PING: Good afternoon, everyone,
and welcome.
My name is Ping and I'm an
engineer at google.org, where
we spend quite a bit of time as
a team thinking about how
to have a positive impact
on the world.
And if you're attending this
talk, it's likely that you
also have a strong personal
interest in using your own
abilities and resources
to make the world a
better place, as I do.
And I'm therefore thrilled that
we are so fortunate and
honored to have Peter Singer
with us today, a person who
has devoted his life to the
rational study of what it
means to do good.
Professor Singer is one of
the most influential
philosophers alive.
He's the author of "Animal
Liberation," which is a
landmark of the animal rights
movement, and also the author
of "Practical Ethics,"
the classic
work on applied ethics.
He was appointed the Companion
in the Order of Australia last
year, and he's personally
motivated countless people to
give to charity.
I attribute my own approach
to charitable giving
in part to his work.
His most recent book, "The Life
You Can Save," has led to
the creation of an organization
by the same name,
and we're going to be hearing
a little bit more about that
from him today.
"The Life You Can Save," the
book, is going to be available
after the talk.
So let's all give Peter
a very warm welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
PETER SINGER: Thank
you very much.
Thanks, Ping, for the
introduction and for arranging
this, and thank you
all for coming.
And of course, that includes
the people in the other
offices around the country.
So this talk is really going
to do two things.
Firstly, I'm going to give you
a condensed version of the
argument of the book that Ping
just mentioned, of "The Life
You Can Save." And it's the
premise behind the argument
for what we ought to be doing
to do the most good at the
moment, and why we ought
to be doing it.
And then before I finish, I
want to talk a little bit
about the organization, because
to be transparent, one
of the reasons that I'm here is
that I do think that there
are people in the room with
skills and resources that
could certainly benefit
the organization.
And if you're interested in
doing something for us in that
way, that would be terrific.
And I also want to leave plenty
of time for discussion,
so I won't speak for too long,
so that we will have a lot of
time
for Q&A. OK.
So let's start with the
basic argument.
And I noticed, as we were
walking back from lunch in the
cafeteria with Ping, that we
crossed a bridge over what
looked like a pretty shallow
meandering stream.
So that'll do for the purpose
of my example.
Imagine that you're walking over
that bridge and you see
that a small child has fallen
into the stream.
And this child is too small to
either stand up in that stream
or to swim.
You, on the other hand, could
easily wade in, and I assume
that that stream is not
more than waist-deep.
So you see the child
in the stream.
Your first thought, perhaps,
is where the parents who
brought this child here,
or the babysitter,
or whoever it is?
Why aren't they pulling
out the child?
But you look around and it's one
of those unusual moments,
perhaps, on a Google
campus where
there's nobody else there.
Just you and the child.
So what do you do?
Your next thought is,
well, I could easily
jump into that stream.
No danger to me.
Pull out the child.
If I don't do that, the child
will probably drown.
Great.
But wait a minute.
What about the clothes
you're wearing?
You just put on some of your
most expensive shoes, let's
say, today and you don't have
time to get them off, or a
really nice suit.
They're going to get ruined by
jumping into that stream.
Is that a reason why, something
that would justify
you in saying, well,
look, it's not
really any of my business.
It's not my child.
I certainly didn't push the
child in the stream or
anything like that, so
I'm not responsible.
So rather than ruin my fancy
shoes, why don't I
just go on my way?
If you think about that, I hope
that you'd agree with me
that that would be wrong.
That if you did think that way
and did go on your way, and
maybe later you heard, oh, did
you hear that a small child
drowned in the stream?
That you would have done
something seriously wrong.
Some people would use stronger
language than that and say
that's what you'd done was
really outrageous or inhuman.
But let's just settle for you've
done something wrong.
That's most people's reaction
to that example.
And I think clearly it's the
right reaction to have.
And I think probably most of us,
maybe everybody here would
have actually saved that child
in those circumstances.
But before you give yourself too
much credit for saying I
would've saved such a child,
think about the global
situation that we're in.
We're in a situation where
there are over a billion
people living in extreme
poverty, as defined by the
World Bank, which is living on
less than $1.25 per day.
That needs to be a bit adjusted
for inflation.
It's also a purchasing power
parity figure, so it needs to
be adjusted in the other
direction, generally, for
currency conversion costs.
But let's say, and I suppose
you said $2 a day, today's
currency, you'd be
pretty safe.
And one result of that kind
of extreme poverty is that
children die.
UNICEF, in its most recent
report, said the number of
children dying from preventable
poverty-related
diseases in 2011 was
6.9 million.
Now UNICEF said, this is really
good news, because in
1990, it was 12 million.
And even as recently as 2008,
when the book, "The Life You
Can Save" in its original
hardback version went to
press, the figure I
quote there is,
I think, 9.8 million.
So it is a figure that's coming
down, and it's actually
coming down more quickly
even in recent years.
And that's very good news.
But 6.9 million a year is
almost 19,000 per day.
So about 19,000 children are
dying every day from
preventable causes.
Now these causes are things
like malaria, measles,
diarrhea, pneumonia.
We can prevent malaria
by providing
insecticide-treated bed nets.
We can prevent measles
by immunization.
We can prevent diarrhea by
providing sanitation.
