I find it interesting that the "self-motivated" donation of one kidney draws so much attention here, however, the almost risk-free ability to donate blood, platelets and plasma is overlooked. With little drawback to one's self (other than time needed), more people across all income ranges can be helped, but yet so few people give. Why do we think that is? Wouldn't that be a great "zero cost" start to getting people to think about "EA"?

Can’t recommend the book 80000 Hours enough. It goes into way more detail on how you can help other than drinking your coffee at home.

I think the moral imperative in question as it is dictated by pure reason is what distinguishes the theory in Mr. Singer’s paper from what we, as a society, experience in practical use. I believe there is a nebulous sphere related to our choice; the closer it is (in time and space) to us at the moment we are practicing the choice or the will to choose, the larger the effect we can provide. This could be a big reason why society as a whole does not participate in the idea that donating is obligatory and not doing so is evil. For example, the effect of saving a child that you witness getting into danger is a direct result of your choice to save the child. It is immediate and knowable (to the extent we can know). However, the farther away the results lie (again in time and space) the less your choice makes a direct effect. You donate to UNICEF to save a starving child in Uganda, but, you intrinsically know that your money is not going directly to that child. It may be going towards the gas to bring that food or toward maintenance of the plane that flies it there or the cost of the person doing the organizing. Reasons for not doing otherwise are subjective and less powerful as an ‘evil’ counterpoint to the ‘good’ of donating. Knowing that your choice makes very little difference is a powerful aspect to human nature. This is a very interesting topic with many legitimate points of view.

Love this subject. On donations, how can we be 100% certain that our donations will be used appropriately? Instead of only 1% of the donation going to the people in need.

I don't think you should give only to the most effective organisations. You can also give to organisations, who need it the most. Why just giving to those who already figured it out how to be most effective. People and organisations who try and maybe also fail also need help! It's about the helping - not too much about how I think.

I remember Peter Singer once saying that he donates 30% of his income to charity.

Everyone should be as charitable as possible. But that is a palliative to a world where inequality is rampant. If there were universal basic income that would be no one in poverty.

My aunt has a guide dog and couldn't live without him. She lost vision from waiting for a lung transplant. Money might be better spent on other procedures, but people still need dogs.

The "Financial DNA" concept and how our upbringing shapes our financial perspectives was a real eye-opener. The story of Zell and his kidney donation was both inspiring and thought-provoking. It's interesting how we scrutinize everyday purchases but often overlook the effectiveness of our charitable donations. The mention of Bill and Melinda Gates' impact was a testament to the power of thoughtful giving. This video really challenges us to rethink how we give and the impact we can make. It's not just about the amount, but the intention and effectiveness behind it. 🌍❤💡

yes, but why should I care to do so? "you value your own life more than a strangers"... yes, I do, they arent my family or friend, there has been no investment

Greed will be the downfall of us all if something doesn’t change. There has to be a movement. We should all take what we need and give what we can. We are all connected. Your suffering is my suffering. Your success is my success.

Yes it has to be effective/efficient otherwise it’s just for your own gratification which then turns it into exploitation of the people in need.

Really had me there until he began defending the ultra rich and condemning regular people for buying coffee. He makes some good point but overall I disagree with the rest of the video. If anyone is interested in reading further I’m gonna rant for a sec about how he contradicts his own philosophy . If a child is drowning half way across the world you can’t throw money at that and pretend that’s going to save a child’s life. There have to be responsible people around who have the capacity to actually pull that kid out of the water and that has nothing to do with money. But what if that child were drowning because of a flood that ravaged their city or village and the reason for the flood was a damn that broke. What if the damn broke because repair work for the damn was agreed on but infrastructure projects are neglected for years because officials instead decided to focus on lining their own pockets to pay for re-election campaigns. Now how is sending your money to that government (even if it’s to an organization that you trust and believe is trying to do good) how could anyone not consider the possibility that once those funds touch the pockets of that same government that they won’t just turn around, do the bare minimum they need for media coverage and go back to how things were. Fine let’s say that most of the money actually goes into fixing the damn and the rest of city after disaster, is that really the most efficient way to spend your energy helping others and being altruistic?? A preventative measure would be much more efficient! Making sure that money is not mishandled in the first place. That does not seem like a problem altruists (especially rich ones) want philosophize on because it means having to do real physical and community orientation work. It’s not as easy as throwing money at a problem or blaming people who buy 3 cups of coffee a week but i sure do think it’s a hell of a lot more effective.

