Sometimes when I see people writing about opposition to the death penalty I get the urge to mention Effective Altruism to them, and suggest it is borderline insane to think opposition to capital punishment in the US is where a humanitarian should focus their energies. (Other political causes don’t cause me to react in the same way because people’s desire to campaign for things like lower taxes, feminism or more school spending seems tied up with self-interest to a much larger degree, so the question if it is the most pressing issue seems irrelevant.) I always refrain from mentioning EA because I think it would do more harm then good, so I will just vent my irrational frustation here.
I endorse using Shortform posts to vent! I think you’re right that mentioning EA would be likely to do more harm than good in those cases, but your feelings are reasonable and I’m glad this can be a place to express them.
Some object-level thoughts not meant to interfere with your venting:
I don’t feel the same way about people who oppose the death penalty, I think largely because I have a strong natural sense that justice is very important and injustice is very especially extra-bad. This doesn’t influence my giving, but I definitely feel worse about the stories “innocent person is killed by the state” or “guilty person who is now wholly reformed is killed by the state” than I do the story “innocent child dies of malaria”, despite knowing logically that the last of these is likely the saddest (because many more years were lost). I can understand how someone who feels similarly to me would end up spending a lot of energy opposing capital punishment.
The death penalty also has a hint of self-interest in that it is funded by tax money. I can imagine people being exceptionally angry that they are paying even the most minute fraction of the cost of executing someone. Similarly, the documentary “Life in a Day” briefly features someone who deliberately earns a very low income so they can pay no taxes and thus ensure that none of their money goes toward “war”.
Sometimes when I see people writing about opposition to the death penalty I get the urge to mention Effective Altruism to them, and suggest it is borderline insane to think opposition to capital punishment in the US is where a humanitarian should focus their energies. (Other political causes don’t cause me to react in the same way because people’s desire to campaign for things like lower taxes, feminism or more school spending seems tied up with self-interest to a much larger degree, so the question if it is the most pressing issue seems irrelevant.) I always refrain from mentioning EA because I think it would do more harm then good, so I will just vent my irrational frustation here.
I endorse using Shortform posts to vent! I think you’re right that mentioning EA would be likely to do more harm than good in those cases, but your feelings are reasonable and I’m glad this can be a place to express them.
Some object-level thoughts not meant to interfere with your venting:
I don’t feel the same way about people who oppose the death penalty, I think largely because I have a strong natural sense that justice is very important and injustice is very especially extra-bad. This doesn’t influence my giving, but I definitely feel worse about the stories “innocent person is killed by the state” or “guilty person who is now wholly reformed is killed by the state” than I do the story “innocent child dies of malaria”, despite knowing logically that the last of these is likely the saddest (because many more years were lost). I can understand how someone who feels similarly to me would end up spending a lot of energy opposing capital punishment.
The death penalty also has a hint of self-interest in that it is funded by tax money. I can imagine people being exceptionally angry that they are paying even the most minute fraction of the cost of executing someone. Similarly, the documentary “Life in a Day” briefly features someone who deliberately earns a very low income so they can pay no taxes and thus ensure that none of their money goes toward “war”.