I think it’s good you helped the dog and you should get positive reinforcement for it and feel good about yourself for it.
I think it would have been, idk, maybe 20 thousand or more times as good, if you had used the same amount of money on highly cost effective global health interventions, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also good that you helped the dog.
I’m curious how others think about this, how you cope with this tension, and if you can imagine spending so much time on one human or animal (who is a stranger to you).
Personally no, not really—I wouldn’t spent 1000+ dollars or a day’s work on an animal who is a stranger to me, or even any an animal that I know. For a human stranger I might, but there are limits there too. I think to some degree i I can viscerally feel in my feelings as well as my thoughts opportunity costs above a certain magnitude, so it doesn’t really feel like cold calculations over feelings to me. It also helps to personally know more people in need than I can realistically help, and so being accustomed to feeling in triage even before taking abstract strangers into account.
But I sometimes do smaller versions of this. For example, last week I tried to catch a mouse and release it in a location where it might survive rather than killing it, even when that costs an extra hour which could be spent doing much more good. I don’t think this is a problem at all, it’s a more impactful use of my time than scrolling on the internet which I also do sometimes. Why should only good actions be subject to scrutiny? So you helped a dog, instead of buying a fancier car, why should anyone have a problem with that?
When your friend isn’t criticizing that you bought a more expensive apartment or laptop than is strictly needed to maximize effectiveness, then why should they decide to criticize your act of kindness to a dog? There are institutions with billions in resources who spend it on nothing useful, or war, who wants to worry that one little dog has gotten some good fortune?
I think it is a big mistake to bring those who are doing a little small bit of good, under more negative scrutiny than if they had done nothing.
what you say relates to the last point I made, I think: what does the behavior (time or money) compete with (or displace). Is that money or time taken from one’s charity budget, or from e.g. one’s entertainment budget? I guess there’s good ways to track that if one is honest with oneself.
I guess I’m not fully sure I understand why you are thinking that. Is it possible that you are feeling confused about your feelings because it is a dog and so it is easier to think of its welfare in terms of which number is smaller rather than engaging with the question emotionally?
Imagine it was a human child. Wouldn’t it be “very good” to give one human child a caring family and a home? Why does the fact that it would be arguably more good to prevent ten human children from premature malaria deaths take away from that it’s good to help one child?
If everybody with the capability would give serious support to even one other person then almost all these problems would be solved several times over
Or lets imagine a more down to earth scenario. Your friend wants you to help them move. So you help them move. But you instead could have worked extra and made more money, hired movers for your friend, and also on top of that paid for a week of your friend’s meals. Haven’t you still done a good turn by helping your friend, even if an even more efficient way to help them exists? (Especially when in reality you were never going to put in all those extra work hours and you would burn out if you lived like that)\
A small good deserves a small reward, not a punishment, but it sounds like you are punishing yourself. The purpose of guilt and shame emotions are not intended to punish yourself for not doing enough.Those emotions are intended to stop you from doing bad things, not punish you for being insufficiently efficient about good. If you emotionally punish yourself for doing good in smaller than maximally efficient ways then you’ll only train yourself to flinch away from doing good things, don’t do that to yourself.
We want you to work hard at doing good for others for many years, We don’t want you to feel guilt and shame about not doing enough until your motivation fizzles out. Small good things count.
It’s not about catering to your emotions at the expense of rationality or anything. When you find a $1 dollar on the street, you are happy to have gotten a little money, not sad that the bill was not $100, right? It doesn’t do to not appreciate the small things just because larger things exist. You talked about emotions vs yourf riends being “more calculating” than you earlier, but what your friends said was actually not rational, it is not calculating correctly to not count small good things as good just because an even bigger good is placed next to them.
If you want to change your behavior to do even more good that’s great but there’s no sense in which doing a small good should count against you.
Yes! There are so many opportunities to help animals, and some are effective on a really large scale, but what Tobias did means the world to this dog <3
I think it’s good you helped the dog and you should get positive reinforcement for it and feel good about yourself for it.
