By regular morals, I mean basic morals such as treating others how you like to be treated, ie. rules that you would be a bad person if you failed to abide by them. While I don’t consider EA superorogatory, neither do I think that not practicing EA makes someone a bad person, thus, I wouldn’t put it in the category of basic morals. (Actually, that is the standard I hold others to, for myself, I would consider it a moral failure if I didn’t practice EA!) I think it actually is important to differentiate between basic and, let’s say, more “advanced” morals because if people think that you consider them immoral, they will hate you. For instance, promoting EA as a basic moral that one is a “bad person” if she doesn’t practice, will just result in backlash from people discovering EA. No one wants to be judged.
The point I was trying to make is that EAs should be aware of moral licensing, which means to give oneself an excuse to be less ethical in one department because you see yourself as being extra-moral in another. If there is a tradeoff between exercising basic morals and doing some high impact EA activity, I would go with the EA (assuming you are not actually creating harm, of course). For instance, I don’t give blood because last time I did I was lightheaded for months. Besides decreasing my quality of life, it would also hurt by ability to do EA. I wouldn’t say giving blood is an act of basic morality, but it still an altruistic action that few people can confidently say they are too important to consider doing. Do you not agree that if doing something good doesn’t prevent you from doing something more high impact, than it would be morally preferable to do it? For instance, treating people with kindness… people shouldn’t stop being kind to others because it won’t result in some high global impact.
By regular morals, I mean basic morals such as treating others how you like to be treated, ie. rules that you would be a bad person if you failed to abide by them. While I don’t consider EA superorogatory, neither do I think that not practicing EA makes someone a bad person, thus, I wouldn’t put it in the category of basic morals. (Actually, that is the standard I hold others to, for myself, I would consider it a moral failure if I didn’t practice EA!) I think it actually is important to differentiate between basic and, let’s say, more “advanced” morals because if people think that you consider them immoral, they will hate you. For instance, promoting EA as a basic moral that one is a “bad person” if she doesn’t practice, will just result in backlash from people discovering EA. No one wants to be judged.
The point I was trying to make is that EAs should be aware of moral licensing, which means to give oneself an excuse to be less ethical in one department because you see yourself as being extra-moral in another. If there is a tradeoff between exercising basic morals and doing some high impact EA activity, I would go with the EA (assuming you are not actually creating harm, of course). For instance, I don’t give blood because last time I did I was lightheaded for months. Besides decreasing my quality of life, it would also hurt by ability to do EA. I wouldn’t say giving blood is an act of basic morality, but it still an altruistic action that few people can confidently say they are too important to consider doing. Do you not agree that if doing something good doesn’t prevent you from doing something more high impact, than it would be morally preferable to do it? For instance, treating people with kindness… people shouldn’t stop being kind to others because it won’t result in some high global impact.