[APPLAUSE]
PETER SINGER: Thank
you very much.
It's great to see
so many of you here
despite the temptations
of getting out
in the sunshine on
a beautiful day.
And thank you very
much, [? Christine, ?]
for having set this up
and for that introduction.
So I'm talking about
an article that I
wrote a very long time ago.
"Famine, Affluence, and
Morality" was originally
published in 1972.
And it's now been
republished together
with a couple of more recent
essays, and a previously
unpublished preface,
and a forward by Bill
and Melinda Gates
as this little book,
"Famine, Affluence,
and Morality."
And I'm delighted that OUP have
had the idea that this essay is
still relevant
today and that it's
something that is worth getting
out there and reminding people
about.
But let me just take you back a
little bit to the circumstances
in which it was written,
which most of you
will not be able
to remember I can
see looking around the room.
[LAUGHTER]
So for those who
don't know, there
was a time when the country
that is now Bangladesh
was a part of Pakistan.
It was called East Pakistan.
There was a movement
for independence
from what was then West Pakistan
and is now just Pakistan.
And that movement
for independence
was very brutally repressed
by the Pakistani army.
As a result of that
repression, nine million people
fled across the border from
East Pakistan to India.
And this is just a
small, tiny segment
of that mass of
humanity that was
trying to escape the repression
and widespread starvation that
also had occurred because of
the disruption of infrastructure
because of that repression.
I was living in
Oxford at the time.
I was a graduate student at
the University of Oxford.
And I was troubled by the fact
that despite this vast number
of people in great need,
affluent nations were not
doing very much to help.
It wasn't that they didn't
know about the situation.
It was well publicized.
The Beatle, George Harrison--
or ex-Beatle, I guess, by then,
perhaps-- put on a
concert for Bangladesh,
and tried to raise
money for it, and did
raise some money for it.
And Oxfam and
other organizations
were fundraising for it.
But they raised
I think something
like 20 or 30 million pounds.
And the World
Health Organization
was saying that something
like half a billion pounds
was needed to feed and
provide sanitation and shelter
for this very large
number of refugees.
And India was a much poorer
country then than it is today.
So it was not really going to be
able to cope with this burden.
So I wanted to write
something about this.
This was at a time when
philosophy, at least
English speaking
philosophy, was just
starting to return to what I see
as its roots and true nature,
going right back to Athens, and
ancient Athens, and Socrates,
of suggesting how
we ought to live.
It was emerging
from a period where
it was really analyzing
the meanings of moral terms
in what was sometimes
ordinary language philosophy
and I think of as a
phase that-- you know,
it wasn't completely worthless.
But it was less
interesting than actually
trying to grapple with
these questions of how
we ought to live that
traditionally philosophy has
been about.
So I wanted to write
something about this.
And this seemed a
good example to ask
what are our obligations
as people living
in an affluent society--
pretty comfortable,
pretty secure-- in
terms of helping
in a situation like this?
But I didn't want to
limit it either just
to this particular crisis,
which obviously at some point
was going to be solved
one way or the other--
but generalizing to what we
ought to do to help people
in extreme poverty, which
existed all over the world
and which was also taking lives.
So the argument
that I put forward
was really a very simple one.
And I'll just run you
quickly through the premises
in the argument.
So the first premise I think
is very difficult to deny,
that suffering and death
from lack of food, shelter,
and medical care is a bad thing.
And that was what these nine
million people were being
threatened with at the time.
So there was a bad
thing happening.
Second premise, somewhat
more controversial--
and I'll come back to
this and say a little bit
in defense of it.
But I wanted to claim
that if it's in our power
to prevent something bad
happening without sacrificing
something of comparable
moral significance, then
we ought to do that.
You're probably
saying, well, what's
of comparable
moral significance?
But I wanted to
leave that as a kind
of open expression for people
to put their own values in.
I didn't want to make my
judgment, in this article
anyway, as to what might be of
comparable moral significance
to suffering and death from
lack of food and so on.
I wanted people to ask
themselves-- so, you know,
I could do something.
We're getting obviously
to the question of,
I could donate to
Oxfam's appeal.
I could do something.
What would I be
sacrificing if I were
to make a substantial
donation to that appeal?
Would it be of comparable
moral significance
to the death and suffering
that it would prevent?
And I thought that most people
living in affluent countries
if they were honest with
themselves would say, well,
I could give quite a lot before
I reached the point where I was
sacrificing anything
that even in terms
of my own values,
whatever they might be,
would be of comparable
moral significance
to what we would be preventing.
So that's the second premise.
And the third is a factual
claim that it is in our power
to prevent suffering and death
without thereby sacrificing
anything of comparable
moral significance.
So that's obviously
a claim that needs
to be defended as well in terms
of what the factual situation
in the world is.
And I'll come back to that.
But from those
three premises, we
can draw the conclusion
that we ought
to do what would prevent the
suffering and death from lack
of food where we can
and if indeed it's
the case, that when that's in
our power, we ought to do it.
So that's the really
simple argument.
And I think one of the
reasons why the article has
been very successful,
and is still widely known
and discussed, and reprinted in
many anthologies and textbooks
is because that
argument is so simple.
