hyporational comments on Another Critique of Effective Altruism - Less Wrong

19 Post author: jsteinhardt 05 January 2014 09:51AM

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Comment author: James_Miller 06 January 2014 12:24:08AM 2 points [-]

Voting is probably irrational unless you enjoy it. My vote won't matter unless the election would otherwise be a tie which probably implies that one candidate isn't much, much worse than another. But your drug conclusion doesn't follow from marginal analysis because my giving, say, $1000 to the Mexican Mafia might increased the murder rate by enough to make my actions immoral.

By the Kant quote I shouldn't not grow food because if no one grew food billions would die. The Kant quote violates Consequentialism although since Kant is a famous philosopher and my objection is obvious I suspect he would have a good counter-reply.

Comment author: hyporational 06 January 2014 09:18:13AM 0 points [-]

While your vote won't matter, what about convincing many people that their votes don't matter?

Comment author: James_Miller 06 January 2014 05:10:03PM 0 points [-]

Spending money on advertising to influence an election can be rational.