Have a video also for Effective Accelerationism

Big suffering can not be addreseed by one or two big philanthropists. All philanthropy is optional too, you could end it at your own whim and fancy. What if the surplus is held by institution and group who are duty bound by law to serve the inadequate? We need the accountability and stabilty as opposed to random giving. We need to make philanthropy compulsory not optional.

"safe water in the tap"

An egalitarian society doesn't need charity, philanthropists or effective altruism.

I always feel a bit more like a person after listening to Singer.

😲 what a get ,ty!

I thought this was interesting "you might still say well we could make those who are worse off better off by redistributing the wealth of those who are very wealthy, that probably wouldn't make much difference anymore once you've got people above those levels of serious poverty"

My late brother left me with too much money. So, I gave to PBS Hawaii, Hawaii Public Radio, Institute For Human Services, Hawaii Food Bank.

Let’s continue doing everything for the humans, the greatest of all animals on this planet.

❤

Please convey this to Mr. Stinger if you can: "Effective altruism is not just about AI and Tech." 🙏

It’s all good and well telling people to give to charity until you see how much the ceos are raking in!

I am not disagreeing with helping or donating. But am I the only one who thinks that this view/movement is constructed wrongly on so many levels? So you would not donate to train dogs, or for blind people or to save animals because it is more "effective" to donate money to save somebody from losing their eyesight or hearing. Do you not see the problem with that logic? Who would decide what is "effective"? By that logic of "effectiveness," one should neither donate/give money to the poor, to a beggar, nor the animal shelters and various charities, for it is more "effective" if a person gives their money to a person who has lost their leg, etc. Do not get me wrong we should help everyone, blind people, deaf people, people who have lost their legs or other body parts. To all of them. But "effectiveness" is a wrong lens to look through. Also, do not forget your money might not be worth a lot in the U.S. or other developed nations, yet, in other developing countries it has a lot more buying power ergo effectiveness. Again, I am not saying we should not help people from other countries, we definitely should but not because it is "effective". Just help to anyone you can help. It is that simple. Also, Bill Gates and other elites usually do it for tax credits. Never forget that ever. But also, the GUY in the video does not want us to redistribute money from rich to poor because at some point it stops becoming effective and it also stifles research and technology. So in short, those who are barely making money and surviving should give to those below them. But THOSE WITH 500K TO 1MLN or MORE should not because it stifles future projects/research/science and technology which can help others and many more people in the future. Also, those barely making money and giving it to poor people can do it because there is a study that found a correlation between giving and feeling happy. It is not causation but mere correlation. please if you do not know the difference go search. But he does not tell you that if you start to have more and more money like Elon or Bill or maybe at least 1 MLn to 10 MLN at least, then that correlation does not necessarily correspond. By the way, why give money to poor or blind guys, you can donate your money instead to research and engineering/science and technology. YES, it will not help current poor people or blind guys, but think about it, in the future, it can save countless blind people and/or poor people or another group of people. It is more effective. He is basically killing 1 guy in the trolly problem and saving 5 because it is effective or brings more happiness or usefulness. It is a slightly different form of utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Please, if you wanna do good, just go outside and do something good, do not think if it is "effective" just do something good. It can be small or big does not matter, and if it is plausible to you to do that good, such as holding a door for somebody else or helping your old neighbor with the bags of groceries in their hand. And you can do it, then just do it. That's enough. Of course, you can donate money or other stuff, but donate to any charity or people, or places that you want. Just do a good thing for the sake of doing a good thing. Do not think about "effectiveness" just do good.

