I think, separately, I would endorse some of the message, though I cannot say what Singer’s intentions were or were not.
Any thought experiment which reveals a conflict in your values and asks you to resolve it without also offering you guidance on how to integrate all your values is going to sacrifice one of your values. This isn’t a novel insight I think, as I’m almost pulling a ‘by definition’ on you, but the spectrum of magnitudes of this is important to me.
Our social network roundabout these parts has many metaphorical skeletons representing dozens and dozens of folks turning themselves into hollowed out “goodness” maximizers after being caught between thought experiment after thought experiment. Again, I don’t attribute malice on the part of the person offering the parable, but Drowning Child is one thing I have seen cut down many people’s sense of self, and I am happy standing loosely against the way it is used in practice on Earth regardless of its original intention.
Yeah ok. But this essay was posted on Earth. And on Earth I read it as response to a percieved failure-mode of an Effective Altruism philosophy.
I think, separately, I would endorse some of the message, though I cannot say what Singer’s intentions were or were not.
Any thought experiment which reveals a conflict in your values and asks you to resolve it without also offering you guidance on how to integrate all your values is going to sacrifice one of your values. This isn’t a novel insight I think, as I’m almost pulling a ‘by definition’ on you, but the spectrum of magnitudes of this is important to me.
Our social network roundabout these parts has many metaphorical skeletons representing dozens and dozens of folks turning themselves into hollowed out “goodness” maximizers after being caught between thought experiment after thought experiment. Again, I don’t attribute malice on the part of the person offering the parable, but Drowning Child is one thing I have seen cut down many people’s sense of self, and I am happy standing loosely against the way it is used in practice on Earth regardless of its original intention.