an organization working to reduce early childhood death or blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency – of which they would be unaware except for the website of an organization associated with EA.

A missing dichotomy and points of agreement

Charitable giving can contribute meaning to our lives by allowing us to express and act on our priorities around who is important and what is important. But our financial resources are finite, even for the wealthiest. What we choose to keep for ourselves determines what we can give to and for others. And unless we choose to keep less for ourselves, what we give to one charitable cause or organization reduces the amount available for another. Aware of this, I agree with Goldberg’s observations that “there’s nothing wrong with the desire to measure the value of our giving” and “there’s also nothing wrong with thinking expansively about that value, or the tools for measuring it.”

Indeed, I’d go further: rather than allow our charitable giving to be determined by marketing, impulse or habit, it’s important for us to be self-aware, to think about the different values of our giving to different causes (who benefits, why, and by how much?), what determines those values (is it from what we get or what others get?), and how we measure them (are the things that we or that others get necessities or niceties?).

It’s important to think of such things because our financial resources are finite and the pressing needs around us are great.

Calum Carmichael is a retired Professor in the MPNL program. His research touches on political finance, the tax treatment of philanthropy, and the regulation of political activities by charitable organizations. He’s introduced and curated many series for “PANL Perspectives,” including Ethics, Shifting Power and What Can the Philanthropic Sector Take from the Downfall of Samuel Bankman-Fried and His Ties to Effective Altruism?

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Thursday, February 6, 2025 in Closer Takes, EA, For homepage, News & Events
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