[Notes] An Immense Opportunity To Do Good
“The challenge for us is this: How can we ensure that, when we try to help others, we do so as effectively as possible?” -William MacAskill
Four Ideas You Already Agree With (Sam Deere)
Main Four Ideas
It's important to help others
People are equal
Helping more is better than helping less
Our resources are limited
The way we typically think about doing good is wrong— need to think how we can help the most people with our limited resources
Random charities may not be the most effective— not giving people equal consideration if we do not choose well, or helping as many people as possible
First focus on causes where we can help most people for limited time and money, not just on those we know
Being cause-neutral
Treating people equally = treating their experiences equally
Equality = treating all death and suffering as tragedy
Q: If we have a personal attachment to a certain cause, even if it does not help as much people as we would like, should we continue supporting that in the same manner?
Q: Should we stop supporting causes we have been supporting if they are not really that effective?
Effective Altruism
Clearly thinking how actions can help the most people or do the most good
Way to live up to values we already hold
Helps with decision paralysis
Asks us to face hard choices — remember you're trading off against other worthy causes
Stuff we can do
Donate to charity based on impact and cost-effectiveness
Pledge to keep donating over course of your lifetime
Choose a high-impact career
On Caring (Nate Soares)
1 - The Bigness of Numbers
Hard to see a magnitude differential
Scope insensitivity
Tragedy is not reduced by being far away, ignorance, or not being directly accountable
It's a problem not to have the internal capacity in feeling much
2 - Caring for the world = doing the right thing anyway, even without the feeling
Humanity is playing for unimaginably high stakes
A lot of existence depends on the present
Internal caring heuristics fail to grasp situation's gravity— but there is a whole world of difference with one life and the world.
Our internal care-feelings =inadequate in deciding how to act in a world with big problems
3 - Motivations and social setting
Sometimes donations are largely motivated by social context (social pressure, camaraderie, competitiveness)
Motivations may be related tangentially to the content of the charitable donation
Need to internalize scope insensitivity
4 - Adjusting to scope insensitivity
Internal feeling of caring can't be expected to line up with actual importance of the situation
Minds can lie about the gravity of real problems
Adjusting to scope insensitivity— realizing everything is a problem
Some tend to forget to see the world's problems, social context reminds them to donate a little
Can't spend time-solving all the world's problems because there are just too many problems
5 - The care feeling and our broken care-o-meters
We think we should care about people suffering far away from us but fail to
We think it's virtuous to do more for the world but think that we can't
Prominent altruists: aren't people who have a larger care-o-meter, but have learned not to trust their care-o-meters
Maybe can't respond appropriately to problems with large magnitude but we can act like the world's problems are as big as they are
Stop trusting internal feelings to guide your actions and switch to MANUAL control
6 - What to do?
Desperate perspective - not enough to think you should change the world - need desperation coming from realizing dedicating life to solving the bigger problems first
Q: What would you constitute as a bigger problem? (Back to EA's criteria?)
Q: Does it mean we have to decrease our personal attachedness
Being a philanthropist requires having money first, then requires to bring it to distant invisible problems (hard to sell to brain)
Guilt not a good long-term motivator
Join ranks of people saving the world proudly
7 - Doing it anyway
The closest we can get is doing multiplication: finding something we care about, putting a number on it, multiplying; trusting numbers more than we trust our feelings (bc our feelings lie to us)
Addressing problems requires more resources that do not exist; it is up to those who try
8 - We can catch a glimpse of the weight of the world.
What are the Most Important Moral Problems of our Time? (Will MacAskill)
Unprecedented time to change world
Need: ethical revolution to work out how to use bounty of resources to improve world
How can we do the most good? (Framework)
Fundamental problem: which should we be focused on solving first?
Most pressing problems are:
Big - more to gain solving problem
Solvable - can solve problem with less time or money
Neglected - diminishing returns - more resources invested in a problem makes it harder to make additional progress
Issues
Global Health: solvable
Factory farming: neglected
Factory farming gets 1/50th of farming
Existential risk
Events that can permanently derail the human race i.e. nuclear war/global pandemic
Framework on existential crisis
Size: how bad are existential risks?
They involve the deaths of like evERYONE; curtailment of human's future potential
Our basic age right now as a race is 10 so like!
Is the human race deserving?
Future progress is vast
Tremendous technological progress, apart from progress, has brought possibility of nuclear war and extreme climate change.
Preserving future of
How neglected are existential risks?
Problems that affect future often neglected
People in future markets don't have a vote
Issues: nuclear nonproliferation, geo-engineering, bio-risk, artificial intelligence safety
Solvable?
Can contribute with money, career, or political engagement
We need everyone to work and support organizations supporting these problems!
"By thinking carefully and by focusing on those problems that are big, solvable, and neglected, we can make a truly tremendous difference in this world for thousands of years to come."
