Thanks for the post. I’ll post some quick responses, split into separate comments...
I agree that “do the most good” can be understood in a totalising way. One can naturally understand it as either:
(a) do the most good (with your entire life).
(b) do the most good (with whatever fraction of resources you’ve decided to allocate to altruistic ends).
I read it as (b).
In my experience, people who think there are strong moral arguments for (a) tend to nonetheless think that (b) is a better idea to promote (on pragmatic grounds).
I’ve long thought it’d be good if introductions to effective altruism would make it clearer that:
Thanks for the post. I’ll post some quick responses, split into separate comments...
I agree that “do the most good” can be understood in a totalising way. One can naturally understand it as either:
I read it as (b).
In my experience, people who think there are strong moral arguments for (a) tend to nonetheless think that (b) is a better idea to promote (on pragmatic grounds).
I’ve long thought it’d be good if introductions to effective altruism would make it clearer that: