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”.
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”.