Category Archives: Society

The BBC investigates Effective Altruism

A friend sent me a link to a BBC radio episode about Effective Altruism (28 min).

Interesting, though frustrating. There are valid critiques of EA, but the program didn’t present them well at all.

It’s Holly at the end (26:40) who best represents EA, I think, with balance and an acceptance that both heartfelt personal decisions and rational decision-making play a part in her actions. Holly’s EA is nothing like the monstrosity that the presenter has conjured up. Peter Singer too, of course, though he gives more attention to edgy philosophical dilemmas and is more easily misrepresented by presenter Giles Fraser and the philosopher John Gray (neither of whom showed much understanding of the movement as it actually is).

To address a few points, from the episode description:

“Giles discovers that, if you’re going to be an Effective Altruist, you have to toughen up and not allow sentiment to get in the way – you can’t prioritise causes close to your family or communities and your heart.”

Aaagh, this is annoying and I have no idea where he “discovers” this, which is in fact untrue. I reject the dichotomy, and was glad that Holly had the chance at the end to do the same.

John Gray: “If you’re a real effective altruist you should feel guilty about loving your children…”

Aaaagh, philosopher who hates effective altruism tells EAs what they “should” do (but don’t), then berates that strawman version of EA as monstrous. It’s appalling that the presenter let him get away with that garbage. Makes good radio, though, I guess, and that kind of sums up most of the episode.

And what’s with the guilt stuff as something that effective altruists are somehow supposed to feel? Guilt helps no one. Yes, it’s something that individuals have experienced, as in many other movements, and the responses that I’ve seen within the community (emphasizing balance, self-care, acceptance, seeing the big picture and trying to let go of personal guilt) have been healthy.

The presenter continues with this nonsense, implying that he is superior to EA because his straw version of EA “denies love”. I wanted to slap him. But I wouldn’t actually slap him because that wouldn’t be loving.

Natalie Quinn, the development economist, is more reasonable, pointing to the real challenge of hard-to-measure impacts which are nonetheless important. The short snippet included in the program overlooks the fact that the movement is well aware of this, gives attention to it, and certainly doesn’t demand that we ignore such impacts. That misrepresentation is on the programmers’ heads rather than Quinn’s.

(I gather that there are some in the movement who don’t think we should care about anything we can’t measure accurately – or at least give that impression – just like there are people elsewhere who, like Mr Spock, think that emotion is bad and leave it out of their calculations. I haven’t personally come across this view in the wild, though.)

The concept presented here, of some kind of imperative to be coldly calculating, doesn’t match my experience.  What I have experienced within EA is closer to its tagline of “head and heart”.

Lessons from leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church (the church known for their bigotry and hateful protests) and left as a young adult. Here she talks about how she left and the light that sheds on how to best communicate with our opponents.

From her TED talk:

I can’t help but see in our public discourse so many of the same destructive impulses that ruled my former church. We celebrate tolerance and diversity more than at any other time in memory, and still we grow more and more divided.

We want good things—justice, equality, freedom, dignity, prosperity—but the path we’ve chosen looks so much like the one I walked away from four years ago. We’ve broken the world into us and them, only emerging from our bunkers long enough to lob rhetorical grenades at the other camp. We write off half the country as out-of-touch liberal elites or racist misogynist bullies. No nuance, no complexity, no humanity.

Even when someone does call for empathy and understanding for the other side, the conversation nearly always devolves into a debate about who deserves more empathy. And just as I learned to do, we routinely refuse to acknowledge the flaws in our positions
or the merits in our opponent’s. Compromise is anathema. We even target people on our own side when they dare to question the party line.

This path has brought us cruel, sniping, deepening polarization, and even outbreaks of violence. I remember this path. It will not take us where we want to go.

What gives me hope is that we can do something about this. The good news is that it’s simple,
and the bad news is that it’s hard. We have to talk and listen to people we disagree with.

It’s hard because we often can’t fathom how the other side came to their positions. It’s hard because righteous indignation, that sense of certainty that ours is the right side, is so seductive. It’s hard because it means extending empathy and compassion to people who show us hostility and contempt. The impulse to respond in kind is so tempting, but that isn’t who we want to be.

