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Notes -
Effective altruism is most interested in the formulation of rulings which permit the outsourcing of compassion to rationality altogether, so that the correct moral choice can always be made without the evolved intermediary emotion of empathy, which never has to be consulted and thus can fade out of human phenomenology altogether. This leads to endless quibbling over whether we should donate most of our money to shrimp welfare or to African malaria nets. An issue with this legalism is that compassion is an instinct, an evolved emotional reflex rather than a “strain’d” rationality. There is no human instinct to allocate compassionate concern based upon abstract calculations involving shrimp farms we have never seen. A genetically compassionate person will help the unfixable homeless vagrant for the umpteenth even though it is irrational because his instinct compels this response to suffering per its evolved utility, when healing a visibly hurt tribe-member aided the reproduction of the giver. In the EA dystopia, the bleeding heart compassionoid is sidelined (receiving little status) so that the bleeding brain rationoid can “produce the most good” through his sheer intellectual output alone, no feelings required, indeed feelings only getting in the way. But what happens if you select for such legalistic rationalists, these Alt-Man entities, who can memorize and answer the correct decisions without any feelings behind the curtain? What happens over time? You will eventually find that there are fewer people around who have the instinct for compassion, and they will apply the same legalistic thinking to things that have no basis in human welfare, and will demand a pound of flesh because that is the law and the law should be followed because the law is intellectual and the first principles, and there’s no instinct or ambient social valuation which pops up to feel disgusted at a first principle which makes no sense (like giving all your charity to shrimp).
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