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Altruismul eficient
by Peter Singer
I read [b:The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty|4722934|The Life You Can Save Acting Now to End World Poverty|Peter Singer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439433749l/4722934._SX50_.jpg|4787382], [b:Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference|23398748|Doing Good Better How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference|William MacAskill|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414351487l/23398748._SY75_.jpg|42955303], and [b:The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically|23168483|The Most Good You Can Do How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically|Peter Singer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1424307874l/23168483._SX50_.jpg|42713701] back to back, so this is a sort of comparative/roundup review of all three.
Despite a few good sections, on the whole this is both redundant and inferior to MacAskill's Doing Good Better. Several of the anecdotes are repeated either from Singer's own earlier books or from authors in the Effective Altruism space. Does that mean that, while this might be a bad book for people who've already a bit about Effective Altruism it might be a good book for those who have yet to? I don't think it is great at that either. It is strangely theoretical and delves into some of the (IMHO) weird rabbit holes of Effective Altruism. That is maybe kinda sorta interesting for people who want to learn more but as an introduction? Singer even concludes his book by saying, eh, let's just ignore all these rabbit holes.
What are some of these rabbit holes? Organ donation (which is only very loosely tied to Effective Altruism), whether effective altruists "are less prone to feel emotional empathy than others", whether giving/altruism makes people happy, and whether effective altruists should -- instead of alleviating the suffering of the global poor -- should instead be donating to research about Artificial Intelligence killing all humans.
A surprising number of Effective Altruists think we should be donating our money to researching ways to avoid "end of civilization" scenarios because the way we can "increase total utility" is to take into account the trillions of human beings who will be born in the future. I've never really been convinced by this line of argument; for one thing it would seem to make abortion immoral by saying that unborn should weigh in our moral calculus like that.
For another, it feels like the usurpation of global philanthropy by a weirdly male technocratic elite. One thing that struck me while reading this book is how almost everyone Singer talks about is a white male with no children. Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Charlie Bresler, Aaron Moore, Celso Vieira, Matt Wage, Jim Greenbaum, Aveek Bhattacharya, Alex Foster, Simon Knutsen, Ben West, Phil Gruissem, Ian Ross, Jason Trigg, "Gorby" (anonymous male), Chris Croy, Alexander Berger, Zell Kravinsky. Maybe more, I stopped counting.
There are far fewer women in the book: Diana Schott (Charlie Bresler's wife), Julia Wise, Bernadette Young (Toby Ord's wife), Rhema Hokama, and Priya Basil. That's it. (Janina Ochojska and Tzu Chi are both mentioned but they are organizers who have been active for decades and have nothing to do with Effective Altruism; their stories are given simply as examples "that show how much an individual can achieve".)
That said, these "rabbit holes" do show one of the big problems of Effective Altruism. Once you decide you need to figure out how to do "the most good", you engage in a very fraught endeavour. Is saving 139 million chickens a year (and those are just the ones that "suffer to death" before making it to a slaughterhouse) better than saving the 9 million people who die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year? If we think preventing mass death from asteroid impact is silly then does that undermine our argument for fighting climate change -- which also primarily affects people who are not yet born?
These are all pretty complicated issues, with no clear answers, and not even very accepted terms of argument -- which feel pretty out of place in an "intro to Effective Altruism" book.
Despite a few good sections, on the whole this is both redundant and inferior to MacAskill's Doing Good Better. Several of the anecdotes are repeated either from Singer's own earlier books or from authors in the Effective Altruism space. Does that mean that, while this might be a bad book for people who've already a bit about Effective Altruism it might be a good book for those who have yet to? I don't think it is great at that either. It is strangely theoretical and delves into some of the (IMHO) weird rabbit holes of Effective Altruism. That is maybe kinda sorta interesting for people who want to learn more but as an introduction? Singer even concludes his book by saying, eh, let's just ignore all these rabbit holes.
If these discussions lead in strange directions, never mind.
What are some of these rabbit holes? Organ donation (which is only very loosely tied to Effective Altruism), whether effective altruists "are less prone to feel emotional empathy than others", whether giving/altruism makes people happy, and whether effective altruists should -- instead of alleviating the suffering of the global poor -- should instead be donating to research about Artificial Intelligence killing all humans.
A surprising number of Effective Altruists think we should be donating our money to researching ways to avoid "end of civilization" scenarios because the way we can "increase total utility" is to take into account the trillions of human beings who will be born in the future. I've never really been convinced by this line of argument; for one thing it would seem to make abortion immoral by saying that unborn should weigh in our moral calculus like that.
For another, it feels like the usurpation of global philanthropy by a weirdly male technocratic elite. One thing that struck me while reading this book is how almost everyone Singer talks about is a white male with no children. Elie Hassenfeld, Holden Karnofsky, Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, Charlie Bresler, Aaron Moore, Celso Vieira, Matt Wage, Jim Greenbaum, Aveek Bhattacharya, Alex Foster, Simon Knutsen, Ben West, Phil Gruissem, Ian Ross, Jason Trigg, "Gorby" (anonymous male), Chris Croy, Alexander Berger, Zell Kravinsky. Maybe more, I stopped counting.
There are far fewer women in the book: Diana Schott (Charlie Bresler's wife), Julia Wise, Bernadette Young (Toby Ord's wife), Rhema Hokama, and Priya Basil. That's it. (Janina Ochojska and Tzu Chi are both mentioned but they are organizers who have been active for decades and have nothing to do with Effective Altruism; their stories are given simply as examples "that show how much an individual can achieve".)
That said, these "rabbit holes" do show one of the big problems of Effective Altruism. Once you decide you need to figure out how to do "the most good", you engage in a very fraught endeavour. Is saving 139 million chickens a year (and those are just the ones that "suffer to death" before making it to a slaughterhouse) better than saving the 9 million people who die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year? If we think preventing mass death from asteroid impact is silly then does that undermine our argument for fighting climate change -- which also primarily affects people who are not yet born?
These are all pretty complicated issues, with no clear answers, and not even very accepted terms of argument -- which feel pretty out of place in an "intro to Effective Altruism" book.