Many of us desire to leave a legacy of good works - and yet our ambitions end up indefinitely postponed or dissipated into dead end, do-nothing projects.
That Montreal story is not a moral failing, or at least it is a very minor one.
I will set aside my Christian morals here, and argue more out of a system of game theory.
Let's assume his story is true. Giving him money is good. You gave as much as you can spare without suffering yourself. That gave him a larger chance to avoid suffering.
If others give aswell, which is likely given that his story is good, he will achieve his goal and prevent the suffering without causing any individual suffering of the donors. This is an objectively better outcome than if you had donated everything, and thus had to suffer yourself, even in a minor way.
Of course, paying the entire ticket yourself would have been heroic and even better, as it would have erased the minor chance of catastrophic failure of him not getting enough money for the ticket. But it would have also erased the opportunity for the best outcome of everyone giving enough to not harm you or him.
As such, if he did not reach his mother, it would be a collective failure of humanity, and not your fault, you gave as much as you could reasonably expend.
I think Christ said something to this notion aswell, if you give give joyfully, or so.
Addendum, read on after my initial impression, and it seems that you yourself are arguing in a similar direction. Why do you feel guilt for a noble thing you did?
I think it is better to acknowledge that you did as well as you could at the time, and hope that the ecosystem is healthy enough to cover for him, including with your part.
No, I don't know what to tell you, your reasoning is very skewed on this. You have incorporated a number of unintuitive and wrong assumptions into the scenario.
Loved reading this. Also, a hug. 🫂 As David below said, you may be a bit hard on yourself. 😉
To respond to a bit of the last part you said, that lots of the problems arise because we do not want to think. I believe that is true, but maybe like half of it? I believe the other half is because we don't want to feel, like truly feel. If we ask ourselves, "Where does the need to help this person in front of me come from?" and really listen to our feelings, then I think the response following that will be much more powerful and truthful.
Anyway, good stuff, it feels like you really put an effort into it and I liked the examples you shared as well!
Came to write something like that. The problem is not "not wanting to think". If anything Effective Altruists for example are overthinkers. The problem is not wanting to deal with real human beings, and touch their problems empirically - wanting to do good in an abstraction.
Effective altruists are looking for better heuristics to offload their cognition onto. That involves thinking; but the goal is the same - write the cheque and forget about it, confident that your dollars are doing good (as opposed to lining the pockets of sociopath careerists).
I think or suspect that Effective Altruists have done a lot of good; I just think the heuristics they use fail when applied outside of a certain narrow zone of endeavour.
I appreciate the candor of your article. Perhaps you are a little hard on yourself.
What this article reminded me of was the definition of "empathy" and how its much more precise/surgical and less feely/impulsive than is often used in vernacular language. To truly put ourselves in another's position and understand their needs takes a lot of thought, rumination and information gathering. The first impulsive compulsion we have in a desire to ease someone's suffering may not actually be empathetic because we haven't taken the time to really understand their needs and situation. Very much like the sandwich lady.
I think one of the highest yield measures to then address local needs and improve the lives of those around us is be less distracted. With our mental attention and energies diverted towards social media, the news, the sports team, the TV show, the audiobook etc. we reduce our mental and emotional bandwidth to identify and meditate on opportunities to do good. When Elon bought twitter I thought the best and funniest thing he could do with it was to just delete it. So many people freed up from anxiously scrolling the timeline and perhaps then more able to direct their energies somewhere more positive. A fantasy for sure, but a nice one I think.
Thanks explores a lot of things I've been thinking through. I think I'm slowly settling on help the person in front of you, locally. Its unlikely to be as efficient as $10 for mosquito nets but you cover the problem with efficiency admirably. Hoping for "therefore do this..." conclusion post but I suppose in a way that contradicts the thrust of the article ... Unless the conclusion were "it's hard and you're going to have to think about this one 🤣"
The conclusion is "it's harder and easier than you think" - harder because you have to actually think, easier because when you push aside bad models, you can see opportunities you might have missed.
