defend the indefensible: utilitarianism

"My theater teacher saved my life" is definitely something nobody has ever said.

theater students say that all the time

theater students say that all the time

then have i got an altruistic social movement for you!!!

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse

Doing Good Better is a feel-good guide to getting good done. It doesn’t dwell much on the horrors of global inequality, and sidesteps any diagnosis of its causes. The word ‘oppression’ appears just once. This is surely by design, at least in part. According to MacAskill’s moral worldview, it is the consequences of one’s actions that really matter, and that’s as true of writing a book as it is of donating to charity. His patter is calculated for maximal effect: if the book weren’t so cheery, MacAskill couldn’t expect to inspire as much do-gooding, and by his own lights that would be a moral failure. (I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Halfway through reading the book I set up a regular donation to GiveDirectly, one of the charities MacAskill endorses for its proven efficacy. It gives unconditional direct cash transfers to poor households in Uganda and Kenya.)

But the book’s snappy style isn’t just a strategic choice. MacAskill is evidently comfortable with ways of talking that are familiar from the exponents of global capitalism: the will to quantify, the essential comparability of all goods and all evils, the obsession with productivity and efficiency, the conviction that there is a happy convergence between self-interest and morality, the seeming confidence that there is no crisis whose solution is beyond the ingenuity of man. He repeatedly talks about philanthropy as a deal too good to pass up: ‘It’s like a 99 per cent off sale, or buy one, get 99 free. It might be the most amazing deal you’ll see in your life.’ There is a seemingly unanswerable logic, at once natural and magical, simple and totalising, to both global capitalism and effective altruism. That he speaks in the proprietary language of the illness – global inequality – whose symptoms he proposes to mop up is an irony on which he doesn’t comment. Perhaps he senses that his potential followers – privileged, ambitious millennials – don’t want to hear about the iniquities of the system that has shaped their worldview. Or perhaps he thinks there’s no irony here at all: capitalism, as always, produces the means of its own correction, and effective altruism is just the latest instance.

otm from a theoretical standpoint but i just can't get on board the anti effective altruism bandwagon. alright they are totally up themselves, far too confident in their flawed models, all too keen to work within a system that is ultimately responsible for the harms they are trying to prevent, and inasmuch as they truly act according to utilitarian principles obviously inhuman monsters. but in terms of practical effects, what is the worst you can say about them? that they might dissuade others from thinking about more radical change? idk seems a stretch, or counterbalanced by the fact that they are unquestionably encouraging people to give more money to more effective (probably) charities.

i wont't defend the ones trying to prevent robot apocalypse though, they really are the worst.

yeah i p much agree. like, it's ok to want to know how to save most lives with your charity donation without writing a book on or even having an opinion of the causes of global inequality.

yeah this seems like one of those cases where i wouldn't want to make perfect the enemy of the good

i mean there's something inherently offensive about the branding, like they're the only people that actually give a shit about having an impact. i say this as someone who used to listen to "intelligent dance music".

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18407/helping-a-drowning-stranger

In the past few years, the “effective altruism” movement has entered the fray to help nascent do-gooders make this decision by ranking charities according to how much good they do, measured by “quality-adjusted life years” saved per dollar. Not surprisingly, the movement has proved particularly popular with those in the earn-more, give-more camp, whom MacFarquhar identifies as mostly “well-educated young, white men of technological background and rational disposition.”

Yet for many of us, effective altruism's urge to assign a calcuable value to human life feels alien, and the scientific rationalism so beloved of tech-minded young, white men seems reductive at best. We are not rational, perhaps, when we prefer to donate to a cause in our neighborhood rather than to more urgent disaster relief overseas. But there's a value in community that most of MacFarquhar's do gooders seem, quite painfully, not to understand. Although many of them have partners, with whom they plunged at young ages into relationships dominated by debates about how to save the world, few are connected to a wider human group. They do not pursue political or collective solutions to the world's ills, but are weighed down by an almost unbearable sense of individual responsibility. In several cases, despite MacFarquhar's sympathetic storytelling, that individualism starts to sound a lot like narcissism. Of those profiled, a pastor, a nurse and a Buddhist priest come closest to doing the type of good that doesn't merely save a life but tries to improve it, too, in its fullness. It's a complicated business that does not fit easily into a utilitarian schema, but it's what most of us know instictively to be true: Saving a life is just the beginning.

