Some people have suggested overthrowing bad governments (or something similar) as a possible EA cause, but that is nowhere near mainstream EA opinion, as far as I know...
The problem is rather philosophical. The idea behind EA is that if people die as a result of your inaction, it kinda makes you responsible for their deaths. (As opposed to the mainstream idea that although saving people’s lives is a nice, not giving a fuck about them dying is merely… neutral.) But if you accept this, then even deciding to donate to cause X instead of cause Y kinda makes you responsible for the people who die as a result of you not donating to Y. So in some sense, all EAs already are choosing the second option, inevitably, they are just hypocritical about that.
If choosing a charity X over charity Y, and thereby saving thousand people and letting ten other people die, is considered a good choice, why is killing ten more people to save thousand more people bad?
The mainstream answer is that killing is bad, but letting die is… kinda not bad, or at least not comparably bad. But EAs reject the mainstream answer, so what is their answer?
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There is a practical objection, that whoever promises to save thousand people by killing ten usually ends up killing ten or more people without actually saving the thousand. Therefore such statements cannot be taken at face value. But that’s avoiding the hypothetical. Suppose that someone proposes to kill ten people to save millions, and when you apply all the skepticism and outside view, you conclude that actually killing the ten people will only save about thousand people on average. Should you do it?
Imagine a vaccine against malaria, that would make everyone perfectly immune, but as a side effect of vaccination, ten people would die. Would EAs support that?
The medical profession supports medical treatments that save lives but very occasionally have lethal side effects. I defer to their judgement but it makes sense to me.
Some people have suggested overthrowing bad governments (or something similar) as a possible EA cause, but that is nowhere near mainstream EA opinion, as far as I know...
The problem is rather philosophical. The idea behind EA is that if people die as a result of your inaction, it kinda makes you responsible for their deaths. (As opposed to the mainstream idea that although saving people’s lives is a nice, not giving a fuck about them dying is merely… neutral.) But if you accept this, then even deciding to donate to cause X instead of cause Y kinda makes you responsible for the people who die as a result of you not donating to Y. So in some sense, all EAs already are choosing the second option, inevitably, they are just hypocritical about that.
If choosing a charity X over charity Y, and thereby saving thousand people and letting ten other people die, is considered a good choice, why is killing ten more people to save thousand more people bad?
The mainstream answer is that killing is bad, but letting die is… kinda not bad, or at least not comparably bad. But EAs reject the mainstream answer, so what is their answer?
.
There is a practical objection, that whoever promises to save thousand people by killing ten usually ends up killing ten or more people without actually saving the thousand. Therefore such statements cannot be taken at face value. But that’s avoiding the hypothetical. Suppose that someone proposes to kill ten people to save millions, and when you apply all the skepticism and outside view, you conclude that actually killing the ten people will only save about thousand people on average. Should you do it?
Imagine a vaccine against malaria, that would make everyone perfectly immune, but as a side effect of vaccination, ten people would die. Would EAs support that?
The medical profession supports medical treatments that save lives but very occasionally have lethal side effects. I defer to their judgement but it makes sense to me.