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RomeoStevens comments on Effective Altruism from XYZ perspective - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Clarity 08 July 2015 04:34AM

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Tags: places market assumptions economics capitalism prioritarianism utilitarianism fuzzies warm altruism effective

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Comment author: RomeoStevens 12 July 2015 06:18:17AM *  1 point [-]

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed description of the issue.

One minor thing

also implausible from non-naive consequentialism, which values people based on their contributions, not just their needs.

Many EAs do seem to understand this to varying degrees of explicitly or implicitly: they value other EAs highly because of the flow through effects.

Comment author: Journeyman 12 July 2015 09:22:05AM 2 points [-]

That would be another example of things which some EAs do, but which don't yet seem to percolate through to the public-facing parts of the movement. For example, valuing other EAs due to flow-though contradicts Singer's view, as far as I understand him:

Effective altruists do not discount suffering because it occurs far away or in another country or afflicts people of a different race or religion. They agree that the suffering of animals counts too and generally agree that we should not give less consideration to suffering just because the victim is not a member of our species.

Comment author: SoerenMind 12 July 2015 11:29:14PM 0 points [-]

I don't get your argument there. After all, you might e.g. value other EAs instrumentally because they help members of other species. That is, you intrinsically value an EA like anyone else, but you're inclined to help them more because that will translate into others being helped.

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