The idea that saving a life is just the beginning fits very easily into a utilitarian schema.

not gonna read the whole thing but from the pull-quote that seems like the worst yet...

i don't know how to better express it but the entire argument seems to boil down to 'calculating stuff feels icky'

Yet for many of us, effective altruism's urge to assign a calculable value to human life feels alien, and the scientific rationalism so beloved of tech-minded young, white men seems reductive at best.

calling the cost of saving a life by donating to charity "a calculable value to human life" is a pretty shitty rhetorical trick

We are not rational, perhaps, when we prefer to donate to a cause in our neighborhood rather than to more urgent disaster relief overseas. But there's a value in community that most of MacFarquhar's do gooders seem, quite painfully, not to understand. Although many of them have partners, with whom they plunged at young ages into relationships dominated by debates about how to save the world, few are connected to a wider human group. They do not pursue political or collective solutions to the world's ills, but are weighed down by an almost unbearable sense of individual responsibility.

it is rational to donate to a neighbourhood cause, just not if you are strictly altruistic. the author's argument for giving to a neighborhood cause rather than disaster relief overseas is that there's value in community... value for who? for the person donating? if we're talking about altruism that shouldn't matter. value for other members of the community? well, then does that outweigh saving a life of someone else? presumably that other person is also a member of a community... is it better to improve the value of a rich-world community than for a member of a poor-world community to die?

also... maybe people these cold rich rational calculating technology young men also pursue political or collective solutions... or maybe they don't because they don't think they're effective? there are obviously some famous examples of political or collective action working well, but there's also tonnes of self-righteous idiot activists not doing any good for anyone. it's complex, maybe these rich bros just figured the best thing they could do was stay out of it and cut a cheque

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

this guy is like an effective altruist with an evil spock beard

maybe there is a continuum between utilitarians and ultra-randian psychopaths but that doesn't mean white is black.

it turns INTO black in the other universe

so in this bizarro world there must be evil utilitarians who want to cause the most harm to the most people, and who are mocked by others for being overly rational and lacking the human touch in their malevolence...

whatever happened to just knifin a dude?????

"Earning to take": instead of accepting a high-paying job on Wall Street, go work at a non-profit and do a half-assed job.

adopting the point of view of the youniverse

a contradiction between those last two that a regular white-hat utilitarian doesn't need to worry about. save the world and earn a huge salary, win-win!

and do a half-assed job. embezzle as much as you can

^ more rational

This puts a more human face on the topic du jour:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altruism-should-you-care-for-strangers-as-much-as-family

more human you say

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/9/21/1442838990148/3403a5ae-8a66-42f2-b2ba-79c0939448ac-2060x1236.jpeg?w=1065&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=19f5948049b5e547fee7a2aa118f2fe6

Facist.

i prefer my own kind, what can i say

Until she was 11, she was fervently religious. She believed that, since God had given her life, she owed him a debt so enormous that she could never repay it, but that it was her duty to try as hard as she could. Then, one weekend, it occurred to her that other people in the world believed in their holy books just as strongly as she believed in the Bible, so what reason did she have to believe that hers was true? She had never seen or felt any evidence of God’s presence. Quite suddenly, she lost her faith.

no she didn't

Okay, this is the best part:

He calculated that if the child gave away around 10% of its income, then they would likely break even – that is, the money their child would donate would be equal to the money they did not donate because they spent it instead on raising the child. Of course, this did not take into account that it was better to give money now rather than later, especially to urgent causes such as global warming and Aids, so some discounting would have to be factored into the calculation. All this made Julia feel better for a while, and even though she realised that it would be pretty weird to tell a child that they expected it to pay for its existence in the world with a certain percentage of its income, she figured she was going to be a weird mother anyway, and her child would probably be weird, too, and so perhaps to a child of hers all this would seem perfectly sensible.

they're going to have an incentive to put nietzsche on their home's list of prohibited books!!

xp aye, but i found a blog where she says Some have asked if we consider her a sort of recruit, hoping that her future donations will outweigh the cost of raising her. The answer is “definitely not.”.

