In my experience, a pretty common implicit view is that charitable giving is like fashion, in that it is about expressing who you are, what sorts of causes you empathize with, etc. In many circles, there's much more status to supporting a cool cause with a personal connection you relate to, and the questions of 'how helpful is that charity at promoting its cause + how important is the cause area' are basically unasked. I hope we come to ask those questions more, at least of ourselves!
I don't agree that point 2 is intuitively true to most people. I think it's a normal part of human psychology to value some lives more than others -- e.g., if I have to choose between saving my wife or saving a group of ten strangers, I'm going to save my wife.
But it wouldn't *just* be because you felt like it. If you could either save two strangers or ten, it would be wrong to arbitrarily pick the two just because you felt like it.
The fact that a choice is emotional doesn't make it arbitrary. My desire to keep my wife alive isn't some random or passing whim -- if you're one of the unlucky people in the group of ten, you don't need to be psychic to predict what I'm going to do.
We can stipulate that both groups consist of strangers if you like, but I don't feel the same about all strangers, either, so there will still be cases where I will predictably choose to save the smaller group, e.g. if it's ten adults versus two children.
I think (2) is misleading. People do not typically just cboose cbarities "because they feel like it." They don't "just feel like" saving fewer lives.
Instead, typically someone gives to charity due to virtues they have, and those virtues are imperfect and fickle. Compassion and empathy do not respond cleanly to numbers.
So, I think (2) is false, both because it confuses a character judgment with a judgment about action and because it seems confused about why people generally give to charity in the first place.
If I imagine you can push one of two buttons, one of which saves 11 random lives and the other 10, then it seems as if someone who would choose to save the 10 rather than the 11 would just be a monster who prefers that more people die. This does seem wrong, because you shouldn't be such a monster.
Yet, if I imagine that this same person now can see and interact with the 10 but not the 11, and those 10 (including some children) beg the person to save them and highlight some things they have to live for, they no longer seem like a monster when they prefer to save the 10. They are merely a flawed human acting out of flawed virtue.
I think the later case is a lot more like typical charity giving, and I don't think they violate any moral duty to save more lives. Compare: It is morally permissible to refuse to kill someone even to save 10,000 lives, though killing them would be justified and do a great deal more good in the world.
In typical cases the person would not be a moral monster for refusing to kill the 1 to save the 10,000. However, we can imagine moral monsters who just prefer the 10,000 die, and something would be wrong in those cases, but the wrongness would rightfully be attributed to their character, not a duty being unfulfilled.
Still, even if there is no moral duty to save the 11 rather than the 10, I can make sense of the fact thaf people who save the 10 are making a moral mistake. This is because virtues, while flawed. point in particular directions. Even if courage fails, it still points towards confronting what is difficult but important to confront.
Thus, when the person who can interact with the 10 saves the 10 rather than the 11, they are in some sense betraying their own compassion and empathy even as they act on these virtues, since the more compassionate and empathetic thing to do would be to save the most lives here.
Yet, since there is no obligation to save the 11 instead of the 10 and since their flawed compassion and emparhy does not indicate that their moral capacities are working improperly (they work the same as they do in normal people), there is no moral wrong here. They neither act wrongly, nor are they a bad person.
Instead, they are simply morally flawed like we all are, and can do better like we all can. And they have good moral reasons to do better, too. If they followed the direction in which those reasons point, they would do much greater good in the world and live much better lives as a result.
1. All lives are not equivalent, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to point out.
2. Charities can be easily ranked on performance metrics like money to programs and overall effectiveness and in that regard service organizations like Lions, Rotary, Shriners eg score way higher than any high profile charities.
I have the intuition you share in 2, but I'm not sure that I share the intuition if what the two people are doing is different enough. If you could either save one life from drowning or cure ten non-fatal but very painful conditions, I'm not sure that there is a right answer there. I'm not sure that there isn't one either, but I think for your argument to hold you need an intuition that this holds true even under different sources of value.
But I'm not sure that most people share my view, or that it's consistent enough to base an ethical system around. I'm not that confident here either, but I'd lean towards saying that you have to save one life from drowning instead of painting the Mona Lisa. So I'm not sure what to make of this besides that my intuitions are kind of confusing here.
