The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism PDF
Preview The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism
The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does Critical Essays on Effective Altruism Edited by CAROL J. ADAMS, ALICE CRARY, AND LORI GRUEN Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Adams, Carol J., editor. Title: The good it promises, the harm it does : critical essays on effective altruism / Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen, eds. Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022040672 (print) | LCCN 2022040673 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197655702 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197655696 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197655726 (epub) | ISBN 9780197655733 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197655719 Subjects: LCSH: Animal rights—United States. | Anti-racism—United States. | Altruism—United States. Classification: LCC HV4764 .G68 2023 (print) | LCC HV4764 (ebook) | DDC 179/.3—dc23/eng/20221123 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040672 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040673 DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197655696.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America Contents Foreword ix Amia Srinivasan Acknowledgments xiii About the Contributors xv Introduction xxi Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen 1. How Effective Altruism Fails Community-B ased Activism 1 Brenda Sanders 2. Effective Altruism’s Unsuspecting Twenty-F irst- Century Colonialism 8 Simone de Lima 3. Anti- Blackness and the Effective Altruist 26 Christopher Sebastian 4. Animal Advocacy’s Stockholm Syndrome 41 Andrew deCoriolis, Aaron S. Gross, Joseph Tuminello, Steve J. Gross, and Jennifer Channin 5. Who Counts? Effective Altruism and the Problem of Numbers in the History of American Wildlife Conservation 59 Michael D. Wise 6. Diversifying Effective Altruism’s Long Shots in Animal Advocacy: An Invitation to Prioritize Black Vegans, Higher Education, and Religious Communities 76 Matthew C. Halteman vi Contents 7. A Christian Critique of the Effective Altruism Approach to Animal Philanthropy 94 David L. Clough 8. Queer Eye on the EA Guys 108 pattrice jones 9. A Feminist Ethics of Care Critique of Effective Altruism 127 Carol J. Adams 10. The Empty Promises of Cultured Meat 149 Elan Abrell 11. How “Alternative Proteins” Create a Private Solution to a Public Problem 160 Michele Simon 12. The Power of Love to Transform Animal Lives: The Deception of Animal Quantification 176 Krista Hiddema 13. Our Partners, The Animals: Reflections from a Farmed Animal Sanctuary 189 Kathy Stevens 14. The Wisdom Gained from Animals Who Self- Liberate 198 Rachel McCrystal 15. Effective Altruism and the Reified Mind 204 John Sanbonmatsu 16. Against “Effective Altruism” 225 Alice Crary 17. The Change We Need 248 Lori Gruen Contents vii Coda— Future- Oriented Effective Altruism: What’s Wrong with Longtermism? 265 Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen Index 271 Foreword Amia Srinivasan The movement known as “Effective Altruism” is true to its name in at least one way: it has proven enormously effective at promoting itself and winning powerful adherents. The story of the consequences of Effective Altruism’s success has so far been told by those adherents. For them, the success of Effective Altruism is near- definitionally a moral good. Effective Altruism, after all, is a movement committed to doing good in a maximally efficient way, so it might appear to follow that the more sincerely committed adherents it has, the better the world must become. But this rea- soning assumes that Effective Altruism—u nderstood not as an ideal type but as an actually existing social formation— in fact achieves its stated commitments. What if Effective Altruism, whatever the intentions of its leaders and followers, systematically harmed those it promised to help, eroding democratic decision- making, creating perverse incentives, and reinforcing the very structures that pro- duce the suffering it purports to target? What if Effective Altruism presupposed an impoverished conception of the good, and of the “reason” it seeks to harness for its promotion? What if Effective Altruism had the ideological function of buttressing systems of oppression, all the while reassuring its adherents—t hemselves very often beneficiaries of those systems—t hat they were morally unimpeachable? These are some of the questions raised when the story of Effective Altruism’s success is told not by its proponents, but by those engaged in liberation struggles and justice movements that operate outside Effective Altruism’s terms. These struggles,
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