this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
54 points (100.0% liked)
Betterment and Praxis
1474 readers
1 users here now
The community for cool things you've done out in the real world, or are doing in the real world!
Covers things like volunteer work, community gardens, political activism, organizing clubs and communities in your public circles, and all the information surrounding how to do that stuff. Also covers self-help and betterment, because to help your community it helps to help yourself!
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think its a question of what your goals are. If its helping people then EA is the most efficient way. If its finding satisfaction in a more hands on way of helping together with a group then that would mean sacrificing (likely in a significant way) some of your potential, but you shouldnt feel bad about that, even this way you would help a lot more than the average person (or what is in my opinion a responsibility for everyone, namely being nice and helpful for your immediate circle of friends, family, etc.). If you choose the former, there are still other ways of finding that human element elsewhere than charity.
I don't have the answers here, but it's quite an assumption to say that EA is most efficient and following another method would be "sacrificing" potential. EA has some major glaring flaws.
I might be ignorant on this, but i would assume that EA is most efficient/effective by definition ( Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis" ). Of course how some may implement it is an other question. What flaws are you thinking of?
It's based/relies on utilitarianism for its moral framework, and I'm just decidedly not a utilitarian. I consider relationships, rights, and motives to matter when judging something.
The whole "earn to give" thing is just a disastrous concept, most publicly in giving cover to things like FTX.
It lacks any theory of power or overall social or economic change. Singer on this issue:
I agree. I built my life around earn to give. It just leaves the giver morally empty and supporting a capitalist system, and the receiver dependent on charity. A hundred thousand people receiving malaria vaccines (or whatever) is immensely powerful, but they still live in a country that didn’t apparently want to give malaria vaccines to its citizens? What will happen to them now? It does nothing to solve the problem.
I think utilitarianism is too diverse to just put EA in that box and therefore say its bad. I agree that it could be used as a cover, but for most people it just means finding the best way to help with their limited resources. I agree that it probably wont make systematic changes, but that requires a level of capital that is unavailable for the average person anyway, who can probably make a more significant change in this regard using their voice and vote, while directing their modest resources to where it can already make significant improvement.