Yes, your opposition is intelligent, but so are you. I think with politics it’s true that your median impact is lower because political policies often depend on getting a majority vote, so typically as an individual you will make zero difference. But your average impact, I think, ought to be fine.
Alexander
Karma: 15
I am wondering if someone can explain, or point me to a link on, why they think global poverty charity matters compared with policy. For example, one statistic from GWWC was that the Iraq war cost more than all government foreign aid from the developed world for 50 years, and I would guess that the war’s economic effects on Iraq were comparable to its costs. Also, African exports and imports are worth about $35 billion each but total US international charity (to all countries, not just Africa) was $19 billion in 2012, according to this source. This suggests to me that (from an EA standpoint) policies on trade alone are more important than charity.
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/effective-altruism-in-1400.html
Anyone have a comment on this post?
Dylan Matthews:You talk about existential risks in your latest book — big threats that have a chance of wiping out all of humanity. Which of those, if you had to pick one or two, concerns you the most? Is there one where the story of how a disaster would unfold is particularly compelling?
Peter Singer: It’s not just that the disaster story is more compelling, but that there is a reasonably compelling story as to how we can reduce that risk. When it comes to collision with an asteroid, there is a reasonable story about how we could reduce that risk. First we need to discover whether asteroids are on a collision path, and NASA is already doing that, and then we would need to think about how we could deflect it from Earth. So that, I can kind of understand.
Some of the others, it’s hard to know exactly what we could do. Bioterrorism, I guess we can develop ways of making things more secure and making it harder for bioterrorists. But it’s not going to be easy to find exactly what the best strategy is. Things like the singularity — the takeover by artificial intelligence, or something like that — it’s very hard to see exactly, at this stage, anyway, what you could do that would reduce that risk. I don’t know.
I would think that a simple way to do this would be to compare international charitable donations with domestic donations.
The only plausible argument I can imagine for de-prioritizing GCR reduction is if there are other activities out there that can offer permanent expected gains that are comparably large as the permanent expected losses from GCRs.
Then I guess you don’t think it’s plausible that we can’t expect to make many permanent gains.
Why?
I am concerned with future people; I would like us to have an interesting or “awesome” future.
I hope we don’t get carried away with the art thing-I was just trying to steelman that guy’s response.
My main point was just to solicit ideas about how to help first-world folks. That’s not because I think you can save more first-world folks than developing-world folks: it’s because I accept greater concern with socially nearby people in my definition of altruism. On this site you guys don’t-and I accept that too. But I now wonder if your definition of effectiveness is so different from mine that we can’t even talk.
Edit: I already doubted anyone here wanted to discuss non-cosmopolitan thoughts, so I just gave a link. The downvote suggests that only cosmopolitan ideas are tolerated here.
it costs a few million dollars to save a life in developed nations
Where does this figure come from?
That is interesting. My knowledge here is pretty limited. If interest rates were lower, saving would be lower and so technological progress would be slower—unless, I guess, governments intervened to make folks save.
http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/06/increasing-and-improving-saving-as.html
What might other concrete effects of artificially low interest rates be?
Thanks for the response. This is cool info, but I’m not convinced. I wonder if there is value that exists but can’t be captured by individuals alive today, causing them to not care.
That post on sustainability I disagree with. I don’t think we understand enough about technological advance to plan for specific future technologies, except in the short term.
Far future fossil fuels might be more valuable. I mean, suppose we never find better energy sources. Oil would be a one-time gift from the planet. It seems like our civilization would get the best cumulative use if we saved most for future generations and only used today what was absolutely needed. I wonder how big the gains would be.
If you have no issue-specific info about crowdedness or tractability, then total effects seem a decent starting point. Right now what I see about policy (trade and wars) vs. charity is that there are a group of ~300 million US citizens who are somehow producing both. Therefore your expected contribution for both is something like (size of total effect)/(300 million).
Edit: I am also forgetting about immigration. Apparently there are 3.8 million black immigrants in the United States, who probably increased their standard of living enormously.