Or we can prevent deaths from
diarrhea by very simple oral
rehydration therapy.
So these are things that with
more resources going into this
area, we can prevent.
And yet we don't.
Though we are clearly, from what
I said, to some extent,
we are preventing it.
But we are still allowing 19,000
children to die every
day from these causes.
And those of us living in
affluent nations and who are
not right at the bottom of
the economic hierarchy in
developing nations have enough,
more than enough, to
meet all of our basic needs,
and beyond that to live an
enjoyable, pleasant quality of
life, and still have money
that is over for things that by
no stretch of imagination
are necessities.
Things like buying a fancy,
expensive pair of shoes when
you could be quite comfortable
in a less expensive pair.
Or if shoes are not your thing,
maybe it's going on an
exotic holiday overseas.
Maybe it's buying a fancy car.
Maybe it's, people here, it's
a lot of high-tech gadgets
that you don't really
need for your work.
You can pick your own luxury,
but I'm sure that
you can find one.
And so that gives you the
opportunity to save lives.
For instance, you could donate
to the Against Malaria
Foundation, which is
a charity that has
been rated by GiveWell--
I'll say a bit more about
GiveWell in a moment--
as the most highly effective
organization in the
anti-poverty,
anti-international-poverty field.
And they will use that money to
buy bed nets and distribute
them, which is a proven way of
reducing malaria, saving the
lives of children.
Also reducing the number of
cases of people who get very
sick from malaria, which is a
pretty unpleasant disease,
even if eventually
they recover.
So the question I want you to
think about is, if I agreed
that it would be wrong not to
jump into that stream to save
the child, isn't it also wrong
not to be doing something
significant to save the children
who are dying further
away from us?
Not so visible to us, but
when we know we have
the means to do so.
Because I don't think the
distinction between being
close at hand and being far
away is really a morally
relevant distinction.
And I'm sure you'll agree with
me that the fact that maybe
one child is an American and the
other child is an Indian
or a Ghanaian or whatever else
it might be is not going to be
a morally relevant
distinction.
So what is supposed to
make the difference?
There are a few things that you
might think of, and like I
say, we'll leave time for
questions, for your favorite
objection if I don't
mention it.
But I mean, some people say
things like, well, what can I
do, though, about 19,000
children dying every day?
I could save that one child
in the stream, no problem.
I can't save 19,000 children.
Even Bill Gates, who's been
putting many billions into it,
and Warren Buffett have not been
able to stop that, though
they may well have
contributed.
In fact, I believe they have
contributed to that reduction
that I mentioned before.
But whatever I do, there's
still going to be roughly
19,000 children dying.
But that, I think, is surely the
wrong way to look at it.
It's not whether you can
solve the entire
problem that is important.
It's whether you can do
something that is highly
significant, highly important,
like saving a child's life, as
compared with what you
will have to give up
in order to do that.
And the fact that there will be
other children still dying
even if you do that is
tragic, certainly.
But it doesn't detract
from the importance
of what you've done.
You have saved a child's
life by a donation.
Or if you give more, maybe
you've saved several
children's lives.
And that surely is
what's important.
And the underlying principle,
I think, is if we can do
something, that is as important,
prevent something
as bad happening as a child
losing her life at a pretty
minimal cost to ourselves,
then I think
we ought to do that.
So that seems to me to be the
most important point about it.
Now, some of you might also
say, well, how can I be
confident that I really
can do that?
Unlike the case of the child.
How can I be confident that my
money will be well used?
A lot of people believe that
giving to NGOs is not a very
effective thing to do,
because they take a
cynical view of NGOs.
They think that NGOs typically
are bureaucratic, inefficient,
spend a lot of money on their
administration or on
fundraising, and not very much
gets to the program, that is,
that needs it.
Well, no doubt there are some
organizations like that.
But there are a lot of NGOs, and
we shouldn't be interested
in what the worst NGOs are like,
or even what the average
NGOs are like.
What we should be interested
in is, can we identify some
really good, effective NGOs
and contribute to them?
And the answer to that is yes,
and it doesn't even require a
huge amount of time and
effort on your part.
I mentioned this organization,
GiveWell, givewell.org, which
was set up a few years ago
specifically to do this by a
couple of guys who were working
for a hedge fund,
making a lot of money.
Decided that they wanted to
give some of it away but
didn't know who to give it to.
Contacted some charities and
said, tell us what you would
do if we gave you a significant
sum of money.
And found that what
they got back was
unsatisfactory, basically.
It was vague.
Glossy brochures with photos of
smiling kids, but not very
much hard data.
Since these were people who
were in the business of
analyzing companies for their
hedge fund, they wanted
something more specific.
So they decided to go with that
more systematically, and
eventually, a couple of
them left the hedge
fund and set up GiveWell.
And they've been looking very
rigorously at organizations.
Some people think, in fact,
their standards are too tough,
that it doesn't allow
some really good
organizations to qualify.
But what they've got at the
moment on the website, they've
screened hundreds of
organizations, and they've
got, actually, just three that
they're recommending.
And the Against Malaria
Foundation is one of them.
So they regard that as a
suitably transparent
organization that has
demonstrable,
scientifically-based
evidence of the
good that it's achieving.
And they're recommending that
as one of the organizations.
