So you say you're an altruist...

The practical answer is that most people would indeed put their neck in the noose for those other 10 strangers, because they and they alone can save them. However, if the King were instead to go out onto the marketplace and say "I will hang ten people today unless one person steps up to take their place", no-one would volunteer. This makes little sense from a consequentialist point of view; it's just a fact about human psychology.

One consequence is that if you're ever being attacked on the street while passers by walk on, don't just shout for help: select a particular passer by and ask them for help as specifically as you can.

It seems to me that if you set the price of virtue too high, a lot of people will say "Fuck virtue, I'm not bothering at all"-- and if you aren't supposed to feel like a good person unless you give all your disposable income to charity, that's setting the price too high.

Stable religions seem to set the price of virtue (in terms of giving to charity) at 10% of income. Anyone know whether that's just the Abrahamic religions?

I hold the "wound-healing" theory of charity, which I by coincidence made up earlier today.

Suppose you have a nasty wound on your leg. Suppose your body isn't very smart, and you have to direct the platelets yourself to begin healing it. Judging from how we go about international aid, most people would direct them to the center of the wound. That wouldn't work. The platelets would die and shed, and the wound would never heal.

You heal a wound from the outside in. You begin healing the parts that just border the healthy, solid parts, and gradually work your way to the center.

Likewise, if you want to help people, you shouldn't throw money into the most unstable, unproductive, screwed-up part of the world. You should find a population that is barely self-sufficient, and help them be more self-sufficient.

The thing is, I could just as easily be one of the ten as the eleventh (actually, ten times as easily), so it's in my interests to support a norm where the eleventh sacrifices for the good of the ten. I am in very little danger of starving to death in Africa.

It's not pleasant, but it is true.

There's an objection to be made that you can't be sure how useful charity is, but it's not a very strong objection. Last I heard there was pretty good evidence converging around $1000 or so being enough to save a person's life.

I accept this argument as valid and have for some time. I doubt I could donate everything to charity, but ~50% seems like a good compromise between human weakness and inhuman mathematics. We'll see how far I follow through on this when I get an income.

So I imagined myself at this person's speech, and found it fairly predictable for the most part. When he said he wanted to ask a few questions before the speech, I knew that the questions would actually be "part of" the speech, and I felt I should put the effort to try to answer them honestly (at least internally, if I were too embarrassed to admit the true answers publicly), as he probably chose the questions to trigger some insight later on.

When he asks if I was 50% confident I would kill myself to save 10, I was pretty torn, and I suspect I would not have resolved the question (and thus not raised my hand) by the time he moved on to the next question.

When he asks if I'm 95% confident I would kill myself to save 10, this was a much easier question. I know I'm not 95% confident and thus did not even consider raising my hand.

When he asks if I would spend 20 years in jail to save 10, my first gut instinct was to raise my hand, and I think I would have raised my hand. But, with my hand still in the air, I think I would immediately start regretting it, as I know that I, personally, am terrible at intuiting time duration, and started to wonder "how long is 20 years, really? That's practically my whole life so far... am I really willing to give up almost as much time as all the time I've ever experienced so far?"

"Too late", I imagined thinking to myself, "he's moved on to the next question." Would I live in eternal poverty to save 10? This again was an easy answer: definitely not. If 20 years was uncomfortably long, there's no way I'd live 60-80, or longer (if I sign up for cryonics?) without being able to afford videogames, internet access, etc.

And I'd at first be surprised by the number of hands that went up, but then I'd figure this is typical of neurotypicals (I'm on the autistic spectrum), who don't say what they mean, and don't even realize they don't mean what they are saying.

Then, as soon as the speaker said

In both situations if the people die, you will be rich; if they live, you will be poor, and it is within your power to decide which it is to be. In either situation if you decide that they should die in order that you can be rich, you have put your happiness, or not actually even that, you have put material riches for yourself above 10 people’s lives.

I successfully predicted that this speech would be about donating money to the poor.

So to answer the implied question:

I'd be really interested to hear what the Less Wrong community thinks of this.

I can tell you that my thoughts really didn't have much to do with poverty, morality, charities or Africa, but a lot more to do with people (in general, not just neurotypicals) not actually thinking about nor realizing what it is that they are saying. As an Autist, I "knew" on some level that NTs weren't doing this intentionally, but this speech actually really hit me hard with the idea that they really weren't doing it intentionally.

This really reminds me of Eliezer's Cached Thought concept.

the next time you hear someone unhesitatingly repeating a meme you think is silly or false, you'll think, "Cached thoughts." My belief is now there in your mind, waiting to complete the pattern. But is it true? Don't let your mind complete the pattern! Think!

