I think it’s a mistake to think that donating $50,000 to a charitable organization in 5 years is more important or “better” than buying $100 of groceries for someone who needs it today.

This person isn’t trying to maximize the amount of “good” they can do, they’re trying to minimize what it will cost them because they’re greedy and unwilling to actually give something of themselves.

“Giving all you have” doesn’t have to mean taking all of your money and possessions and just giving them to someone. It can also mean earnestly engaging with the idea that we’re here to serve and elevate each other, and having faith that in doing so we will create a better world.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

But then how are their wife and daughter gonna land that sweet charity board job?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I think it’s a mistake to think that buying $100 of groceries for 500 people is more important or “better” than buying $100 of groceries for one person

If your goal is to eliminate hunger it's a hell of a lot more effective

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

*if your goal is to eliminate hunger in a hypothetical future 5 years from now.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Don't forget by accumulating massive wealth he's going to be damaging people all around the world right now. You can't accumulate that type of wealth without exploiting workers. His hypothetical accumulation of wealth is literally creating poverty and inequality.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Unless you believe hunger will be solved in the next 5 years it's not really all that hypothetical

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you become obscenely rich, you start to hate the poor and want to exploit them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

You became obscenely rich because you exploited the desperate.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You can't even flood them, they'll just make hydropower

They'll make a Cryptocoin called SploogeBux which will grant opportunities to buy futures in a to-be-constructed hydropower plant, then spin out sixteen kinds of derivatives around the fluctuations in the Coin's trading price. They'll implement a comprehensive social media strategy to market SploogeBux, targeting potential buyers experiencing maximum rainfall. And then they'll spin out a sub-company called SubCompany that guarantees access to yet-unproduced underwater living facilities you can rent-to-own in advance, contingent on the price of steel remaining cough above water into the next forty fiscal cycles.

Then they'll fight one another in a race to embezzle the assets, before retreating to a fortified compound in the Himalayas, where they can churn out a series of books titled "How To Survive The Coming Apocalypse Without Even Trying". These books will be traded by a series of bot farms hosted in a water-tight chamber at the last surviving Amazon Warehouse, and will be worth $70T/ea when the last of the Ultra-Rationalists is cannibalized by an erratic robot butler.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Peter Singer convincingly argues in "The life you can save" that the utilitarian benefit over time of spending money to save a person today, who can then do good for themselves and their community, is almost always greater than the utilitarian benefit of letting that person rot for now, investing the money and saving more people for the returns on that investment when you die.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Peter Singer argued for the genocide of disabled infants and the rest of his loopy logic on effective altruism got us into this mess in the first place.

Could have just said "you should prioritize solving the root cause of poverty, but not exclusively" and left it alone, but NOOOOOO

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First of all: the arguments on charity can be evaluated quite easily on their logical merit without any reference to Peter Singer himself. And if done so, I can't really see how the logic should be "loopy".

Second: Ethically allowable euthanasia is not the same as genocide. Let's hear what Peter Singer's got to say on the matter:

It’s standard practice in neonatal intensive care units pretty much everywhere, that if a child is born with a very severe disability, doctors will ask parents whether they want to put the child on life support or not — or if the child is on life support when the disability is discovered, whether they wish to remove life support.

If you have, let’s say, a premature infant who’s had a massive brain bleeding, a hemorrhage in the brain, which does happen with very premature infants, and the doctors say, “Would you like to take your child off life support? This is the prognosis. Your child will never be able to live independently, will never be able to recognize the child’s mother or father, will basically be needing complete care. Would you like to take this child off life support?” That’s a decision to ask: “Would you like the child to die?” There’s no other way of glossing that.

That happens all the time. Parents very frequently say yes, and the child dies. So the difference between what I’m suggesting and what is happening is that, if the child is not on life support, when the disability is discovered, the brain hemorrhage or whatever it might be, and therefore you can’t end the child’s life by taking the child off life support, parents should still have the option of saying, we think that it’s better that the child should not live, and doctors should be able to make sure that happens, to give the child a drug so that the child dies without suffering.

I continue to think that it’s okay for doctors to offer to take the child off life support, and it’s okay for parents to accept that offer. And I continue to think there’s no real ethical difference between bringing about a child’s death by turning off life support than by giving the child a lethal injection.

I'm not sure which of those elements people think I should change, but I don’t think that I should change any of them.

What is true is that on the range of disabilities where I think parents may properly say, “We want our child to live” … I’ve broadened my views somewhat on that.

I’ve talked to people in the disability community, and I accept that there are all kinds of worthwhile lives. I used to say the parents should discuss it with the doctors, if there’s some uncertainty about the condition. I now say parents should discuss it with the doctors and with representatives of people who have the disability that their child has. Depending on the nature of the disability, that may be people with a disability themselves who’ve grown up and lived that life, or it may be the parents who are living with a child.

But I certainly accept the point that doctors themselves may have a prejudice against people with disabilities, and that therefore it’s good to get a wider range of advice.

Source

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's a whole lot of text to say you're also a genocidal eugenicist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I don't think I am... Would you care to offer an actual argument? Declaring the equivalence of turning off life support and euthanising an infant doesn't seem genocidal. Could you elucidate how it is? Is turning off the life support equal to genocide, or are they not equivalent?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Boy do I love EA