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Nevermind the fact that this whole pseudo-utilitarian premise is just a nice way to ignore the harm I'm curious why you claim that. It seems to me the goal is

Nevermind the fact that this whole pseudo-utilitarian premise is just a nice way to ignore the harm I'm curious why you claim that. It seems to me the goal is to redress the harm, not ignore it. You can't claim to know Jason Trigg's true internal motives, can you? The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his donations outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or the industry as a whole to those same areas. Nor can you claim that this assumption is false, given that you suggest a utilitarian analysis is impossible. I find the general premise of "work like a sociopath to make so much money you can do good with the money", whatever their forms, to be a textbook example of feeling good rather than doing good. By what logic? Do you claim that good isn't being done? You're of course right that harm is being indirectly done, but you have stated that there's no way to show whether more good or more harm is being done. So what exactly is the source of your cynicism?

md224 13y ago
>> The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his donations outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or the industry as a whole to those same areas. > Nor can you claim that this assumption is false, given that you suggest a utilitarian analysis is impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle If the net harm of participating in a certain system for the sake of philanthropy is unknown but potentially significant, I think we ought to be a little careful about it. Beyond that, even if one cannot prove that working at a hedge fund helps to propagate a system that may be resulting in the very same poverty that one's charitable contributions are meant to mitigate (and I'm not saying this is necessarily the case), we should try to be aware of the potential indirect outcomes of our actions, rather than assuming there is no downside whatsoever.
- andylei 13y ago
  there is a known (great) benefit of donations towards preventing malaria. a ~$2,500 donation prevents about one death. there is a unknown (probably small, maybe great) harm in being a small part of the high frequency industry. seems like a no brainer to me
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Chris2048 13y ago
    If 'great' in the first case isn't equal to 'great' in the second, then isn't this an appeal to ignorance?
- Symmetry 13y ago
  Doesn't using the Precautionary Principle obviously fail the Precautionary Principle? I mean, if we had followed the Precautionary Principle in the past I can think of a number of important medical advances that would never have occurred, so clearly the Precautionary Principle has great potential to cause harm and I certainly don't think anyone has proven it won't cause harm in this case. Which is to say, the only way to actually use the Precautionary Principle is to selectively apply it against thing you otherwise don't like. Or you could say that there are certain classes of things like scientific or medical advances that are the only places it should be applied, but this situation clearly isn't one of them.

md224 13y ago

>> The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his donations outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or the industry as a whole to those same areas. > Nor can you claim that this assumption is false, given that you suggest a utilitarian analysis is impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle If the net harm of participating in a certain system for the sake of philanthropy is unknown but potentially significant, I think we ought to be a little careful about it. Beyond that, even if one cannot prove that working at a hedge fund helps to propagate a system that may be resulting in the very same poverty that one's charitable contributions are meant to mitigate (and I'm not saying this is necessarily the case), we should try to be aware of the potential indirect outcomes of our actions, rather than assuming there is no downside whatsoever.

andylei 13y ago
there is a known (great) benefit of donations towards preventing malaria. a ~$2,500 donation prevents about one death. there is a unknown (probably small, maybe great) harm in being a small part of the high frequency industry. seems like a no brainer to me
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Chris2048 13y ago
  If 'great' in the first case isn't equal to 'great' in the second, then isn't this an appeal to ignorance?
Symmetry 13y ago
Doesn't using the Precautionary Principle obviously fail the Precautionary Principle? I mean, if we had followed the Precautionary Principle in the past I can think of a number of important medical advances that would never have occurred, so clearly the Precautionary Principle has great potential to cause harm and I certainly don't think anyone has proven it won't cause harm in this case. Which is to say, the only way to actually use the Precautionary Principle is to selectively apply it against thing you otherwise don't like. Or you could say that there are certain classes of things like scientific or medical advances that are the only places it should be applied, but this situation clearly isn't one of them.