We're talking about a person who, along with her partner, gives to efficient charity twice as much money as she spends on herself. There's no way she doesn't actually believe what she says and still does that.

Julia Wise holds the distinction of having actually tried it though. Few people are selfless enough to even make the attempt.

This is why I think it's not too terribly useful to give labels like "good person" or "bad person," especially if our standard for being a "bad person" is "someone with anything less than 100% adherence to all the extrapolated consequences of their verbally espoused values." In the end, I think labeling people is just a useful approximation to labeling consequences of actions.

Julia, Jeff, and others accomplish a whole lot of good. Would they, on average, end up accomplishing more good if they spent more time feeling guilty about the fact that they could, in theory, be helping more? This is a testable hypothesis. Are people in general more likely to save more lives if they spend time thinking about being happy and avoiding burnout, or if they spend time worrying that they are bad people making excuses for allowing themselves to be happy?

The question here is not whether any individual person could be giving more; the answer is virtually always "yes." The question is, what encourages giving? How do we ensure that lives are actually being saved, given our human limitations and selfish impulses? I think there's great value in not generating an ugh-field around charity.

That sounds to me like exactly the sort of excuse a bad person would use to justify valuing their selfish whims over the lives of other people.

Is it justified? Pretend we care nothing for good and bad people. Do these "bad people" do more good than "good people"?

Well, Jeff and I give about a third of our income, so I'd say we're not Sunday Catholics but Sunday-Monday-and-part-of-Tuesday Catholics.

Seriously, though, I advocate that people do what will result in the most good, which is usually not to try for perfection. Dolores1984, you've said before that rather than fail at a high standard of helping you'd rather not help at all. (Correct me if that summary is wrong). I'd rather see people set a standard in keeping with their level of motivation, if that's what will mean they take a stab at helping.

Do you live a life of extraordinary, desperate asceticism? If not, why not? If so, are you happy?

I believe Peter Singer actually originally advocated the asceticism you mention, but eventually moved towards "try to give 10% of your income", because people were actually willing to do that, and his goal was to actually help people, not uphold a particular abstract ideal.

The coalition of modules in your mind that believes in ascetism being the only acceptable solution is most likely vastly outnumbered by the hedonistic modules. (Most people for which this wasn't the case were most likely filtered out of the gene pool.) As with politics, if you refuse to make compromises and insist on pushing your agenda while outnumbered, you will lose, or at best (worst?) create a deadlock in which nobody is happy. If you're not so absolute, you're more likely to achieve at least some of your aims.

Or, as Carl Shulman put it:

As those who know me can attest, I often make the point that radical self-sacrificing utilitarianism isn't found in humans and isn't a good target to aim for. Almost no one would actually take on serious harm with certainty for a small chance of helping distant others. Robin Hanson often presents evidence for this, e.g. this presentation on "why doesn't anyone create investment funds for future people?" However, sometimes people caught up in thoughts of the good they can do, or a self-image of making a big difference in the world, are motivated to think of themselves as really being motivated primarily by helping others as such. Sometimes they go on to an excessive smart sincere syndrome, and try (at the conscious/explicit level) to favor altruism at the severe expense of their other motivations: self-concern, relationships, warm fuzzy feelings.

Usually this doesn't work out well, as the explicit reasoning about principles and ideals is gradually overridden by other mental processes, leading to exhaustion, burnout, or disillusionment. The situation winds up worse according to all of the person's motivations, even altruism. Burnout means less good gets done than would have been achieved by leading a more balanced life that paid due respect to all one's values. Even more self-defeatingly, if one actually does make severe sacrifices, it will tend to repel bystanders.