It doesn't require a great
philosophical sophistication
to spell out what
the argument is.
Now some people see
that as a disadvantage.
Particularly if I go and
lecture on this sort of topic
in a place like France, they
all think, oh, this can't really
be philosophy.
I can understand that.
[LAUGHTER]
It's not profound enough.
But I think we can get into
deeper questions if we want to.
And we don't need to make the
language more complicated.
OK let's, though, look at
the defense of the premises.
And we'll start with
the second premise.
So in defending
the second premise,
I told a little
story-- and the story
might be the other reason
that the article has
been so widely read--
called "The Drowning
Child in the Shallow Pond."
I couldn't find,
despite everything
that's on the internet-- you'd
think everything is there.
I could not find a photo of
a child drowning in a pond.
[LAUGHTER]
But I found a photo of a rather
happy toddler playing in water.
And that's going to have to do.
[LAUGHTER]
So the story is--
it's laid out here--
you're walking across a park.
And there's a shallow
pond in the park.
You know that the
pond is shallow.
You've been walking through
the park on summer days
when kids have been playing.
And you know that if there's
a teenager in the water,
it's only up to his waist.
But today, it's not summer.
There's nobody else around.
You wouldn't expect anyone
to be in the water at all.
But you do see
something in the water.
And when you look
more closely, you
see it's a very small
child, a toddler.
And although the
pond, is shallow it's
too deep for this child.
And this child is
apparently drowning,
in danger of drowning.
Your first response
probably would
be to look around and say,
who's looking after this child?
Where's the father, or
mother, or babysitter?
Somebody has to be taking
care of this child.
But you can't see anyone.
You don't know how
it could happen
that this small child could be
alone and fallen in the pond.
But that apparently
is what's happened.
And there's nobody else there.
So it looks like the only way
to stop this child drowning
is for you to run into the pond,
and quickly grab the child,
and pull the child out.
Not a dangerous
thing to do, but you
realize there is some
cost to you involved.
As bad luck would
have it, you've
dressed in your most
expensive outfit,
because you're going to meet
someone you want to impress.
And it's going to get ruined.
Your expensive shoes, suit,
whatever else it might be
is going to get ruined by
wading into this muddy pond.
It's going to be
inconvenient for you.
You're going to have to go back
and dry off, call your friend
and say you're going
to be late, whatever.
And you're up for the expense
of replacing your nice clothing
that you bought recently.
Nevertheless, most people
would think if you said,
yeah, well, I don't
want to damage my shoes.
And after all, this
is not my child.
And I'm not responsible
for this child.
Nobody said, you
know, please look
after this child or
anything like that.
So why don't I just forget
about it and go on my way?
If you said that,
most people I think
would think that you'd
done something really bad,
something really wrong.
I thought of this as a
purely hypothetical example.
But there are
cases of people who
neglect to take simple steps
that will save a child's life.
There was one that got a
lot of attention in China
three years ago because
it was caught on video.
This is a street in
the city of Foshan.
And there is a child here
who has been previously hit
by a van driving
down the street.
The child's mother is
not aware that this
has happened to her child.
She's doing something else.
And the video camera
captures a number
of people walking down
the street, like this man,
basically looking
away from the child.
It's pretty hard to imagine
that this person who
has walked from down there
has not noticed that there's
a child lying in the street.
But he's paying no
attention to the child.
And over a period--
I can't remember
exactly how long-- but
over a period of 10 minutes
or so, something
like a dozen people
walk down the street without
paying any attention.
And tragically, a second car
hit and ran over the child
while she was lying
on the street.
After that, a woman who
was cleaning the street
did notice the child
and sounded the alarm.
The child was taken to hospital.
But the injuries were too
severe, and the child died.
That was then shown in China
on national news programs.
And there was a huge outcry
that this was a terrible thing.
What's happening to China?
Don't we care about each other?
And there was very
widespread condemnation,
as you'd expect of the
people who had done nothing
to help the child.
So it's not just a
sort of local thing.
I think that if
we think, yes, you
ought to have helped the child
in the pond and people in China
also I think you ought to
help someone in the street,
it may not always happen.
But the moral judgment
that I am looking for,
that I am inviting you to make
is one ought not to do this.
I hope you would be
thinking that you yourself
if you were in this
situation would not do this,
that you would help the child.
You would think that the cost
of replacing your clothes
would not be anything of
comparable moral significance
to saving the child's life.
And therefore, that's
something you ought to do.
So if I do have your agreement
on that, your support on that,
then I can use that
as a way of saying,
at least in that
particular case,
the child in the pond sort of
case or the child in the street
here, you agree that
if it's in your power
to prevent something really bad
happening without sacrificing
something comparably
significant,
you ought to do it.
And that is an important
step in the argument.
It shows that you're not
taking the view that you only
have obligations if
you have in some way
some special responsibility--
let's say you promise to look
after the child, or the
child is your child,
or something like that.
If you think that
this would be wrong,
you're actually saying
we do have obligations
to help strangers even when
we haven't voluntarily taken
on those kinds of obligations.