Effective Altruism: "All this unchecked corporate capitalism at best and fraud at worst is going to be for the good of humanity bro, I promise after getting billions of dollars for myself under my name I will give it all back just trust me bro"

Oh of course, let's ignore the pursue of a more just economic model and continue with increased inequality, while hoping the super rich will work on altruistic skills and feel good about 'helping to just lift the poor' to a mininum acceptable living standard. Oh this philosopher is a genius! I wonder why his brilliant idea is just not.working?🤔

I like effective altruism, and I really like all the things it has done for the world. I've been inspired by effective altruism to donate to effective charities. But Peter's apologism here for capitalism borders on the absurd. If it's good for wealthy people to spend their money on improving the welfare of the global poor (and it is), then the obvious implication of that is not to try and shame every individual rich person into giving away a portion of their money, it's to raise their fucking taxes. Governments already have a mechanism for distributing resources in an intentional way to address the enormous inequalities and artificial suffering created by capitalism. Why does he spend so much time supporting individual rich people giving away their money, but refuse the idea that ALL rich people should give away a portion of their money proportional to their income? His defense in this video is twofold: 1. It wouldn't make a big difference after you finished elevating the extremely poor out of poverty 2. Private entities are more efficient at using resources than government agencies are The first point is complete bullshit. It applies just as much to charity as it does to a welfare state. The second is understandable but makes a serious error. Are private entities really so much more efficient than government bureaucracies that it's not even worth it to raise taxes and implement such bureaucracies? Surely they're more efficient to some degree, since they're competing against other agencies, and also they're not as bogged down by the slow-moving bureaucratic culture that dominates in many governments. However, the degree to which government intervention can cause massive changes is orders of magnitude larger than that of private charities. A quick google search shows the top 1% of Americans controlled 41.52 trillion dollars two years ago. Say that the top 1% of Americans were taxed 1% of their total net worth, a change so minute they would hardly notice it. That would result in 415.2 billion dollars. That's almost a thousand times more than the against malaria foundation has raised in its entire existence. Even if 9/10 of the money were somehow lost by the government as a result of its comparative inefficiency, wealth redistribution would be a far, far more effective method of addressing global systemic issues than bullying individuals into spending money. This isn't even a hypothetical. In the past 40 years, 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty. 600 million of those were the direct result of a state program by China to eliminate absolute poverty. And China is nowhere near as wealthy as many of the nations of the west, yet they still succeeded two years ago to eliminate absolute poverty. How did they accomplish this? Through charity? No. They did it through economics. Maybe you don't like the government of China because it's not a democracy, I don't either. But democratic governments can do exactly the same thing. Look at the social democracies of Northern Europe, or Mauritius, or even just at the social programs that have already successfully been implemented in countries like the USA and Canada. Charity is good. Economics is better. I suspect Peter Singer, having ingratiated himself with the international ruling class for so many years, feels a strong aversion to working class politics, automatically taking the viewpoint of the global elite even when it contradicts his own ethics, and coming up with post-hoc justifications for why an economy geared towards maximizing profit is more moral than an economy geared towards providing all people with what they need.

❤❤

I believe Dr. Singer donates more than half his income and lives quite frugally.

Collective altruism is the next step. Watch the world understand soon. Big movements start underground. Also, with His name. 🤙

UBI would solve all of our problems

but charity or donating to the people will couse that money flaying back to the rich, why? think who produce the sell any food or goods in the market, who produce phone, electronics, utencils, clotches, etc? people will keep give the maoney back to them no matter what, then how we can fix this? what if instead just donating money we provide them a comunity owned company that can produce something can be sell on the market. why not give them the fishing equipment instead of always giving them raw fish?

Thank you for poking a new hole in my logic.

Some charities have been going for decades with no improvements to the cause

It's easy to see why Peter Singer is such an influential philosopher. His arguments are clear, well reasoned and persuasive. Some philosophers live in ivory towers, but this philosopher lives in the real world. He cares deeply about it and he wants us to care too. Three cheers for Peter Singer!

