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What alternative? How is that even a question? The answer is obvious: do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly. That’s the obvious alte

What alternative? How is that even a question? The answer is obvious: do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly. That’s the obvious alternative. Maybe not everyone has the opportunity to do that, just like not everyone has the opportunity to get a non-alienating job. > Give enough to charities that make you not feel alienated, and then donate the rest to charities that are making a greater positive impact on the lives of others. You see? Both of these things are still indirect do-gooding. Donating to charity? How about being good, doing good? Or are you only able to assess the moral weight of something if you can read about them in some spreadsheet?

yboris 6y ago
There are many ways to look at the problem we're discussing. One is to think about what the effect on the world would be if people follow one strategy over another. The strategy of "help those around you" results in rich people who live in rich areas with multi-million-dollar-homes helping those that live in merely million dollar homes (because that's what's around). And if they venture too far geographically, they end up feeling alienated, apparently. Furthermore, these people, rather than taking the tremendous power of their wealth, do something "with their own minds and hands" - which is presumably serving some soup in a soup kitchen. My observation is that it's really unfortunate that many people feel the need for a personal connection, and therefore do less good than they could otherwise. My response is to ignore the ill-fitting kluge that is the evolution-installed software I have. When you know that a $3 donation protects 2 people from malaria for about 3 years, can you really think you can do more good with your hands and mind than to just protect those people with $3 you have? You can get your warm feeling of having done good through doing something, and then use your money to give to cost-effective charities regardless of how "alienated" that makes you feel.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Perhaps the disconnect here is between fundamentally different ways of measuring "good" or "doing good". Your argument here and EA arguments in general are based on an axiomatic assumption that good done to anyone is equally valuable, that all people worldwide now (and in some analyses, all hypothetical future people) have an equal claim on your help. IMHO this axiom does not match the "built-in moral system" of most people. To start with an illustrative example (obviously you can imagine many less extreme comparisons), for most people, the welfare of their child is unquestionably much, much more important than the welfare of some other child across the globe. For most people saving the life of another child across the globe at the cost of the life of their child would not be a neutral exchange of things of equal value, it would be a horrifically unbalanced "trade". This is completely understandable even for undeniably good people doing lots of good. So this extreme establishes a baseline that the axiom of "saving every life is equally valuable" can not be accepted by most people (and accepting that axiom is not a requirement for "being good" or "doing good"), there is some difference, and the only question is about the scale and of that difference, what factors apply, etc. And coming from an (incompatible) axiomatic assumption that it's plausible that helping someone in your community can be more valuable than protecting two people with no connection to you, all these other strategies start making some sense. Looking at this from a Kantian 'moral duty' perspective, some people (perhaps including you) have an implied moral duty to care about everyone, equally. And some people have an implied moral duty to care about their community more than "strangers". Obviously those two approaches are incompatible, but IMHO both are frequently encountered, and I don't believe that "good people" and "people who do lots of good" always subscribe to the first concept of moral duty, there seems to be a lot of good works done based on the latter understanding.
  - yboris 6y ago
    Thank you for a beautiful description of what is likely happening. I think you're right about how many people think about morality. I humbly try to encourage everyone (if the conversation strays this way) to reflect on the built-in moral system, and how wildly unprepared it is for dealing with the modern world. Given how much the world has changed (I can literally help people across the globe; people are interconnected deeply with others on the other side of the planet through everyday objects they use, etc) it is important to use reason and careful thinking when it comes to morality, not just our gut feelings. The best writeup of all this comes from Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene - where he uses the photo camera analogy for morality: the automatic setting (gut feelings - great for usual scenarios evolution prepared us - like day to day courtesy with others), and the manual setting (slow and deliberate reasoning - essential for our complex world - anything to do with society beyond what our evolution prepared us for - I'm thinking like technology [mechanical and social] invented after 1500s).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
rcoveson 6y ago
I don't see how this is any different. Where does the proposition, "do good directly, with your own mind and hands", lead? Should the first step not be "consider who is most in need"? Should the next stop not be "consider how best to help them"? And should the last step not be "help them in that way"? It almost seems like you're arguing against examining the problem at all. What would the world look like if everybody just quit their jobs so they could do good "directly"? They'd realize pretty quick they needs planes and ships to move people and things, and farmers to grow food. Not to mention doctors and chemists to develop and administer medicine. If they were smart about it, they'd end up allocating their own time to the things they were best at, and then liquidate and donate any excess they produce. If you just follow your heart, in the most basal sense, you will probably do some good and you will likely feel very good about it. Which is great for you, and good for those you help. There's nothing wrong with that. But that approach will never help those afflicted with malaria, because your heart doesn't know about them. Your head has to hear about them. And then your head has to tell you not to fly down there yourself, because if everybody did that then there'd be nobody back here running air traffic control or formulating medicine.
- yrimaxi 6y ago
  You’ve set up a convenient dichotomy where one through pure reason alone arrives at the inevitable conclusion that one should “liquidate and donate any excess they produce”, or else one is merely being driven by pure sentiment/feel-goodiness. For some reason though it is only these tunnel-vision engineer types that seem to be sentimentally drawn towards this oh so obvious conclusion. (As an example: a socialist will probably not think that making the most money possible and then giving a lot of it away is the most ethical thing to do.) And yes, of course my obvious point is that everyone should just quit their jobs and travel to Africa.
  - rcoveson 6y ago
    I'm just trying to give examples, not set up a dichotomy. There's certainly a very wide range of ways to be charitable. For example, you could be charitable in this discussion by not lampooning those who disagree you as "tunnel-vision engineer types." I'd like to hear more specifically how you think people should approach charity. Surely some people actually should travel to Africa? And some should not. I'm not sure why you're being sarcastic about quitting one's job and traveling to Africa in a conversation about charity. It's not an insane thing to do. The point I was trying to make was that not everybody can do it, and that some people can actually do more good by just being excellent at their current job.
neilparikh 6y ago
> do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly. How? I live in North America. The people need the most help in the world don't live in North America. How do I help them directly "with my own mind and hands"? I could help those in my city/state/country, which isn't unreasonable by any means, and definitely commendable. But this will leave the global poor in just as bad as state as they are right now. Who will do good directly for them? As a side note, maybe this is an issue of framing. We've been calling EA charity, but another way to view it is wealth distribution from rich countries to poor countries. I think from that lens, it becomes obvious (to me) that this is not only good, but necessary, because I don't think the current global inequality in wealth is fair at all. Telling people to stop donating to EA charities is effectively telling them to keep the wealth in rich countries, rather than having it flow to poor countries (who really need it).