They are not alike cases in practice because some lives are worth multiples of others and it's not even close while others fall within the social contract. I agree with the general point that people should evaluate charitable spending a lot more consistently then they do, but the total absence of an effective altruism that will openly tally up just how much more a first worlder is worth means that intransigence might be civilizationally load-bearing.
Are there any of them with civil libertarian tendencies and who didn't immediately hop onto the vaping scare? Also, 1st worlders are not all I care about, I just care a lot less about third worlders. Find me say a charity effectively tracking down African genocidaires for the Hague and no... stopping illegal immigration is similarly a crime against humanity subversion arm and I'll be happy to endorse them for whatever that's worth. I will also go on the record as pro-PEPFAR.
First world people consume more calories, use more energy, and generate more greenhouse gases than third world people. Roughly 1.5x, 10x, and 8x. The calories we do eat are also created much less efficiently (livestock uses 80% of agricultural land and produces only 20% of the calories), so if everyone ate like Americans do, 140% of the earths habitable land would be needed for food production.
These are just facts. Rationalize this as needed to maintain your worldview.
Huh, now that I think about it maybe we need to turn a few 1st worlders into third worlders. This is a very hard choice, but since I cannot argue with your logic... I suggest we begin with welfare recipients. We don't even have to make it a race thing. Ok not, deportation. How about every welfare recipient has to move to Africa... or comparable racial region of origin. We can host the white ones in Ukraine at a considerable discount or even better Russia! Uninterested... well that's because this was not your real objection, you just despise the very concept of some humans being innately worth more than others.
In my experience, a pretty common implicit view is that charitable giving is like fashion, in that it is about expressing who you are, what sorts of causes you empathize with, etc. In many circles, there's much more status to supporting a cool cause with a personal connection you relate to, and the questions of 'how helpful is that charity at promoting its cause + how important is the cause area' are basically unasked. I hope we come to ask those questions more, at least of ourselves!
I don't agree that point 2 is intuitively true to most people. I think it's a normal part of human psychology to value some lives more than others -- e.g., if I have to choose between saving my wife or saving a group of ten strangers, I'm going to save my wife.
Agree but then it wouldn't be just because you have a preference. It would be because you have especially strong obligations to your family.
No, it would be because I love her and desire for her to go on living -- i.e., because I feel like it.
But it wouldn't *just* be because you felt like it. If you could either save two strangers or ten, it would be wrong to arbitrarily pick the two just because you felt like it.
The fact that a choice is emotional doesn't make it arbitrary. My desire to keep my wife alive isn't some random or passing whim -- if you're one of the unlucky people in the group of ten, you don't need to be psychic to predict what I'm going to do.
We can stipulate that both groups consist of strangers if you like, but I don't feel the same about all strangers, either, so there will still be cases where I will predictably choose to save the smaller group, e.g. if it's ten adults versus two children.
Wait you'll save 2 random children over ten adults all things being equal?
All things are never equal, but yes, I'd probably save the two kids.
> If you have two options to save lives, you don’t have the license to save the fewer rather than the greater, because you feel like it.
This would require me to spend infinite time preventing soil nematode suffering, so I reject it.
I think (2) is misleading. People do not typically just cboose cbarities "because they feel like it." They don't "just feel like" saving fewer lives.
Instead, typically someone gives to charity due to virtues they have, and those virtues are imperfect and fickle. Compassion and empathy do not respond cleanly to numbers.
So, I think (2) is false, both because it confuses a character judgment with a judgment about action and because it seems confused about why people generally give to charity in the first place.
If I imagine you can push one of two buttons, one of which saves 11 random lives and the other 10, then it seems as if someone who would choose to save the 10 rather than the 11 would just be a monster who prefers that more people die. This does seem wrong, because you shouldn't be such a monster.
Yet, if I imagine that this same person now can see and interact with the 10 but not the 11, and those 10 (including some children) beg the person to save them and highlight some things they have to live for, they no longer seem like a monster when they prefer to save the 10. They are merely a flawed human acting out of flawed virtue.