So we can just take that
as an example.
And if that exists, and there
is scope for more funding--
and there is, because that's
one of the things that
GiveWell looks at--
then that's something
that gives you
the means to do this.
So I think that the case for
saying that we ought to be
doing something like this, as
an ethical case, is really
very strong.
Again, you can present
objections or reasons if you
think that it's not.
I've heard a few over the
years that I've been
presenting this case, and I
haven't really seen anything
that's convinced me
that there's a
serious hole in the argument.
What is true, I think, is
that the argument has a
psychological difficulty in
motivating people to give, or
motivating some people to give,
because we, I think,
have evolved to respond to
individuals close to us.
Because that, after
all, was the
situation in which we evolved.
Most of our evolutionary
history, we could help people
in our own small group,
and we did that.
But we couldn't really help
strangers, or it wasn't
advantageous to do
so, so we didn't.
And now we live in a different
world, where we easily can
help strangers, and we can know
about strangers in need.
And so that situation has
changed, but we have not
changed in an emotional way.
That's, I think, true
and unfortunate.
But we don't have to only be
guided by that instinctive
emotional response here.
And I'm sure people in this room
and in the other offices
are particularly used to
thinking in other terms, to
reasoning your way to
conclusions, to analyzing
information.
And I think we should regard
this as a combination of the
head and the heart, so that we
have some empathy with people.
We can understand the idea
of helping strangers.
And with our head, we can
appreciate that they are
people whose lives matter, that
they are people who have
interests like we do, who
want to go on living.
Parents who want their
children to
survive and be well.
And people who can suffer as we
can, and that that matters
just as much as our
own suffering.
There's nothing especially
privileged about us, from a
broader moral point of view,
that means that our suffering
matters and somebody else's
suffering doesn't matter.
So I think we can use our
capacity to reason and argue
to reach the conclusion that
there is something that we
ought to be doing about this.
And in fact, that we have the
opportunity to do it.
So that's really the essential
argument of the book.
It also then raises the
question, so how
much should I be doing?
Does this mean that I should not
spend anything on anything
that's a luxury or not something
that I really need?
And the answer to that question,
I think, is sort of,
actually, a difficult one.
In one sense, I'm tempted
to say, yes, really,
that is what it means.
And to the extent that you're
not doing that, you are doing
something wrong.
But at the same time, I know
that I'm not living according
to such a demanding standard,
and I think very, very few
people actually are saintly
enough to do that.
So I think we can, in a way,
take a somewhat more relaxed
standard and say, look, let
me do something reasonably
significant.
And perhaps if I get comfortable
with that, work up
to a higher standard
more gradually.
But as long as I feel I'm
doing something quite
significant, if I'm doing--
perhaps one way that some people
look at it to say,
suppose that others
in my situation
were giving this much.
Would that be enough to really
deal with this problem of the
19,000 children dying every
day unnecessarily?
That's one way you can try
to work out a figure.
So what I, in the end, in the
book, and on the website,
thelifeyoucansave.org, I've
got a scale which is
progressive that starts off
quite low, at around 1% of
your income.
Gets up to around 5% when you
get to around $100,000 US
dollars, for people living
in this country.
And it moves up, it actually
tops out at about a third for
people who are earning over
$1 million a year.
And that seems to me the scale
which on the one hand, doesn't
really impose any great
hardship on anyone.
At the lower levels, you're
giving quite little, and at
the upper level, if you are
earning a million dollars a
year, I don't think it's
any hardship to give
away $300-odd thousand.
You've still got plenty left.
And yet if you do try to work
out the sums of what would
this amount to, if everybody in
the affluent world were to
give, then it does look like we
would really have enough to
virtually eliminate extreme
poverty in the world.
You're never going to completely
eliminate it.
There'll be places you can't
really be effective in, places
with such corrupt or oppressive
governments, you
can't make changes or there'll
be situations of civil war.
But you could change the world
so that there are no longer
over a billion people living
in extreme poverty, and so
that the number of children
dying from these preventable
causes would drop to, let's say,
a few hundred thousand.
I think that is a real
possibility over the next
decade or two.
So that would be a reasonable
way, perhaps, of calculating,
if you're not a saint, what
might be enough to be able to
feel good about what you're
doing, and to have some
reasonable self-esteem based
on what you're giving.
And also, and I think this is
part of it, to feel that
you've done something meaningful
and significant
with your life.
I think that's--
looking at people who do this,
that's something that I've
found that I've felt myself,
that it's easy in a society
like this to get sucked into
a lifestyle where you earn
money, you buy consumer goods
with it, you enjoy using them
and spending them, but
then that's all over.
And what are you going
to do next?
Well, you can earn more and you
can buy even more consumer
goods, and then you can do the
same, and it goes on and on.
But in the end, it's not
truly satisfying.
I think that's a phenomenon
that a lot of people feel.
Whereas if you're contributing
to something really important
that is making a permanent
difference in the world, a
permanent difference for good,
obviously, you can end up with
a more meaningful, more
fulfilled, and
more satisfied life.
There is some research that
suggests that people giving to
charity does improve their
own satisfaction
with their life, too.
So that's really the thrust of
what I want to say to you
about the argument.
Now in terms of what
we're doing here--
and when I say we--
so I published the book
a few years ago.