And that's part of
the judgment that
lies behind the
second premise that I
want to get you to agree to.
But of course, you
might say, well,
I agree in the case of
the child in the pond
or the child in
the street there.
But the analogy, if
you're going to use--
as I presume you've
probably already seen
the strategy here-- if
you're going to use this
as an analogy for saying
I ought to help strangers
in Bangladesh, or refugees
from Bangladesh or in India,
or for that matter
right now that you
or to help people in
developing countries who
are in need who you can
help, then that analogy--
there's too many differences
between the two situations.
And so I want to say a
little bit about that now.
So the question is,
yes, there are obviously
differences between the
situation, many differences.
Are they morally
relevant differences
between those situations?
And there's such a
lot of differences
that I'm not going to be
able to mention them all.
But I am going to
mention some that I
think are psychologically
relevant in that they would
affect, perhaps, the likelihood
that people will help--
differences between the child in
the pond and the global poverty
situation today.
And maybe they affect
the moral judgments
that people will make about
whether we ought to help
or not.
So I'll just go fairly
quickly through these,
because I know we have a
limited amount of time.
So in the child in the pond,
there's an identifiable child.
You don't know this child's
name or much about this child,
but you can see it's that
child I'll be helping.
It's one particular individual.
In global poverty, you don't
know who you'll be helping.
You may donate to the
Against Malaria Foundation,
a highly effective charity that
distributes bed nets in areas
where malaria kills children.
And it's been very
well documented
by the best possible methods,
by randomized controlled trials,
that distributing
bed nets does reduce
child mortality at modest cost.
But of course, if you contribute
to the Against Malaria
Foundation, you're
never going to know
which child's life you saved.
Because it's a counterfactual.
It's, well, if this child hadn't
been sleeping under a bed net,
he or she would have got
malaria and would have died.
And if you distribute
enough bed nets,
there will be such a child
that fills that description.
But you'll never
know which one it is.
And psychologically,
we're much readier to help
an identifiable individual
than a statistical individual.
The futility aspect
is another little sort
of psychological trick
that we play on ourselves.
When we think of the
child in the pond,
we think I can save that child.
And when I've saved that
child, I've solved the problem.
There's nobody else needing
to be saved around there.
But when we think
about global poverty,
we often think, oh, but there
are-- the current World Bank
figure is 700 million people
living in extreme poverty.
There's no way I can
help all of them.
In fact, the difference
that I could make
is insignificant compared
to the size of the problem.
It's a drop in the
ocean, we sometimes say.
And that is a
discouraging factor that
makes us less likely to do it.
But if you think of it
from the point of view
of the individual
you have helped,
it's just as much a
benefit for that individual
that you've saved their life, or
saved the life of their child,
or prevented them going blind,
or reduced their suffering
from a disease.
It doesn't reduce the
value of that benefit
that sadly, there are hundreds
of millions of other people
who are still in that situation.
I think it's still just
as important a benefit.
The diffusion of
responsibility--
also in the child in
the pond, I said you're
the only person who can help.
But clearly, that's not the
case with global poverty.
There are, again,
hundreds of millions
of people who can help, some
of whom are wealthier than you.
And some of those
people who are wealthier
than you are helping like Bill
and Melinda Gates, for example.
Others who are a lot
wealthier than you
are not helping at all.
So you might say, well, why me?
Why am I the one who should
do something about this?
And again,
psychologically, there
are all sorts of
experiments psychologists
have done that show that we
are less likely to help others
if we are one of a group and
we see that others in the group
are not helping.
It's something that, in a
sense, deters us from helping.
But mostly, we think that that's
wrong, at least in retrospect
when we're outside it.
I mean, we think that
people should have helped.
And the fact that they were
part of a society where
people didn't help very much
doesn't really excuse them.
If we think about people who
turned a blind eye to what
was happening in
Nazi Germany, we
don't think the fact that
they were just one of many
is a sufficient excuse.
And I think here too, we
should think that, well, I
can still make some difference.
Even if other people won't,
I can make some difference.
And maybe if I and a few
others start helping,
that will make it easier
for others to join in.
We'll build up the critical
mass of people helping.
And we'll actually counteract
this psychological effect
of diffusion of responsibility.
The child in the pond is near.
And the people, the refugees
in India, were far away.
And other people
in extreme poverty
are far away from
where we are now.
Most people when
they think about that
are pretty clear about
that doesn't really make
a difference to my obligations.
If the distance makes
it harder for me
to actually do anything, then
sure, that makes a difference.
But that's relevant
to the other premise
that I showed you, the
one about whether it's
in our power to do something.
If it's just
distance, I think we
can see pretty clearly that
it's not that critical.
You can see the
child for yourself
and sum up the situation.
You don't have to rely on
information from others.
Psychologically, that
makes a difference too.
But again, I would say,
what really matters
is the quality of information.
Are you getting
good information?
Is it reliable information?
Could somebody be
trying to scam you
into sending them a
donation or sending
a donation to an
organization that isn't
a bonafide organization at all?
All of those are very
relevant and proper concerns.