Can you imagine a world where everyone followed this advice? I don't really know what would happen but it seems possible if all disposable income is given to people who don't have an income in regions that don't have an economy that this would choke economies and bringing the entire world population down to a subsistence level.

Please remember that we're supposed to be able to submit links, not just original essays. Anyone downvoting on that basis (rather than dislike of the link itself) is making an error about Less Wrong posting policies. A link like this wouldn't be promoted to the front page but it's okay to vote up if you like the content.

This whole speech makes me mad. The same people who urge us to not have kids, because of overpopulation, are urging us to spend all of our disposable income in supporting 'poor people', because they are in misery. And why are they in misery? Because they had more kids than they could afford to take care of. And their parents did. And their parents before them.

You on the other hand, are descended from a long line of prudent people. Who though about the consequences of their actions and decided that the short term pleasure wasn't worth the long term pain. Those in misery, those we are being urged to save, they, and their parents, didn't exercise the self restraint to not have kids they couldn't afford, and so now we should rush in and save them -- from the pain associated with their shortsightedness. They are and were obviously more indifference to their own future suffering, and to the future suffering of their children than to the pleasure of having half a dozen kids, why should we be more concerned about their suffering than they were? You postpone marriage and sacrifice to get a good job, they go out and have 10 kids when they don't have enough food and money to support themselves.

If revealed preferences show anything, they show that they, personally, aren't actually very distressed by the threat of dying of hunger, or being debilitated by disease, or living in a society wracked by violence and injustice. And they aren't too distressed by the possibility of their children living and dying in exactly the same way. They obviously aren't concerned enough about it to change their own behavior. Why should we rush in and save them?

That's the problem with utilitarianism. Just like every other form of socialism it says that people who are smart, and conscientious, and hard working, should spend their time working to accomplish the goals of people who are lazy, stupid, and thriftless. Or rather working 24/7 to save them from the consequences of their actions. They go off and have half a dozen kids with no way to support them, and then we are supposed to spend out time maximizing "the sum total of human happiness" by supporting them and their kids -- by doing for them things they can't be bothered to do for themselves.

That's the problem with democracy too, especially democracy in the form with mass redistribution. Money (which is, literally, time) is taken from the smart, the hardworking, and the conscientious, and given to the foolish, the feckless and the irresponsible. This TRANSFERS decision making power as to what to do with the spare resources of society from people who would invest in cultural enhancement, things like scientific research, to those whose highest goals are pleasure and the shortsighted avoidance of pain.

This is a mistake on two levels:

First, it turns evolution on it's head. Soon the world is full of thriftless, heedless, irresponsible people.

Second, it destroys the possibility of progress. I say encourage smart, conscientious, hardworking people to use their spare time, energy and money to advance human KNOWLEDGE, and to have smart, conscientious, hardworking kids of their own, who will do the same.

If increasing the sum total of human happiness is your goal, there are far better ways of accomplishing it than giving all of your money to aid workers to distribute to the poor.

1) Even if you did save the lives of 10 people, by sending all your spare cash to provide food aid or medical assistance to the dreadfully poor. I don't think it actually decreases the amount of suffering in the world, or increases the amount of human happiness. It just gives 10 people you saved the 'opportunity' to suffer in a dozen other unpleasant ways. The quality of life in places where people actually die from malnutrition is dreadful.

2) If you just want to maximize the human happiness of 10 people, have 10 kids, and raise them lovingly. You'd add more to the sum total of human enjoyment in the world than someone who rescues 10 people from starvation. The number of additional " enjoyable human life years" you give them is probably nil, since you don't, and can't, make sure they are educated, or taught a useful profession, or protected from dreadful diseases, or from random violence by thugs and jihadists and the hundreds of other injustices and oppression they would encounter in Africa,or where-ever. Just making sure they don't die of starvation is just the start of the unending list of things you would have to fix to make their lives enjoyable. Cut out the middleman, those ineffectual, incompetent aid workers, who need tens of thousands of your money to marginally improve the life of one person (maybe). Raise 10 kids of your own. Guaranteed the happy, useful lives of THOSE ten kids will add more to the 'sum total of human happiness' than the lives of those hypothetical 10 people in Africa.

3) Besides, raising 10 kids of your own would dramatically increase your OWN happiness. Why feel guilty? Pleasure that you give yourself is as much a contribution to the sum total of human happiness as pleasure you enable your 10 kids experience, by living happy and productive lives. And believe me, your life would be MUCH more enjoyable. And not just from the fun of watching the kids grow up. If you're a guy, and if you're reading this blog, the odds are high you are a guy, then, believe me, there is no 'game' you can play that would be as sure a road to finding a beautiful, loving woman who wants YOU, as announcing to all and sundry that you want to get married and have a lot of kids -- and that you are looking for someone who wants that too. Try THAT the next time you walk into a bar.