I had a friend who had a bit of
knowledge about setting up
websites, and she said, we
should build a website that
goes with the book.
Not just to promote sales of
the book, but to spread the
message of the book and to get
people to pledge to give,
according to the scale that you
suggest in the book, to
give them information about
that, to provide them with
regularly updated information
about what are organizations
that are worth giving to, and
generally to build a community
of people who share this idea.
And to try to change the culture
on a larger scale, so
that giving to reduce global
poverty, to help those who are
so much less fortunate than we
are, becomes an accepted part
of what it is just to
be a decent person.
Live an ethical life.
And so with her help, I got
the website set up.
And then more people came, and
people did pledge to give
according to that scale.
And quite a few of them gave
us contact details.
And so we built up a community
of people supportive of this.
And now, more recently, other
people have said, well, we
need to go further.
Not just have this website,
but actually use this
information to build an
organization to do more in the
way of spreading the message,
marketing through social media
and in whatever other
opportunities we have, to get
this idea as essentially a way
of living, or alternative to
the consumer society, to get
this out there and get this
better known.
So one of these people is in the
audience, Charlie Bresler
here, who has a lot of
experience in marketing.
He has a Ph.D. in social
psychology, but then went into
the menswear industry and spent
some time as president
of a major national
menswear chain.
And is now helping me
and some others--
international people,
in England, too--
to set this organization up to
get a 501(c)(3) status in this
country so that it becomes a
tax-deductible organization.
And we want to grow it, as fast
as we can and as much as
we can, to be an effective
organization for spreading
information of the sort I've
been giving you, encouraging
people to give, and trying to
change that culture so that
this becomes a more normal and
accepted and widely understood
thing to do.
So that's one of the reasons
why I was excited when Ping
set up this opportunity
to speak to you.
Because I'm hopeful that people
will want to join in
this effort, will
want to help us.
Either with money-- we do need
to raise some money for the
organization, although as I've
been saying, of course, I
think it's terrifically
important to give directly to
these organizations, and if
that's what you want to do,
that's absolutely fine.
But we could use
a small amount.
Charlie's put some in.
I've put some in.
We could use a small amount to
get the organization up.
Or if you have skills that will
help us in a variety of
ways, spreading our message
through ways that
I'm sure you know--
some of you know a lot more
about it than I do--
we're certainly interested
in that as well.
And then before you go,
I've got some sheets.
If you are interested in that
way, you could put your name
and email address.
And I'll leave them
at the front here.
You can sign them.
And for those of you who are
not here in this room, you
could email us or you
could email Charlie.
He's offered to take
the names.
So his email is charlie.bresler@
thelifeyoucansave.com.
And we'd be very happy
to hear from you.
I'll stop at that point.
And as I said, we'll have time
for questions and discussion.
I look forward to hearing
from you.
[APPLAUSE]
PING: Thank you.
I should just make a comment.
Really, the credit for setting
up this whole talk goes to
Pablo Cohn.
I just stepped in at the last
moment to do the introduction
and to have the pleasure of
meeting Peter Singer, here,
but we should thank Pablo
for setting this up.
AUDIENCE: There are a lot of
good causes out there.
There's poverty, there's
fighting cancer, finding a
cure for Alzheimer's, reducing
animal suffering in factory
farms, what have you.
And there are many ways to
go about fighting them.
If your interest is in poverty,
you could be donating
your time, volunteering at a
soup kitchen or what have you.
You can give away money.
Maybe you should buy that
expensive clothing.
It's produced in Indonesia, say,
and it allows people in
Indonesia to have a good job and
increase their standard of
living and bring themselves
out of poverty.
You could go on the trip, have
that safari, perhaps, in
Africa, and spend money in the
local economy and increase the
level of income there.
You could stay at work and build
technology like we're
all doing, which is the real
creator of wealth.
Why this cause and this
way of fighting it?
Why is that the best?
PETER SINGER: Good, thank you.
So in a way, there's two
different questions in there.
One is a question about
why this cause
rather than other causes.
And the other is a question
about whether giving money to
the NGOs that I was talking
about is better and more
effective than buying an
expensive Indonesian-made suit
or going on the safari
in Africa.
So on the, why this cause rather
than others, for some
other causes, I would
say, fine.
I don't have any real basis
for saying this cause is
better than that.
So if you said, for instance,
I think climate change is
going to be a disaster for the
planet, for the poor as well
as for the better off, and I'm
going to devote my energy to
trying to get the United States
to adopt sensible
climate change policies, and I
have this strategy where I
think I can make
a difference--
if you thought that out and
you're serious about doing
that, I'm not going to try to
dissuade you from doing that.
You also mentioned
reducing animal
suffering in factory farms.
That's something that I've been
concerned about for a
very long time.
And again, it's very difficult
to compare
human and animal suffering.
But you might say humans suffer
more, but then there's
far more animals in factory
farms than there are humans on
the planet.
And so yes, that's another
possibility.
But you mentioned something
like say working in soup
kitchens, which really means
you're working about domestic
poverty in the United States.
And I think while I sympathize
with those who are in poverty
in the United States, it's
simply a lot more
cost-effective to work for
those in extreme poverty
elsewhere in the world.
