The Most Good You Can Do

Peter Singer's new book on effective altruism

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Peter Singer's new book on effective altruism

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Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

Form an EA group in your school or on your college campus. Help to educate yourselves and others about issues like global poverty, climate change, factory farming, etc, and about the different groups working on these issues. You can volunteer for some of the organizations working on these issues. And even if you don't have much money, you can still start giving a small amount to an effective charity, to get into the habit of doing so. Then when later on you have more, it will come more easily to you.

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11yr ago

Spelt

@petersinger Thanks! Great advice.

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11yr ago

Tweety-Pi

Loved your TED Talk and I look forward to reading this book. Q: Presuming that people who run charities / non-profits are Good People, what factors make so many of them ineffective? And how might we go about changing that?

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11yr ago

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

@jonarcher In contrast to the business sector, charities have not had to demonstrate their effectiveness. They can get away with emotional appeals and a few photos of smiling kids. The Effective Altruism movement is changing that. So supporting the EAmovement, and donating to charities recommended on websites like GiveWell.org and thelifeyoucansave.org are good ways of changing things.

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11yr ago

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Hunter

what's more ethical: taking a job you're really passionate about but doesn't make as much money vs. a job you don't feel passionate about but that would earn you tons of money that you could then donate to someone else?

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11yr ago

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

@eriktorenberg People often advise "follow your passion" but I don't think that's always good advice. It might be better to take the high-paying job and do more good that way. You might develop a passion for doing good, and helping effective charities. Or it might depend on what each job does, apart from the money you earn. Anway, people's passions change. Think about your basic values, and I hope they will lead you to want to do the most good.

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11yr ago

Postpone Pixel

I love the premise of this book and I look forward to reading it; I find it fascinating to learn how skewed our conventional perception on the route to hapiness is. Two different questions here, hopefully both somewhat relevant to the AMA participants. Q: What do you think will be the role of "social businesses" (American or otherwise) in creating solutions for issues like: water scarcity, poverty, or education in the world at large, and how important do you think they will be at creating positive changes in the lives of those affected? Q: In recent light of decisions made in New York regarding chimpanzees and habeas corpus, what do you think the future discussion of animal rights will conclude for the "captivity" of wild animals in zoos and research facilities, also what elements of "intelligence" will play a role in decisions regarding custodial authority? Thank you for this fantastic opportunity to ask you questions and I hope my impromptu choice of topics doesn't detract from anything. Cheers!

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11yr ago

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

@tbajwa Social enterprises have a lot of potential, but we have to see if they are really going to reach the people in greatest need. So far, the verdict isn't yet in Re the rights on nonhumans in captivity, I'm hopeful that courts will eventually rule that they have legal standing. This is likely to come first with animals like chimps, but perhaps in the long run it will spread. But the meat industry is so huge and influential, that first we have to undermine it, by developing plant-based alternatives that are healthier, more environmentally sustainable, and that eliminate the cruelty of factory farming.

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11yr ago

Postpone Pixel

@petersinger much obliged by your response, I thank you. To add my unsolicited 2 cents to the point about the farming industry... In addition to cultivating the vitally needed alternatives I feel the disconnect between the consumers' awareness and the factory farms' obligations to maximize profits plays a significant role on the demand for meat based on the fact that the agents are so far removed from what is required to get their steak on the shelves for under $10 a pound; this relationship can be continued with fruits and vegetables in that commercial farming has irreversibly harmed soil life and demand for fresh has lead to landfills of food waste. I feel that one who is not prepared to take an animal's life, should not be prepared to eat from it, much less create so much waste from the act, furthermore, corporate agriculture's influence should be met by consumer education and awareness.

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11yr ago

I appreciate your work, and am looking forward to reading your new book. You'd previously used an example (the details are off, but hopefully not important to the point) suggesting that if you were willing to ruin a pair of $200 shoes to jump in the water and save a drowning child, which most people would, you should be willing to forego a purchase of equal value in order to instead contribute $200 to a trustworthy charity that would save a child's life. While I happen to agree with the conclusion, your reasoning in coming to that conclusion confuses me. One can easily use the same reasoning to argue that if you weren't willing to forego a $200 purchase to contribute to the charity, you also shouldn't jump in the water and ruin your shoes to save the drowning child? The thought experiment is focusing on the shared details of two scenarios (e.g., financial loss, and lives being saved), and suggesting that it is a mistake to let the other details (e.g., proximity to life-saving event) to affect our choices/preferences. As if to consign these latter details to some realm that is outside logic or rationality when, in fact, it makes all the difference to human beings in the real world; they're part and parcel of how we decide what we should and shouldn't value in the world. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with appealing to someone's reason or intuitions to have them change their preferences to bring them in line with other, firmer preferences they may have or by making the distal effects of saving a child psychologically salient, but to suggest that they have to change their preferences to make them logically consistent in this very abstracted way, seems to take advantage of a confusion in order to get them to change their preferences.

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11yr ago

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

@nycortex The point of the example is just to get people to see that there is a problem with our intuitions that needs to be sorted out. I've given more argument, in several of my writings, as to why we should go in the direction of saving the child AND helping the global poor.

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11yr ago

Spelt

@petersinger What advice do you have for high school/college students who want to be effectively altruistic but don't have jobs yet and therefore lack the financial means available to many in your TED audience?

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11yr ago

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Maker

@hjonesr It's going to depend on what the company does But everyone can give to an effective charity.

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11yr ago

Spelt

@petersinger Agreed. Thanks for your advice.

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11yr ago

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