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ahbwramc comments on Some reservations about Singer's child-in-the-pond argument - Less Wrong
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I was going to write a post describing why I didn't find your argument compelling, but then I realized that I would find it perfectly compelling if the estimate for $/life saved had gone up to say, $10 million. So apparently my true rejection of your argument isn't what I was going to write - it's that I just don't find the difference between $200 and $2000 to be that significant.
Even if you would save the child at a price of $2000, it's still important to have a representative hypothetical in mind rather than using Singer's child in a pond scenario, in order to be well calibrated with respect to the value of donating to alleviate poverty relative to other altruistic activities.
But Jonah is not merely saying that some sufficiently big difference between Singer's estimates and the most credible estimates would affect his argument. He is making the stronger claim that the actual difference is big enough to make the argument far less credible.