And that's the reason why
GiveWell really only evaluates
international aid programs,
because it looked at,
initially when it set up, one's
domestic help for the
poor, and it just found
that it didn't
really compare at all.
I mean, one way in which you can
see this is to say, well,
the World Bank's definition of
extreme poverty is $1.25 a
day, or say $2 a day,
$700 a year.
In the United States, the
poverty line, I think, for a
family of four is $22,000.
So to make a difference to
someone who's on $700 a year
given the marginal value of
money, it's much easier than
to make a difference
to somebody who's
on $22,000 a year.
Another form of comparison that
I owe to a guy called
Toby Ord, who has another
organization called Giving
What We Can.
Take, for example, a charity
that is providing guide dogs
for blind people in
the United States.
That's a good thing to do.
It's good that blind people
have guide dogs.
Well, it costs about $40,000 to
produce and train a guide
dog for a blind person in the
United States and to train the
recipient to use it.
It costs about $20 to treat
someone in a developing
country who is blind because
they have trachoma, and to
cure them of blindness.
So you can do the math.
One guide dog for one person
in the United States versus
2,000 people with trachoma
cured of blindness.
I think it's clear why I'm
focusing on international
problems rather than
domestic ones.
You also said, well, how do I
know that this is not going to
be better than simply buying
things that are
made in poor countries.
I think the point is that with
the NGOs, you're really
focusing on the people
at the bottom.
You're focusing on the people
in extreme poverty.
With the expensive suit or the
safari, a lot of what you're
paying is actually going to
people who are already quite
comfortably off.
I mean, some of it, of course,
will go to the retailers here,
or the tour operators,
the travel agents.
Some of it may get
to the people in
the developing country.
Probably not to the people
who are really worse off.
So again, I don't think it
really uses the resources as
effectively as giving to these
effective organizations.
AUDIENCE: But I'm getting
a suit, in that case.
I mean, there's--
sorry.
OK.
I'm getting some return on what
I'm giving, so it's not
just giving it away.
PETER SINGER: Well, I want to
suggest you're getting a
return on what you're giving
when you give to the other
organizations.
It's just not a material
return.
But in terms of your own
well-being, I think it may be
an even more important one.
AUDIENCE: OK, but like maybe
if someone were up here
promoting the values of
globalization and pointing out
that global poverty has been
reduced, cut in half,
essentially, due to
globalization, maybe I would
feel good about buying that
expensive clothing.
Not only because I get clothing,
but because I know
it's improving the conditions of
someone in the Third World.
PETER SINGER: So I mean, there's
a complicated debate
about globalization and
its effect on the
really poorest people.
There's no doubt that it's
lifted some people out of
pretty low levels of income,
lifted them up.
But has it helped the poor
people who are really in the
bottom 10%?
There are a lot of development
economists who
think that it hasn't.
But even if it is, I would say
there is still plenty of scope
for more direct, more effective
aid that is making a
bigger difference and a quicker
difference to those at
the bottom.
AUDIENCE: I was going to ask,
essentially, about why global
poverty, instead of human
rights or environmental
protection, but I think you did
a good job answering that
question already.
But I was going to also allude
to animal suffering, and just
throw out this statistic.
I think if there are tens
of thousands of children
suffering and dying per day,
there are probably tens of
millions of animals, or
something like that.
So there would be a question
about how much could you do
with a given dollar in terms
of reducing that.
However, instead of going down
that road, I was just going to
respond to your thought
experiment.
Because it seemed to me that
one of the differences you
didn't point out is, I think
in the set-up, you said,
there's one child drowning in
the stream and you're alone
and no one else is around.
It seems like it's easier to
feel moral obligation if
you're the only person
who can help.
If there were 19,000 children
dying in the stream and 7.5
billion people crossing
the bridge,
it might feel different.
What do you think about that?
PETER SINGER: It's undoubtedly
would feel different.
[LAUGHTER]
I think about that in something
like the way that I
responded to the opposite kind
of objection, that I can save
the one child and solve
the problem, but I
can't save the 19,000.
So you're looking at it rather
from the number of people who
could help save, and that does
give us this feeling of
diffusion of responsibility.
Psychologists study it.
It's called the bystander
effect.
If you know there's a lot of
other people who could help
and you see that they're not
helping, it does mean actually
that people are less
likely to help.
But I think that's also a
psychological fact about us,
not a moral justification
for not helping.
I mean, if you knew that because
of these other people,
all of those who needed rescuing
would get help, fine.
Then you could sit and relax and
watch them save everybody.
But you know that's not the
case, at the moment, anyway.
AUDIENCE: And I also think
that, and I'll hand the
microphone off after saying
this, but I also think it's
another psychological fact about
us, of course, that we
think that the suffering and
death of a child might be as
bad or worse than the suffering
and death of a
million chickens.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I won't disagree
about that one.
PING: I see a question
from a remote office.
Could we unmute that feed?
AUDIENCE: Can you hear me?
PING: Yes, we can hear you.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: OK.
It sounded like you were
suggesting somewhat of a
utilitarian calculation for
domestic versus foreign aid.
My question has to do with
the metric used.
Lives saved, for example, from
people dying from malaria.
In places where you might die
of malaria and you don't die
of malaria, you might, the next
day, die of being shot or
being hungry.
