Morally right ?
What about everything (What about us?) I didn’t do? (What about us?) … What about animals? (What about it?) Turned kingdoms to dust (What about us?) What about elephants? (What about us?) Have we lost their trust? (What about us?) What about crying whales (What about us?) Ravaging the seas? (What about us?) What about forest trails? (Ooh) … What about the common man? (What about us?) Can’t we set him free? (What about us?) What about children dying? (What about us?) Can’t you hear them cry? (What about us?) Where did we go wrong? (Ooh) Someone tell me why (What about us?) What about baby boy? (What about it?) What about the days? (What about us?) What about all their joy? (What about us?) What about the man? (What about us?) What about the crying man? (What about us?) What about Abraham? (What about us?) What about death again? (Ooh) Do we give a damn? -MJ Earth song
This is a song by Micheal Jackson. I love the lyrics. It hits me everytime MJ sings it. He questions all the things we have done to destroy the world, and surprisingly also questions all the things we personally didn’t do to harm the planet, but someone else did. He asks what about all those things? Are we going to fix it? Because the burden is not on others to fix it. But on you and me. In short he covers a good list of issues that cause a lot of pain to the living beings now and in the future. Hopefully it reminds “people” from time to time to get back to what is important.
What are we supposed to do?
Over the last fewposts, I try to understand what is really important for me. We have narrowed down on the point that we would definitely like to save more lives. The value of a life to us is much more than what material pleasures can give us.
So what now?
We could for example, save as much money as we can while working and donate it to some charity. There! Done!
There are a couple of things; Whom do you donate to and how much? What exactly are we trying to optimize?
What now?
Some people say donate to high impact charities/organizations. Some people say, donate anywhere, all good is good. Some people say do it personally as you can’t trust anyone.
What we should realize is this…
Say you have two options: a) Save 100 people b) Save 5 people who are not those 100 people
As cold blooded as it might sound to say to ask your apology to the 5 people of option ‘b’, it appears that going ahead with option ‘a’ which is to save 100 people, seems wise; for the simple reason that we care about lives and we want to save as many lives as we can. We need to realize that this is what we value, we have finite resources, and yes many people are going to die. But we need to minimize these deaths and that is our goal.
Such a decision seems to already tell us whom to donate to. Donate to the high impact organizations. How do we know who would make the maximum impact with our money? GiveWell does something amazing. It helps one make an informed choice about what is the best place to donate. Of course it is not the complete guide, there are so many constraints. It has done quite some research, something that as one person would take years to come up with. Instead of re-inventing the wheel we trust their capabilities and move on with their recommendations. At this point it doesn’t matter whether it is South Sudan, or Syria or even India. The thing is about impact and maximizing it. Everything else can pretty much go to hell.
Time and again I find myself debating with myself that maybe “all lives are equal” NOT. How is it ok to help say south sudan and not someone in pakistan who might be suffering more. What about the so many thousand women are getting raped and murdered in UP, what about them? Why should you focus on just south sudan. Again, it all boils down to the same thing.
Say you have two options: a) Save 100 people b) Save 5 people who are not those 100 people
Save as many people as you can. We seem to value life and every life we gain is valued at X. Which means N lives saved gives us NxX.
Some might ask, “then are not all people equal”? Well definitions! For us the value addition of every life is still X! And as long as the answer to the following question does not change, you can say whatever you want, but its not going to make any difference.
Say you have two options: a) Save 100 people b) Save 5 people who are not those 100 people
Impact seems to be king. Impact being number of lives saved. The ultimate goal is and seems to be to save as many lives as possible. But making that decision involves lot of research, and making some educated guesses. The true impact is hard to estimate and can be far from reality as a result. In some places we can’t measure the a proper value for our expected impact; For example, imagine a think tank that is one of the reasons why a government chose to invest 50 bn $ in ‘Health in poor countries’. It’s not all black and white. We could of course funnel all our money to AMF, and continue saving so many more lives, as GiveWell says. But there are other risks for this world and its species, such as risk of extinction, risk from AI getting away from the human moral code etc. There are other ways we can help as well. GiveWell only rates the NGO’s based on their impact and openness with information.
There is this sight called 80000 hours, which does research on what we could possible do in our life and tells us what are the problems that are neglected, what are the ones that need action, and possibly where we can contribute to create maximum impact. So there are other variables that we need to look at to decide how to make our maximum impact so that the world survives for generations and generations on end. The suggested ways to impact would be for example, to work in Finance and earn a lot of money, or to work on research in AI etc…
So in conclusion, the question about whom to donate to is also answered in the 80000 hours website. It might happen that earning to give and hence donating could be our final goal, but it can also happen that we do research or design things that are useful in sustenance of life amongst other things. In addition, we might also be donating the excess money that we have. What ever decision that we make regarding saving lives, depends on uncertainty of a suggested method sometimes being sketchy to evaluate, neglectedness and solvability. it is crucial to consider these factors as done in the 80000 hours website for example. Also, we can happily stand on the shoulders of these giants and work from there on.
Saving the future?
Wait. I understand pain of a person dying near me or for that matter even dying somewhere in the planet. But someone 1000 years later?
Would you save 100 people now or 100000 people 1000 years from now?
