Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

Hi Rebecca.

Contrary to what one could conclude by applying pure utilitarianism, saving someone’s life is good even if they go on to do bad things.

Would you agree with saving the life of a suicide bomber who was about to be shot to prevent a detonation which would kill lots of people? In this case, saving the life of the bomber would imply not saving the lives of lots of people. If one prefers not to save the bomber in order to minimise the number of killings, one should also be open to not saving humans in order to minimise the number of animals killed?

The discussion always seems to come up in response to saving the lives of poor people in third world countries, and I have a sense that some people don’t react super viscerally to what’s actually being said because the humans in question are so distant from them.

The farmed animals in question are even more morally distant, so I am more worried about people being biased towards underestimating the effects on animals.