And I wasn't sure how that
kind of compound problem
factors in your calculation.
So for example, in the United
States, it costs $100 to save
someone from a disease, but then
after that, they have a
job and they have society to
integrate with, versus in
another country, where solving
a particular problem, you
might make good progress, but
there is a huge ecosystem
problem to face.
What are your thoughts
on that?
PETER SINGER: So firstly, you're
right that the ethic
that I'm talking about
is consistent with
utilitarianism, anyway.
I don't think that one has to
be a utilitarian to accept
what I've been talking about.
But yeah, it certainly
follows from that.
Secondly, you're right to say
that if, in fact, the child
you save dies tomorrow, then in
my view, you haven't really
done much good at all.
That's true.
But I think the calculations
that, for instance, GiveWell
does about the effectiveness
of organizations does take
into account evidence not just
about lives saved but about
life years that are saved.
In other words, how many years
of life are you extending?
That's a metric that
is in common use on
global health issues.
And certainly, that's what
you want to use.
Now there's two questions
there.
One is, if you say a child from
malaria, what are the
chances the child will die
quite soon anyway?
I think the answer is
not very great.
That after all, as I said, we
are reducing the number of
deaths of children under five.
That's what's been
coming down.
So I think children do die of
various diseases, but that
doesn't mean that their lives
are so fragile that if they
don't die of one thing, they'll
die of another.
And once they get beyond five,
their life expectancy goes up
quite dramatically.
So that's one issue.
Then you also raised
questions about the
quality of life, I suppose.
You might say, well, their lives
are still not going to
be very good.
They're going to be
pretty miserable.
I don't think that's
really true either.
I think that people who live
in conditions that we can't
perhaps imagine enjoying their
lives in can still quite often
have lives that are fulfilling
and enjoyable,
worthwhile for them.
And so I think we should accept
that, that we are doing
good in that way.
And life, even in a high degree
of poverty, if you can
survive a few obstacles, is
definitely still worth living,
even though we could certainly
make it better and we should
try to make it better.
But it's still something that's
very much worth doing.
AUDIENCE: I encountered your
ideas years ago and was very
affected by them.
Although maybe not in
the way you wanted.
I'd always given a lot to
charity, and I still do.
But I've been a lot less happy
about the rest of my life.
Because you argue that somebody
who cares more about
their good shoes than saving the
life of a child is really
effective about donation,
but that goes with
every luxury I have.
What sort of person am I if I
go out to dinner or buy a
present for my niece when that
money could be used to improve
a child's life?
I've even wondered whether I'm
worth more dead or alive,
comparing the value of my Google
life insurance to my
Google stock options, if you
want to take utilitarianism
all the way.
So I think the only part of
your argument that isn't
rigorous is that we can stop
at a certain percent.
So how can I accept
your argument and
feel good about luxuries?
PETER SINGER: Yeah, that
is a good point.
And you're right, that there is
no really rigorous argument
for a particular
stopping place.
What I think there is a good
argument for, though, is not
torturing yourself with guilt
about this, but getting on,
basically, with living and being
effective and trying to
encourage other people to
give and to do the same.
And I assume that you will
actually maximize good if you
continue to live, you continue
to work at Google, and you
continue to earn money which
will enable you to give more.
And hopefully, your Google stock
options will appreciate
as well, so you'll still have
more to give at the end.
But I mean, I wrestle with this
same problem myself, and
it may be, to some extent,
a matter of temperament.
I don't agonize over it every
day, or with every purchase,
or with this birthday present
for my niece, or
whatever it might be.
I accept, as I said to you, that
I'm not a [INAUDIBLE],
that there's a kind of normal
family life that I take part
in, that that's important to me,
that that's part of what
it is for me to be
psychologically well, I
suppose you could say, and
that's necessary for me to
function well.
And so I know that I'm giving
quite substantially.
I know that I could give more,
but I don't dwell on that.
And I think insofar as I can
justify that at all, it's
because it enables me to get
on with my life without too
much agonizing.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Giving is really a
very difficult and interesting
optimization problem of sorts.
And once you've determined
that if you earn a good
salary, maybe your time is
better spent doing your normal
job and then giving
away money.
And once you've determined
that you can maximize the
marginal benefit of whatever
you're giving by giving to the
more poor part of the world,
it's still extremely difficult
to find a good charity.
And you've mentioned GiveWell,
and there are other sites like
this, like Charity Navigator
and a few like this.
And if you look at what they do,
in many cases, they look
whether or not the charity is
well managed, and whether it
uses a lot of money on
advertising and the salaries
of the CEO and all that.
PETER SINGER: Can I
just interrupt?
That's not what GiveWell does.
You mentioned Charity
Navigator.
They've been there for years.
That's all they do.
I think it's completely useless,
or 90% useless.
GiveWell does not do that.
GiveWell looks for evidence that
the program is helping.
It doesn't focus on just
the management of the
organization.
It looks for evidence that what
they're doing is saving
lives, or bringing people out
of poverty, or improving
school scores, or whatever
else it might be.
AUDIENCE: OK.
So maybe I need to look
into GiveWell more.
But I mean, in general, it looks
like no one really--
it's a very difficult problem,
but no one really has a model
of figuring out where money
should go and where it could
have the maximum marginal
benefits.
