Let me tell you about one of the most radical philosophies today, which begins with these two very benign premises:
All human lives are equal in value.
If we are doing good, we should attempt to do the most good.
Pretty uncontroversial right? But if we dig a bit deeper, the implications of these tenets are quite large.
To illustrate, let’s talk about guide dogs. These dogs assist the blind with crossing streets and navigating tricky terrain. Unfortunately, training these guide dogs is quite expensive and can cost up to $60,000 per dog.
Betty White, the legendary comedian, is a prominent supporter of one of these organizations. Each year, she has a lunch auction where she offers to have lunch with the highest bidder.
These auctions have sold for as much as $20,000, which Betty White then graciously donates to Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Good for Betty White! With just a 2-hour lunch, she’s able to fund 1/3 of a guide dog for a blind person in need. It’s a heck of a lot more than what I do in my lunchtime.
But you can also say that she’s not doing enough.
At least, that’s what advocates of effective altruism, the aforementioned radical philosophy, would say. After all, if we accept the premise all human lives are equal, we can then say that a blind person in America is worth no more than a blind person in Africa. And it turns out that with $20,000, you can prevent up to 1,000 people in Africa from becoming blind from trachoma.
Through some Googling and a little bit of research, Betty White could have gotten a 3000x better return on her lunch, and she could have significantly improved the lives of 999.66 more people in the process. As effective altruists would say, if you’re going to do good, you might as well do the most good possible.
And I don’t mean to pick on Betty White here. I donate to local organizations regularly and the utilitarian calculus of those donations also doesn’t hold up very well to the lofty standards of effective altruists.
So, the question becomes, why don’t I do what the effective altruists do?
It’s an odd question because I don’t disagree with either of their two premises. I think all human lives are equal in value, and I do think we should do the most good possible when doing good.
I just think that many of us, including myself, are too human to be doing what effective altruists advocate for. We might have in our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, but our day-to-day actions clearly don’t reflect that.
I remember a few years ago when an especially powerful hurricane hit the Philippines, causing mass amounts of destruction and death. I was moved by photos of the devastation, so I ended up donating some money.
Would I have done the same thing if the exact hurricane hit another country? Probably not. As a Filipino-American who used to go back to the Philippines every summer, I have a strong connection to the country through my many relatives who are still there and through all my childhood memories.
While I might truly believe that all human lives are equal in value, a cursory look at my actions would reflect otherwise. And I don’t think I’m alone here. We’re just going to care more when bad things happen to people we empathize and connect with.
All that being said, the human race being wired a certain way doesn’t justify our faults, so I think that effective altruists are mostly right. Slowly over time, I’ve shifted the makeup of my donations heavily towards causes that look more like trachoma treatment than guide dog training.
So how do you find where you can get the biggest bang for your donation buck?
There’s this wonderful website Givewell that’s motivated by this effective altruist philosophy, and they do lots of research in order to highlight the charities that give the highest return per dollar. Currently, Malaria Consortium is their top charity, and Givewell estimates that a $3,000 donation could save a life.
By winning the birth lottery, so many of us have the power to save hundreds of lives in our lifetime. Hopefully more of us take that opportunity.