But otherwise,
whether you actually
see it with your own eyes or
whether you get information
from a source that you believe
is fully reliable I don't think
should make a difference.
So although psychologically
these are disanalogies,
I want to argue that morally,
they're not really relevant.
And this is my explanation
of what's going on,
which owes something to
the Harvard psychologist
Joshua Greene who has a book
called "Moral Tribes," which
is about moral psychology
and its implications
in this kind of area,
that I highly recommend.
So why do we have
these responses
that I just described?
We have them because we evolved
in small face-to-face societies
where basically we knew
the people we could help.
They were identifiable
individuals.
And they were part of our group.
And to that extent,
some of these responses
are hardwired into us.
They're part of our biology.
But the world has changed
in the last century or two
very dramatically.
It's changed in the sense
that we're living now
in a much bigger community.
And we have the
ability to know what's
going on far away from us,
which we never had before.
And we have the ability
to actually help and make
a difference, not
quite as instantly
as we have the ability
to know what's happening,
but quickly enough.
Of course, evolution
doesn't work that fast.
The biology hasn't changed.
We still have the
innate responses
that are more suited to the many
millennia in which we lived,
or millions of years, going
back to our pre-human ancestors
even, in which we've lived
in small social groups.
So that's why we
have these notions.
But now we really need to go
beyond them-- not that I'm
saying we shouldn't have
emotions in this area,
but we need to use our
reason and our ability
to reflect in order
to go beyond them
and think about what we ought
to do in a different way.
So the psychological
differences I'm saying
are not always morally relevant.
And I've just said-- what's
the second part of that slide,
so I needn't repeat that.
Briefly, I want to
make sure that you
have time for questions.
So I don't want
to go on too long.
I'll just briefly run
through the factual claim
I made that it's in our
power to do something--
has been challenged.
Some of you may have
read some critiques
of aid-- Bill Easterly's book,
"The White Man's Burden,"
Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid."
And my Princeton
colleague Angus Deaton
who this year got the
Nobel Prize for Economics
also has some criticisms of
aid in his excellent book,
"The Great Escape."
But I think the more
sweeping critiques that
come from Easterly
and Moyo are not
applicable to what
I'm talking about.
They're directed at government
aid, multilateral aid,
not at the NGOs that I would
recommend you give your aid to.
Very few of us say we want to
give money to the government
so we can increase its aid.
Even as far as
government's concerned,
I think Easterly and Moyo are a
little unfair, especially where
you have governments that have
been reasonably thoughtful,
as Difford has in this country,
in terms of overcoming some
of the objections that certainly
have existed in the past
to aid.
And as far as Deatons critique,
which is a more nuanced one,
Deaton acknowledges that aid,
particularly in the health
area, has saved
millions of lives.
And I think there's
no doubt about that.
You look at the figures--
child deaths have
come down very dramatically
in the last 50 years
or more from 20 million in 1960
to under six million today.
So we had less than a third
of the number of children
who die before their
fifth birthday as
compared to 50 years
ago despite the fact
that the world's population
has more than doubled.
So effectively, the death
rate for children under five
is less than one
sixth of what it was.
That's very good news.
Aid can't claim all
the credit for that.
Obviously, economic
development in countries
like China in particular has
made a huge difference here.
But I think it's clear that
aid has also made a difference.
And there's data on that
which I could go into.
But I think that the data is
pretty clear in some cases
that aid programs have made
an important difference
in reducing child
mortality, also
in doing other things
like reducing incidence
of preventable
blindness from trachoma,
and dealing with a whole
range of other conditions
that cause a lot of
suffering, providing
more education, particularly
education for girls,
providing information
about family
planning, a whole lot
of different things
that aid has done.
So I think the factual
premise is justified.
We do have it in our
power to do things
as long as we choose carefully
and thoughtfully about what
we're doing with our resources.
So the only thing that
I do want to correct
here, having said that, is
in the original article,
I said, like, for the cost
of your ruined pair of shoes,
you could save a life.
Well, you're going
to have to really
be very much at the top
end of the shoe market--
[LAUGHTER]
--for that to be true on
the more recent research.
Because whereas I
thought earlier maybe
there was some suggestions that
for a couple of hundred dollars
you could save a child's
life, more recent research
suggests that it's
significantly more than that.
It might be in
$1,000 or two range.
But it's still, I think, not
something that's-- most of us
would not have to give
up something comparably
significant in order
to achieve that.
OK, aren't I giving
through my taxes?
Well, yes, if you
pay taxes in the UK,
you are giving to
one of the countries
that now, thanks to a bipartisan
pledge that's actually
being fulfilled, is among the
better nations in the world.
And that's really
good, much better
than where I spend part
of each year, Australia,
and better still
than where I spend
the other part of each year.
The US is really pretty
miserable on this scale.
But still, this line is 0.7%
of gross national income,
so not very much.
70 pence in every 100 pounds the
nation earns is not very much.
I think we could do a
lot better than that.
So this is sort of
the big, big question
about the whole thing is,
well, how much should we give?
What is this level of
comparable moral significance?
Doesn't it make
life very demanding
to go all the way there?
