Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life.
Objections to the Pond Analogy
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From the course by Princeton University
Effective Altruism
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From the lesson
Poverty and Affluence, Part 1
What obligations do the affluent have towards those who live in extreme poverty? In this week, we look at one distinct argument based on consequentialist ethics, and also begin the discussion of the effectiveness of aid programs. This week also includes a conversation with Raymond Offenheiser.
Meet the Instructors
Peter SingerIra W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics
University Center for Human Values
What do you think about that parallel.
Is that a sound parallel.
Have I overlooked important differences that also
are relevant to the moral judgement, so
that while you might want to, stick to the moral judgement that it would be wrong
of somebody not to rescue the child in the pond, we're not, led to make a
similar moral judgment, about people who don't help to do anything about global
poverty and therefore to help save the lives
of people who are dying because of global poverty.
Yes, there.
>> I think it's harder just to know [UNKNOWN].
>> Okay, so the first suggestion is that there's
a difference in how to help, or in a
knowledge of how to help that's, that's very straightforward
in the case of the child in the pond,
you just run in, pull the child out, find
the parents presumably, and give the child back, maybe
give them a little lecture about looking after their
child better, but anyway you, you know what to do.
Whereas in the other case it's seems more difficult.
How do we help.
How do we know that we're helping.
So, let me just take that point rather than comment on it
at moment, see whether there are other points people want to raise.
One here.
>> What is the difference between saving a fetus and saving this child.
Okay, good.
So, you've taken us back to the debate about abortion where I've said the fact
that the fetus has the potential to be a rational being is not enough, given the
fact that the world has lots of rational beings in it, maybe as many as it
can comfortably support, is not enough reason to
say, that it's wrong to abort the fetus.
what's, what's the difference here.
Well, since that is, that it relates to something we
talked about before I'll, I'll, I'll respond to that right now.
One difference clearly is that, you could think about the parents of the child.
So, in the case of a woman who wants to have an
abortion, she's made that decision that she doesn't want to have this child.
And clearly, while she may well have some regrets that her
circumstances are such that she can't have a child, but on
balance that's her judgment, that's her decision, that's what she wants, and she's
not going to, therefore, be grief stricken over the abortion.
You know, sometimes later she may have remorse,
but in general, I think women who terminate
their pregnancies continue to think that they made
the right decision, tough as it sometimes is.
So, in the case of a child who dies, a child, under five
who dies, parents are going to be grief stricken about the loss of their child.
Even though the deaths of children in developing countries may be more
common than they are here, much more common than they are here, it's
still not the normal run of events, and parents who have a child
still love and cherish that child, and are going to care for that child.
So, one thing is you could just think of it, if you like,
in terms of the, the parents and their attitude, but you can also
think of it in terms of the child suffering because the child
is, you know, for example, if a child has malaria, it's an unpleasant disease.
You don't die from it immediately or quickly.
You go through lots of episodes of fever and distress.
So, you could think about that.
And, depending on whether this is a newborn child or an older, somewhat older
child, we're talking about children under five, you know, you may well feel that
the, the child itself now has started to have interests in going on living
in a way that a fetus, which is not even a conscience being, doesn't have.
So, that may not be true for early
newborn deaths which we talked about with Professor
[UNKNOWN], but I certainly think it is true once you get a little bit past birth.
So, I think that there's those
differences, but it's a reasonable question.
Anybody else.
Yeah, all right, down in front here.
>> I think there is a difference in the responsibility of the community.
>> Okay so a second, a second difference is that in the
case of the child in the pond, I've said that you were
the only person there, so the
responsibility falls entirely on you, whereas
what I've been talking about, you
suggested, the responsibility falls on the public.
You could say that.
You could say, also, it falls on everyone of us
individually, that would be another way of looking at it.
But, certainly it's true that there are many, many
people who could be doing something, not just me.
So, in that sense, the responsibility seems to be diffused.
Okay, let's take that one on board, and there's a hand right behind you as well.
Yeah.
>> [INAUDIBLE].
>> Okay, So, so this point of difference was that, as I
described a child in the poem, you only do this once, you know.
In fact, probably none of you will ever be
in a situation to rescue a small child from a
shallow pond, but if you were, it would be
quite extraordinary if that were to happen more than once,
whereas if you do something to donate to an
organization to provide bed nets for children who are in
danger of getting malaria, having made that donation today,
you could also make it tomorrow, and the next day,
and for a very long time to come, at least.
Hopefully, one day we'll solve this problem, but until
we do solve this problem, you are going to
be able to do that, and then there will
be other problems, not just malaria, but so on.
So, you could say, yes, there's a question about how demanding this morality can be
given that the problem is such a large problem that we can't solve individually.
So, that's also true.
Anybody else.
Anybody, who I'm missing up in the gallery wants to comment.
Yes, okay, we'll take you, and maybe we'll finish with that.
>> [UNKNOWN].
>> Okay, that's interesting.
So, you've pointed to an emotional difference, that we, we see
this child in front of us, there's some connection, that we
have, and we don't have that with 6.6 million children who
we don't see and which is, in a way, just a statistic.
And that's an interesting point.
And, let, let, let me go on with that one for a, for a few moments.
I think you're, you're undoubtedly right as a matter of psychological fact.
We relate to individuals in a way that we don't relate to the mass.
