Regarding “intuitive moral sense”, I would add that one’s intuitions can be somewhat shaped by consciously thinking about their implications, noticing inconsistencies and settling on solutions/improvements.
For example, the realisation that I usually care about people more the better I know them made me realize that the only reason I do not care about strangers at all is the fact that I do not know them. As this collided with another intuition that refuses such a reason as arbitrary (I could have easily ended up knowing and thus caring for different people, which is evidence that this behaviour of my intuition does not reflect my ‘actual’ preferences), my intuitions updated towards valuing strangers.
I am not sure how strongly other EAs have reshaped their intuitions, but I think that using and accepting quantitative arguments for moral questions needs quite a bit of intuition-reshaping for most people.
No worries, I wasn’t assuming you were a speaker for the EA community here, I just wanted to better understand possible motivations for donating to EA given my current perspective on ethics. I think the answer you gave outline on such line of reasoning quite well.
Not sure whether every EA would endorse this description, but it’s how I think of it, yes.
Regarding “intuitive moral sense”, I would add that one’s intuitions can be somewhat shaped by consciously thinking about their implications, noticing inconsistencies and settling on solutions/improvements.
For example, the realisation that I usually care about people more the better I know them made me realize that the only reason I do not care about strangers at all is the fact that I do not know them. As this collided with another intuition that refuses such a reason as arbitrary (I could have easily ended up knowing and thus caring for different people, which is evidence that this behaviour of my intuition does not reflect my ‘actual’ preferences), my intuitions updated towards valuing strangers.
I am not sure how strongly other EAs have reshaped their intuitions, but I think that using and accepting quantitative arguments for moral questions needs quite a bit of intuition-reshaping for most people.
No worries, I wasn’t assuming you were a speaker for the EA community here, I just wanted to better understand possible motivations for donating to EA given my current perspective on ethics. I think the answer you gave outline on such line of reasoning quite well.