I logically acknowledge that: “In some cases, an extravagant lifestyle can even produce a lot of good, depending on the circumstances… It’s not my preferred moral aesthetic, but the world’s problems don’t care about my aesthetics.”
I know that, but… I care about my aesthetics.
For nearly everyone, I think there exists is a level of extravagance that disgusts their moral aesthetics. I’m sure I sit above that level for some, with my international flights and two $80 keyboards. My personal aesthetic disgust triggers somewhere around “how dare you spend $1000 on a watch when people die of dehydration”. Giving a blog $100,000 isn’t quite disgusting, yet, ew?
If your thesis is “Instead of saving 300 lives, which I could totally do right now, I’m gonna do this other thing, because if I do a good job it’ll save even more than 300 lives”, then man, you had really better do a good job with the other thing.
I like the scenario this post gives for risks of omission: a giant Don’t Look Up asteroid hurtling towards the earth. I wouldn’t be mad if people misspent some money, trying to stop it, because the problem was so urgent. Problems are urgent!
...yet, ew? So many other things look kind of extravagant, and they’re competing against lives. I feel unsure about whether to treat my aesthetically-driven moral impulses as useful information about my motivations vs. obviously-biased intuitions to correct against.
(For example, I started looking into donating a kidney a few years ago and was like… man, I could easily save an equal number of years of life without accruing 70+ micromorts, but that’s not nearly as rad? Still on the fence about this one.)
I logically acknowledge that: “In some cases, an extravagant lifestyle can even produce a lot of good, depending on the circumstances… It’s not my preferred moral aesthetic, but the world’s problems don’t care about my aesthetics.”
I know that, but… I care about my aesthetics.
For nearly everyone, I think there exists is a level of extravagance that disgusts their moral aesthetics. I’m sure I sit above that level for some, with my international flights and two $80 keyboards. My personal aesthetic disgust triggers somewhere around “how dare you spend $1000 on a watch when people die of dehydration”. Giving a blog $100,000 isn’t quite disgusting, yet, ew?
The post I’ve read that had the least missing mood around speculative philanthropy was probably the So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program retrospective on Astral Codex Ten, which included the following:
I like the scenario this post gives for risks of omission: a giant Don’t Look Up asteroid hurtling towards the earth. I wouldn’t be mad if people misspent some money, trying to stop it, because the problem was so urgent. Problems are urgent!
...yet, ew? So many other things look kind of extravagant, and they’re competing against lives. I feel unsure about whether to treat my aesthetically-driven moral impulses as useful information about my motivations vs. obviously-biased intuitions to correct against.
(For example, I started looking into donating a kidney a few years ago and was like… man, I could easily save an equal number of years of life without accruing 70+ micromorts, but that’s not nearly as rad? Still on the fence about this one.)
[crosspost from my twitter]