We can resist. And I will always be inspired to do so by those people I encountered on Twitter,
apparent enemies who became my beloved friends. And in the case of one particularly understanding and generous guy, my husband. There was nothing special about the way I responded to him. What was special was their approach.

I thought about it a lot over the past few years and I found four things they did differently
that made real conversation possible. These four steps were small but powerful, and I do everything I can to employ them in difficult conversations today.

The first is don’t assume bad intent. My friends on Twitter realized that even when my words were aggressive and offensive, I sincerely believed I was doing the right thing. Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do. We forget that they’re a human being with a lifetime of experience that shaped their mind, and we get stuck on that first wave of anger, and the conversation has a very hard time ever moving beyond it. But when we assume good or neutral intent, we give our minds a much stronger framework for dialogue.

The second is ask questions. When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view. That’s important because we can’t present effective arguments if we don’t understand where the other side is actually coming from and because it gives them an opportunity to point out flaws in our positions. But asking questions serves another purpose; it signals to someone that they’re being heard. When my friends on Twitter stopped accusing and started asking questions,
I almost automatically mirrored them.  Their questions gave me room to speak, but they also gave me permission to ask them questions and to truly hear their responses. It fundamentally changed the dynamic of our conversation.

The third is stay calm. This takes practice and patience, but it’s powerful. At Westboro, I learned not to care how my manner of speaking affected others. I thought my rightness justified my rudeness—harsh tones, raised voices, insults, interruptions—but that strategy is ultimately counterproductive. Dialing up the volume and the snark is natural in stressful situations, but it tends to bring the conversation to an unsatisfactory, explosive end. When my husband was still just an anonymous Twitter acquaintance, our discussions frequently became hard and pointed, but we always refused to escalate. Instead, he would change the subject. He would tell a joke or recommend a book or gently excuse himself from the conversation. We knew the discussion wasn’t over, just paused for a time to bring us back to an even keel. People often lament that digital communication makes us less civil, but this is one advantage that online conversations have over in-person ones. We have a buffer of time and space between us and the people whose ideas we find so frustrating. We can use that buffer. Instead of lashing out, we can pause, breathe, change the subject or walk away, and then come back to it when we’re ready.

And finally… make the argument. This might seem obvious, but one side effect of having strong beliefs is that we sometimes assume that the value of our position is or should be obvious and self-evident, that we shouldn’t have to defend our positions because they’re so clearly right and good that if someone doesn’t get it, it’s their problem—that it’s not my job to educate them. But if it were that simple, we would all see things the same way. As kind as my friends on Twitter were, if they hadn’t actually made their arguments, it would’ve been so much harder for me to see the world in a different way. We are all a product of our upbringing, and our beliefs reflect our experiences. We can’t expect others to spontaneously change their own minds. If we want change, we have to make the case for it. My friends on Twitter didn’t abandon their beliefs or their principles, only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain and violence.

I know that some might not have the time or the energy or the patience for extensive engagement, but as difficult as it can be, reaching out to someone we disagree with is an option that is available to all of us.
And I sincerely believe that we can do hard things, not just for them but for us and our future.

The end of this spiral of rage and blame begins with one person who refuses to indulge these destructive, seductive impulses. We just have to decide that it’s going to start with us.

Why I don’t watch video link replies

In brief:  Videos are not often a good way to present evidence. If you’re trying to convince me of something, I prefer to see a clear, concise argument in text form. Thanks for understanding.


When I’m in a discussion on the Internet and someone makes an unusual or unlikely-sounding claim, I will keep an open mind and ask for evidence. Sometimes the reply comes in the form of a video. My general rule now is that I do not watch these videos, with a few exceptions*. Here’s why.

  1. Video is an effective tool for conveying emotion; it’s less effective for conveying information. If you have a clear, concise argument, text is generally preferable. Emotions can be fantastic, but they’re not great evidence.
  2. Watching videos is much more time-consuming than reading a concise article. In an article I can skim, pace myself according to how easy or difficult the language and arguments are, and often I can quickly identify whether the writer is making sense or not. In a video, it might be several minutes in before I find out whether the argument is based on carefully weighed scientific research, or on an assertion that space lizards are conspiring with George Soros to give us all vaccines that make us believe in global warming.
  3. Text lends itself better to structure, which aids the presenting and weighing of evidence.
  4. Responding to text is much more straightforward – I can copy and quote as appropriate. It’s easier to get on the same page about what precisely was said, claimed, proven.
  5. Text lends itself much better to providing referencing, and it’s much easier to find the references as they will be linked from the text where a particular claim is made, or found by scrolling down.
  6. My experience with replies in video form has not been positive. Let’s assume that your video reply is different – more rigorous, logical, persuasive and honest. If we don’t know each other yet, I don’t yet have a way to tell you apart from other people on the Internet who sent me links to terrible videos. So start with a clear and concise argument in text form, and we can discuss the video later, perhaps.