I think it would have been, idk, maybe 20 thousand or more times as good, if you had used the same amount of money on highly cost effective global health interventions, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also good that you helped the dog.
Personally no, not really—I wouldn’t spent 1000+ dollars or a day’s work on an animal who is a stranger to me, or even any an animal that I know. For a human stranger I might, but there are limits there too. I think to some degree i I can viscerally feel in my feelings as well as my thoughts opportunity costs above a certain magnitude, so it doesn’t really feel like cold calculations over feelings to me. It also helps to personally know more people in need than I can realistically help, and so being accustomed to feeling in triage even before taking abstract strangers into account.
But I sometimes do smaller versions of this. For example, last week I tried to catch a mouse and release it in a location where it might survive rather than killing it, even when that costs an extra hour which could be spent doing much more good. I don’t think this is a problem at all, it’s a more impactful use of my time than scrolling on the internet which I also do sometimes. Why should only good actions be subject to scrutiny? So you helped a dog, instead of buying a fancier car, why should anyone have a problem with that?
When your friend isn’t criticizing that you bought a more expensive apartment or laptop than is strictly needed to maximize effectiveness, then why should they decide to criticize your act of kindness to a dog? There are institutions with billions in resources who spend it on nothing useful, or war, who wants to worry that one little dog has gotten some good fortune?
I think it is a big mistake to bring those who are doing a little small bit of good, under more negative scrutiny than if they had done nothing.
what you say relates to the last point I made, I think: what does the behavior (time or money) compete with (or displace). Is that money or time taken from one’s charity budget, or from e.g. one’s entertainment budget? I guess there’s good ways to track that if one is honest with oneself.
I guess I’m thinking that if A is 20k times as good as B, it’s really not very good to do B even if B is a little bit good in itself :-)
I guess I’m not fully sure I understand why you are thinking that. Is it possible that you are feeling confused about your feelings because it is a dog and so it is easier to think of its welfare in terms of which number is smaller rather than engaging with the question emotionally?
Imagine it was a human child. Wouldn’t it be “very good” to give one human child a caring family and a home? Why does the fact that it would be arguably more good to prevent ten human children from premature malaria deaths take away from that it’s good to help one child?
If everybody with the capability would give serious support to even one other person then almost all these problems would be solved several times over
Or lets imagine a more down to earth scenario. Your friend wants you to help them move. So you help them move. But you instead could have worked extra and made more money, hired movers for your friend, and also on top of that paid for a week of your friend’s meals. Haven’t you still done a good turn by helping your friend, even if an even more efficient way to help them exists? (Especially when in reality you were never going to put in all those extra work hours and you would burn out if you lived like that)\
A small good deserves a small reward, not a punishment, but it sounds like you are punishing yourself. The purpose of guilt and shame emotions are not intended to punish yourself for not doing enough.Those emotions are intended to stop you from doing bad things, not punish you for being insufficiently efficient about good. If you emotionally punish yourself for doing good in smaller than maximally efficient ways then you’ll only train yourself to flinch away from doing good things, don’t do that to yourself.
We want you to work hard at doing good for others for many years, We don’t want you to feel guilt and shame about not doing enough until your motivation fizzles out. Small good things count.
It’s not about catering to your emotions at the expense of rationality or anything. When you find a $1 dollar on the street, you are happy to have gotten a little money, not sad that the bill was not $100, right? It doesn’t do to not appreciate the small things just because larger things exist. You talked about emotions vs yourf riends being “more calculating” than you earlier, but what your friends said was actually not rational, it is not calculating correctly to not count small good things as good just because an even bigger good is placed next to them.
If you want to change your behavior to do even more good that’s great but there’s no sense in which doing a small good should count against you.
Yes! There are so many opportunities to help animals, and some are effective on a really large scale, but what Tobias did means the world to this dog <3