I call serious BS, Singer. Redistribution of wealth is the necessary first step. Your protection and justification of the super rich is unequivocally unethical. Please reconsider.

Don’t be a greedy and don’t try to monopolize things😉

Who’s here because of SBF?

Not the peta guy?

So this is what SBF was trying to do with all the money he was hoarding in the Bahamas... right?

I think true altruism is in not hurting others, through educating yourself and being more engaged in your local community, you start to unstand the people around you and "not hurt" effectively

He only touched on the subject, but altruism needs to be voluntary and not forced. Governmental redistribution of wealth has rarely been effective as he defines it. More so today than in the past. Government forced altruism tends to spend money lining pockets of politicians instead of actually doing any good. That's not to say that inefficiencies don't happen at the private level. Just that private charity tends to be more effective than government run charity. Voluntary altruism does mean that your neighbor may not do with his money that you would. That's their choice to make, not yours.

More like effective hypocrisy. You do not need immersive wealth to do good for people around you .

But why is the person who's already blind less valuable or worthy than the person who hasn't gone blind? I have no doubt that the companionship, affection, joy and comfort a guide dog brings to a blind person is well worth 40,000 dollars. The dogs work for around 8 years, so if we round up to 3,000 days service on average, they cost about 13 dollars a day - the price of a movie ticket or a bottle of wine.

The thing he's missing is psychology: We primarily give away to make us feel good, and thinking about that lovely dog you funded brings you more joy than thinking about that cataract surgery.

sbf

Folks, SBF was highly aligned with "Effective Altruism". So you have to look past the happy talk title to figure out what it really is. We know what altruism is. No debate about that. So why not just call themselves "Applied Altruism"? That's because Effective Altruism is not the same as Applied Altruism. Thanos was an Effective Altruist. His thesis was that there is a resource crunch and that higher populations are a strain on that so half the universe must die so that the remaining people would have better lives. Thus, he was not the worst piece of crap in history but rather the savior of the universe in his own eyes. GW Bush was an effective altruist for markets when he said "I've abandoned free market principles in order to save free markets". It's lying, Satanic global elite speak for others must die so we can have more. And you are a damned fool if you think it is something else.

I don't believe the kidney example is appropriate in the context of charity. I doubt the 1 : 4000 chance of death included complications in surgery given his specific circumstances. It's common for people to misapply group/population statistics to their individual circumstances. We all do it occasionally and sometimes with dire results. Additionally, did he bother to quantify the pain he experienced, how much longer the person lived that received the donation, or the relative quality of their life afterwards. Doubtful. To say not donating that kidney means that individual values themselves 4000x greater than another is absurd logic and honestly deplorable coming from someone with a background in philosophy. Black and white thinking like this is often times not the right way of thinking.

Yeah I would give, if my time here wasn't disrespected.

You are just saying that altruism is means by how many people you can reach. So a banker is always going to be more altruist, based on the rule you describe, than a common individual. What you describe is more likely to be the influence and reputation more than the altruism itself and your underlying philosophy is "give your money to rich people because they are more effective". You made a confusion between material and physical capabilities and the altruism philosophy itself. Effective is not belong to the understanding of philosophy, it' is out of the subject of etude of philosophy, philosophy dont care about effectivess, if so, you are not a philosopher anymore but an accountant, a banker, or a salesman.

Singer is a mad thinker. He's for PETA and ecologism.

Sure, let's defend and praise billionaires, who are directly aggravating the quality of life of people in "poor countries" with modern colonialism. Let's not consider the direct and indirect harm that corporations' owners cause to the "global south", which is thousands of times bigger than any aid they will ever provide. Their aid budget is ridiculous compared to the structural losses for "poor countries" they cause. Does this "philosopher" really try to put the responsibility of reducing poverty on average citizens by limiting their daily coffee drinks? "Make yourself happy by helping" and just ignore the global economic oppressive system that was created by the c*nts he's defending. Outrageous bigotry and hypocrisy.