*There may be exceptions when:

  • The video comes later in the conversation, when we have already come to some agreement and can see each other’s perspectives.
  • The video comes from someone with whom I have often had constructive discussions in the past.
  • We are both members of a community that places an exceptional emphasis on informed, reasoned, civil discussion.

So if you send me a video link and I respond with this post, know that I mean this with respect and good faith, and that it’s part of my attempt to properly understand your argument and weigh the evidence.

Updated: 4 May 2020

When the shepherd loses faith: The Clergy Project

A Christian acquaintance studied ancient languages and New Testament history. With limited options after graduation, he went to work for a mega-church with beliefs and materialistic values in opposition to his own.

His desire to escape was only partly offset by a sense that he was doing some good, bringing some sense to the naivete and madness he saw in the church where he worked. Escape never came, and nearly 20 years later he is still trapped, and his family with him.

My acquaintance’s role is not as a pastor (or minister, or priest), but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of pastors, ministers and priests who lose their faith but continue in their role. I’m familiar with this concept from my years as an evangelical Christian, many years ago the concern is sometimes expressed for the students in theological colleges, Bible colleges and seminaries taught “liberal” ideas, and “falling away from the Lord”. I hadn’t thought of it from the perspective of those individuals, and what a terrible, lonely experience that must be. As Daniel Dennett states:

“They’re like gays in the 50s without gaydar. They don’t dare raise the issue with other clergy they know whom they suspect are just as much non-believers as they are.” Source (6 min video).

It may be that they continue to hold the same values and see good in their work, but they are also likely to feel trapped, with a lack of experience and training that would make it difficult to find other employment, and a necessary secrecy that makes it very difficult to seek support.

In response, The Clergy Project has been established – a confidential online community for current and former religious leaders in vocational ministry who do not hold supernatural beliefs. I wish them well.

If you wish to find out more:

Finall, here is one former pastor describing his own journey:

Energy subsidies – online course

Energy subsidies are a complex and enormously important issue, having a major impact on climate change (and thus on the fate of our world, and how livable it remains), on health (via air pollution, especially in developing world cities), as well as distorting our economies. And the level of public debate around energy subsidies and taxes is very poor, with conflicting claims made by the fossil fuel industry, advocates of renewable energy, and advocates of nuclear.

Energy Subsidy Reform, a free, 2-week, online MOOC style course run by the IMF on edX, sounds like a much-needed corrective.

“Whether you are a civil servant working on economic issues for your country or simply interested in better understanding issues related to energy subsidies, this course will provide hands-on training on the design of successful reforms of energy subsidies.”

How do you decide to trust someone?

How do you know when to trust someone? How do you decide? Here are my thoughts – please comment if you know something I don’t.

(Perhaps I should file this under the bleeding obvious but sometimes the obvious bears repeating. This is also a way of asking for your deeper insights.)

  • Watch how they treat those with less power, e.g. wait staff or shop assistants.
  • Take note if they enjoy putting others down. Not just frustration, not just poor social skills, but actively building themselves up by pulling others down – this could be immaturity or something more dangerous, but it’s not healthy. And if they seem to enjoy being nasty, even in the most witty and charming way, take it as a warning sign. (Actually, especially if they’re witty and charming about it.)
  • You don’t really know someone until you say no to them. (An unsourced bit of wisdom.)
  • Give them time. Toxic personalities can seem wonderful for a while (charm is one characteristic of a psychopath) but they usually wear thin in time. Full-blown narcissists take around 2.5 hours to lose their charm, on average* – others may keep their appeal for longer. If you’re in a close relationship with the person (e.g. romantic or family relationship) it’s hard to be objective, and so you may still fall for the facade, even after you’ve seen the disturbing truth behind it, and even when you’ve been warned.
  • Gut feeling. I wouldn’t rely on this alone and it depends how much opportunity you’ve had to train your unconscious mind through observing and experiencing people being trustworthy and untrustworthy. Personally, my intuition occasionally gives me a warning (and I’ve suffered for ignoring it). I take this as a warning not to put myself in a vulnerable position, rather than as a final judgment.

