Effective Meta-Altruism: Notes towards a new project

If we could make people more altruistic by some intervention, and roll out that measure at a public health level that would be a great contribution to altruism. Dare I say it, it would be a very effective contribution to altruism. I call this project Effective Meta-Altruism

There are a couple of mechanisms by which making people more altruistic would help:

1. People would donate more money and time, including to people outside their own society.

2. Generally speaking, in a society where people were nicer, people’s lives would go better for them.

3. An altruism bump, by encouraging cooperation, could lead to both a step increase in GDP (if the change happened all at once) and an increased growth rate over time.

4. People would select the policies they supported in a spirit of altruism. Now it’s possible that, by eleven-dimensional chess, this would actually make people worse off, but it’s not likely.

5. My strong suspicion, although the variables are too multifarious to think through explicitly, is that an altruistic civilization is less likely to destroy itself.

What better way to help, then, than to make more helpers?

Further, I think every one of goodwill and interested in politics has a strange reason to support the proposal that we find ways to make people altruistic. You should believe that it will help your politics win. After all, if you don’t believe a kinder people would prefer your politics then it’s quite odd that they’re your politics. If you’re a leftist, you should think this will finally let us move beyond the individualistic greed of capitalism. If you’re a centrist, you should think this will let everyone see each other’s point of view. If you’re a rightist, you should think it will help us overcome rampant hedonistic individualism.

The point of this piece isn’t to be a deep dive- it’s more like pointing to a 20-dollar bill on the ground. I want to provide a really quick sketch of what effective meta-alturism might look like. There are all sorts of reasons to think that raising the human population’s altruism by even 1% could be incredibly important. I invite you, then, to join in a research program directed towards making it possible.

The ideal form of this would be to find some nutritional issue that, if fixed, would increase altruism, or an environmental toxin preventing altruism, or a relatively easy and desirable educational intervention that increases altruism and leads to other positive outcomes making it desirable (e.g., reduced delinquency through metta bhavana meditation in schools).

Ideally, the variables found will not require control of the state to address. This is not because I don’t believe in substantial political programs- heaven forbid, I’m involved in a lot of them. It’s because the unique value of EA is not in outlining things we could do if we had control of the state, it’s in outlining things that we can do without the state, or in a position where we can only influence the state, but not directly take control of policy. It’s one thing to say “We should pressure the state to reduce lead levels” It’s another thing entirely to say “We should implement this welfare policy”. That big P political work must go on but outside EA.

Aggression as a proxy

So how to make people more altruistic? I don’t know. At the moment, the best lead I have is treating aggression as a proxy. I believe both that aggression is probably negatively correlated with altruism (though there are always exceptions) and that a society with reduced rates of violent crime would be a higher-trust society where people would be more altruistic. Scientists track negative variables like aggression much more than positive variables like altruism. Aggression isn’t a perfect proxy, but think of it as an example of what targeting would look like. If we get a research program going, a more direct target might be found, for the moment at least, I’m treating aggression as the primary lead. I note that personality factors connected negatively with aggression tend to be positively linked with altruism.

Lead: Blood lead is believed to be related to violent crime. Additionally, we have some evidence that it is directly related to agreeableness and conscientiousness, which could be proxies for altruism:

There’s also evidence of a link with psychopathy

There is already some work suggesting blood lead as a cause area.

Lithium: Increased lithium in tap water has been associated with lower crime. In this study, for example, the most serious violent crimes (murder and rape) were half as common in high lithium areas.

Thyroid hormones: There is evidence that free T3 and T4 are associated with aggression. I put this out there as an interesting lead, though I’m not sure how one would ‘fix’ it.

Infections during childhood: May cause higher rates of criminality. One study found that infections affecting the CNS were associated with an increase in criminality of 20%.

Preventing and treating TBI, especially childhood TBI: TBIs are associated with violent behavior even when acquired in adulthood. It’s possible that TBIs have an even more powerful effect when sustained during childhood.

Environmental neurotoxins- There are over 214 environmental neurotoxins being tracked; it is extremely likely some of them cause aggression.

Civil society: I have a strong suspicion that experimental interventions that gather people together and help form a community might reduce violence and increase altruism, but I need to do more research on this.

Overall thoughts: The literature, like most literature in social science, is underdeveloped relative to where it would need to be. Controls are always difficult. Causation is a dubious matter to say the least. Experiments are not possible, or exceedingly difficult. Even the blood lead stuff, by far the most developed, is still at least somewhat questionable. Still, even in this stuff that I’ve turned up, there are things to work on. What else is waiting to be found?

Ethics and reputation

Any program to make a better world by altering people’s personalities better watch its step if it is not to offend everyone, and rightly so. One way to do this is to stick to measures like alleviating nutritional deficiencies, removing pollutants, and preventing traumatic brain injuries and other health problems. In the frame of everyday ethics, these things are unambiguously good.

Educational interventions might also be permissible so long as they focus on things that are regarded as nearly unambiguously good in public reason and contain nothing regarded as ideological content. Metta Bhavana meditation might qualify here, although it’s not quite so neutral as removing lead. The ethics of education is a complex topic about which I know little, but Metta Bhavana meditation seems less controversial than many other ethical matters that are taught of in school.

The political philosophy of a project like this seems, to say the least, fascinating.

Tasks

1. Theorise the ethical and reputational risks, and what is permissible.

2. Find instruments with which it is practically and ethically possible to intervene to increase altruism.

3. Design optimal intervention strategies

4. Carry them out.