This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
That's definitely true, and a real issue for having empathy for all of humanity. It's a problem I have as well, I don't think having empathy exactly like that is effective or helpful for anyone.
However, I get around it by not thinking about the quantity of children/people dying around the world. Just think of them as if they're one, or a few people who are dying and need malaria nets or whatever. Think about, try to feel, how much pain they're experiencing, how scared they are, how scared and sad their family is, etc. That way, you can feel the empathy, which can get you to take positive action, but not have to be destroyed by the scale of how many people out there need help.
...why tho
Getting emotional over people I don't know is irrational and makes you easy to manipulate. Not opening my wallet for a charity just because they will ostensibly reduce suffering somewhere I have never seen that I will never go to. People should look out for the ones they have direct responsibility for first. How about helping a friend out first? Everyone has a friend that's struggling these days.
One can improve the lives of those around them with great precision and far greater cost efficiency than unknown strangers.
Real Effective Altruism is giving a beer to the bum in front of Walmart. I don't expect him to get any better and he will almost certainly die in a ditch in ten years, but at least I know my money is being converted directly into utility (beer == smiles) and not wasted on high overhead charity making political or economic changes with uncertain second order consequences.
Yeah, they're good points. I don't think there are clear answers to this.
I can't speak to EA funding politics stuff, but a few years ago when I was giving more to Against Malaria, it was certainly nice to be able to think about how this small amount of money would help to save real people's lives. Every bit helps to create a better world.
As far as people near us vs people far from us, yes, I agree that it should be more morally incumbent on us to better the lives of the people around us, vs far away and unrelated. But why not both? Some reasons you may want to donate to an EA style charity:
your money does go further in Africa than it does here. There's not anything you can do to save your friend's life for $5. If there is anything, then you definitely should do it
there are complex social politics that will go on in situations of you and the people you personally know. they may be offended that you think they're a charity case, they may not want to accept money cause it'd get weird, etc
tax writeoff
Wouldn't you get the same feeling volunteering in or contributing to a local soup kitchen? Or mentoring through Big Brothers/Sisters? Coaching Little League/Pop Warner/AYSO (team activities cut suicide risk!)? Filling in potholes in the road to cut traffic accidents? Are local people any less "real?"
Why wouldn't you think that far-away cases would have their own complex social politics? Why would you think that "aid" parachuted in from strangers would be any less likely to fall afoul of these problems than you, working in an area you're presumably at least a little familiar with, among people you presumably share at least a few things in common with?
I don't mean this as a reflection on you personally - I don't know you, of course - but these two quotes seems related. A person far away actually might be more "real" than a person nearby, at least insofar as their "realness" is as a pure, innocent victim who can be redeemed through charity. The person nearby, after all, is probably smelly and dirty and unsightly and low status. He might be crazy, or addicted to something, or violent and destructive. He might be resistant to help, or prone to relapses, or have other human foibles which so frequently are both the cause and result of being down-and-out. Even if he's none of those things, he might disagree about politics, or listen to the wrong music, or otherwise bear cultural marks that one might cringe from being associated with. And so it's hard and often unpleasant to help those nearby! Meanwhile, you don't see any of those things about the person far away, or if you do it's likely covered up by cultural unfamiliarity. Feels a lot better to help that person, I'd bet.
EA wasn't always like this - insofar as it's an attempt to cut through grift and bloat in charity efforts, it's still quite useful! But your comment seems to encapsulate a version of EA that flattens the world into fungible QALYs and tries to Moneyball-optimize QALYs-per-dollar, with an affective bias against giving and working where one is. And that I seems like a moral superstimulus to me, which substitutes the sugar-water of depersonalized "effectiveness" for the hard, hard work of improving ourselves and the uncomfortable things close to us.
No, those are good activities, too, and I did some of them as well. But that doesn't say anything about my main point in that paragraph, which is bang for the buck. The price of my time is generally considerably high, so really, I was contributing potentially a lot more than just a few dollars when I was volunteering my time. And still, even when I would give time or money to those places, I doubt I was really saving lives, the way paying for malaria nets would be.
Because they don't know the person who's giving it, and also they probably understand how life and death things are. If my life were at stake, I'd take aid from anyone.
I mean, maybe. I personally mostly thought about it as the QALYs-per-dollar thing. I wanted to try to help in the most efficient way possible. Save the most people with as little money as possible. I just think that some far away places probably need that kind of help more than the northeastern US.
Why? Were there not hungry people at the soup kitchen who would otherwise starve? Depressed and troubled kids who, absent mentoring or sports-socialization, would have spiralled downward?
We just disagree on whether or not the flattening of locality in the efficiency calculation represents a loss or not, I guess.
Truly, I don't think the people who were coming were THAT bad off. Orders of magnitude below me in income, yes, but I don't think I saw a single person who was dressed in rags, strung out, covered in filth, or completely crazy, over the course of years that I volunteered there. I'd guess that they were all very low income, but not destitute. They were well off enough that almost all of them were able to afford to get there in a car, or get there with a friend who was in a car.
Then there's the factor that if I wasn't helping at that location, it was a fact that there would be other people who would be instead. There are more people in my area who want to volunteer than there are spots to volunteer in such facilities.
That's good, and honestly a bit of a bubble-burster. I guess I'm too used to living in "communities" which really aren't worth the name.
Anecdotal, but this was my experience with a decent variety of in-person volunteering (food banks, soup kitchens, summer camps for troubled teens and for mentally disabled, habitat for humanity, special olympics, etc) in the cities I spent my high school through early career years (pops ranging from around ~.5 mil to 1 mil).
For basically all of those, there were either decently long waiting lists, make-work (i.e assigning multiple people to perform a task easily performed by just one) or both. Also similar impression of the people I was helping- I do not believe that was because those cities lacked the truly destitute or the profoundly handicapped, just that they weren't who I was dealing with as an uncredentialled volunteer.
Honestly my experiences with volunteering in my younger years have led me to focus on the near (friends, family, immediate co-workers, same-block neighbors) and the far (malaria nets, etc) for giving. The middle seems saturated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link