I just like the idea that because, from their perspective, raising a child was an optional cost, they think their child should view it the same way. From one's own perspective, having been raised isn't an optional cost.

"Is it bad to discriminate against fertile women in employment?"

http://robertwiblin.com/2010/04/11/is-it-bad-to-discriminate-against-fertile-women-in-employment/

is some classic utilitarian "makes u think bro"

that is one of the major EA dudes btw, not just some bro w/ thoughtz

is there a difference

power

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c2zw6

TBF I think Steve Landsburg remains the all time "makes u think bro" utilitarianism champ with

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/03/steven_landsburg_rochester_professor_is_it_really_rape_if_the_victim_doesn.html

"Raping unconscious people: maybe not so bad"

http://thepointmag.com/2015/examined-life/effected

An idea is a kind of cartoon. Inhabiting one, we get that thrill of clarity: everything simple and certain, with sharp black borders. But at some point this cleaner world turns oppressive, like the grandparents’ condo after a few days’ visit, and we look to escape. That too is another sort of thrill. We get out, and the fuller world rushes back to meet us, in all its grubby confusion. Woosh.

The break was unexpected and decisive. We both got home one day, three or four weeks in, and instead of sitting down to practice building little virtual boxes, we picked up some book or other, Homer or Harry Potter or our own journals; and that was that. We canceled the remaining interviews and tests; David said goodbye to an already-guaranteed $90,000 job. Just a few days later it all seemed a bizarre and sort-of boring dream, a micro-group fantasy we’d witched ourselves into. One of us bumped the running chess game, which I was losing, and we never put the pieces back, leaving the crooked board on the table as a sort of monument to our stumble out of grace.

. I set up an interview with Google, and David began a series of trainings and tests for web-development boot camp.

How do you "set up an interview with google" when you don't know anything about web development?

connections my brother connections

That was a good piece. Not exactly another critique of EA, more about the experience of getting caught up in a brief spell of idealism before reverting to fecklessness.

http://bostonreview.net/forum/foundations-philanthropy-democracy

I'm not going to read the whole death penalty thread but I assume utilitarians are at it again

no it's a bunch of deontologists and catholics ruining everything, creating problems and suffering

nothing kantian, I promise

fairly huge absence of utilitarian arguments i'd say actually - maybe a little bit deems

i did espouse the utilitarian argument that executions should be carried out more efficiently and economically (i.e. shooting vs. the more expensive method of lethal injection)

http://www.publicbooks.org/the-problem-with-philanthropy/

In The Self Help Myth, Erica Kohl-Arenas shows how hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and decades of advocacy have failed to address the poverty and disenfranchisement of workers in the area.

In her richly told historical analysis, Kohl-Arenas interrogates the longstanding tension between philanthropic funders and their grantees: “Can the surplus of capitalist exploitation be used to aid those on whose backs this surplus is generated?” Considering the Central Valley as a test case, one would have to assume the answer is no. Farmworkers continue to face substandard housing, food insecurity, dangerous working conditions, underemployment and overwork, lack of health care, endemic racism, and the threat of deportation. While the lack of “outcomes” from philanthropic investments suggest a simple systems failure, Kohl-Arenas’s close examination of the negotiation of power over decades offers a deeper lesson, providing key insights into the nonprofit sector’s role in American society and beyond.

https://www.academia.edu/30350308/The_Lessons_of_Effective_Altruism

still noxious trash

one day you will be piloting a speeding train and you will have to decide whether to run over a bum on the tracks or derail the entire train, and that day you will love utilitarianism

― the late great, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:07 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what kind of a cretin needs a moral theory to tell them not to derail the entire train

― j., Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:15 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink