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That argument relies on the utilitarian assumption that maximizing the global well-being is the goal.

For most people, that is not the case, and understandably so. We care about our neighbors, but we don't care about alien lifeforms on other planets, because we have no contact with them and no way to help them. Same can be applied to poor people living on the other side of the world. Where exactly do we draw the line?

The simple answer is that helping is inherently selfish - we help people because we expect to be helped when we are in need (for those who disagree - imagine being in a community where everyone asks for help, but nobody gives it to you when you need it). So the obvious answer is we need to help people in our proximity.

Of course, like many other human affairs, there's no simple algorithm to decide what do to in a general situation. It all comes down to an individual's will.

Recommend reading a book called "The Elephant in the Brain".

For almost all human behaviour there are 2 reasons. The good reason (acceptable to others) and the real reason (selfish). And we have evolved for self-deception on this because we need to deceive ourselves in order to deceive others.

As an example the primary motivating force for Peter Singer might be status and academic prestige, not concern for others. Would he do the things he does if he got no attention for it on a personal scale?

> "The Elephant in the Brain"

Looks interesting. Apparently, written by a software engineer and an economist, and it's about a topic I'm very passionate about - human behavior. I will definitely check that out, thanks.

This assumes that having empathy for one person means actively working against benefiting other people— that is to say, funding someone’s wheelchair individually somehow also causes one to maliciously go against benefiting starving children in an exploited country. I don’t think this is the case; you can both give to someone with a wheelchair and also support a program that distributes medicine or food or something else.

I am heavily against this notion that giving to someone is bad because it isn’t the most efficient giving. Giving to someone, anyone, in need is good.

Time and money are zero-sum.

“The End of Empathy” is an Invisibilia (NPR) episode arguing empathy for a person harms others. I find the episode to be an interesting window into how some folk think. https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/712280114/the-end-o...

Yeah, overwhelming majority of people don't do either. And people are way more likely to be in position to act on empathy then to do elaborate study then cause systematic changes of something.

> you can both give to someone with a wheelchair and also support a program that distributes medicine or food or something else.

You can only spend so much money on charity before you can't buy groceries anymore. Giving to one necessarily takes from the other.

There is a choice to be made, and one of the options is to give all your money marked for charity to one goal, and another is to split it. I don't think it's wrong to split between multiple causes, even if we know some causes are much more bang for your buck than others, it's a personal choice that you have to make for yourself. But it is a choice.

No it doesn't.

Giving to one means you gave and it is good period.

Speculation on whether giving to another is artificial value and loss.

If giving were required, it would work like taxes do and one getting more or anything at all does take from another.

Not everyone will give, and or give multiple times.

Whether money is even marked for gifts is itself a question.

It also misses the point of local tribe mentality deeply rooted in all of our brains.

We care about our closer relations far more than some other far away ones.

Therefore we are far more empathetic towards family and friends, than neighbours, than neighbouring nation, than country on the other side of the world you didn't know was there.

Me giving $100 to neighbour is different to $100 to malaria fighting foundation.

> It also misses the point of local tribe mentality deeply rooted in all of our brains.

Singer fully acknowledges the instinct you reference. But he points out there are other circumstances where we override our brute instincts based on social strictures and an intellectual understanding of the bigger picture.

For instance, most of us have a far stronger instinctive urge to violence than we actually practice. If someone steals my car I may be tempted to beat him grievously, but I don't even if it might feel powerfully right at the moment.

I would encourage everyone to read "When Helping Hurts". It lays out why it is bad for Americans' first response to throw money at an international problem.

Some of the reasons why we should be slow to give money:

We should encourage self-empowerment. If there are local laborers who can clean up after a natural disaster, we should empower them to help their community

We should avoid short term solutions. Instead of donating a super expensive tractor to a farming community that can't maintain it, donate a tractor that they can maintain

We should strengthen the community. Instead of sending a Dr to heal people across the world, send a Dr to train local Dr's who heal the locals

And, to be clear, the model of being thoughtful of where and how to give is much harder than giving money. This is not a cop out

I've heard a similar idea with giving free food to an area. Influx of free food puts local farmers out of work - they can't compete with free. When the charity dwindles the former farmers can't spin up their production in time and famine reoccurs.