4) And if you're reading this blog, the odds are high that you are about 2 standard deviations above the average human being in intelligence, conscientiousness, and willingness to work hard. If the 10 people whose lives you make possible are all YOUR KIDS, instead of some random strangers, you just helped improve the human gene pool, and by a lot. We need more people who are just like you, who care about scientific progress, and the future of the human race, etc. So get out there and replicate!! :-) ,Instead of sending your money off to help replicate other people, replicate yourself! You are exactly the sort of people we need more of.

Even better, if you do have kids, (instead of spending your time supporting other peoples kids), you can raise them to be USEFUL: scientists, engineers, researchers -- people who can make a real contribution to humanity, instead of eaking out their lives as subsistence agriculturalists, or as "marginally attached workers" in some slum of a mega city, or idling their time away in some refugee camp...

If you could gave me a magic button to kill 10 people and make me rich, without any tricky business (like risk of being punished) then I would push it.

I should also hope that nobody else would, and by the sound of things many wouldn't.

The real question is, is the ultimate value maximizing the number of human-years? How about the quest for knowledge? Improvement of the species?

Is saving 10 people from starvation (ie, funding the continued existence of 10 people, engaging in the typical activities of a subsistence agriculturist, and experiencing the normal pleasures/pains of a subsistence agriculturist's life, of greater value than, say, funding one person working to figure out how to increase human being's peak IQ? [although, of course, fill in here the research question that you think is the most important]

I'd say that the average subsistence agriculturalist isn't contributing anything (and CAN'T contribute anything) to the most valuable activities mankind is currently engaged in.

The linked article presents a situation where the ten people you could save were chosen at random by a king. However, the people who you could save by giving to food aid charities are not random. They are specifically those who for some reason cannot produce enough to feed themselves. A few hundred years ago, feeding them would have prevented deaths in the short term, but caused an equal or greater number of deaths a generation later due to excess population. It also eliminates selection effects which would make future generations more productive. It may be possible to feed everyone today, but our moral instinct has had very little time to adjust to that fact, and it's still difficult to ensure our efforts aren't counterproductive. A lot of aid ends up being claimed by warlords and used against the people we want to help.

Wow, I'm glad I don't say I'm an altruist.

I'm also glad I don't easily fall prey to arguments based on bad economics.

BTW your edit is a spoiler - I recommend turning it into a comment...

Personally I'd keep myself alive, accept 20 years jail, but refuse permanent poverty which I consider a worse-than-death (those preferences make sense since I hope to live a very long time). And I don't think that "not maintaining life" is the same as killing - any more than I think "not creating life" is the same as killing. Other people's survival is not automatically my problem, and I am certainly not obligated to beggar myself to keep a hundred war-impoverished Africans in rice. They had better look out for themselves.

It essentially boils down to what people do with power and it is the song of choice that is being sung. Americans choose to keep the wealth and power that they have partly out of ignorance. After all, it's easy to forget about the rest of the world when you have a family, a mortgage, and a healthy community in a mid-size suburb. That, I would say, explains why many Americans choose to keep the wealth and power they have to better themselves even if it is at the cost of other people. But that isn't the whole story.

Other people have all they need and are well educated and well traveled enough to know that there are problems many people face globally, not to mention within America itself. Why is it that so many starve in the world when the planet produces more than enough food for everyone? Why does disease wipe out entire villages in certain parts of the world when the cure (or prevention) of diseases exist and can be distributed? Why do certain demographics face incredible challenges just to survive when a few have the privilege of thriving without much effort?

It's not economics, it's not "society", it's not some shadow government purposefully harming people. It's the song of choice. Truly altruistic people will do what they can with what they have to help others, and expect nothing in return. That is the purest definition of selfless that can exist in humanity. But the enemy of selflessness is selfishness. While many may choose to be selfish out of ignorance, some choose to be selfish fully knowing that they are perpetuating the problems in this world. Such people may not be villains, but they sure aren't heroes.

But why do these people willingly make the choice to cause harm to others for personal gain? It's fear. Fear of losing what they have, fear that others will replace them, fear that the world will no longer need them, fear that all they've been privileged to enjoy will be taken away. Some people believe that by working together, anything is possible. Others believe that to succeed, someone must fail.

Fear is what keeps people in line, fear is what keeps the status quo, fear is what keeps the poor starving while the rich enjoy luxury.

I don't agree that the selfish option on the third choice is murder. There's a difference between killing people because you're being coerced using your money and killing people of your own free will in order to take their money.

