I checked the numbers thinking that a 1 to 100 ratio in your example should be much larger, that actually the trade-off should be more like 1 to 10000. Turns out that is not the case. If 9% of the world’s population is over 65 (I assume you wanted to compare a person’s possible impact on aging with their possible impact on the bladder), the ratio is more like 1 to 11. So I have to retract my statement that peeing is on the same scale as aging and poverty. That being said, I still think this is a very important issue and while the most effective people should work on something else, someone whose applications to jobs in other fields got rejected still just consider improving catheter technology as a way to do a tremendous amount of good. The same holds true for advocacy. While catheters are maybe not something Peter Singer should write books about, I for my part am very happy to raise awareness of this topic. And that is more tractable than you seem to think. While people might think fighting poverty is more important, they do not act according to their believes, see the drowning-child thought experiment. While people would prefer having to pee and poop to poverty, that is not a choice most people in rich countries face.
I checked the numbers thinking that a 1 to 100 ratio in your example should be much larger, that actually the trade-off should be more like 1 to 10000. Turns out that is not the case. If 9% of the world’s population is over 65 (I assume you wanted to compare a person’s possible impact on aging with their possible impact on the bladder), the ratio is more like 1 to 11. So I have to retract my statement that peeing is on the same scale as aging and poverty. That being said, I still think this is a very important issue and while the most effective people should work on something else, someone whose applications to jobs in other fields got rejected still just consider improving catheter technology as a way to do a tremendous amount of good. The same holds true for advocacy. While catheters are maybe not something Peter Singer should write books about, I for my part am very happy to raise awareness of this topic. And that is more tractable than you seem to think. While people might think fighting poverty is more important, they do not act according to their believes, see the drowning-child thought experiment. While people would prefer having to pee and poop to poverty, that is not a choice most people in rich countries face.