Is your rule about distances actually a base part of your ethics, or is it a heuristic based on you not having much to do with them? I'm assuming that you take it somewhat figuratively, e.g. if you have family in another country you're still invested in what happens to them.
Do you care whether the unknown people are suffering more? If donating $X does more than donating Y hours of your time, does that concern you?
Is your rule about distances actually a base part of your ethics, or is it a heuristic based on you not having much to do with them?
Its more of a heuristic. Any ethic that used a specific measurement of distance in its raw calculation would be odd. There might somewhere be a line where on one side I might care about a person, and on the other I might not. Where someone could stand on the line exactly. That would be mostly silly.
if you have family in another country you're still invested in what happens to them.
most of my family lives within a fe...
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