Salemicus comments on Taking Effective Altruism Seriously - Less Wrong

2 Post author: Salemicus 07 June 2015 06:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (122)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Salemicus 21 June 2015 10:39:47AM 1 point [-]

Would it be fair to summarise your post thus: "aid to the poorest people on earth is an ineffective way to create utils, it is better to invest in western businesses" ?

The first half of your "summary" is a utilitarian framing, and the second half is a recommendation of investment in the West. Neither are anywhere in the post. So no, this is not a fair summary.

My two-sentence summary would be:

Effective methods rely on a tight feedback loop between action and results, which is best provided by a market. Wealth is a function of productive capacity, which requires investment, which requires consumption to be foregone, so the route to a richer tomorrow is through consuming less, not more, today.

You'll note that all these concepts are mentioned in the post, rather than surreptitiously snuck in from outside.