I find myself agreeing with quite a lot of what he says in this video as, on a personal level, the greatest difficulty I find when trying to wind my mind around the values and principles of EA (as opposed to effective altruism, in small caps) is the axiom of impartiality, and its extension to a degree to animals. Like, in some aspects, it is trivially obvious that all humans (and by extension, this applies to any creatures with sufficient reason and moral conscience) should be the possessors of an equal set of rights, but if you try to push it into moral-ethical obligations towards them, I can’t quite understand why we are supposed not to make distinctions, like valuing more those that are closest to us (our community) and those we consider wise, good, etc… That would not preclude the possession, at the same time, of a more generalist and abstract empathy for all sentient beings, and a feeling of a degree of moral obligation to help them (even if to a lesser degree than those closest to one).
I find myself agreeing with quite a lot of what he says in this video as, on a personal level, the greatest difficulty I find when trying to wind my mind around the values and principles of EA (as opposed to effective altruism, in small caps) is the axiom of impartiality, and its extension to a degree to animals. Like, in some aspects, it is trivially obvious that all humans (and by extension, this applies to any creatures with sufficient reason and moral conscience) should be the possessors of an equal set of rights, but if you try to push it into moral-ethical obligations towards them, I can’t quite understand why we are supposed not to make distinctions, like valuing more those that are closest to us (our community) and those we consider wise, good, etc… That would not preclude the possession, at the same time, of a more generalist and abstract empathy for all sentient beings, and a feeling of a degree of moral obligation to help them (even if to a lesser degree than those closest to one).