That Montreal story is not a moral failing, or at least it is a very minor one.
I will set aside my Christian morals here, and argue more out of a system of game theory.
Let's assume his story is true. Giving him money is good. You gave as much as you can spare without suffering yourself. That gave him a larger chance to avoid suffering.
If others give aswell, which is likely given that his story is good, he will achieve his goal and prevent the suffering without causing any individual suffering of the donors. This is an objectively better outcome than if you had donated everything, and thus had to suffer yourself, even in a minor way.
Of course, paying the entire ticket yourself would have been heroic and even better, as it would have erased the minor chance of catastrophic failure of him not getting enough money for the ticket. But it would have also erased the opportunity for the best outcome of everyone giving enough to not harm you or him.
As such, if he did not reach his mother, it would be a collective failure of humanity, and not your fault, you gave as much as you could reasonably expend.
I think Christ said something to this notion aswell, if you give give joyfully, or so.
Addendum, read on after my initial impression, and it seems that you yourself are arguing in a similar direction. Why do you feel guilt for a noble thing you did?
I think it is better to acknowledge that you did as well as you could at the time, and hope that the ecosystem is healthy enough to cover for him, including with your part.
No, I don't know what to tell you, your reasoning is very skewed on this. You have incorporated a number of unintuitive and wrong assumptions into the scenario.
I don't think so, but it's your guilt, you can keep it if you want
Loved reading this. Also, a hug. 🫂 As David below said, you may be a bit hard on yourself. 😉
To respond to a bit of the last part you said, that lots of the problems arise because we do not want to think. I believe that is true, but maybe like half of it? I believe the other half is because we don't want to feel, like truly feel. If we ask ourselves, "Where does the need to help this person in front of me come from?" and really listen to our feelings, then I think the response following that will be much more powerful and truthful.
Anyway, good stuff, it feels like you really put an effort into it and I liked the examples you shared as well!
Came to write something like that. The problem is not "not wanting to think". If anything Effective Altruists for example are overthinkers. The problem is not wanting to deal with real human beings, and touch their problems empirically - wanting to do good in an abstraction.
Effective altruists are looking for better heuristics to offload their cognition onto. That involves thinking; but the goal is the same - write the cheque and forget about it, confident that your dollars are doing good (as opposed to lining the pockets of sociopath careerists).
> write the cheque and forget about it
That sums up their relation to other humans
I think or suspect that Effective Altruists have done a lot of good; I just think the heuristics they use fail when applied outside of a certain narrow zone of endeavour.
I appreciate the candor of your article. Perhaps you are a little hard on yourself.
What this article reminded me of was the definition of "empathy" and how its much more precise/surgical and less feely/impulsive than is often used in vernacular language. To truly put ourselves in another's position and understand their needs takes a lot of thought, rumination and information gathering. The first impulsive compulsion we have in a desire to ease someone's suffering may not actually be empathetic because we haven't taken the time to really understand their needs and situation. Very much like the sandwich lady.
I think one of the highest yield measures to then address local needs and improve the lives of those around us is be less distracted. With our mental attention and energies diverted towards social media, the news, the sports team, the TV show, the audiobook etc. we reduce our mental and emotional bandwidth to identify and meditate on opportunities to do good. When Elon bought twitter I thought the best and funniest thing he could do with it was to just delete it. So many people freed up from anxiously scrolling the timeline and perhaps then more able to direct their energies somewhere more positive. A fantasy for sure, but a nice one I think.
Thanks explores a lot of things I've been thinking through. I think I'm slowly settling on help the person in front of you, locally. Its unlikely to be as efficient as $10 for mosquito nets but you cover the problem with efficiency admirably. Hoping for "therefore do this..." conclusion post but I suppose in a way that contradicts the thrust of the article ... Unless the conclusion were "it's hard and you're going to have to think about this one 🤣"
The conclusion is "it's harder and easier than you think" - harder because you have to actually think, easier because when you push aside bad models, you can see opportunities you might have missed.