Against Responsibility: The Essay Arguing EA's Universal-Responsibility Mindset Causes Harm
NathanpmYoung · x · 2026-09-18
Ben Hoffman's 2017 essay 'Against Responsibility' is being recirculated amid recent events, challenging effective altruism's core mindset.
- The author observes well-meaning people trying to 'take responsibility for the future of the universe' — an attitude he argues causes real harm.
- Core argument: taking responsibility means seeking control; universal responsibility implies universal control, and maximizing control structurally produces an adversarial stance toward other agents and decision paralysis.
- He contrasts EA at its best (principled reasoning like Katja Grace's vegetarianism analysis) with its worst: moral angst over coffee spending, truth-bending for 'the greater good,' social pressure on others, and escalating resource claims without a verified track record.
- Conclusion: we need a practical moral philosophy for strategies that benefit from other benevolent agents rather than treating them as objects of control.
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