Consider scope insensitivity. The amount of “warm fuzzies” one gets from helping X numbers of individuals with a given problem does not scale even remotely linearly with X. Different actions to help with distinct problems, however, sum in a much closer to linear fashion (at least up to some point).
Ergo, “one person with clean water and another with a malaria net” feels intuitively like you’re doing more than “two people with clean water”.
Consider scope insensitivity. The amount of “warm fuzzies” one gets from helping X numbers of individuals with a given problem does not scale even remotely linearly with X. Different actions to help with distinct problems, however, sum in a much closer to linear fashion (at least up to some point).
Ergo, “one person with clean water and another with a malaria net” feels intuitively like you’re doing more than “two people with clean water”.
Well, not when you compare them against each other, but only when each is considered on its own: it’s like this phenomenon.