And when the article,
the "Famine, Affluence,
and Morality" article,
first came out,
it was used, as I said,
in a lot of classrooms.
Professors gave it to
their students to read,
because they could read it.
And they could be
challenged by it.
But I've heard from
a number of people
that the-- the way
in which it was used
was basically, look, here's
a rather plausible argument.
The premises seem like
they're plausible.
Certainly, the
conclusion follows
if you accept the premise.
But the conclusion
is so demanding,
it must be wrong, right?
So your job is to show where
the argument goes wrong.
And that was something that to
work quite well as a teaching
tool.
But one of the
interesting things that's
happened more recently, and
perhaps one of the reasons
why OUP thought it would be good
to have the article out there
again, is that, in
fact, more people now
are seeing this
not as an objection
but as a reason for
doing something about it.
And that relates
to what's now known
as effective altruism,
a new movement,
certainly within the
last 10 years, that
is trying to publicize
the idea of living
as if that argument
actually mattered
and as if we could do
something about it.
So here's one of the
founders of this movement.
It's sort of not a
single organization
that's got it going.
There are a number
of different people,
different organizations.
One of them is Toby Ord,
who is now a research
fellow in philosophy at Oxford.
He read the article
as a student.
He decided that he wanted
to live so as to make
the world a better place.
So he thought, well, I'm
doing OK as a student.
I'm on this graduate
studentship.
I think it was around 16,000
pounds or maybe 14,000 pounds.
He said, yeah, I could maybe
have a little bit more.
But, you know, I'm not
really missing anything.
And I'm heading for
an academic career.
After I get my
DPhil, I'm probably
going to get an academic job.
I'll be earning a lot
more than my studentship.
Suppose that I just
continue to live
on this studentship,
or inflation
adjusted amount of
this studentship,
or a little bit more.
So he's pledged to live on that
amount adjusted for inflation--
it's probably a bit
higher than that by now,
because he made that
pledge a few years ago--
and to give away the rest.
And he worked out what
he might do with that.
He picked, as a highly
effective thing to do,
preventing blindness from
trachoma, the largest
cause of preventable
blindness in the world that
affects people in
developing countries--
pretty cheap to prevent.
He, because he likes
doing maths, and sums,
and so on, he
decided to work out
how much he would
be able to give away
if he had a normal academic
trajectory at the kind
of salaries that academics are
likely to have until retirement
and continued to
live on this amount.
And so he got this
large sum of money,
notional a large sum
of money, divided it
by the cost of preventing
blindness from trachoma,
and ended up with a figure
of 80,000-- 80,000 cases
of blindness that he alone,
not a very rich person,
no Bill Gates or Warren
Buffet-- he alone
would be able to prevent.
And he thought that
was very impressive.
He was sort of thrilled
to think that he could
do that much good in
the world-- and decided
to tell people about it.
So he founded this organization,
Giving What We Can,
encouraged people not to take
a pledge as tough as the one he
did, but to pledge to
give 10% of their income
to effective charities.
Here's somebody who came to
this completely independent,
Julia Wise, a woman living
in Boston who sort of thought
that learning how much better
she is than other people wanted
to give quite a lot to help
people and could live on less--
persuaded her then
boyfriend now husband
to join her in doing this.
And incidentally, he
worked-- Jeff Kauffman
works for Google in Boston.
But even before he got
this job at Google,
they were already donating
a substantial amount
of their income.
They were I think donating
something like 30% of it
even when their total income
was no more than around $50,000
a year.
Now that Jeff has
a nice Google job,
they've upped this to
50% of their income.
And if you want to read about
how Julia feels about it,
she writes this engaging
kind of personal blog
at givinggladly.com.
And you can see what she
does, and how she lives,
and why she thinks this is
important by looking at that.
And this is probably
the most impressive sort
of a case of the influence of
philosophy on direct behavior.
This is not somebody
that I've ever met.
But I got an email out of the
blue a few years ago telling me
that as a result of
discussing "Famine, Affluence,
and Morality" in class,
the sort of discussion
went, well, you know,
there's this argument.
And it leads to saying
you should give away
a lot of money.
And then somebody
else they read said,
well, you know, if that
argument were true,
it wouldn't just
apply to giving money.
You could help
people for example
by donating a kidney
to a stranger.
And again, this was seen
as a reductio ad absurdum
that morality couldn't be
that demanding that that's
what we ought to do.
But Chris, after
thinking about it
and discussing it
with other people--
he didn't rush into
this-- took some months
to reach this decision-- decided
that was what he wanted to do.
And you see him here
just after doing that.
I've continued to be
in touch with him.
And he's very happy
about what he's done.
He's in good health.
He's been in contact
with the person who
received the kidney who
was a man in his 40s
who was a schoolteacher teaching
in an underprivileged school
in St. Louis, so he feels
really good about that.
Of course, you never know
who you're going to give to.
It could've been someone who
was a conservative Republican
or whatever.
[LAUGHTER]
Chris might have
felt less happy.
But that's-- it turned
out well for him, anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
So there are a few
people who do this.
I think it's probably, for
most people including me,
it may be a step too far.
