5 ms·

There's quite a bit wrong with this model - most of all, it starts from the assumption that the lack of capital is the main limiting factor. World hunger is not

There's quite a bit wrong with this model - most of all, it starts from the assumption that the lack of capital is the main limiting factor. World hunger is not a resource problem, it is a distribution and ideology problem.

jerf 11y ago
I tend to agree that world hunger is not the best example of problem that can be fixed in that manner, actually. But there are plenty of problems that can be. I'd also observe that if you agree with the statement "People just don't care enough about the problems to fix them.", that that is morally all but the same thing as saying "People don't give enough of their money to solve the problem.", especially if people are careful about who they give it to. Caring basically is money, be it in the form of concrete donations, donations of time, or anything else that money can be converted into. If you can't solve the problem with careful monetary donations, it is approximately equivalent to saying you can't help the problem at all. In which case, under most reasonable moral systems, you can unburden yourself of worry over the problem, if there is literally nothing you can do. If I were speaking to a multi-billionaire who potentially had resources to realign the world political stage, we might have to be a lot more careful, but we're talking a fairly normal first-world person.
- brenschluss 11y ago
  > Caring basically is money, be it in the form of concrete donations, donations of time, or anything else that money can be converted into. This is not just a laughably simplistic statement, but a sinister one, as it's the flawed axiom on which you justify your moral self-exoneration from feeling the need to do anything. But let's take your logic even further. Because of economies of scale and the powers of compound interest, multi-billion-dollar industries (and their owners) have much higher marginal earning potential, and the effects of their efforts will vastly outweigh those of everyone else. Since "caring basically is money", there's a higher proportion of caring-ness that billionaires hold, and ought to mobilize. This means that, for anyone who is not a multi-billionaire, "there is literally nothing you can do". So for most people living their day-to-day life, we should continue to live in relative ignorance to these problems, and defer the moral question of mobilizing the world's resources and care the multi-billionaire. Moral of the story (of jerf's worldview): "don't worry, don't even try to fix things; the ubermensch will do it for you". If I am putting words in your mouth, then I would request that you point out the flaws in my argument. Moreover, rather than pointing out that it's a strawman argument, I'd request that you point out why it is so -- otherwise, my pastiche of your logic ceases to be a strawman and becomes an accurate representation of your opinion.
  - VanillaLime 11y ago
    I really recommend you read about the Effective Altruism movement if you want a detailed response to your questions. In response to your question, you are totally right! Anything you can do for most of these problems will probably be completely meaningless compared to the scale of the problem. Almost certainly, the rational decision is to do nothing. So what? The entire idea of altruism is that you make an economically irrational choice to contribute to a cause that produces positive externalities for society but does not benefit you directly (if it did, it's not altruism anymore: it's just an investment). Measuring caring in terms of dollars allows you to maximize your possible contribution. Imagine a highly-paid consultant who cares about the homeless, so he volunteers at the local soup kitchen for several hours a week. If he instead simply worked for those same hours and earned $100 an hour, he could pay 10 people to work at the same soup kitchen and help 10 times as many homeless. That's the kind of tradeoff you don't think about if you don't realize that money is fungible with regard to caring. In the longer run, realizing that money <-> fixing things means that you can also decide to dedicate your life to making money and donate a significant chunk of that money to the cause of your choice, leaving both you and presumably society better off than if you had dedicated your whole life to volunteering/working for your cause in the first place, since your money can fund specialists in the field who are probably more effective than you, as a random coder/manager would be. And no, this doesn't imply that if billionaires hold the most effective resources for solving the problem, you should give up. Instead, dedicate yourself to effectively convincing said billionaires to care about your cause. The guy(s) who successfully convinced Bill Gates to donate to malaria eradication have probably saved more lives than every volunteer who was previously working on that effort. The point is, realize that if you want to care, you should make a difference in the most effective way possible, and often that is by leveraging money and resources in ways that most people would not consider "charitable work" in the traditional sense of the phrase.
    - brenschluss 11y ago
      > If he instead simply worked for those same hours and earned $100 an hour, he could pay 10 people to work at the same soup kitchen and help 10 times as many homeless. That's the kind of tradeoff you don't think about if you don't realize that money is fungible with regard to caring. A statement that 'money is fungible with regards to caring' ignores the network effects that happens when money becomes prioritized, like a version of the Jevons paradox, in which a relative efficiency in coal resulted in an absolute increase in coal consumption.
sandstrum 11y ago
Here is a detailed report about the room for more funding in several standout charities: http://blog.givewell.org/2015/11/18/our-updated-top-charities-for-giving-season-2015/ http://blog.givewell.org/2015/11/18/our-updated-top-charitie... They are all significantly under funded. The best of them distributes long lasting insecticide treated nets which protect against malaria. Below is an estimate (via google doc) that pegs the cost per life saved via nets at around $2,800. The estimate only considers the nets' mortality effect on children under 5 years old. http://files.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/GiveWell_cost-effectiveness_analysis_2015.xlsx http://files.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Gi... And below is more general information on this charity: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF

jerf 11y ago

I tend to agree that world hunger is not the best example of problem that can be fixed in that manner, actually. But there are plenty of problems that can be. I'd also observe that if you agree with the statement "People just don't care enough about the problems to fix them.", that that is morally all but the same thing as saying "People don't give enough of their money to solve the problem.", especially if people are careful about who they give it to. Caring basically is money, be it in the form of concrete donations, donations of time, or anything else that money can be converted into. If you can't solve the problem with careful monetary donations, it is approximately equivalent to saying you can't help the problem at all. In which case, under most reasonable moral systems, you can unburden yourself of worry over the problem, if there is literally nothing you can do. If I were speaking to a multi-billionaire who potentially had resources to realign the world political stage, we might have to be a lot more careful, but we're talking a fairly normal first-world person.

brenschluss 11y ago
> Caring basically is money, be it in the form of concrete donations, donations of time, or anything else that money can be converted into. This is not just a laughably simplistic statement, but a sinister one, as it's the flawed axiom on which you justify your moral self-exoneration from feeling the need to do anything. But let's take your logic even further. Because of economies of scale and the powers of compound interest, multi-billion-dollar industries (and their owners) have much higher marginal earning potential, and the effects of their efforts will vastly outweigh those of everyone else. Since "caring basically is money", there's a higher proportion of caring-ness that billionaires hold, and ought to mobilize. This means that, for anyone who is not a multi-billionaire, "there is literally nothing you can do". So for most people living their day-to-day life, we should continue to live in relative ignorance to these problems, and defer the moral question of mobilizing the world's resources and care the multi-billionaire. Moral of the story (of jerf's worldview): "don't worry, don't even try to fix things; the ubermensch will do it for you". If I am putting words in your mouth, then I would request that you point out the flaws in my argument. Moreover, rather than pointing out that it's a strawman argument, I'd request that you point out why it is so -- otherwise, my pastiche of your logic ceases to be a strawman and becomes an accurate representation of your opinion.
- VanillaLime 11y ago
  I really recommend you read about the Effective Altruism movement if you want a detailed response to your questions. In response to your question, you are totally right! Anything you can do for most of these problems will probably be completely meaningless compared to the scale of the problem. Almost certainly, the rational decision is to do nothing. So what? The entire idea of altruism is that you make an economically irrational choice to contribute to a cause that produces positive externalities for society but does not benefit you directly (if it did, it's not altruism anymore: it's just an investment). Measuring caring in terms of dollars allows you to maximize your possible contribution. Imagine a highly-paid consultant who cares about the homeless, so he volunteers at the local soup kitchen for several hours a week. If he instead simply worked for those same hours and earned $100 an hour, he could pay 10 people to work at the same soup kitchen and help 10 times as many homeless. That's the kind of tradeoff you don't think about if you don't realize that money is fungible with regard to caring. In the longer run, realizing that money <-> fixing things means that you can also decide to dedicate your life to making money and donate a significant chunk of that money to the cause of your choice, leaving both you and presumably society better off than if you had dedicated your whole life to volunteering/working for your cause in the first place, since your money can fund specialists in the field who are probably more effective than you, as a random coder/manager would be. And no, this doesn't imply that if billionaires hold the most effective resources for solving the problem, you should give up. Instead, dedicate yourself to effectively convincing said billionaires to care about your cause. The guy(s) who successfully convinced Bill Gates to donate to malaria eradication have probably saved more lives than every volunteer who was previously working on that effort. The point is, realize that if you want to care, you should make a difference in the most effective way possible, and often that is by leveraging money and resources in ways that most people would not consider "charitable work" in the traditional sense of the phrase.
  - brenschluss 11y ago
    > If he instead simply worked for those same hours and earned $100 an hour, he could pay 10 people to work at the same soup kitchen and help 10 times as many homeless. That's the kind of tradeoff you don't think about if you don't realize that money is fungible with regard to caring. A statement that 'money is fungible with regards to caring' ignores the network effects that happens when money becomes prioritized, like a version of the Jevons paradox, in which a relative efficiency in coal resulted in an absolute increase in coal consumption.

sandstrum 11y ago

Here is a detailed report about the room for more funding in several standout charities: http://blog.givewell.org/2015/11/18/our-updated-top-charities-for-giving-season-2015/ http://blog.givewell.org/2015/11/18/our-updated-top-charitie... They are all significantly under funded. The best of them distributes long lasting insecticide treated nets which protect against malaria. Below is an estimate (via google doc) that pegs the cost per life saved via nets at around $2,800. The estimate only considers the nets' mortality effect on children under 5 years old. http://files.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/GiveWell_cost-effectiveness_analysis_2015.xlsx http://files.givewell.org/files/DWDA%202009/Interventions/Gi... And below is more general information on this charity: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF