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So, if you had to choose between funding community theater and saving X lives, how large would X need to be before you'd abandon the theater? It's fine to spen

So, if you had to choose between funding community theater and saving X lives, how large would X need to be before you'd abandon the theater? It's fine to spend money on the theater, everyone spends money and time on themselves and their interests. If you consider community theater altruism though, I think it makes sense to acknowledge that it is ineffective altruism - that is, you're doing a little bit of good with your money, but not nearly as much as you might be doing.

probably_wrong 4y ago
The issue as I see it is that you cannot say that the first is ineffective unless you can quantify the ROI of the theater. If I knew that my donation will fund the next Romeo and Juliet, then I'd expect X to be really high before I deprive future generations of such an important work. Art in particular has a multiplicative effect that is essentially impossible to quantify. Once a work of art is out there, it can live forever and influence multiple generations. That seems like a pretty effective use of my money.
- smallnamespace 4y ago
  I agree arts and culture are valuable. The obvious objection now is why not build 5 theatres in Africa? Obviously the local theatre benefits your own community, but if you live there then you are also benefiting yourself (via status and seeing plays), which seems less than altruistically pure, even if you could only build 1 theatre in Africa.
  - didibus 4y ago
    A theater won't have the same impact everywhere. You likely don't know anything about the neighborhoods in Africa, and how impactful a theater there could be. You know a lot better what a theater could bring to a neighborhood you know well. And then, there's the question of if altruism itself is most efficient at helping others. Some would argue that helping oneself but where it benefits others as well, win/win situations, in practice produces better outcomes. The idea of self-sacrifice, or having to lose or risk something personal to help others sounds noble, but might not be most effective.
didibus 4y ago
"saving a life" is kind of vacuous. You need to contextualize the life saved, do we mean they went to live one more day, or a full long life of prosperity and comfort with a happy painless death from old age. And did they themselves gain the means to save more lives in turn? For example, I feel giving people the means of saving their own life, or other people's lives a much more efficient way to save lives than actually saving a life. And finally you have to address the sacrifices you've made and the people you've hurt in pursuit of saving that life. To me, it looks like a charade, because the claim that you can actually measure and quantify all of these complex systems to truly arrive at the real impact of all these things, I just don't believe it. It seems you've picked a simple metric to measure, because it's easy, but is it lasting impact, is really more meaningful impact, that's all all still up in the air.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  Our moral intuitions are developed for dealing with actual cases that we are actually experiencing. If you showed up with a fire hose and found that a bus full of X people and an empty community theater were on fire - it would not even occur to you to save the theater. You would save the screaming people who are begging for help. One way to think about effective altruism is that it's trying to get you to apply whatever moral intuitions you would use in a concrete scenario to an abstract scenario. To any individual apart from it, it's abstract to know that mothers in some poor country can't adequately nourish their children, or that mosquito nets reduce malaria deaths, and so on. But, the reality is that those people are actually real, are actually suffering, and actually could be helped. If you take that message to heart then it won't make sense to send your charity to the community theater - by all means, send the theater money if you want, but it's a selfish thing, not an altruistic thing.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    > it would not even occur to you to save the theater. You would save the screaming people who are begging for help. If there was a crypto trade available to make a billion dollars available for the next 15 minutes only - but you have to chose between the community theater, the bus of X people on fire or giving 10% of your gainz to a charity to save X*2 ...

probably_wrong 4y ago

The issue as I see it is that you cannot say that the first is ineffective unless you can quantify the ROI of the theater. If I knew that my donation will fund the next Romeo and Juliet, then I'd expect X to be really high before I deprive future generations of such an important work. Art in particular has a multiplicative effect that is essentially impossible to quantify. Once a work of art is out there, it can live forever and influence multiple generations. That seems like a pretty effective use of my money.

smallnamespace 4y ago
I agree arts and culture are valuable. The obvious objection now is why not build 5 theatres in Africa? Obviously the local theatre benefits your own community, but if you live there then you are also benefiting yourself (via status and seeing plays), which seems less than altruistically pure, even if you could only build 1 theatre in Africa.
- didibus 4y ago
  A theater won't have the same impact everywhere. You likely don't know anything about the neighborhoods in Africa, and how impactful a theater there could be. You know a lot better what a theater could bring to a neighborhood you know well. And then, there's the question of if altruism itself is most efficient at helping others. Some would argue that helping oneself but where it benefits others as well, win/win situations, in practice produces better outcomes. The idea of self-sacrifice, or having to lose or risk something personal to help others sounds noble, but might not be most effective.

didibus 4y ago

"saving a life" is kind of vacuous. You need to contextualize the life saved, do we mean they went to live one more day, or a full long life of prosperity and comfort with a happy painless death from old age. And did they themselves gain the means to save more lives in turn? For example, I feel giving people the means of saving their own life, or other people's lives a much more efficient way to save lives than actually saving a life. And finally you have to address the sacrifices you've made and the people you've hurt in pursuit of saving that life. To me, it looks like a charade, because the claim that you can actually measure and quantify all of these complex systems to truly arrive at the real impact of all these things, I just don't believe it. It seems you've picked a simple metric to measure, because it's easy, but is it lasting impact, is really more meaningful impact, that's all all still up in the air.

ALittleLight 4y ago
Our moral intuitions are developed for dealing with actual cases that we are actually experiencing. If you showed up with a fire hose and found that a bus full of X people and an empty community theater were on fire - it would not even occur to you to save the theater. You would save the screaming people who are begging for help. One way to think about effective altruism is that it's trying to get you to apply whatever moral intuitions you would use in a concrete scenario to an abstract scenario. To any individual apart from it, it's abstract to know that mothers in some poor country can't adequately nourish their children, or that mosquito nets reduce malaria deaths, and so on. But, the reality is that those people are actually real, are actually suffering, and actually could be helped. If you take that message to heart then it won't make sense to send your charity to the community theater - by all means, send the theater money if you want, but it's a selfish thing, not an altruistic thing.
- blitzar 4y ago
  > it would not even occur to you to save the theater. You would save the screaming people who are begging for help. If there was a crypto trade available to make a billion dollars available for the next 15 minutes only - but you have to chose between the community theater, the bus of X people on fire or giving 10% of your gainz to a charity to save X*2 ...