Please consider that any views presented in this presentation are my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the position of any particular organization. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Alexander Herwix at herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de. Doing Good Better: What We Can Learn From Effective Altruism EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Agenda 1. Introduction and Motivation 2. Research Overview 3. A Short Overview of Effective Altruism 4. What We Can Learn from Effective Altruism 5. Discussion and Outlook EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Introduction and Motivation The self-concious view of IS research: we have the potential § to be great but are we really there, yet? • In competition with other strong fields (e.g., computer science, economics, organization science) • No common IS paradigm to speak of (e.g., different communities doing their thing) • Challenge of tracing the impact of research on practice Motivation Show the IS community a way to become more confident by focusing more on having the greatest possible impact. EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Research Overview Assumption The IS community wants to improve the world. Architects want to build better buildings, medics want to help people live longer and healthier lives, engineers want to build more effective technological systems to improve efficiency and artists want to stimulate our subtler senses with their work. IS scholars and practitioners should be concerned with how to use ICTs to help make a better world, where everybody has the opportunity and capability to use technologies to make better lives for themselves, their communities and the world in general. [6] Research Question How can the IS community most effectively improve the world? Research Approach Examine and learn from Effective Altruism (EA) as a reference discipline focused on the core question: How can we do the most good with the resources we have? EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
A Short Overview of Effective Altruism Effective Altruism is a question. § How can we do the most good with the resources we have? Effective Altruism is a network. Effective Altruism is a research program. EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
A Short Overview of Effective Altruism General Features of the World Capacity to Feel Pleasure and Pain § Future Considerations § Variation in Cost-Effectiveness § Ethical Decision-Making Idealized Ethical Decision-Making § Practical Ethical Decision-Making § EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Capacity to Feel Pleasure and Pain When do things become ethically relevant (i.e., moral agents)? The creation of pleasure and avoidance of pain is generally considered to be an important value in all plausible theories of value that underpin systematic moral considerations [12]. How far do we expand the moral circle? + + + Only Humans Only Animals Substrate Independent Consciousness EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Future Considerations How can we determine the value of an action? The observable value of any action today is determined by what happens in the future [12]. Climate Change Earth Exists For Billions of Years € Poverty Relief Meteor Hits Earth in 20 Years What actions today are most important? If one sees future people as morally relevant and considers that in a positive (post-human) future [17] most people who will have ever lived have not yet been born, all actions which help to positively shape the far future may be of overwhelming importance [18]. EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Variation in Cost-Effectiveness Are all actions that are valuable equally worth doing? According to the best estimates resulting from empirically grounded cost-effectiveness analyses [11, 22] there are significant variations in the cost-effectiveness of interventions focused on improving the world [23, 24]. Given general constraints on available resources, people in EA generally argue for a moral imperative to use the resources available wisely and in a cost-effective manner [23]. The Guiding Principles of Effective Altruism Commitment Scientific Openness Integrity Collaborative to Others Mindset Spirit EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Idealized Ethical Decision-Making How should perfectly rational agents act? Epistemology – How to form beliefs given available evidence? § Ethics – What is valuable? § Decision Theory – How to reach a decision given values and believes? § Real Situation Model Situation EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Practical Ethical Decision-Making How can we have the biggest (marginal) impact? Structure the problem in terms of problems , interventions , and focus areas [12]. § § Assess the relevance of focus areas to identify the most promissing opportunities in the overall problem space in terms of the likelihood of containing great opportunities for doing good. § Use cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit estimates to identify the most promissing interventions. The Importance/Tractability/Neglectedness (ITN) Framework [33] Importance Neglectedness Tractability EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Practical Ethical Decision-Making What should I do to have the biggest impact? Structure the problem in terms of problems , interventions , and focus areas [12]. § § Assess the relevance of focus areas to identify the most promissing opportunities in the overall problem space in terms of the likelihood of containing great opportunities for doing good. § Use cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit estimates to identify the most promissing interventions. Current EA focus areas Global Poverty and Improving the Animal Welfare Health Long-term Future (Existential Risk) EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
What We Can Learn from Effective Altruism Focus on Shared Goals, Principles and Measures § EA demonstrates how a sophisticated and polycentric research program can be built around a strongly shared ethical agenda focused on a single core question [7, 27]. § A set of shared principles (i.e., commitment to others, scientific mindset, openness, integrity, and collaborative spirit) guides major institutions in the movement [8] and inspires individuals. § United by the common goal of finding ways to do the most good and guided by the shared principles, EAs find it in their own best interest to develop, establish, and update shared measures to be able to better understand, benchmark and compare how they can do the most good [11, 29]. Shared goals, principles and measures help to coordinate and prioritize between possibly diverse § research programs. Thus, they complement recent work on a systematic high impact research model (SHIR) [31] which elaborated on how to build (independent) high impact IS research programs. EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
What We Can Learn from Effective Altruism Emphasize Cause Neutrality and Focus Area Selection § Cause neutrality describes the stance that no cause (i.e., focus area) is by any rule, definition or dogma more important than any other cause, only the consequences of working on a cause should determine our actions [8, 12, 14, 25]. § Cause neutrality enables the most effective use of resources [25] as well as creates an expectation of constant adaptation and reprioritization as new evidence is assimilated and views are updated. § The ITN framework helps to operationalize cause neutrality and coordinates individual interests as it presents a rational avenue to discuss allocation conflicts and mediate between them. § The ITN framework can be applied in IS research and could provide a clear conceptual foundation for comparing and choosing between specific directions and focus areas in IS research. § EA focus areas can guide IS research (i.e., global health and development, animal welfare, improvement of the long-term future). EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
Discussion and Outlook Discussion We highlight a possible link between IS identity and impact and provide support for Walsham’s [6] § call for an ethical agenda for IS research. We show how applying EA concepts and ideas could help IS research convert its latent comparative § advantage in investigating and shaping IT-related phenomena into often missed “real world” impact [6, 31] by focusing on the most ethically-valuable opportunities. However, we only make the very first, tiny steps into a highly challenging and entrenched topic. § EMoWI 2019 | Siegen, Germany | 24.02.2019 | Alexander Herwix | herwix@wiso.uni-koeln.de
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