I think the later case is a lot more like typical charity giving, and I don't think they violate any moral duty to save more lives. Compare: It is morally permissible to refuse to kill someone even to save 10,000 lives, though killing them would be justified and do a great deal more good in the world.
In typical cases the person would not be a moral monster for refusing to kill the 1 to save the 10,000. However, we can imagine moral monsters who just prefer the 10,000 die, and something would be wrong in those cases, but the wrongness would rightfully be attributed to their character, not a duty being unfulfilled.
Still, even if there is no moral duty to save the 11 rather than the 10, I can make sense of the fact thaf people who save the 10 are making a moral mistake. This is because virtues, while flawed. point in particular directions. Even if courage fails, it still points towards confronting what is difficult but important to confront.
Thus, when the person who can interact with the 10 saves the 10 rather than the 11, they are in some sense betraying their own compassion and empathy even as they act on these virtues, since the more compassionate and empathetic thing to do would be to save the most lives here.
Yet, since there is no obligation to save the 11 instead of the 10 and since their flawed compassion and emparhy does not indicate that their moral capacities are working improperly (they work the same as they do in normal people), there is no moral wrong here. They neither act wrongly, nor are they a bad person.
Instead, they are simply morally flawed like we all are, and can do better like we all can. And they have good moral reasons to do better, too. If they followed the direction in which those reasons point, they would do much greater good in the world and live much better lives as a result.
Good stuff as usual
Two points:
1. All lives are not equivalent, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to point out.
2. Charities can be easily ranked on performance metrics like money to programs and overall effectiveness and in that regard service organizations like Lions, Rotary, Shriners eg score way higher than any high profile charities.
I have the intuition you share in 2, but I'm not sure that I share the intuition if what the two people are doing is different enough. If you could either save one life from drowning or cure ten non-fatal but very painful conditions, I'm not sure that there is a right answer there. I'm not sure that there isn't one either, but I think for your argument to hold you need an intuition that this holds true even under different sources of value.
But I'm not sure that most people share my view, or that it's consistent enough to base an ethical system around. I'm not that confident here either, but I'd lean towards saying that you have to save one life from drowning instead of painting the Mona Lisa. So I'm not sure what to make of this besides that my intuitions are kind of confusing here.
Somewhere else on the internet there is a debate about the relative tax-efficiency of different charity strategies.
Lives saved? C'mon man!
They are not alike cases in practice because some lives are worth multiples of others and it's not even close while others fall within the social contract. I agree with the general point that people should evaluate charitable spending a lot more consistently then they do, but the total absence of an effective altruism that will openly tally up just how much more a first worlder is worth means that intransigence might be civilizationally load-bearing.
If you just care about saving first world lives then I would recommend giving to charities that provide try to reduce smoking in wealthy countries.
Are there any of them with civil libertarian tendencies and who didn't immediately hop onto the vaping scare? Also, 1st worlders are not all I care about, I just care a lot less about third worlders. Find me say a charity effectively tracking down African genocidaires for the Hague and no... stopping illegal immigration is similarly a crime against humanity subversion arm and I'll be happy to endorse them for whatever that's worth. I will also go on the record as pro-PEPFAR.
First world people consume more calories, use more energy, and generate more greenhouse gases than third world people. Roughly 1.5x, 10x, and 8x. The calories we do eat are also created much less efficiently (livestock uses 80% of agricultural land and produces only 20% of the calories), so if everyone ate like Americans do, 140% of the earths habitable land would be needed for food production.
These are just facts. Rationalize this as needed to maintain your worldview.
Huh, now that I think about it maybe we need to turn a few 1st worlders into third worlders. This is a very hard choice, but since I cannot argue with your logic... I suggest we begin with welfare recipients. We don't even have to make it a race thing. Ok not, deportation. How about every welfare recipient has to move to Africa... or comparable racial region of origin. We can host the white ones in Ukraine at a considerable discount or even better Russia! Uninterested... well that's because this was not your real objection, you just despise the very concept of some humans being innately worth more than others.