But it's an example of
the way that philosophy
can make a difference.
OK, I'm nearly done.
So this is this movement,
effective altruism.
You can look it up
on Wikipedia now.
So it's pretty new.
It wasn't there a few years
ago-- stresses the idea
about applying
evidence and reason.
And here's one
way of doing this.
An organization-- this is
American rather than UK--
but an organization
called GiveWell
that reviews charities,
finds ones for which there's
really clear evidence,
and recommends them--
so just this thin slice.
That doesn't mean that all
these other charities that
have been reviewed are
actually not effective.
What it means is
they have not been
able to produce good
enough evidence to satisfy
the rigorous assessment
that GiveWell
does that they are effective.
And that's a very
different question.
But GiveWell is kind of driving
the movement to get more data,
to get independent studies,
to get good analysis so
that we can know which are the
really effective charities.
And that's certainly helped
the whole effective altruism
movement.
Here again is the one
that Toby Ord started.
And if you go to their
Where to Give tab,
they also recommend
charities more
suited for purposes
for the UK, if you're
interested in tax deductibility
for donations in the UK.
And there's one
that I've involved
with that started as the title
of a earlier book of mine,
"The Life You Can Save"--
somewhat more global
in the charities
that it recommends,
slightly less rigorous in the
evidence required than they
GiveWell, because we wanted a
broader group of organizations.
But if you're interested, have
a look at any of those websites.
And at that, I'm going
to stop so that we still
have some time for questions.
Thanks very much.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 1: Great.
So we have two microphones.
We've got Jan with a
microphone over there.
I've got one.
I'm going to start with
a question, if I may.
I love the link
between this book
and the ideas around
effective altruism.
I wonder though about
what your thoughts
on the immediacy of social media
and the immediacy of what we're
able to do now in order to bring
us closer to things happening
on the other side of the globe--
does that change our behavior?
Or do we suffer from
information overload?
PETER SINGER: I'm hoping that
we'll change our behavior.
It probably already is
changing our behavior,
but I haven't seen good
enough data on that.
Obviously, you know,
all of these things
have positives and negatives.
I would like sort
of the positive
that we feel more closely
connected to people
on the other side of the world.
So I like the idea of, you know,
Mark Zuckerberg's internet.org,
that everybody in
the world eventually
is going to be on the net.
And we can communicate
with them in some way.
I think it will be
excellent if that spreads.
Sometimes the social
media get people
to focus on a particular
thing that goes viral.
And it may not be the
most effective thing.
We had the ice bucket
challenge a year or so ago.
You know, that was
fine, but it was
dealing with a fairly rare
disease in affluent countries.
If we want to use our
resources most effectively
to help people
suffering from diseases,
there are others affecting
people in developing countries
where it would be much more
cost effective to donate.
SPEAKER 1: Perfect.
AUDIENCE: So there's
two elements of this.
Is this on?
Yeah.
PETER SINGER: Yeah, yeah.
AUDIENCE: And one of them is
getting people to donate more.
And the other one is donate
to effective charities.
For example, Against Malaria
Foundation from what I know
is about 100 times more
effective than the ALS ice
bucket challenge per dollar.
Which of those areas do
you find it is easier
to convince people to
make an improvement?
And what sort of
strategies have you learned
from writing your
books and so on
and how you have
managed to convince
those people to do that?
PETER SINGER: Yeah,
that's a good question.
I don't really have good
data to say which of them
have I found more successful.
I've certainly--
I do know people
who've started giving because
of arguments that I and others
in the effective altruism
movement have put forward.
I know quite a lot
of people who've
taken that up and perhaps
in some way responded
to that argument-- maybe
thought they should do something
before, but didn't get
around to doing it.
So that's certainly possible.
Probably though, you
typically get more resistance
when you tell people
they ought to be giving
or they ought to be giving
more than if you tell them
they ought to be giving more
effectively, at least the kind
of audiences that I talk about.
But I do get pushback
from that as well.
I get pushback from--
some people say, but look,
you're taking the emotional
component out of giving.
You're telling people
to think about it.
And if people don't
feel emotionally,
then they're not
going to give at all.
I've don't accept that I'm
taking the emotional component
out of it.
I'm trying to change
the emotional component
in some way.
And I also get
pushback, I should
say, from people in
the philanthropy sector
as such, so professional
philanthropy advisors, those
who are involved
in organizations
for promoting philanthropy.
They want to be cause neutral.
Because they don't want
to turn people away.
If they're find to be
advisors, and potential clients
come to them and say, we'd like
your advice on how to give,
or we want to give
away some of our money,
or leave our estate
to something--
and then they say
to you, and we're
really passionate about music,
so we want to endow a new opera
hall for our city.
And if you then say
to them, well, I
don't really think
a new opera hall
is what the world
most needs, you know,
should be helping to
prevent blindness in Africa,
then they're worried that
those people would just
go away and find somebody
else to talk to so.
So they kind of have
this official idea
that we can't judge.
We can't judge between
different causes.
I think that's wrong,
but I can sort of
understand from their point of
view why they're saying that.
