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Effective Altruism & Catholicism

Status: highly speculative, 1-hour braindump; curious which of these points would be valuable for me to flesh out, or what seems flat-out wrong.

I identify as an EA. Unlike 97% of you, I also identify as a practicing Catholic

When I mentioned this at a recent meetup, someone was like “oh you should meet <the literal other practicing Catholic>”
Weird, right? 1B Catholics among 8b people imply 12% base rates.

Am I qualified to write this post? Shrug.

EA credentials: Founder at Manifold Markets, more than half our funding is from EA sources. Took the GWWC pledge.
Catholic credentials: I still go to church every week; pescatarian diet inspired by Lenten Fridays
Notably: Not super involved with either community; most of my friends are neither EA nor Catholic

FWIW, more EA than Catholic at this point

Why EAs should learn from Catholicism

Catholicism has succeeded

If EA aims to be effective, we may want to study its success

And, of course, avoid its failures

Tithing is a well-established idea (this is why I personally took the GWWC pledge)
Catholicism and EA are both demanding

There’s a lot of actual alignment!

Alignment between EA and Catholicism

Look at the Nicene Creed

God

AGI? Creator of our simulation?

Sin

Importance of morality; that there is a right and a wrong thing to do, and we often do wrong, but we can strive to do right

Hell: X-Risk. Heaven: Utopia
Resurrection/eternal life: If we get this right, we get it right forever
Holy Spirit

Ever present, always with us

Kinds of things EA and Catholic Church demand of members

To maintain alignment in service to EA

“Love your god with all your heart, soul, spirit, might”

To equate the desires of other people with their own desires

“Love your neighbor as yourself”

To do the most good (parable of talents)

Warning: May be motivated reasoning; eg tempting think I was right all along by practicing Catholicism

But occasionally, it’s good to have something to motivate your reasoning, esp to bring up a bunch of points outside the overton window

Things EAs can learn from Catholicism

Commitment

Closing out of total opportunity space in order to achieve a group goal
Schelling point/game theoretic stuff: how to operationalize it
Commandments

You shall not have any other gods: EA is not compatible with some beliefs, like hedonism
Love your neighbor as yourself: Utilitarianism in a nutshell
Do not kill/steal/covet relationships: Universalizability
Honor your parents: importance of respecting ancestors.

We talk about protecting the future, but what about the past? Out of 100B humans to have ever existed, we are only 8B.
“What we owe the past”

Rituals

Sacraments

Confirmation - I stand up and avow that I commit to being part of this movement
Confession - Speaking to someone about what I’ve done wrong ⇒ having an outlet for forgiveness; acknowledging where I’ve made mistakes
Priesthood - I am now committed to serve the community
Matrimony - I am now committed to serve this other person

Fasting, suffering

Suffering is not a thing to be avoided in your personal life

Holidays

“More Rationalist holidays”

Rituals are a unifying force for bringing members together

Worry: are they exclusionary?

Community

How to coordinate on a massive group problem: keep everyone on the same page
You have to go to mass every week, or you go to hell. This is what I literally believed as a kid

Then: After mass, you get to eat snacks!
And then: Sit in a classroom with a cohort of people you like, and learn from a teacher

Rationality has dojos? EA should have churches.

Enough “independent alignment research”, that’s not how anything actually gets done

Physical churches

This place that you can show up to and get help
This place you know anyone is always welcome
This place where we set aside earthly concerns and focus on the mission
Tragedy that REACH dissolved

Service/Volunteering

What, you mean ineffective altruism?

Aside: How Austin invented EA

7th grade. Catholic mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico: sending a bunch of kids to build a house for a single impoverished family
But the inefficiency/bizarreness of that struck me later, in my adult life. What was salient to teenage me:

We organized a car wash where dozens of teens and their parents got together, big hubbub, raised: $200
Remember thinking: Multiplying out the number of hours we spent (12 x 6 = 72) we were making less than $3/hour
Wait, why didn’t we just go... work at McDonald’s?

Okay now here’s why volunteering can be good: Church spread because nonbelievers could see what believers DID.

Not by fiat or force, but by “hey look, there’s this other amazing way we can live”
Missionaries - going to spread the word, yes, but mostly by integrating into the community and serving them
“They will know we are Christians by our love”
Catholic church emphasizes good works (Christian emphasizes belief, more)

What does EA accomplish, that other people would care about?

“Grow EA size”, “Raise money for EA” ⇒ not very impressive; from the outside looks like this group trying to accumulate status and wealth for itself.

Cannot worship both money and God

Critique from my smart AI researcher friend: what has alignment accomplished in the last 6 years, for ~$50m spent? Eg Since Concrete Problems was published.

There’s no writeup I can point to!

A call: the focus on developing world interventions should not be relegated as low-status among EA folks, in favor of the weird contrarian XRisk/Longtermism stuff

I think everyone would espouse agreement, but huge gap between stated values and experienced life
Been thinking I should visit Africa at some point...

Humility

You are not too important to serve other people in ways large and small
You are not too smart to ignore the things that other people have to say
(I struggle with this a lot, as a fairly confident/arrogant person; routinely count pride among my sins)

Explainer: Catholicism vs Christianity

My summary: Catholics share a unity of tradition AND a unity of institution

(Catholic means unity)
The “institution” half is really really important!
Pope leads bishops leads cardinals leads priests leads the congregation

Christians memorize the bible; Catholics regard that as a really “christian” thing to do

Most of my learning was through a body of interpretation on top of the Bible

Centuries of discourse among the most learned scholars of the day

Yes, an older civilization is dumber than a newer one, we shouldn’t idolize the words of the past. But - discount rates. Ancestors have thought a lot about the same problems that we think about.
Reason to privilege their knowledge: some things that haven’t changed very much (eg human nature, group psychology)

Action items

Internal:

Build (or buy) some churches
Support priests (community managers)
Run a weekly service

External:

Go out and volunteer (unconditionally help people who are not EAs)

Understand their goals, and help them achieve them
EA assessment of climate issues - people care a lot about these!
EA assessment of racial/systemic issues, theories of change

???

Aside: I’m not interested in...

Defending the epistemics of “did X miracle actually happen”; a miracle being something inexplicable under known physics
Having my one individual quirky thoughts be taken as representative for Catholics as a whole

Imagine if someone did this to you for EA. “You’re an EA, what do you think about X?” “Uh......”

Caveats

Lots of things the Catholic church does is bad; eg:

Power allocation to women (no women priests or popes)
Respect for LGBT persons (my brother is gay! my sister is trans! guess who stayed!)

This really screwed my family over

Tolerance of corruption and abuse?

I don’t know much about this, not sure if just newsworthy or actually endemic

But: It’s always easy to focus on the bad stuff

I believe the church did an excellent job at raising the moral waterline

Now there’s more disruptive innovation

If you only pay attention to some movement’s flaws, you ignore the 90% of stuff that they do well

Cf Zvi Mowshowitz as director of FDA
Cf Easy to outperform Scott Alexander by copying all his predictions and placing bets on where you disagree

Not a reason to ignore its methods

Inspirations

Appendix

Thanks to X for editing and Y for ideas can sometimes turn into a laundry list of “oh look at all the cool people I know who will vouch for me”
But also credit is really motivating and just. I hate not being credited. Don’t know how to solve this problem.