GiveBots vs. Humans
This article is cross-posted on my blog, Science For Seekers:
I’m one of those regular people who’s been hooked by the core premises of effective giving. The philosophical arguments and do-gooder examples have convinced me of two things: first, that it is morally incumbent on those of us with more to give to those with less; and second, that we ought to do so in as effective a way as possible, using tools of rationality and critical thinking.
I think there are many others who would buy into these premises. And yet, like me, they have not donated a kidney to the cause; they are not living on $25,000 a year because it’s far more than the average income in any developing nation; they spend some of their money on vacations and dinners out rather than give all that money to good causes. And, like me, they give to their local elementary school’s book drive and the local inner-city arts program, even though their money could go much further if all of it went to the programs proven to most cost-effectively save lives around the world.
Why is it so hard for people to base their giving exclusively on reason and mathematical estimates of the greatest good? The answer: it’s because we’re Humans, not GiveBots.
What Are GiveBots?
In 2008’s Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein challenge the traditional view among economists that people are fully rational creatures, always maximizing the net benefits of their rewards. They refer to these theoretical entities as Econs, in contrast to the Humans who populate the real world. Econs never act based on emotions; they are always perfect cost-benefit analysts; and they have no bad habits, psychological dispositions, or any other features that compromise their perfectly rational economic minds.
In reality, of course, people make decisions based on a host of psychological factors, some of which have very little to do with the actual net benefit of the transaction. They buy more expensive drugs because they come in pretty bottles and have brand names; they tend to stick with the status quo even when making changes would save them money in the long run; they act based on “feelings” and “emotions”. In short, they are Humans.
The field of effective giving has given us hypothetical creature similar to the Econ: theGiveBot. Just as Thaler and Sunstein’s Econs rationally maximize their personal gain with ruthless efficiency, GiveBots rationally maximize their positive impact on others. They are ceaselessly efficient in their evaluations of their personal impact on the world. They select only those charities which have been proven to be most cost-effective in improving lives, no matter how abstract or distant. They maximize every moment of their time in order to leverage as much as possible of it for the common good.
GiveBots also are tirelessly benevolent. Their finely-tuned moral compass demands that they live frugal lives because even the costs of even small indulgences could have far greater impact elsewhere.
Great. Only GiveBots don’t really exist. Humans do.
Effective giving tends to see the characteristics that make Humans Humans – such as greater emotional reactions to suffering of those close — as liabilities, but it needn’t. It might be more productive to accept what it really means to be Human and develop our strategies to make the world better accordingly.
Of course you’re correct that people are humans rather than idealised givers. This distinction matters, and sometimes it matters a lot.
I think there’s an important disanalogy between making econs a principal object of study and making idealised givers a principal object of study, though. Most of economics is descriptive—it’s about understanding how the world works, and that includes understanding how the people in it work (positive economics). On the other hand much of the work around effective altruism is trying not to do describe how people do behave, but to give goals of behaviour to which people can aspire (this is really normative economics).
Interesting post! I think you raise several points that others on the fringes of the effective giving movement have brought up before. Please don’t treat the following critiques as attacks but rather as “tough love,” or perhaps tentative explorations by somebody else cautiously trying to discern right and wrong in a screwed-up world.
1) As a factual matter, living on $25,000 isn’t just “far more than the average income in any developing nation,” it’s also a higher individual income than almost 50% of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States#Income_distribution
Note that a)the above number is before taxes and savings and b)the US is rich even among the developed world, so all else being equal I’d expect the median person in the developed world to spend less per year.
2) Is somebody who gives away a kidney less “human”, in your view? What about a First Worlder who lives on less than $20,000*? A man who cooks for himself&family rather than go to restaurants? A woman who commits to never having children? An American citizen who’s neutral (and thus triages) between complete strangers in the local elementary school in Newark and complete strangers in a local elementary school in Malawi? Someone who’s vegan? Someone who eats beef and drinks milk but not chickens or eggs? Somebody who bikes to work? Somebody who cries at the thought of drowning strangers? Somebody who doesn’t cry?
The way I see it, all of those are examples of what it means to be “human” (Case in point: the very same humans who exhibit those traits!), and much more. I don’t think it’s too strong a claim to say this and that you, ironically enough, severely under-estimate the richness of human experience.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country#Gallup_median_household_and_per-capita_income (The numbers are smaller than the above figure since “per capita” also includes children).
3 Your claim for what is and is not a human isn’t just a problem in a definitional sense of inaccuracy, it’s also rather harmful emotionally. Put another way, you’re literally dehumanizing the views/actions of myself and some of my friends, and that makes me sad.
4) Combative language aside, I definitely agree with point that people are not idealized givers,. nor are they capable of being so. Julia Wise writes a lot of good articles about this:
http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/cheerfully.html http://www.givinggladly.com/2014/10/aim-high-even-if-you-fall-short.html http://www.givinggladly.com/2015/10/burnout-and-self-care.html
5) Some people give more than you. Some people give less than you. Some people don’t give at all. Some people kill orphans and other people save them. They’re all human, no more or less than you are. This post is not meant to guilt you for not giving more, or for being “human”. As DavidNash and Julua Wise talks about, people should factor in burnout/productivity/influence, and figure out the level of giving that works best for them. Different people have different limitations, different things that makes them “human.” It’s too high-level a critique to say that our foibles rather than our virtues are what makes us human, and I think human foibles are just that-foibles. Some of them can be avoided, but we all have limitations (different limitations) that we can’t overcome. And that’s fine! But despite our foibles, despite our limitations, our humanity can and will shine through, and we can and will strive to make the world a better place, together.
Wouldn’t a true givebot factor in burn out/productivity/influence, which would allow them to spend money on themselves and take breaks and live happy lives so that others could be inspired to join in as opposed to dismiss as something too hard.
What do you mean by “accept what it really means to be Human”? To what end is it “more productive”?
Not any “human” thing is a good thing. Being susceptible to disease, old age and death is part of “being human” but it is a part I would rather part with. On the other hand, being Human also means having the ability to use reason to find a better strategy than the one suggested by the initial emotional response.
A rational thinker should factor the limitations of their own brain into their decision making. Also, sometimes we do care about some people more than about other people (e.g. friends and family). However, certain behaviors are simply bugs (in more scientific language, cognitive biases). There is no rational reason to “accept” them if we can find a way to work around them.