We had someone in
the back there.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was
going to ask actually
a really similar question
but with the example
of International
Rescue Committee who
were really praised, because
they did this large scale
monitoring and
evaluation process.
And it turned out that their
most expensive, longest running
program had no impact.
And there was debate, should
she publish that or not?
Because it will be so
psychologically discouraging.
It is a moral thing to
publish that finding or not?
You just answered it.
But yeah--
PETER SINGER: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
PETER SINGER: No,
I think it's great
that people do those
trials and that they
are prepared to publish them.
Best of all is if
they commit themselves
in advance of the
trial by announcing
that they're doing a trial.
And that's what some
organizations are doing.
One very transparent
organization is GiveDirectly.
GiveDirectly has pioneered
handing out one-off cash grants
to poor families in East Africa.
It sort of finds poor
families, gives them $1,000,
makes it clear that
that's what they're
going to get-- it's
not a permanent thing--
and then sees what
they do with it
and whether they
come out better.
And they announced
beforehand that they were
going to do a randomized trial.
So they were committed
to publicizing
the results of the trial
however they came out.
They did come out well.
They're now actually trying
a guaranteed minimum income
scheme to see whether if they
do give regular minimum amounts,
what that does to people.
And again, they've
announced that they
will do a trial on
that without knowing
how it's going to come out.
AUDIENCE: So you explain
your moral argument
with sound logic
that applies to NGOs.
But there are many
ways in which entities
try to target helping the
developing world, sometimes
even extreme such as
military interventions.
So my question is,
how do you think--
to what extent do you think
your moral framework applies
to such ways of helping out
rather than just directly
through NGOs?
I think the overriding
framework applies.
I'm focusing on
NGOs, because I'm
addressing people who might
have decisions about what
to do with surplus income,
or sometimes with time
that they might be prepared to
volunteer, or whatever it is.
Nobody-- none of you will
have the power to say,
oh, we ought to be intervening
in Syria, so let's do that.
I mean, you might decide to
write a letter to a paper.
Or you might decide to
vote for someone who
thinks you ought to do that.
But very marginal effect
that you can have there.
But I do think if you're
considering something
like intervention, you
ought to be weighing out
the costs and benefits
of what that ought to be.
And that's why
some cases I think
we've missed opportunities to
get huge benefits at rather
small costs.
Rwanda would be the
classic case of that
where according to the Canadian
leader of the UN forces
that were there before, another
5,000 well-trained troops could
have stopped the massacre
that took 800,000 lives.
I think it's very regrettable
that that didn't happen.
But other people have called
for intervention-- for example,
at the time of the Kosovo
intervention against Serbia,
other people said,
well, what about what
Russia is doing in Chechnya?
Isn't that just as bad as what
the Serbs are doing in Kosovo?
And the answer might well
be yes, it was just as bad.
But who wants a war with a major
nuclear armed power, right?
The costs are
going to be absurd.
So I do think the
ultimate framework is
applicable to those situations.
AUDIENCE: With your argument,
how should we compare
individuals to corporations?
So if a company such
as Google, what level
should we be giving a
percentage of our profits
back to charities?
PETER SINGER: What level
should Google give?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Corporations
in general.
PETER SINGER: Yeah.
You know, corporations are in
somewhat different situations
in that they have
fiduciary responsibilities
to their shareholders.
Of course, they can give.
And they can justify this
in terms of being good
for the image of the company.
So there is a fair
amount of flexibility.
And I think Google would
enhance its reputation
by giving quite a lot.
I know that it does
have google.org.
And its funding a lot of
projects through that.
And some of those I hope
will do a lot of good.
So it's hard for me to put
any kind of specific figure
on that.
But that's an important thing.
And then also in terms of
what the company is doing,
the sort of corporate social
responsibility policies,
I think are also important.
And there's quite
a lot of thought
going into that has also
had beneficial consequences
on a number of
different companies.
So that's not a very
specific answer.
I'm sorry.
If you have suggestions
about what kind of level
ought to be set, I'm interested
in listening to them.
But I don't feel I have the
knowledge to be more specific.
SPEAKER 1: OK.
We've got time for
two more questions.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I like your
initial three-step argument.
I wonder, where do you stop?
So in the example of a
child that is drawing,
if somebody told me,
you can have a meal,
or you can skip lunch today
and you'll save a child,
I'll probably skip lunch
today and save a child.
So if I give all my spare
money to charity today,
I could still probably miss
a meal one day and save
a child's.
So I should do that.
And then I could
probably get another job
and donate that money to charity
and save even another life.
Because that's what I would do
for a child if somebody told me
you have to work an
extra two hours today
to save a child here.
And the same goes as why
only focus on donating money?
You know, I walk home, and
there is a homeless person.
And that person would probably
be hungry and cold tonight.
I could take him home.
So why shouldn't I do that?
It's a bit of a tricky question.
But I think I understand
your moral framework.
And I like it.
I just wonder as such a
simple moral framework,
if you would do anything to save
a child that is drowning right
here, then where do you stop?
Like, where do you put the
boundary between how much
are you willing to give?
