Comment by RLaing on Another Call to End Aid to Africa · 2009-04-03T23:49:40.000Z · LW · GW

Logic and pity are at right angles to one another. The former is a system for connecting premises to conclusions, and has nothing to say about the validity of either premises or conclusions, except to say that if you accept the premises, and can find no flaw in the logic, you also must accept the conclusion. Pity, on the other hand, is an emotion.

Of course aid appeals are going to be couched in terms of pity, because that is the emotion most likely to result in giving. How aid actually gets used is an entirely separate question. My understanding is that there is a long history of aid being a disguised subsidy to domestic business interests, in which case harm to local development would be a real possibility.