Are EA billionaire philanthropists actually effective in their 'altruism'? (spoilers: no)
Are EA billionaire philanthropists actually effective in their 'altruism'? (spoilers: no)
Charity, power, and who gets to define “good”
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Effective Altruism is just code for technofeudalism.
Free Market Altruism
Utilitarianism for people who think the humanities are pointless
The Peter Singer EA concept is incredible solid and well argued, such a shame it's been stolen by grifters
Singer's original EA argument, concerning the Bengal famine, has two massive holes in the argument, one of which survives to his simplified setup. I'm going to explain because it's funny; I'm not sure if you've been banned yet.
First, in the simplified setup, Singer says: there is a child drowning in the river! You must jump into the river, ruining your clothes, or else the child will drown. Further, there's no time for debate; if you waste time talking, then you forfeit the child. My response is to grab Singer by the belt buckle and collar and throw him into the river, and then strip down and save the child, ignoring whatever happens to Singer. My reasoning is that I don't like epistemic muggers and I will make choices that punish them in order to dissuade them from approaching me, but I'll still save the child afterwards. In terms of real life, it was a good call to prosecute SBF regardless of any good he may have done.
Second, in the Bangladesh setup, Singer says: everybody must donate to one specific charity because the charity can always turn more donations into more delivered food. Accepting the second part, there's a self-reference issue in the second part: if one is an employee of the charity, do they also have to donate? If we do the case analysis and discard the paradoxical cases, we are left with the repugnant conclusion: everybody ought to not just donate their money to the charity, but also all of their labor, at the cheapest prices possible while not starving themselves. Maybe I'm too much of a communist, but I'd rather just put rich peoples' heads on pikes instead and issue a food guarantee.
It's worth remembering that the actual famine was mostly a combination of failures of local government and also the USA withholding food due to Bangladesh trading with Cuba; maybe Singer's hand-wringing over the donation strategies of wealthy white moderates is misplaced.
who is this peter singer fellow? Sounds like a great and unproblematic man. Please tell us more of his teachings.
Didn't he sing Little Boxes?
Not sure on that but I think he’s related to Sabrina Carpenter. Source, this line from Espresso:
I'm working late, 'cause I'm a Singer
Don't know anything about him as a person, but his writing on veganism and EA is some of the most concise and convincing modern moral philosophy I've read.
Clearly formulated, with clear assumptions and solid arguments and conclusions built on them, making it easy to critique without having studied moral philosophy.
oh wow, convincing moral philosophy you say? brb adjusting my priors
(e: the rationalwiki links are probably an even better overview)
I'd be genuinely interested in an elaboration. Reading the article, the fundamental issue seems to be that he's an idealist utilitarian who opposes racism and animal suffering in the wrong way?
The article concludes that
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to become a vegetarian, to advocate for better treatment for animals, or to oppose factory farming.
But I genuinely haven't seen such reasons which do not ultimately end up in some form of Singer's argument that suffering implies moral value. Do you have a link exploring it further?
the fundamental issue seems to be that he's an idealist utilitarian who opposes racism and animal suffering in the wrong way
don't worry, he's just a misunderstood good guy
Let's do veganism now. I'm allowed to do this because I still remember what lentil burgers taste like from when I dated a vegan at university. So, as with most vegans, Singer is blocked by the classical counting paradoxes from declaring that a certain number of eukaryotic cells makes something morally inedible, and the standard list of counterexamples works just fine for him. Also, I hear he eats shellfish, and geoducks are bigger than e.g. chicks or kittens (or whatever else we might not want to eat.) I don't know how he'd convince me that a SCOBY is fundamentally not deserving of the same moral insight either; I think we just do it by convention to avoid the cosmic horror of thinking how many yeast cells must die to make a loaf of bread, and most practicing vegans aren't even willing to pray for all the bugs that they accidentally squish.
I agree with everything else he puts forward, but it boils down to buying organic-farmed food and discouraging factory farming. Singer is heavy on sentiment but painfully light on biology.
As I understand his argument, it goes
- If you can suffer, you have moral value
- We have an obligation to not cause suffering to beings with moral value
- Some animals can suffer, therefore they have moral value, and we have an obligation to not cause suffering to them
You can then of course ask whether yeast can suffer, which we don't have any evidence of, but you're welcome to stop eating yeast if you feel morally obliged to anyway. Lack of evidence doesn't mean we know they don't suffer. But for the animals where we have convincing evidence that they experience suffering, such as most intelligent mammals, we all have a clear moral obligation to stop causing them harm.
Counting cells doesn't really enter the argument. Evidence of suffering does, which is not just about sentiment.
The inability to draw a perfect distinction between beings that can suffer and those who cannot doesn't stop us from identifying cases clearly on either side of that line.
What Singer eats doesn't really matter for the argument.
You now have to argue that oxidative stress isn't suffering. Biology does not allow for humans to divide the world into the regions where suffering can be experienced and regions where it is absent. (The other branch contradicts the lived experience of anybody who has actually raised a sourdough starter; it is a living thing which requires food, water, and other care to remain homeostatic, and which changes in flavor due to environmental stress.)
Worse, your framing fails to meet one of the oldest objections to Singer's position, one which I still consider a knockout: you aren't going to convince the cats to stop eating intelligent mammals, and evidence suggests that cats suffer when force-fed a vegan diet.
When you come to Debate Club, make sure that your arguments are actually well-lubed and won't squeak when you swing them. You've tried to clumsily replay Singer's arguments without understanding their issues and how rhetoric has evolved since then. I would suggest watching some old George Carlin reruns; the man was a powerhouse of rhetoric.
this is not debate club