Because with such
a simple analogy,
what occurs to me is
that I should stop
or everybody should
stop doing everything
and give 100% or more 100%--
like, make a massive effort
to donate everything.
PETER SINGER: Well, you
probably shouldn't stop working,
because that's the
source of your income.
[LAUGHTER]
And, you know, you
actually should
be trying to work to-- if
you're fortunate enough
to have a well-paying job, you
should be using that income
and perhaps maximizing
that income.
Some people in effective
altruism movement
have deliberately chosen
higher income careers.
I had a student at
Princeton who could
have gone to graduate
school and probably
had a career as a
philosophy professor.
But because he had a
strong maths background,
he also had very good
offers from Wall Street
to go and work there--
and decided to do that.
And he's been doing that for
the past four or five years,
donating half of his income,
which even in the first year
enabled him to donate $100,000
to effective charities.
So, you know, he sees that
as a path of doing good.
Some people would say, well, no.
I mean, if that wasn't
the kind of work
that I really want to do, I
just couldn't face doing that.
But they'll earn less,
but they'll still
give significantly.
But you're asking,
I suppose, you know,
where do you draw this line?
And I don't have a very
good answer to that.
In the original essay,
I said, ultimately,
the only line you can draw is
the point at which-- well, I
said two things.
One is, if there
are certain things
that you need in order to
maintain your income-- so it
doesn't apply to
Google obviously,
but some jobs you need to
be able to dress in a suit,
and wear a tie, and so on.
So you can't give away so much
that you can no longer hold
a job and do well in your job.
That's one thing.
But apart from that, I said,
really the ultimate line
would just be where you've
impoverished yourself
so much that if
you gave away more,
you would be adding to
your own difficulties,
suffering, whatever
you want to call it,
as much as you would be
alleviating the difficulties
or suffering of someone else.
That's the ultimate line.
But, you know, I was a lot
younger when I wrote that.
And maybe I've become a
little more realistic in terms
of what you can say
to people and what
you can expect them to do.
And I think that even if in some
sense that still is ultimately
what you ought to do, there's
a difference between that
and what we ought to
expect people to do,
what we ought to blame
people for not doing.
And I think that if people sort
of just start doing something,
make a substantial
difference, and then say,
I'm going to try this out.
If I'm comfortable with it,
I'm going to increase it.
Year after year,
I'll be doing more.
I think that's
the kind of appeal
that has more hope of attracting
a large number of people.
So that's the least
the public answer
that I give to your question.
Thanks.
And there was a last one here?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Quick question--
in your slide when
you were talking about
the psychological reasons
against it and
things, you didn't
touch at all I think on
sort of reciprocation, which
seems to be quite
a big-- the idea
that if you see a child
drowning, you can think,
well, if my child
was drowning, I'd
want one of my
neighbors to help me.
But when you're seeing
a disaster, famines
across the other
side of the world,
people probably don't
feel like one day that
could be me in the
famine if you're
in sort of developed world.
I think that can take some of
the sort of the-- at least the
urgency out of things.
PETER SINGER: Mhm.
OK, so that's not-- when
you said reciprocation,
I thought you meant,
you know, this person
is actually likely to
help me in some way.
That's one sense
of reciprocation.
But that doesn't apply to
the child in the pond either.
So what you're talking
about is rather
the kind of imagine
yourself in that position,
you know, that
could happen to you.
Or your child could be drowning.
And you'd want
somebody to do that.
And then the question
would be, well, how far can
we carry out that
exercise, right?
OK, so I do have a child
let's say that age.
I mean, I don't anymore.
My children are grown up.
But I guess I have a
grandchild of that age,
so I could say that.
I would want somebody
to rescue my grandchild.
Could I say, well, I
could become a refugee
or something like that?
I think I could imagine that.
In fact, you know, my parents
were refugees from the Nazis.
They came to Australia when
the Nazis took over Austria.
So I don't have to go that far
back to think that, well, I
certainly am very glad
that people helped them
and that Australians took them.
And so it depends on how far
you're going to carry that.
But I think we can put ourselves
in the position of others
in some ways.
We can form connections.
And the original question
that [? Christine ?]
asked about social media
I guess may make it easier
for us to see how we could be in
that situation in some perhaps
not really likely circumstances,
but imaginable circumstances.
AUDIENCE: Just I don't think
that the reciprocation thing
is-- I don't think
it's a good argument,
but I think that sort of
intuitively it feels that
that's--
PETER SINGER: Uh-huh.
AUDIENCE: --that
would inherently
stop people taking that step.
PETER SINGER: Right, OK.
OK, right.
So then it's also related to
the they're people like me.
That part of my group and so on.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
It's sort of a in-group,
out-group thing
on a fundamental level.
PETER SINGER: Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
And that is something that I
could have added to that list
but didn't.
Yeah.
Thanks.
SPEAKER 1: I'm terribly
sorry, but we're out of time.
This has been an incredible,
thought provoking
talk with a wonderful
call to action.
I hope we all stop and think
about what we ought to do,
how we ought to live.
Please join me in thanking--
PETER SINGER: Thank you.
SPEAKER 1: --Professor
Peter Singer.
[APPLAUSE]