And so I wonder if you recommend
other good books
about it, or any other websites
that you can recommend?
So GiveWell seems to be one?
PETER SINGER: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Anything else?
PETER SINGER: Well, I mean,
GiveWell is certainly the only
one in this country that's
a website that evaluates
charitable organizations
in this way.
But there is other
work going on.
In particular, there's two
academic units that are worth
looking at.
One is called Innovations
for Policy Action.
I think I've got that right.
IPA.
Poverty Action, sorry.
Yes.
Which is at Yale, associated
with Dean Karlan, I think, is
the economist's name.
And they are studying which
particular programs can be
demonstrated to be effective.
The other one is the Poverty
Action Lab at MIT, run by
Esther Duflo and Abhijit
Banerjee, that is particularly
looking at ways of evaluating
projects, trying to do
randomized controlled trials
of different approaches in
different areas.
So there is academic work
going on, but they are
looking, more or less, at the
project level rather than the
organization level.
AUDIENCE: And a related
follow-up there is how do you
differentiate between options
that have immediate benefit.
Like take for example Heifer
International.
You can get a goat that will
immediately provide milk for
some children, versus the same
amount of money that you could
have them plant trees, which
will have a much longer-term,
not-immediate benefit.
But the goats may also erode
the landscape, and that's a
short-term solution versus
a longer-term solution.
And so how do you ethically
weigh those sort of choices,
even with a good charity?
PETER SINGER: I mean, if you
have the information, then I
think we ought to take
a long-term view.
We don't want to just make
people better off
in the short term.
The difficulty is, and I just
mentioned briefly in passing,
that some people think
that GiveWell is
actually too tough.
Because they don't really have
a handle on how to evaluate
the difference that growing
trees makes.
Say, they can look at the goats
and they can measure the
benefit in children's health,
but they don't have the
information about the erosion
of the landscape that the
goats cause.
And so it tends to mean that
they focus on things that do
have measurable outputs, like
anti-malaria nets or deworming
children, and it's harder for
them to take account of some
of these other long-term goods,
like reforestation.
So I think what that shows is
that there may well be other
things that need to be
looked at, that we
don't really know about.
And you might like to look at
particular organizations and
say, well, I think in the long
run, this may do even more
good than anti-malaria nets.
So that's a judgment call, and
I don't really know anybody
who can put that on a rigorous
basis, at this stage.
AUDIENCE: Thanks, Dr. Singer.
I hope I have an easy
question for you.
On your website, you ask people
to give a pledge, and
you just talked about it a
second ago, a certain percent
of their income.
And it was like 1% for under
100 grand, and 5%
for the next one.
How did you pick
those numbers?
PETER SINGER: So I picked
those numbers--
firstly, the income levels
relate to tax brackets.
And I had that information from
a couple of economists
who provided information on a
website about how many people
are in each of these
tax brackets--
so the top 10%, the top 1%,
the top 0.1%, and so on--
and what their average
income was.
So that gave me a basis of
calculating how much money
would actually be raised if
all of the people in that
income bracket were to give at a
particular percentage level.
And therefore, I had a way of
trying to work out what the
total sum would be raised
from the United States.
And then taking United States
as a percentage of the
economies of the affluent
nations, if that
were repeated globally.
And what I wanted to do was to
get at a total figure which
would be in excess of what
some economists--
Jeffrey Sachs among others--
calculate would be needed
to virtually
eliminate global poverty.
So it was a way, if you like, of
saying if we raise this, we
could deal with this problem
pretty effectively.
And here would be a fair way
of breaking it up, that sum
that we have to raise,
among people of a
certain level of affluence.
AUDIENCE: If years of life
lived is a good metric to
maximize, might it be more
cost-effective to encourage
more children to be born rather
than to try to save the
lives of those who
already exist?
PETER SINGER: Well, that's a
very interesting and much
discussed philosophical
question, in fact, and people
have very different intuitions
about it.
And it's really hard to resolve
the difference.
A lot of people think that
bringing more people into the
world is not something that
is good in itself.
Even apart from the population
problem, right?
Even if we imagine the world
were not overpopulated.
Say the world had a population
of 500 million.
Would it then be a good thing
if we increased that
population to one billion,
assuming that the standard of
living did not decline?
Some people think yeah,
that would be great.
We would have twice as
many happy people.
Other people think, no, they
wouldn't have existed at all.
They would never have missed
out on anything,
so it doesn't matter.
So I guess the answer is it
doesn't follow from saying
that given that a person exists,
we want them to have
as many life years as possible,
and we want the
quality of those life years to
be as high as possible, it
doesn't follow from that to say,
therefore, it's good to
bring more people into existence
if they'll have that
quality of life.
But one could take that view.
Of course, I think you can only
take that view if you
think that the world has the
capacity to give a high
quality of life to more people,
and if you don't think
that adding more people will
bring down the quality of life
and even increase poverty
for some.
And I would say, in the state
of the world at the moment,
that would be a dubious
assumption to make, that we
could actually manage to have
more people and to maintain
the quality of life.
AUDIENCE: I have a question
that's been related to kind of
some of the other questions.
But it's basically the question
of unintended
consequences.