>We should encourage self-empowerment. If there are local laborers who can clean up after a natural disaster, we should empower them to help their community

Usually, though, this empowerment is just giving them money.

>Instead of sending a Dr to heal people across the world, send a Dr to train local Dr's who heal the locals

Similarly, subsidizing study-abroad programs could have a similar effect.

I agree that stupidly giving out money is exactly that, stupid. But let's not let the pendulum swing too far the other way - the solution, much of the time, is giving out money, wisely.

EDIT:

I say the solution is to give out money much of the time because money offers freedom in ways that a good tractor doesn't; moreover, we might not know the comparative need of tractors vs doctors at as high a resolution or in as nuanced a way as the locals do, considering that we haven't lived where they have for X amount of years. Money lets them allocate according to their needs in real time and as specifically as they want. Of course this assumes the people that the money is going to is in the best interests of the people in general, and that's where wisdom and discretion come into play.

I agree with everything you said, and so does Singer.

But I want to point out that a large part of Singer's book is about "effective altruism", giving in a way that helps. He talks about how the shallow analysis of Charity Navigator focuses mainly on operational overhead, while a few charity evaluation sites have boots on the ground to study how the charity is using its spending and measuring results. See the "Best Charities" link on the site below:

https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/

It is selfish, and I would say that is ok. Yes, it might be more altruistic to help someone you have literally no connection to, but perhaps it is more rewarding to help someone near you, who has suffered unfortunate loss or difficulty, achieve a life that is closer to being as fortunate as your own. It's a real understandable difference from helping someone in a different country and a different culture who you can't identify with and will never see.

And yes, it's a little selfish, and I think that's ok.

Its just indulgence letters all over again. People paid a lot of money to the church to try to clean their conscience when they could instead have used the money to lift a ton of people out of poverty. So the actual cause doesn't matter, what matters is what those around you think is important, and to them burning money by sending it to the church was more important than actually doing as Jesus preached.

Meh. It's a bit cold-hearted, but if I help a person that I never actually meet, I think you can also argue that this is a simple indulgence letter, instead of making a tangible change that you can see with your own eyes.

I don't think you're wrong, I just don't think your statement is any more (or less) valid than its inverse.

It is a matter of culture, we shouldn't praise those who throw away money on mostly useless things since then we encourage more people to throw away money instead of using it well.

So even though you say "it helps a little bit, that is praiseworthy!", that is the problem! If they are to throw away money then we can at least try to incentivise better use of it. I agree that giving away money is a good thing, but praising those who give away money to mostly useless things that is a bad thing. The bad person here isn't the one who gave money to a guys car, it is the people who praise that person for giving away money for the car that are the problem, we should praise those who actually helps rather than those who just makes sacrifices.

This treats people who help a little worst then those who don't help at all. In such system, doing nothing at all is best strategy for everyone.

Are you responding to the right post?

I submit that any attempt to reduce your humanity to a math problem is ultimately going to give perverse results. Why give money to children in foreign countries and save 10,000 lives when I can contribute to the creation of technology that could save the lives of countless future human beings? Instead of that, why not give my money to Elon to help ensure we eventually develop an extraterrestrial and (possibly even extrasolar) colonization capability which will help ensure the survival of humanity as a whole? Oh, I know, I'll build a company that exploits its workers and consumers in order to amass a fortune that I can ultimately use to further that goal!

The part of your mind that does this kind of logic or math based reasoning is very useful, but there's a reason our minds aren't entirely rational. Rationality is a tool we use, it is not us and it is not the end-all be-all way of understanding and interacting with our reality.

One aspect of the intellectual approach that I struggle with is decision paralysis. That is, second-guessing any expenditure of resources I'm considering as possibly better spent on something else. And there are innumerable options. Empathy or (perhaps more usefully?) a sense of duty to specific people or organizations helps break that indecision, at least for me.

It’s not really intellectual, it’s a sort of bike shed accounting process where we argue about what is more virtuous.

Most of us have a sense of family, community, humanity or other identity. Your personal feeling on these matters ultimately drive charity. Personally, my family does alot of charity and volunteering, and we generally do so for local organizations in our city that help those less fortunate. In my mind, it’s important to build up the community that we live in.

A “human charity accountant” will point out that our labor and treasure would better benefit a child in Bolivia or a sick person in the Congo. Those are fine causes and we all find our path to what matters most to us.