My beef with "Effective Altruism" (as a contemporary movement, rather than your sense of altruism that bears fruit) in its strong form at least is that it's probably misguided. I think their longtermism is a somewhat suspect concept and one probably shouldn't starve the present in order to feed a future that may never come to pass! We cannot predict with certainty future states of affairs in a complex phenomena like human society even twenty years out, much less one hundred years, and a thousand years out is beyond the predictive power of even concatenated exascale computers. So to take resources from the present's limited supply to address illnesses that may never arise whether we tend to them or not is beyond ineffective-- isn't it a fundamental misreading of causality in an environment of epistemic uncertainty?
Your approach seems much more realistic and congenial.
Very, very well done!
My beef with "Effective Altruism" (as a contemporary movement, rather than your sense of altruism that bears fruit) in its strong form at least is that it's probably misguided. I think their longtermism is a somewhat suspect concept and one probably shouldn't starve the present in order to feed a future that may never come to pass! We cannot predict with certainty future states of affairs in a complex phenomena like human society even twenty years out, much less one hundred years, and a thousand years out is beyond the predictive power of even concatenated exascale computers. So to take resources from the present's limited supply to address illnesses that may never arise whether we tend to them or not is beyond ineffective-- isn't it a fundamental misreading of causality in an environment of epistemic uncertainty?
Your approach seems much more realistic and congenial.
You ask, "What costs are we morally required to incur to rescue strangers?"
It may be helpful to set morality aside, and reframe the question as...
Is rescuing strangers in our own self interest?
This question can be examined both on the social and individual level.
Really excited to see this book out