And there's some interesting research on this
which shows the importance of connecting in some
way with an individual, even if it's not an actual individual in front of you.
The research was done, by a psychologist called Paul
Slovic and his colleagues, and they did it like this.
They got students at a university to volunteer to come in for
a psychology experiment for which they were going to be paid $15.
They were not told anything about the nature of the experiment.
So, they came into a room, they were given a questionnaire
and told to fill in the questionnaire, that took them 15 or 20
minutes, they came back, to somebody at the desk handed in
the questionnaire, he gave them $15 in small notes, and
in fact, only at that point did the experiment really begin.
As well as giving them the money, he gave them some
information, and on a random basis they were divided into two groups.
One group was told, each month our Psych lab adopts a particular charity.
The charity we're supporting this month is helping children in Malawi.
There are thousands of children in Malawi who go to bed every night,
this was on a piece of paper, who go to bed hungry every night.
Would you like to help some of them.
And then there was a box into which they could put,
if they wished, some of the $15 that they were given.
The other students were given a similar piece of paper,
but it had a picture of a small African child.
And it said on it, this is Rokea.
She's seven years old.
She lives in Malawi.
She goes to bed hungry because her family is poor and
can't afford enough, they can't afford to give her enough to eat.
Would you like to help her.
And there was the same box.
Well, as you might guess from what I've said,
significantly more students gave when they were given the
identifying information about Rokia, than those who were
given the more broad information about thousands of children being hungry.
If you think of it, this is sort of strange.
If you think of this from a purely sort of rational point of
view, this is strange because these
were university students, they presumably weren't stupid,
they must have known, if they'd stop to think for a minute, that
it wasn't that the lab was collecting all this money to give to Rokia.
I mean, you know, then Rokia, one child
in Malawi, was going to really become relatively wealthy
for a child in Malawi, whilst all the rest
of the children were just as hungry as before.
They must've realized that Rokia is a kind of a token child, a
token of the type child that we're helping, but in fact they gave more.
So presumably, it was as you were suggesting,
that they felt an emotional pull to this child,
and although they didn't think they were only giving
to her, that emotional pull prompted them to give.
And I think that is a real problem in terms
of getting people to address global poverty as an issue.
It's a problem because, it is a statistic.
It's very hard to make it individual in this way.
You can do things as, as that said,
you can, you can appeal to people, individuals.
Some charities try to get people to adopt a
child in the sense of sending money to a particular
child, but that's not really the most effective way of
helping because a lot of problems need more systematic approach.
If you put in safe drinking water for
a village, not an individual family for instance.
So, so there is this problem that we're not emotionally moved by global poverty
in the way that we would be moved by a child in front of us.
But, the question I want you to think about is, that may explain why we don't
give that much to the global poor, but does it justify the difference.
Does it justify us in thinking it's less wrong not to give.
I mean, once you realize this, don't you
also realize that this shouldn't really make a difference
to whether it's right or wrong to help somebody,
the fact that you are emotionally drawn to them.
I mean, our emotion's maybe triggered by all sort of things.
Again, there's research showing that we're more likely to
respond emotionally to somebody who looks rather like us.
But we know that that's not a good basis for deciding how to help.
That's uncomfortably close to racism, and we
may consciously try and get around that.
So, shouldn't we also try to consciously try to get around the fact here that,
actual, that, we are not emotionally pulled in the same way.
Okay, let's look at some of these, other things that, were said.
So, for example, it was said that, it's not just my responsibility
in this situation, it's, everybody could take part.
And I think that's also another reason why we give less.
Again, there's research showing that when we're not the
only one responsible, we are less likely to help.
Let me give you another example of that, that kind
of research which in a way is, I think, quite disturbing.
So, its another example of, you, you
need to be careful about psychology experiments.
It's another example where students were actually
deceived about the purpose of the experiment.
They they were asked to come in to do an experiment, weren't told what
it was about, given questionnaires to fill in, and sometimes they filled in these
questionnaires in a room where there was
another person also filling in a questionnaire,
and sometimes they walked into the room and there was nobody else in the room.
The person who gave them the questionnaire then went into another room where they
couldn't see her, but they could hear her moving things around the room, dragging
furniture or something perhaps, and then, they heard a thud as if she'd fallen off
something, and she started crying out and saying, oh help, I've hurt my leg.
Now if the person, who was the real person
doing the experiment, was alone in the room, they
almost always jumped up and ran into the next
room to help, as you would hope they would.
But, if there was somebody else in the room, that person was actually
a stooge, not just another student filling the experiment, and when the cry for
help came, that person sort of looked up, it was obvious that he'd
heard the cry for help, and then went back to filling in the questionnaire.
And that made it significantly more likely
that the other person would not help either.
In other words, the other person who was genuinely the subject of
the experiment took his or her cues from, from other people around.
And I think that that's what we do in this situation, too.
We're influenced by the fact that we know a lot of other people are not giving.
We may also be influenced by a feeling of, that it would be unfair if
we gave and other people, some of whom are wealthier than us, were not to give.
So, I think that also influences us, against giving.
And then there's the factor that we feel that this is
potentially a limitless obligation, a very demanding obligation.
That one I'm not going to really address now because we're going to talk about
that, I think it's the first class after
the mid semester break if I remember correctly.
We're going to talk about, about how demanding morality might be.
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