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 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.”