Devin gave me the idea of making this with their recommendation posts, so I thought I’d give my own song recommendation: “Only Be a Story” by Icon for Hire. Honestly the song is short enough that you could listen to it and come back to this, but if you just want to know how it relates to Effective Altruism, then the rest of this post is for you.
Sometimes when I hear an emotional song, I try to think of how it could fit into a TV show[1]. My interpretation of this song is about how limited our empathy can be. Horrible things happened in the long ago. We hear about them all of the time in history class. But I can’t say I feel emotionally connected to them. It’s often hard for me to remember that Mary Ann Nichols was a real person, rather than a character in a story. When I think of how this could fit in a TV show, I think a show where there’s an old legend that carries the story. The characters involved in the old legend suffer through unimaginable pain to give the world a chance to survive. Think of Star Wars: Rogue One[2]. The events of Rogue One are described in the rest of the saga in a way that doesn’t reflect the amount of pain involved in that story. To anyone hearing the story after it happened, the pain doesn’t matter. Their lives only seem like a story.
So why did I post this here? Because this song could be the theme of the drowning child. People often feel hesitant to help others when they’re on the other side of the Earth. They feel more connected to the people around them. Helping with the issues that affect the people near you grants a warmer glow. Most of us in the developed world don’t have friends who’ve developed fistulae, or family members who’ve gotten malaria. Global health problems feel like stories.
As for his various eccentricities, I don’t think they add anything to an understanding of his philosophy, but I find him very moving as a person. When I was interviewing him for the first time, for instance, we were in the middle of a conversation and suddenly he burst into tears. It was completely unexpected, because we were not talking about anything emotional or personal, as I would define those things. I was quite startled, and as he cried I sat there rewinding our conversation in my head, trying to figure out what had upset him. Later, I asked him about it. It turned out that what had made him cry was the idea of suffering. We had been talking about suffering in the abstract. I found that very striking. Now, I don’t think any professional philosopher is going to make this mistake, but nonprofessionals might think that utilitarianism, for instance (Parfit is a utilitarian), or certain other philosophical ways of thinking about morality, are quite calculating, quite cold; and so because as I am writing mostly for nonphilosophers, it seemed like a good corrective to know that for someone like Parfit these issues are extremely emotional, even in the abstract.
As much as I’d love to say I have as great of a care-o-meter as Parfit did, I don’t. Maybe that’s okay, but sometimes I worry that I don’t take certain atrocities as seriously as I should because of this. In On Caring, So8res argues that the best altruists aren’t that way because they have great care-o-meters, but because they thought about how to do the most good logically. I agree with this, but it’s one thing to know the world would be better if you took some action, and another to actually take it.
I think this would be a good place to admit that I am not a vegetarian. I have been limiting my meat intake quite a lot over the past year[3], but I haven’t reached the point of full vegetarianism yet. In my defense, reducing your meat intake over time seems to be a legitimate strategy. I’ve met many people to tried to be a vegetarian immediately but gave up. However, if I was perfectly empathetic, and eating meat caused me to feel the pain of the factory farmed animals, then I would probably stop eating meat.
Maybe it’s sufficient to just be able to empathize with one chicken, and then use that as motivation. After all, the reason why I said empathy might be useful is for motivation, and not determining what cause area to solve first.
But there’s another reason to not want to be so motivated to do good, rather than self-preservation. George Price ended up committing suicide after giving away everything he had to the poor. If nothing else, this is at least self-defeating. His dead body couldn’t do much to help the poor.
I know I’m already off-track, but I feel like I should answer the question that every young effective altruist asks at some point: “how much should I give?” The Giving Pledge recommends 10%, but that’s such an arbitrary number. Giving What We Can does give a lot of possible answers to this question. If you’re to ask me, I like what Peter Singer said in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. One big reason you’re even considering donating to charity is because you are living comfortably. You would not be donating to charity if you were not living comfortable. You’d be more concerned with helping yourself than others. So what you should do is take what you can comfortably live on, and give the rest to charity. This raises the question of “What do you mean by comfortable?” I’d like to have the best graphics card in the world, but I don’t need it. Bring your own standard of living.
I don’t know what the point of this post was. But I assume the thought experiment was worth it in some way. Thank you for joining in this journey with me.
For the song, “The Crow, The Owl, and the Dove”, I imagined it as part of The Owl House. Luz has to leave the demon realm and everyone she’s met there behind. This was well before season 2 ended.
