Explain why you are not an effective altruist Veeky Forums
Effective Altruism
Mason Hernandez
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Liam Nelson
Intelligent Kindness
Thoughtful Love
Sophisticated Sluttery
Alexander Parker
i don't really care about the suffering of people I don't know personally.
Josiah Martin
So if you walk past a drowning child you won't save him/her?
There's no real difference between doing so and turn your eyes away from the suffering of faceless people across the world
Chase Ross
Other people drowning is not my problem.
Nathaniel Peterson
>le drowning child meme
That is a stupid comparison, because you only have to save the child once, and then he is saved, while in reality, solving problems like world hunger or whatever would take decades of effort, and would require us to become the slaves of other people's suffering, vastly decreasing the quality of our lives. Altruism is good, but there is a point where we really should just not give a fuck.
Carter Wood
It's called Christianity and it's been around for a long time
Samuel Kelly
>vastly decreasing the quality of our lives
Not really, people who gives most to charity are people who are the most appreciative of their lives, generally happier, and enjoy higher quality of life. Happiness & life satisfaction index in the US I think plateau around $60k a year with massively diminishing return.
Jonathan Lopez
Christianity is not very effective, and has large overhead to pay for the middleman like the priests, and to build churches.
For comparison, Give Directly charity donates 90 cent per dollar given on direct & randomized cash transfer to people in the poorest region of the planet. Imagine if you're suffering and destitute in Kenyan village but suddenly received an unconditional cash transfer, it'll signicantly improve your livelihood and reduce suffering
Matthew Martinez
Correlation != Causation
People who are able to give to charity are wealthier, and therefore often happier.
People who are willing to give to charity feel that they are happy in their situation already and thus don't mind giving their wealth to charity.
Owen Richardson
Altruism is a plague to human society. It is disrupting the fitness of our species
Go ahead, spam me with the fedora images
Ian Lewis
The drowning child argument basically says that you are morally compelled to not spend your money on bullshit like expensive clothes when you could spend it on saving lives. Most of those charitable people don't spend all their money on charity, otherwise they would lead very miserable lives.
>giving unlimited money to people in need will greatly improve their lives
That would fuck up the economy so fucking fast holy shit. And not just ours, but theirs too.
Jayden Parker
Sending to money to Africa only increases suffering in the long term because they use the aid to reproduce and compound their problems. The ethical thing to do with Africa is withdraw all aid and let them fix the problems themselves.
Aiden Powell
>Christianity
>altruism
Pol please go.
Christian James
Give directly doesn't give unlimited money. It gives a finite, but sizeable amount of money per transfer (about like 50 bucks, which in kenya probably equivalent to 500 bucks) so that people can improve their living conditions.
If you and I live in extreme poverty, and suddenly receive a finite, and random cash transfer (so it's not welfare, as you're not likely to get another one next time) we'll use this random blessing from stranger to absolutely improve our livelihood, like get a loan to start a business that you always want, or get a vehicle, or get a farm animal, etc.
It is one of the most effective method to alleviate suffering
Liam Davis
Africans are too dumb to use the money effectively. There was a story of an aid worker who went over there, taught a local farmer that using fertilizer quadrupled the yield of his crops. He used fertilizer again for the next crop and again it was quadrupled on top of that. The local farmer was left with a lot of cash and was told to keep using the fertilizer and his harvests would get better and better. Did he? No. The other guy who was there watched the farmer squander his cash on bullshit and he never bought the fertilizer again and his crop yields dwindled back down to almost nothing.
You cannot help those people. They have absolutely no ability to think beyond their current circumstances.
Ryder Barnes
But your anecdotal evidence doesn't eclipse a peer reviewed study here
princeton.edu
People who received the cash transfer tend to spend almost all of those money to improve their well being.
Nathan Kelly
I consider seeing somebody personally with my own eyes as "knowing personally".
I'll give 5 dollars to a starving kid I see on the street but I'm not going to mail $5 off to "feed starving statistic numbers in shit country charity"
Carson Nelson
It seemed to me that you were talking about sending huge amounts of money over time, and if you did that, they would get a steady income, no matter the randomness. Like over a year, people would receive around the sum of all money sent divided by the number of people living there. In fact, the randomness would create accidental poor and accidental millionaires, which is even worse.
Also, money in itself is useless. Think about it, they already have some local production, and already have currency, the only way money could improve their lives is if they spent it on acquiring products from external sources, but at that point you may as well just send the products themselves to ensure that the right products get sent, since they are most likely uneducated and do not know what to spend their money on to increase their quality of life long-term.
William James
That study is hilarious. "People who got given money experienced psychological well being" well fuck me, that's weird, you give some money to a bum and they're going to be happy about it? That's completely unexpected!
But then they go and blow it on booze and their wellbeing drops right back to where it was.
Owen Rogers
>It seemed to me that you were talking about sending huge amounts of money over time, and if you did that, they would get a steady income, no matter the randomness.
It is spread over large area, it is very unlikely that on the other end the same individual recepient will get the cash transfer twice
Samuel Rodriguez
>But then they go and blow it on booze and their wellbeing drops right back to where it was.
Read it further. The big majority decided to invest on livestock and better roofs for their houses.
Even if someone decided to buy some beer, his life sucks so I don't mind giving a brother some drink.