I think the arguments about moral realism/utility and ethics being demanding are very interesting.
I am new to EA, and I am an environmental vegetarian for over 10 years. I believe it was in one of the video introductions to EA that they talk about how many chickens equal a human life, and the answer varies for different individuals and for some may be quite large. Does EA allow for people having differing valuations of level of suffering?
For people whose animal-to-human suffering equivalence ratio is very high, could the choice to eat meat be presented as a cause of human suffering (of future generations, due to carbon emissions/equivalence) instead of animals? Then again, nearly every choice we make could be. (Do I take the bus vs. drive my car, do I feed myself this fancy meal or feed 100 starving children.)
I thought the “moral nonrealism, therefore egoism” part was purely satire. (I felt like the other points, besides the cultural value one, actually seems seemed quite serious.) I’m not really sure how moral nonrealism works, but I haven’t seen it used within EA to argue for maximizing your personal pleasure and for nothing else mattering. I think it’s very unlikely you’d be an EA if you believed that.
There are definitely a lot of figures (either empirical or subjective) which EAs disagree about, and so there’s a lot of variation in people’s beliefs of what’s most impactful to work on.
Founders Pledge did some research into effective climate change charities (see https://founderspledge.com/research/Cause Report—Climate Change.pdf), and it estimates that $100 to Coalition for Rainforest Nations averts “~857 tonnes of CO2e with a range of ~138 tonnes to ~4,600 tonnes”. For reference, apparently the average person in the US has a footprint of 16 tons, but I’m not sure if that’s CO2-equivalents or just CO2. Now, how valuable is averting a ton of CO2? The WHO had an old figure of 5,000 tons/DALY, but apparently that’s not reliable anymore (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/modelling-climate-change-cost-effectiveness/#1-the-old-estimates). If anyone has a better figure, please post a comment.
I think the arguments about moral realism/utility and ethics being demanding are very interesting.
I am new to EA, and I am an environmental vegetarian for over 10 years. I believe it was in one of the video introductions to EA that they talk about how many chickens equal a human life, and the answer varies for different individuals and for some may be quite large. Does EA allow for people having differing valuations of level of suffering?
For people whose animal-to-human suffering equivalence ratio is very high, could the choice to eat meat be presented as a cause of human suffering (of future generations, due to carbon emissions/equivalence) instead of animals? Then again, nearly every choice we make could be. (Do I take the bus vs. drive my car, do I feed myself this fancy meal or feed 100 starving children.)
I thought the “moral nonrealism, therefore egoism” part was purely satire. (I felt like the other points, besides the cultural value one, actually seems seemed quite serious.) I’m not really sure how moral nonrealism works, but I haven’t seen it used within EA to argue for maximizing your personal pleasure and for nothing else mattering. I think it’s very unlikely you’d be an EA if you believed that.
There are definitely a lot of figures (either empirical or subjective) which EAs disagree about, and so there’s a lot of variation in people’s beliefs of what’s most impactful to work on.
Founders Pledge did some research into effective climate change charities (see https://founderspledge.com/research/Cause Report—Climate Change.pdf), and it estimates that $100 to Coalition for Rainforest Nations averts “~857 tonnes of CO2e with a range of ~138 tonnes to ~4,600 tonnes”. For reference, apparently the average person in the US has a footprint of 16 tons, but I’m not sure if that’s CO2-equivalents or just CO2. Now, how valuable is averting a ton of CO2? The WHO had an old figure of 5,000 tons/DALY, but apparently that’s not reliable anymore (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/modelling-climate-change-cost-effectiveness/#1-the-old-estimates). If anyone has a better figure, please post a comment.
I’ve seen a few people say it, not on this forum but in other EA associated spaces. “I only give to charity because I desire to do so.”