Philosopher Leif Wenar on effective (i.e., short-term, measurable) altruism

A pretty wicked takedown, but basically right.  It turns out even the emphasis on short-term measurable effects involves bad measurements.   An excerpt:

Where [Toby] Ord was earnest, [Will] MacAskill was shameless. “HOW YOU CAN SAVE HUNDREDS OF LIVES” is the name of a chapter in his pitch book for EA. The book tells you that you can be a hero by giving to charities in the EA way—you’ll be like the guy who pulls people from a burning building, it says, or even like Oskar Schindler. Your heroic donations can do “a tremendous amount of good.”

MacAskill admits that many experts are skeptics about aid. Yet he gushes that aid has been “incredibly beneficial”:

    "The claim that there is “not much to show for [aid]” is simply false. Even among the “bottom billion”—the population of countries that have experienced the weakest economic growth over the last few decades—quality of life has increased dramatically. In 1950, life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa was just 36.7 years. Now it’s 56 years, a gain of almost 50% … In reality, a tiny amount of aid has been spent, and there have been dramatic increases in the welfare of the world’s poorest people."

Now this is pure hooey. Even aid’s biggest boosters would cringe at the implication that aid had caused a 50 percent increase in sub-Saharan life expectancies. And what follows this astonishing statement is a tangle of qualifications and irrelevancies trailing off into the footnotes. To anyone who knows even a little about aid, it’s like MacAskill has tattooed “Not Serious” on his forehead.

Do read the whole essay.