One thing I find interesting about all the thought experiments is that they assume a one donor, many recipient model. That is, the morality of each situation is analyzed as if a single agent is making the decision.
Reality is many donors, many recipients and I think this affects the analysis of the examples. Firstly because donors influence each others’ behaviour, and secondly because moral goods may aggregate on the donor end even if they don’t aggregate on the recipient end. I’ll try and explain with some examples:
Two villages (a): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors. Enough of the other donors care about equality that this number will stay at 50% whichever one you donate to (because they’ll donate to whichever village receives less than 50% of the funds). So whether you care about equality or not, as a single donor your decision doesn’t matter either way.
Two villages (b): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors, but this time it’s because the other donors are donating carelessly. Moral philosophers have decided that the correct allocation (balancing equality with overall benefit) is for one village to receive 60% of donations and the other to receive 40%. As a relatively small donor, your moral duty then is to give all your money to one village, to try and nudge that number up as close to 60% as you can.
Medicine (a): Philosophers have decided the ideal distribution is 90% condoms and 10% ARVs. Depending what the actual distribution is, it might be best to put all your money into funding condoms, or all your money into funding ARVs, and only if it’s already right on the mark should you favour a 90⁄10 split.
I don’t think the Ultrapoverty, Sweatshop and Participation examples are affected by this particular way of thinking though.
I just get the feeling that something like consequentialism will emerge, even if you start off with very different premises, once you take into account other donors giving to overlapping causes but with different agendas. Or at least, that this would be so for as long as people identifying with EA remain a tiny minority.
One thing I find interesting about all the thought experiments is that they assume a one donor, many recipient model. That is, the morality of each situation is analyzed as if a single agent is making the decision.
Reality is many donors, many recipients and I think this affects the analysis of the examples. Firstly because donors influence each others’ behaviour, and secondly because moral goods may aggregate on the donor end even if they don’t aggregate on the recipient end. I’ll try and explain with some examples:
Two villages (a): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors. Enough of the other donors care about equality that this number will stay at 50% whichever one you donate to (because they’ll donate to whichever village receives less than 50% of the funds). So whether you care about equality or not, as a single donor your decision doesn’t matter either way.
Two villages (b): each village currently receives 50% of the donations from other donors, but this time it’s because the other donors are donating carelessly. Moral philosophers have decided that the correct allocation (balancing equality with overall benefit) is for one village to receive 60% of donations and the other to receive 40%. As a relatively small donor, your moral duty then is to give all your money to one village, to try and nudge that number up as close to 60% as you can.
Medicine (a): Philosophers have decided the ideal distribution is 90% condoms and 10% ARVs. Depending what the actual distribution is, it might be best to put all your money into funding condoms, or all your money into funding ARVs, and only if it’s already right on the mark should you favour a 90⁄10 split.
I don’t think the Ultrapoverty, Sweatshop and Participation examples are affected by this particular way of thinking though.
I just get the feeling that something like consequentialism will emerge, even if you start off with very different premises, once you take into account other donors giving to overlapping causes but with different agendas. Or at least, that this would be so for as long as people identifying with EA remain a tiny minority.