If you haven’t watched the show, then I could just tell you what happens in it, but that also wouldn’t give you any empathy for the characters, which would defeat the purpose of the analogy. Go watch it if you want to know what I’m talking about.
Overthinking “Only Be a Story”
Devin gave me the idea of making this with their recommendation posts, so I thought I’d give my own song recommendation: “Only Be a Story” by Icon for Hire. Honestly the song is short enough that you could listen to it and come back to this, but if you just want to know how it relates to Effective Altruism, then the rest of this post is for you.
Sometimes when I hear an emotional song, I try to think of how it could fit into a TV show[1]. My interpretation of this song is about how limited our empathy can be. Horrible things happened in the long ago. We hear about them all of the time in history class. But I can’t say I feel emotionally connected to them. It’s often hard for me to remember that Mary Ann Nichols was a real person, rather than a character in a story. When I think of how this could fit in a TV show, I think a show where there’s an old legend that carries the story. The characters involved in the old legend suffer through unimaginable pain to give the world a chance to survive. Think of Star Wars: Rogue One[2]. The events of Rogue One are described in the rest of the saga in a way that doesn’t reflect the amount of pain involved in that story. To anyone hearing the story after it happened, the pain doesn’t matter. Their lives only seem like a story.
So why did I post this here? Because this song could be the theme of the drowning child. People often feel hesitant to help others when they’re on the other side of the Earth. They feel more connected to the people around them. Helping with the issues that affect the people near you grants a warmer glow. Most of us in the developed world don’t have friends who’ve developed fistulae, or family members who’ve gotten malaria. Global health problems feel like stories.
Of course, this isn’t the case for everyone. Larissa MacFarquhar said the following about Derek Parfit:
As much as I’d love to say I have as great of a care-o-meter as Parfit did, I don’t. Maybe that’s okay, but sometimes I worry that I don’t take certain atrocities as seriously as I should because of this. In On Caring, So8res argues that the best altruists aren’t that way because they have great care-o-meters, but because they thought about how to do the most good logically. I agree with this, but it’s one thing to know the world would be better if you took some action, and another to actually take it.
I think this would be a good place to admit that I am not a vegetarian. I have been limiting my meat intake quite a lot over the past year[3], but I haven’t reached the point of full vegetarianism yet. In my defense, reducing your meat intake over time seems to be a legitimate strategy. I’ve met many people to tried to be a vegetarian immediately but gave up. However, if I was perfectly empathetic, and eating meat caused me to feel the pain of the factory farmed animals, then I would probably stop eating meat.
There are good reasons to not want to be perfectly empathetic. Like, what would that even mean? Hundreds of millions of chickens are killed every day. Hundreds of millions of humans live in extreme poverty. Am I seriously supposed to even try to feel the pain of all of those people?
Maybe it’s sufficient to just be able to empathize with one chicken, and then use that as motivation. After all, the reason why I said empathy might be useful is for motivation, and not determining what cause area to solve first.
But there’s another reason to not want to be so motivated to do good, rather than self-preservation. George Price ended up committing suicide after giving away everything he had to the poor. If nothing else, this is at least self-defeating. His dead body couldn’t do much to help the poor.
I know I’m already off-track, but I feel like I should answer the question that every young effective altruist asks at some point: “how much should I give?” The Giving Pledge recommends 10%, but that’s such an arbitrary number. Giving What We Can does give a lot of possible answers to this question. If you’re to ask me, I like what Peter Singer said in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. One big reason you’re even considering donating to charity is because you are living comfortably. You would not be donating to charity if you were not living comfortable. You’d be more concerned with helping yourself than others. So what you should do is take what you can comfortably live on, and give the rest to charity. This raises the question of “What do you mean by comfortable?” I’d like to have the best graphics card in the world, but I don’t need it. Bring your own standard of living.
I don’t know what the point of this post was. But I assume the thought experiment was worth it in some way. Thank you for joining in this journey with me.
For the song, “The Crow, The Owl, and the Dove”, I imagined it as part of The Owl House. Luz has to leave the demon realm and everyone she’s met there behind. This was well before season 2 ended.
If you haven’t watched the show, then I could just tell you what happens in it, but that also wouldn’t give you any empathy for the characters, which would defeat the purpose of the analogy. Go watch it if you want to know what I’m talking about.
I wrote this a long time ago. This statement is still true, but the last time I ate meat was about a month ago.