The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism

The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does is the first edited volume to critically engage with Effective Altruism (EA). It brings together writers from diverse activist and scholarly backgrounds to explore a variety of unique grassroots movements and community organizing efforts. By drawing attention to these responses and to particular cases of human and animal harms, this book represents a powerful call to attend to different voices and projects and to elevate activist traditions that EA lacks the resources to assess and threatens to squelch. The contributors reveal the weakness inherent within the ready-made, top-down solutions that EA offers in response to many global problems-and offers in their place substantial descriptions of more meaningful and just social engagement.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: Amia Srinivisan Introduction: Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen Acknowledgements 1 How Effective Altruism Fails Community-Based Activism Brenda Sanders 2 Effective Altruism's Unsuspecting 21st Century Colonialism Simone De Lima 3 Anti-Blackness and the Effective Altruist Christopher Sebastian 4 Animal Advocacy's Stockholm Syndrome DeCoriolis, Aaron S. Gross, Steve J. Gross, and Joseph Tuminello (Farm Forward) 5 Who Counts? Effective Altruism and the Problem of Numbers in the History of American Wildlife Conservation Michael D. Wise 6 Diversifying Effective Altruism Longshots in Animal Advocacy: An Invitation to Prioritize Black Vegans, Higher Education, and Religious Communities Matthew C. Halteman 7 A Christian Critique of the Effective Altruism Approach to Animal Philanthropy David L. Clough 8 Queer Eye on the EA Guys pattrice jones 9 A Feminist-Ethics-of-Care Critique of Effective Altruism Carol J. Adams 10 The Empty Promises of Cultured Meat Elan Abrell 11 How 'Alternative Proteins' Create a Private Solution to a Public Problem Michele Simon 12 The Power of Love to Transform Animal Lives: The Deception of Animal Quantification Krista Hiddema 13 Our Partners, The Animals: Reflections from a Farmed Animal Sanctuary Kathy Stevens 14 The Wisdom Gained from Animals Who Self-Liberate Rachel McCrystal 15 Effective Altruism and the Reified Mind John Sanbonmatsu 16 Against 'Effective Altruism' Alice Crary 17 The Change We Need Lori Gruen Coda: Future-oriented Effective Altruism: What's wrong with longtermism? Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen

About the Author :
Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. Lori Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University where she founded and coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Carol J. Adams is a feminist scholar and activist whose work explores the cultural construction of overlapping and interconnected oppressions, as well as the ethics of care.

Review :
The entries of this book truly help draw attention to just how dangerous EA is...All in all, reading this book would benefit just about anyone. The story of Effective Altruism is told here not by its proponents, but by those engaged in liberation struggles and justice movements that operate outside of Effective Altruism's terms. There is every possibility that Effective Altruists will ignore what these voices have to say…That would be a deep shame, and what's more, a betrayal of a real commitment to bring about a better world. Effective Altruism has made big moral promises that are often undermined by its unwillingness to listen attentively to the voices of its detractors, especially those from marginalized communities. In this vital, stimulating volume, we hear from some of the most important of these voices on some of the most important criticisms of Effective Altruism, including its racism, colonialism, and technocratic rationalism. This book is essential, inviting reading for both Effective Altruists and their critics. What could possibly go wrong when a largely white and male alliance of academics, business and nonprofit arrivistes, and obscenely rich donors reduce complex situations to numbers and plug those numbers into equations that claim to offer moral and strategic clarity about how we should live in a suffering world? In this book, dissenting activists and academics speak passionately and plainly about what has gone wrong This is a collection of works that embodies the both/and approach: that there can be a unity in purpose, divergence in how that is achieved, and an acknowledgment of the value and legitimacy of all those efforts.