The point of the original drowning child argument was to argue for ‘give basically everything you have to help people in dire need in the developing world’. So the point of the original argument was to move from
A relatively Undemanding + Near scenario: You encounter a child drowning in the real world. This is relatively undemanding because it’s a rare, once-off event that only costs you the shirt on your back plus a few minutes of your time. You aren’t risking your life, giving away all your wealth, spending your whole life working on the problem, etc.
to
A relatively Demanding + Far scenario. It doesn’t have to be AMF or GiveDirectly, but I use those as examples. (Also, obviously, you can give to those orgs without endorsing ‘give everything you have’. They’re just stand-ins here.)
Equally importantly IMO, it argues for transfer from a context where the effect of your actions is directly perceptionally obvious to one where it is unclear and filters through political structures (e.g., aid organizations and what they choose to do and to communicate; any governments they might be interacting with; any other players on the ground in the distant country) that will be hard to model accurately.
My guess is that this has a relatively small effect on most people’s moral intuitions (though maybe it should have a larger effect—I don’t think I grok the implicit concern here). I’d be curious if there’s research bearing on this, and on the other speculations I tossed out there. (Or maybe Spencer or someone can go test it.)
The point of the original drowning child argument was to argue for ‘give basically everything you have to help people in dire need in the developing world’. So the point of the original argument was to move from
A relatively Undemanding + Near scenario: You encounter a child drowning in the real world. This is relatively undemanding because it’s a rare, once-off event that only costs you the shirt on your back plus a few minutes of your time. You aren’t risking your life, giving away all your wealth, spending your whole life working on the problem, etc.
to
A relatively Demanding + Far scenario. It doesn’t have to be AMF or GiveDirectly, but I use those as examples. (Also, obviously, you can give to those orgs without endorsing ‘give everything you have’. They’re just stand-ins here.)
Equally importantly IMO, it argues for transfer from a context where the effect of your actions is directly perceptionally obvious to one where it is unclear and filters through political structures (e.g., aid organizations and what they choose to do and to communicate; any governments they might be interacting with; any other players on the ground in the distant country) that will be hard to model accurately.
My guess is that this has a relatively small effect on most people’s moral intuitions (though maybe it should have a larger effect—I don’t think I grok the implicit concern here). I’d be curious if there’s research bearing on this, and on the other speculations I tossed out there. (Or maybe Spencer or someone can go test it.)
I have heard a number of people saying that they don’t want to give money to charity because they don’t trust the charities spend the money well.
I see. So essentially demandingness is not about how strong the demand is but about how much is being demanded?