yboris 6y ago

There are many ways to look at the problem we're discussing. One is to think about what the effect on the world would be if people follow one strategy over another. The strategy of "help those around you" results in rich people who live in rich areas with multi-million-dollar-homes helping those that live in merely million dollar homes (because that's what's around). And if they venture too far geographically, they end up feeling alienated, apparently. Furthermore, these people, rather than taking the tremendous power of their wealth, do something "with their own minds and hands" - which is presumably serving some soup in a soup kitchen. My observation is that it's really unfortunate that many people feel the need for a personal connection, and therefore do less good than they could otherwise. My response is to ignore the ill-fitting kluge that is the evolution-installed software I have. When you know that a $3 donation protects 2 people from malaria for about 3 years, can you really think you can do more good with your hands and mind than to just protect those people with $3 you have? You can get your warm feeling of having done good through doing something, and then use your money to give to cost-effective charities regardless of how "alienated" that makes you feel.

PeterisP 6y ago
Perhaps the disconnect here is between fundamentally different ways of measuring "good" or "doing good". Your argument here and EA arguments in general are based on an axiomatic assumption that good done to anyone is equally valuable, that all people worldwide now (and in some analyses, all hypothetical future people) have an equal claim on your help. IMHO this axiom does not match the "built-in moral system" of most people. To start with an illustrative example (obviously you can imagine many less extreme comparisons), for most people, the welfare of their child is unquestionably much, much more important than the welfare of some other child across the globe. For most people saving the life of another child across the globe at the cost of the life of their child would not be a neutral exchange of things of equal value, it would be a horrifically unbalanced "trade". This is completely understandable even for undeniably good people doing lots of good. So this extreme establishes a baseline that the axiom of "saving every life is equally valuable" can not be accepted by most people (and accepting that axiom is not a requirement for "being good" or "doing good"), there is some difference, and the only question is about the scale and of that difference, what factors apply, etc. And coming from an (incompatible) axiomatic assumption that it's plausible that helping someone in your community can be more valuable than protecting two people with no connection to you, all these other strategies start making some sense. Looking at this from a Kantian 'moral duty' perspective, some people (perhaps including you) have an implied moral duty to care about everyone, equally. And some people have an implied moral duty to care about their community more than "strangers". Obviously those two approaches are incompatible, but IMHO both are frequently encountered, and I don't believe that "good people" and "people who do lots of good" always subscribe to the first concept of moral duty, there seems to be a lot of good works done based on the latter understanding.
- yboris 6y ago
  Thank you for a beautiful description of what is likely happening. I think you're right about how many people think about morality. I humbly try to encourage everyone (if the conversation strays this way) to reflect on the built-in moral system, and how wildly unprepared it is for dealing with the modern world. Given how much the world has changed (I can literally help people across the globe; people are interconnected deeply with others on the other side of the planet through everyday objects they use, etc) it is important to use reason and careful thinking when it comes to morality, not just our gut feelings. The best writeup of all this comes from Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene - where he uses the photo camera analogy for morality: the automatic setting (gut feelings - great for usual scenarios evolution prepared us - like day to day courtesy with others), and the manual setting (slow and deliberate reasoning - essential for our complex world - anything to do with society beyond what our evolution prepared us for - I'm thinking like technology [mechanical and social] invented after 1500s).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

rcoveson 6y ago

I don't see how this is any different. Where does the proposition, "do good directly, with your own mind and hands", lead? Should the first step not be "consider who is most in need"? Should the next stop not be "consider how best to help them"? And should the last step not be "help them in that way"? It almost seems like you're arguing against examining the problem at all. What would the world look like if everybody just quit their jobs so they could do good "directly"? They'd realize pretty quick they needs planes and ships to move people and things, and farmers to grow food. Not to mention doctors and chemists to develop and administer medicine. If they were smart about it, they'd end up allocating their own time to the things they were best at, and then liquidate and donate any excess they produce. If you just follow your heart, in the most basal sense, you will probably do some good and you will likely feel very good about it. Which is great for you, and good for those you help. There's nothing wrong with that. But that approach will never help those afflicted with malaria, because your heart doesn't know about them. Your head has to hear about them. And then your head has to tell you not to fly down there yourself, because if everybody did that then there'd be nobody back here running air traffic control or formulating medicine.

yrimaxi 6y ago
You’ve set up a convenient dichotomy where one through pure reason alone arrives at the inevitable conclusion that one should “liquidate and donate any excess they produce”, or else one is merely being driven by pure sentiment/feel-goodiness. For some reason though it is only these tunnel-vision engineer types that seem to be sentimentally drawn towards this oh so obvious conclusion. (As an example: a socialist will probably not think that making the most money possible and then giving a lot of it away is the most ethical thing to do.) And yes, of course my obvious point is that everyone should just quit their jobs and travel to Africa.
- rcoveson 6y ago
  I'm just trying to give examples, not set up a dichotomy. There's certainly a very wide range of ways to be charitable. For example, you could be charitable in this discussion by not lampooning those who disagree you as "tunnel-vision engineer types." I'd like to hear more specifically how you think people should approach charity. Surely some people actually should travel to Africa? And some should not. I'm not sure why you're being sarcastic about quitting one's job and traveling to Africa in a conversation about charity. It's not an insane thing to do. The point I was trying to make was that not everybody can do it, and that some people can actually do more good by just being excellent at their current job.

neilparikh 6y ago

> do good directly, with your own mind and hands, not indirectly. How? I live in North America. The people need the most help in the world don't live in North America. How do I help them directly "with my own mind and hands"? I could help those in my city/state/country, which isn't unreasonable by any means, and definitely commendable. But this will leave the global poor in just as bad as state as they are right now. Who will do good directly for them? As a side note, maybe this is an issue of framing. We've been calling EA charity, but another way to view it is wealth distribution from rich countries to poor countries. I think from that lens, it becomes obvious (to me) that this is not only good, but necessary, because I don't think the current global inequality in wealth is fair at all. Telling people to stop donating to EA charities is effectively telling them to keep the wealth in rich countries, rather than having it flow to poor countries (who really need it).