Unfortunately I don’t have time to write a thorough response but I just wanted to flag that I think this post fails to seriously engage with any of the strong counter-arguments to the central point (including the objections that were mentioned).
For starters, acting under moral uncertainty is a lot more complicated than briefly considering some abstract notion of virtue ethics and assuming that it endorses the same decisions. I think virtue ethics would more likely have a problem with stopping some of the “low return on sacrifice” actions because this would reflect poor moral character, e.g. poor integrity. Similarly, deontological views would likely caution against being willing to cause harm (e.g. human or animal rights violations) in order to do more good in other ways.
Even from a purely consequentialist perspective, I think the indirect impacts of “low RoS” actions are being unduly shrugged off here, such as signalling and value drift. E.g. the suggestion of “tracking impact” as a solution to the latter seems to involve a misunderstanding. Value drift is not about losing sight of whetheryour actions are effective, but losing the motivation to care about whether your actions are effective. If you get rid of all the most visible / obvious ways you’re doing good in your everyday life, you might start seeing yourself as less of a morally-motivated person and eventually stop tracking your less-visible impact too.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to write a thorough response but I just wanted to flag that I think this post fails to seriously engage with any of the strong counter-arguments to the central point (including the objections that were mentioned).
For starters, acting under moral uncertainty is a lot more complicated than briefly considering some abstract notion of virtue ethics and assuming that it endorses the same decisions. I think virtue ethics would more likely have a problem with stopping some of the “low return on sacrifice” actions because this would reflect poor moral character, e.g. poor integrity. Similarly, deontological views would likely caution against being willing to cause harm (e.g. human or animal rights violations) in order to do more good in other ways.
Even from a purely consequentialist perspective, I think the indirect impacts of “low RoS” actions are being unduly shrugged off here, such as signalling and value drift. E.g. the suggestion of “tracking impact” as a solution to the latter seems to involve a misunderstanding. Value drift is not about losing sight of whether your actions are effective, but losing the motivation to care about whether your actions are effective. If you get rid of all the most visible / obvious ways you’re doing good in your everyday life, you might start seeing yourself as less of a morally-motivated person and eventually stop tracking your less-visible impact too.