A life is a life. It’s value is constant to us. We don’t feel the pain of someone dying 100,000 years from now. So we think, yeah fuck that cunt. But in reality it is going to be no less painful than what it is going to be to any other human now. Whether you see it, feel it, or are alive to see it live, doesn’t fucking matter. Pain is pain. Imagine that girl in mexico caught in the debris. Imagine that 1000 years later.
When do lives stop mattering to us
So when does life stop mattering to us to care about it? Let’s look at abortion. Life goes from a fetus to being born in this world after a period of 9 months.
Peter Singer, talks about abortion. His views are that, Fetuses hardly feel pain upto 20 weeks as their nervous system is not built by then. We should not hesitate to kill it off knowing that it has a dangerous disease or is going to be quadriplegic for example, one that would make all our lives hard. Of course if the baby is born, we should do everything in our power to save it? Depends on…
What is the line that divides the beings that morally matter and the ones that don’t.
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham
I was looking for rationale regarding abortion. All along I just took the liberals side and just now realized that both pro-choice and anti-abortion seem to have valid points. And maybe it is all just an opinion and no one should be judged. And then I stumble upon the above quote. All along in my series of essays and especially this one, I realize that the number one factor that moved me or informed me that I have to take some action is pain. Pain is the single important indicator that I value. If I look at plants, I don’t care. Animals abused in factories? Hell yeah! it pains. People dying in mexico, especially the girl stuck in debris and imagining all the pain she would be in while alive? Yeah! much pain for me. Euthanizing animals, rather than allowing them to live a hopeless life in a cage or a painful life? Yes, I don’t see the point of them living like this. And the list goes on… All the time pain was the single most important thing in the equation of decision making regarding what lives matter. And even now with abortion it is.
There does not seem a better standard than this. Within 20 weeks of a fetus feel free to have an abortion. Highly unlikely that the fetus feels the pain. And for any serious reason do go for an abortion in any case after the 20 weeks, then make sure the fetus feels no pain, is Peters stand, which I seem to agree with as well.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with abortion unless the abortion is carried out so late in pregnancy that the fetus might feel pain during the procedure. (That is unlikely to be earlier than 20 weeks - the overwhelming majority of abortions are performed much earlier than this.) Even after that point, abortion is not morally wrong if it is done for a serious reason, and the procedure is carried out in a manner that minimizes the risk of the fetus experiencing pain. - Peter Singer on Quora
If as soon as a fertilized egg gets the right to live, then what about the sperms? It’s probably a sin to ejaculate as well, as you allow your sperm to die, let alone allowing millions of them to die even when you procreate, anyway.
Peter also suggests, that people buying meat without second thought are in no moral place to judge women getting abortions. The reasoning being that a fully grown pig can feel pain just like us, where as a fetus, will feel nothing. There is quite a lack of moral consistency. And then it is vital to understand who is important and what we place our values on.
Our moral responsibility to oysters is quantitatively less than our moral responsibility to pigs
So it appears that Factory farming is bad, but what if animals were allowed to do their thing and didn’t know they were being killed in the end for meat? The pain is removed from the equation! Great! For now, it seems like a great solution. If pain is all we care about can the same be extended to humans say for experiments in a controlled environment such that they don’t feel pain or have harmful side effects, suddenly that sounds unimaginable. How about Dogs then? Dogs for experiments?
Let’s say there is a someone undergoing lot of pain, and there is no cure for his disease. Maybe it makes sense in this case to put him to sleep. Otherwise, it feels not right. To me it appears that we are perfectly capable of living without meat, and in the future we could make much more advances in this field and hopefully get all people on the same boat. If it is possible, we should avoid killing animals even. But for now, implementing a solution where the pain is reduced for all the animals, sounds good enough. With more advancements, we can go further and further.
If humans become extinct, then there is no pain. So are we good to leave humans to die in peaceful way to extinction? As a result it seems to me in addition to pain, there are other things we consider while trying to understand the moral responsibility of a situation, as seen above.
Value of a life is constant?
When we eat one Bhel puri, we might still want one more. But after the second one we don’t feel that much of urge to eat another one. Meaning with every additional bhel puri the value we get from it diminishes. This is an example of the law of diminishing marginality.
With every life we save, is our appetite for the next life reducing? (by that I mean that if you are a doctor in South Sudan, after you save one life, are you going to say, “Well I have done my work for today” or are you going to bust your ass to save every single life possible?). The value of the life seems rather constant. There are 7 billion people on this planet. There seems to be no reason we should value every extra life differently. Hence we shut up and multiply the value we get from every additional life?
Let’s say there are only 8 people in the world and there is food left only for 2. If every one is fed then you wont have enough food and humanity will die as a whole. We should probably give this food to the 2 best of the 8 people to improve the chances for humanity to survive as a whole. When faced with the option of saving the entire human race or noone, we value the 2 best people very high, as compared to the other 6. But now we are not in any such situation. There are 7 billion people. There are enough resources and good chances that we all pull through together. Furthermore, no reason to distinguish, the value each life means to us. The important point being that 8 billion happy people is any day better than 7 billion happy people (SITH). No contest. The value of every additional life is X. And hence it seems like a good idea to shut up and multiply rather than listen to our amazing feelings on what they actually think.
Summary
In the near future, we need to evaluate what we need to do next such that we can maximize our impact to the world. We started with understanding more deeply the value of different lives.