If the facts about poverty there are true and one agrees that being unwilling to make the third sacrifice is murder (which I don't), then yes, his conclusion that most of the people there were being hypocritical would be logical. If you consider yourself altruistic but put your own comfort before the lives of others, I don't think that your actions logically follow from your morals. I didn't feel conflicted by his conclusion, though, because I'm not an altruist.

Implicit premise, that I haven't seen anyone point out:

It is assumed that while charity has a variable utility anywhere between 0 and X, selfish spending has a utility which is less than 0. This may be true in most cases, given that many people waste their money on disposable, consumerist garbage, but when considering somebody who spends frugally, their monetary utility will be in the positive sums (though arguably, less than any given charity).

I am what I like to call a "Greedy Progressive", inasmuch as my liberal instincts are not based in the guilt theory that a lot of conservatives and some liberals associate with liberalism, but on an implicit assumption that others doing well helps my life get better - and after a certain point, indeed helping others helps my quality of life in more immediately helpful ways than even spending money on myself or my family, though exactly where this point is at is subject to argument.

However, fundamentally the point is that I am not a progressive because I'm a sweet guy, but because I get a return on the investment. This implies two obvious things

A) That as improving others life also improves mine, improving my life also improves the lives of others in society. I am no less worth of living in comfort than someone in Africa either.

B) That although it helps me to help someone in Africa, it may very well help me more to help someone here, who in turn helps someone else slightly further from my sphere of influence, et al. Since this is not about me being a sweet guy, the question of who I help depends on my (perception of) return on investment.

C) Once I get below a certain point, the highest return on investment for expenditure of X money for Y personal happiness, is me. And, since I am in fact as important as anyone else, I give myself explicit permission to do that. I quit giving to my local public radio and the ACLU when I get below that point - and start again when I get above. The same for every other charity in existence.

And that's where I dislike the article. It assumes my happiness is in fact less important than the happiness of those I could help. So in point of fact, no, there is a definite limit to what i will sacrifice for random strangers, just because my happiness is no less important.

The gap between what people say they'd do and what they actually do is an interesting topic.

However, in the example chosen here (starving people in third-world countries), there are too many other reasons for which people wouldn't make the choice to save lives, many of which have been given by other commenters.

And I expect that if you mounted a hypothetical scenario that was closer to the actual starving people one, including the factors like the impact that aid might have on the local economy, the overpopulation problems, etc. - then I expect that much less people would say that they'd make great sacrifices to save lives (much less than would in the ten-hostages scenario, at least). There would probably still be a gap between what people say they'd do, and what they actually do, but it wouldn't be as dramatic.

The correct moral response to the king's sadistic choice (in any of the 4 forms mentioned) is not sacrifice yourself OR to let the other 10 die instead. The correct answer is that you, knowing the king was doing this, should have founded/joined/assisted an organization devoted to deposing the evil king and replacing him with someone who isn't going to randomly kill his subjects.

So to with charity. The answer isn't to sacrifice all of your comforts and wealth to save the lives of others, but to assist with, petition for and otherwise attempt to inact sanctions, reforms and revolutions to force the leaders of the world's most impoverished nations to end the policies that are leading to their populations starving to death. There is already enough food to feed everyone in the world twice over, it is simply a matter of making sure that nobody is prevented from obtaining it by a cruel or uncarring outside institution.

There are several different fallacies and errors mixed together in this essay which is what makes it so bad.

First, and simplest, is the equating of non-sacrifice and murder. Just because the one person is not willing to sacrifice himself to save a few others is not the same as being willing to kill innocent others. "But morally speaking, that situation is exactly the same as this one."- vicious nonsense.

Second, everything I have read, except Leftist propaganda, says this "Within the next 50 years an absolute minimum of 500M people will starve to death. The UN reports that around 10M people starve to death every year and the problem is only going to get worse as the population increases." is also vicious nonsense. And the idea that foreign aid will help the people who do die of malnutrition is as bad. Any widespread malnutrition today is directly caused by governments' attacks on specific groups, the most current and egregious example being Sudan.

Most important is a matter of values. Why should someone value anyone, even a large number of people, over their own life and freedom, or even their own comfort? There is no one, or any collection of people, I would sacrifice my life or my freedom for. I might risk my life for a sufficient number of people, or for a few people I know personally.

The linked essay is one of the most viciously stupid things I have read in a long time.

Thanks John_Maxwell_IV for gratuitously insulting all autists by calling them assholes. I have been annoyed enough by evo-psychs saying humans do this or humans do that when many non-neurotypicals don't; apparently evo-psychs don't consider autists as humans (more likely they're just sloppy thinkers).