If you're looking to reduce
suffering or if you're looking
to increase the number of life
years, that's basically a
consequentialist view.
And any action that you take
has a large range of
consequences.
And it's pretty much
impossible to
predict all of them.
For instance, after the Haiti
earthquake, lots of aid
workers went in, and I guess
the UN peacekeeping force
brought cholera with
them and created a
large cholera epidemic.
There's been lots
of other cases.
Giving to refugees in Rwanda
actually fed some of the
Rwandan soldiers that were
responsible for the genocide.
You could even say giving
malaria nets might free up
money from some governments,
from having to pay for health
services, and instead, they
might use that money for war
or something.
So what is your advice, in terms
of finding the right
charities to give and minimizing
those unintended
consequences, so that you can be
relatively sure that you're
having a positive impact.
PETER SINGER: Yeah, you're
right, of course, about the
cases you mentioned.
At least, certainly,
the first two.
And you're right that we can
never be completely sure that
we won't have unintended
consequences.
We can only learn
from mistakes.
I think the Haiti case, there
is a general problem with
disaster relief, particularly
where it's a well-publicized
case, where a lot of
money comes in.
And I don't really encourage
people to give in those
circumstances.
I mean, the Haiti case was one
which because it was close to
the United States and there are
a lot of Haitians here,
really more money came in than
could be usefully used.
And in addition, there was the
cholera that you mentioned.
The Asian tsunami was a little
bit like that as well.
And of course, the actual
domestic ones of Hurricane
Katrina and 9/11 were also cases
where more money was
donated than really could
be usefully used.
You get, I think, much better
cost-effectiveness, in terms
of long-term development then
with those disasters.
But even there, yes.
Things can go wrong,
certainly.
I'm not aware of cases where
because NGOs provided bed
nets, governments had
more money for war.
I think that's probably somewhat
far-fetched, because
the governments probably would
not have provided the bed nets
if the NGOs hadn't been there
in the first place.
But you really just have to do
the best you can, and you can
never be completely sure.
But I think you also shouldn't
be paralyzed by the fact that
you might make a mistake.
Because the result of that would
be that you don't do any
of these good things, and in
many of the cases, you would
have done very good things
without any of these
unintended consequences, or any
seriously adverse ones.
AUDIENCE: Professor Singer,
thanks for coming.
I've always found your
work inspirational.
You sort of--
I mean, with her earlier
question, you alluded to--
you allowed us to sort of
give only what we're
psychologically prepared
to give.
I mean, you know, to give a
lot but not everything.
We don't have become
St. Francis.
But why--
I mean, as she said, rigorously,
your philosophy
does seem to suggest that we
should give everything.
So why give us a psychological
break on what we're prepared
to do when you don't give us a
psychological break of saying,
well, this kid is here now, and
I see him, as opposed to
the people who are far remote,
psychologically, I don't care
about them.
You said that logically we
should, and I agree.
But you understand
my question?
PETER SINGER: Yeah, I understand
the question.
So I suppose I give you a
psychological break because I
want to develop and advocate a
morality for real human beings
and not for a population
of St. Francises.
And so I think that's why we
need that kind of morality.
Now in terms of saying, why
don't you give us a
psychological break in terms of
our greater predisposition
to save the child in the pond?
If in some way that were a
choice, and people were
saying, look, I can pull out one
child every day from the
pond, or I can save ten children
elsewhere, and I'm
busy pulling out the child from
the pond, maybe then OK.
But in fact, the child
in the pond is a
hypothetical example--
not totally hypothetical.
Every now and again, somebody
sends me a news clipping and
says, hey, did you see this
child fell into a pond and
somebody rescued them,
or whatever.
But for most of us, we've never
had the opportunity to
easily rescue a small
drowning child.
So giving us that psychological
break and
saying, you don't have to
worry about the distant
strangers would effectively
be saying you
don't have to do anything.
AUDIENCE: I like your story
about the pond, and actually,
I hear another one.
Sometimes we're overwhelmed
when there's so
many people in need.
And I heard that one time in a
beach, there was a little boy
throwing starfishes
into the water.
And someone said, you're
crazy, there's so many.
You're not going to
save them all.
And he said, yeah, that's right,
but this one will live.
And then he will continue.
And so even if we impact one,
two, or three, those are real
lives that we're saving.
And so I don't have a real
question, but to end, I just
want to encourage all of us not
to be intimidated by that
daunting task, but encouraging
each of us to do one thing in
something that we're
passionate.
Even if it's technology,
education, some disease, or
whatever it is.
And then if we donate through
let's say Google or another
company, $1 that you donate
gets matched.
And then if you can bring
someone else in a company like
that, then you are quadrupling
your contribution.
So I want to thank you for
your time and I hope that
everyone gets encouraged
by your speech.
PETER SINGER: Thank
you very much.
And thank you for the starfish
illustration.
It does make the point well.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, that is
a great way to wrap up our
presentation with Dr. Singer.
I want to thank you very
much for coming.
PETER SINGER: Thank
you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
And may I remind you that if
you do you feel you have
something to help in some way
with The Life You Can Save, we
have the sign-up sheets
over there.
And for those of you watching
elsewhere, if you would email
charlie.bresler@
thelifeyoucansave.com, we'd be
very happy to hear from you.
Thank you.