Final comments:

  • Someone may be honest but not trustworthy – e.g. careless, unreliable or lacking in empathy. They may make a good friend, but know their limits and be willing to say no (nicely but directly).
  • Completely untrustworthy people are rare. While being cautious, give plenty of space to let good people into your life.

*The 2.5 hours comes from an article I remember reading about a psychological study. My imperfect memory + most studies never being replicated => take this with a grain of salt.

An “Awww” moment from Malaysia

“I don’t want the whole world to know.”

Hey, here’s an idea – let’s put it on YouTube!

But seriously, even though it’s Malaysian government feel-good propaganda, glossing over the country’s institutionalized racism, it’s a sweet video.

(It won’t be obvious to some, but he’s ethnic Chinese, and she’s Malay. There’s a lot of historical and ongoing prejudice, but hopefully it’s on the way out.)

The changing meanings of marriage

Traditional marriage is a diverse and wondrous thing – in terms of ceremonies, day-to-day arrangements, how decisions are made, even how many people are in the marriage. The “traditional marriage” as a norm is a relatively recent arrangement, and isn’t a clear norm in religious texts.

The idea that marriages must be registered with a government is also not universal or traditional – common law marriage being the obvious exception. An obvious answer to all the fuss is to say that the government has nothing to do with the word “marriage”. Leave these decisions to civil society. If a religious institution will only marry straight couples, then gay couples can go somewhere more inclusive and be married there. 

As for tradition and history, brutal traditions around the world have been banned, from slavery and genital mutilation to foot-binding. Blatant discrimination is less extreme but no more defensible. However, an open exploration of marriage and its changing meanings is good thinking fodder for current debates. Here’s a good exploration on Australian radio: Marriage, Australian style – Rear Vision – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Audio and transcript available. Program summary:

Debate over same-sex marriage is nothing new. Just who can marry and the circumstances under which they can later divorce has been contested territory for as long as the institution of matrimony has been with us. 

The same

“If people in straight relationships feel that my song mirrors theirs, enough to play it at their wedding, then aren’t our experiences the same? Isn’t my experience of love as good and as valid as theirs? And, if so, then why can’t I get married too?… I’ve had the honour of singing at four of my friends’ weddings. I was flattered to be asked each time and humbled to be part of the celebration. I wrote a song years ago called Now I Love Someone which is a great wedding song. I was touched. I’m not sure if any of them knew I’d written it about a woman.”

So says singer Holly Throsby.

I’m about as conventional as it gets, in my personal orientation – and that is entirely irrelevant to my judgement of people like Holly Throsby. I have no vested interest in who she loves, other than to wish them happiness. Discriminatory laws against loving the “wrong” kind of person are absurd and offensive – and so last century.

Why is this even an issue? What regressive forces maintain fear and discrimination in this day and age? What will take before we no longer need to even say “GLBTI,” and can just say “people”?

Loomio – collaborative online decision-making

Loomio is a user-friendly tool for group decision-making.

Creating a world where it’s easy for anyone to participate in decisions that affect them.

Loomio.org appears to be an intelligently thought through approach to the thorny problem of online group democracy. It’s discussed in Can Social Software Change the World? Loomio Just Might – worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

“The key,” says Benjamin Knight, one of the members of the core team developing Loomio, “is building shared understanding before a decision is reached by the group.” He adds, “That means that when you get to the outcome, it’s not that everyone has to agree to the outcome, they just have to agree that its the best outcome the group can reach at that time.”

Murder is a “moral” act… so we need to question our moral impulses

Edit: Some friends on Facebook interpreted this post as saying that we’d be better off with no morals. No one is saying that here. I propose that we need a very small set of well considered morals, and a lot more ability to communicate, to negotiate. and to accept difference. Some argued that we need better morals rather than no morals (which is a straw man argument – no one has argued for no morals). I see that argument but I disagree, Morals regarding sexual orientation, or how a woman dresses or who she talks to, are best abandoned, and do not need anything to replace them other than mutual respect between us. 