I really admire Peter Singer. Thanks for featuring him!

Had me in the first half, lost me in the second half on the notion of income inequality.

10/10 content

People are too greedy to realize that one person in poverty is all people in poverty as a choice, not ignorance but greed may end the US.

Y'all are salty af

Odd that you don't mention one of the most notable effective altruists of our day, Sam Bankman-Fried

Wait, isn't giving to charities encouraging tax evasion from the owners of the important charities, which are big companies usually

Ask ftx sbf 🌚

SBF believes in this, but look what happened. This means only the rich benefit and the rest don't.

I never want to be a millionaire or billionaire. I will never selfishly hoard money/resources. I can’t understand how anyone could aspire to be so greedy.

What causes poverty? The rich. Not only because they're rich but because they set the rules for the rich all across society. I give to environmental/wild life organsations and Amnesty. Then I care for my Chinese partner after she fell into madness. I think this guy is also a little bit mad for he dosn't see the world as it is.

This is WEF but instead of right wingers going crazy about it, it's left wingers lol. Tbh, i'd much rather have these guys then WEF pulling strings, because at least these guys are getting to the brass tax and really thinking about how rich people morals are supposed to work. WEF just panders and speaks a bunch of vague emotional nonsense. Nothing they ever talk about is actually relevant to the people who show up and it's all just another way super rich people meet up. Effective altruism on the other hand does actually generate new political theory and is currently shaping the political ecosphere of AI tech bros. So they're getting something done at least. Also effective altruism envisions a future where i get a brain implant that let's me trade and invest 500 stocks per second while getting it on, and WEF's future is just modern day san Francisco but in stasis. Even if the effective altruism's cyberpunk dystopia is worse, I don't care because that's infinitely more cool than an embarrassing psuedo socialist hipster world where we all love pod hotels and wework style offices.

He said there is a strong correlation between charity and happyness, then immediately claimed that therefore charitable acts make you happy ... Please stop messing up correlation with causation if you want to at least look like an actual researcher. (Anecdotal example: When I was depressed, I hated giving things, and being pressured to give things made me angry and not happy at all even if I did give someting.)

Peter Singer is correct to encourage altruism. Who couldn't agree? But there are misunderstandings here about the nature of how the world works and basic economics. Ethically, you could indeed better spend your $5 on a donation to charity than buying a coffee. But if no one ever buys that coffee the outlet will close and the staff become unemployed and in need of...charity. Any given $5 sum is spent not only on the coffee, but also again by the recipient. This process continues as the $5 note changes hands many times -and as a result the amount of money in circulation expands. So the economy grows, as does the prosperity of the entire system. Now I know many will say this is rubbish, sounding like Reaganite style trickle down economics that has been discredited, but nevertheless it is a fact that economic activity is the basis of the prosperity that allows some to give to charity. It is no surprise that China has transformed its economy since embracing this reality 30 years ago - despite receiving little from the rich West in the form of aid. .

Oof tell me you dont live in america without telling me you dont

Incredibly elitist philosophy that happens to think the best way to care for those in need is to be an oligarch and enact your will onto others. The fundamental assumption "You know best" as an individual donating to charity leads to all sorts of systemic and ethical flaws. In my personal experience this thinking is used by people I know to justify their selfish narcissism through "charity". (In quotes because many of the projects they fund are not charities. They are nonprofits with business goals.)

Effective altruism just reminds me of Sam Bankman Fried

Australian Jew

Rogan said it best. We need less losers

One good move Melinda did was ditch the alleged pedo Bill.

Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and capturesthe essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms. Greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge. Has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words,will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioningcorporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Doing "good" is so boring.

Plz pin me❤

First

Greed and profil WILL end ALL life on earth. GOD will start over.

A scam

sometimes children grow up to be terrible people...what if your donation keeps alive some assh0le kid who go on to become a serial killer..?

FTX guy was into this. Screw people over as hard as you can and pledge to help later. Awesome philosophy! Not.