You cannot spend anything on yourself, you must give all your money away, and live in a tiny cottage eating bland, cheap foods.
But effective altruism doesn’t say that. If it did, that would be pretty weird, as no EAs do that.
My objection to EA along these grounds is not that EA says that, it’s that the principles of EA imply that. While it’s true that EA doesn’t say that, it seems to be making unprincipled exceptions when doing so.
No one—and I seriously mean no one—is suggesting that you should become a mafia boss so that you can donate the money.
This also falls under “EA may not say that, but it doesn’t seem to have a principled reason why it doesn’t imply that”. It’s entirely possible that you destroy less utility by doing Mafia-type things than you gain by donating what you get from your Mafia activities.
Here it seems like you should save the child.
But now imagine that rather than the child being near, they’re far away.
My answer to this is that in any drowning child situation that is realistic enough that our intuitions apply, the fact that the child is near places limits on how much we have to spend, and the fact that there are limits to helping people near us is one of the reasons why helping people near us is a reasonable policy.
And it doesn’t seem like the fact that they’re our countrymen is itself relevant, because then it would be more important to help a person after they’ve immigrated here than before they have.
If you believe there should be limits on immigration, and that there’s no need to help people who have immigrated in a way bypassing those limits, this is not a problem. This seems to be circular reasoning: EA ideas of helping everyone equally are used to justify open borders in the first place, and then EA says stuff like this which tries to bootstrap open borders into a justification for EA.
The principles of Christianity not only imply that, they clearly spell it out: “If you want to be perfect, then go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor”, and yet Christianity was uncontroversial in the West for centuries, and the current secular “common sense” morality hasn’t diverged particularly far. EAs just take ostensibly common sense principles far too seriously compared to the unspoken social consensus, in a way that’s cringe for normal people. Critics don’t really have a principled response to the core EA ideas either, but they don’t want to appear morally delinquent, so they generally try to dismiss EAs without seriously engaging.
My objection to EA along these grounds is not that EA says that, it’s that the principles of EA imply that. While it’s true that EA doesn’t say that, it seems to be making unprincipled exceptions when doing so.
This also falls under “EA may not say that, but it doesn’t seem to have a principled reason why it doesn’t imply that”. It’s entirely possible that you destroy less utility by doing Mafia-type things than you gain by donating what you get from your Mafia activities.
My answer to this is that in any drowning child situation that is realistic enough that our intuitions apply, the fact that the child is near places limits on how much we have to spend, and the fact that there are limits to helping people near us is one of the reasons why helping people near us is a reasonable policy.
If you believe there should be limits on immigration, and that there’s no need to help people who have immigrated in a way bypassing those limits, this is not a problem. This seems to be circular reasoning: EA ideas of helping everyone equally are used to justify open borders in the first place, and then EA says stuff like this which tries to bootstrap open borders into a justification for EA.
The principles of Christianity not only imply that, they clearly spell it out: “If you want to be perfect, then go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor”, and yet Christianity was uncontroversial in the West for centuries, and the current secular “common sense” morality hasn’t diverged particularly far. EAs just take ostensibly common sense principles far too seriously compared to the unspoken social consensus, in a way that’s cringe for normal people. Critics don’t really have a principled response to the core EA ideas either, but they don’t want to appear morally delinquent, so they generally try to dismiss EAs without seriously engaging.