I’ve edited the title to hopefully make it clearer that I’m questioning the moral impulses that arise from our monkey brains, rather than proposing that morals be entirely abandoned.)

Most murders and many wars stem from moral outrage and judgement* – primitive instincts that derive from a hodgepodge of causes.  Steven Pinker, psychologist, cognitive scientist who has written on why violence has declined) says that we’d be better off with less morality in the world.

  • I realize that could be a controversial claim, but motives for murder in Australia, for example, generally relate to a personal conflict rather than killing during a robbery, for example. 

Steven Pinker is professor of psychology at Harvard, and the author of:

among his other books.

A successful local food hub – what it takes

A local food story – an apparent success story – is Mad River Food Hub. The Co.Exist article is a nice long read, but for those like me who want to get to the nub, here are the highlights.

After a long intro about unprofitable and failing farmers’ markets, we get to local food hubs, and the hope that a system of local “food hubs” can make local food work by processing and bundling foods and delivering them to us. Wonderful idea – but like farmers markets, most food hubs are not thriving.

The only way farmers are going to make more money is by getting more value out of their products.

It comes down to this:

How do you “value-add”? “Through processing. Through delaying the availability of a product until you can get a higher price–storage. By getting your product to places that you haven’t had it in the past–distribution. And by running your business better–incubation.”

That’s Robin Morris, the brains behind the Mad River Food Hub. But even with these value-adds, Morris couldn’t make the numbers work for a profitable – economically sustainable – food hub, until he did the numbers for meat. Meat is a year-round business, with potential for significant value-add from processing and curing, products selling for up to $24/lb for dry-cured prosciutto.

Now, meat raises ethical issues, especially if you’re vegetarian. Personally, since I know people will continue to eat meat, I’m happy to see any move away from massive factory farms which cause enormous suffering. There’s no guarantee that local artisans will treat animals less cruelly, but at least there’s a likelihood of free range and organic products, which can be a significant improvement.

Back to the article – a key takeaway is that Morris approached his hub with a tough business sense, to make the hub and its food food producers profitable. The hub invested heavily in facilities so that its food-producing entrepreneurs didn’t have to – the hub is an incubator, allowing local food entrepreneurs access to the (expensive) infrastructure for launching their business, in exchange for a cut of the sales.

Finding a niche for the hub has also been key – the hub doesn’t compete at cut-throat price points to sell to institutional clients such as cafeterias. Of course – a small or mid-sized operation could never compete on price, and could only profitably supply an unusually understanding institution that committed to supporting ethical food.

In making this work, Robin Morris’s business sense and careful thinking about numbers and scale are crucial:

Cutting out the middleman to get more of the customer’s money into the hands of the farmer may sound great in a TED talk, but the reality is that there is no way to challenge the economies of scale of industrial food production, which is propped up by subsidies, kickbacks, and money-saving environmental shortcuts…

As a result, businesses are growing that otherwise would have no hope, and Mad River Food Hub operates without grants. The hub produces salamis, soups and “Rookie’s Root Beer” among products, and also packs and distributes farm produce. This approach makes local food possible. 

Says a soup maker, the first anchor client of the hub:

Just to fit out a place like this and meet USDA regulations? Let’s say $250,000… Easily. This allowed me to skip that gray area where I’d take on a lot of debt to ramp up and expand, and basically gamble that I could meet all the monthly payments.

This soup maker is also a CSA farmer, using the hub to pack and distribute produce. He sees the power of the infrastructure to make CSA usable and attractive:

The share shows up at work, it’s boxed, it’s got their name on it, and they walk out the door with it. The potential is really big… if I can drop it off on their doorstep, they sign right up.

This takes local food beyond the eco-nuts, those of us who go out of our way and pay extra to support it. With its efficiencies and its distribution system, it might just make for local food that is actually sustainable – because driving miles out of your way to pick up your organic veggies certainly isn’t.

See How To Build A Local Food System, To Make Local Food Actually Work | Co.Exist.

More reading on local food: Locally Deliciousbuy from Amazon or read on Appropedia.