JEFF KAUFFMAN: This afternoon
we have Peter Singer with us
to talk about his new book,
"The Most Good You Can Do."
This is a book about
effective altruism
which is the idea that you
should use your time and money
to try and have as much of a
positive impact on the world
as you can.
Peter Singer has been
interested in this sort of thing
since at least the
early '70s when
he wrote "Famine, Affluence,
and Morality" which
is a pretty well-known paper.
It's been very influential.
It's influenced a lot
of people, including me.
Its basic idea is if
you came across someone
in front of you who
very much needed help,
you would help them.
There are lots of people
who need help elsewhere.
Why don't we help them?
Perhaps we should.
And expanding this
into effective altruism
has happened sort
of over decades
with a bunch of
ideas from elsewhere
as well which Peter
will get into.
He's currently a professor
of bioethics at Princeton
and also, he's at the
University of Melbourne.
And now he's here, so
please welcome Peter Singer.
PETER SINGER:
Thank you very much
for that introduction, Jeff.
I'm very happy to
be here with you.
So as Jeff said,
this is an issue
that I've been interested
in for a very long time.
And last night I was speaking
to a lecture theater in Harvard
that was organized by the
Harvard Effective Altruism
Group and I was introduced
by Josh Greene who
is a professor who works in
psychology of-- essentially
moral psychology.
You could say
psychology about how
we develop our moral beliefs.
But he started off as
a philosophy student,
he studied philosophy as an
undergraduate at Harvard.
And he actually put
something very nicely
that I'm going to repeat,
too, in terms of what's
happened with the thought
that goes back to the article
that Jeff just mentioned.
It was published
in the early '70s.
That article has been very
successful in one sense, that
is it's one of the most
reprinted philosophy articles
in anthologies that are used
for teaching philosophy.
And many, many people
have come up to me
and said, oh, I
read your article
when I was doing an
undergraduate philosophy
course.
But as Josh put
it last night, it
was generally taught in the
sense of here's a challenge
to you.
This article is obviously wrong.
Find out why it's wrong,
tell me why it's wrong
because the claims that it
makes or the conclusions that it
draws are just too demanding.
It has to be wrong, all right,
because essentially the idea is
you would rescue-- here's
this child drowning in a pond,
you can easily
rescue this child.
No great risk to you,
it's just a shallow pond.
But you're wearing some really
expensive clothing that's
going to get ruined, so there's
going to be some cost to you.
Not a life-changing
cost, but some cost you
in order to save that child.
OK, so everybody
in the-- everybody
says, of course
I'd save the child.
You know, what can you
compare some clothing
with a child's life?
And then I say, OK, but really
you're in that situation
right now because
there are people dying
from preventable poverty-related
diseases in the world
but you can save-- at not
very great cost actually.
You could debate the
point of the cost
and whether it is
comparable to clothing
that you might be wearing.
That might depend on your
penchant for designer clothing,
I guess, but
something like that.
And then people say,
OK, but once you've
done that, once you've
let's say donated
the cost of one pair of
expensive shoes or a suit
to save one child.
Unlike the pond case,
there are more children
so it seems that you
ought to do it again.
And again and again and
again, and where do you
stop until you reach the
point of marginal utility?
That is the point at which
if you gave more then you'd
be lowering yourself to the
level of the poor person
you're helping or you'd be
doing as much harm to yourself
or as much risk
to yourself as you
would be alleviating in terms of
the person that you're helping.
So that's the highly demanding
conclusion that can't be right,
and that's why I think the
article was taught in that way.
Seems plausible, but
what's wrong with it?
But what Josh Greene
said yesterday
is that an interesting thing has
happened in the last few years
and that is that the reaction
that there's something
wrong with this idea and
we have to find out what
has switched at least with a
substantial number of people
to saying no, this
is really right.
Yes, it's very
demanding and maybe I'm
not going to be able to go
all the way that this says
I should be going,
but that doesn't
mean that it wouldn't
be right to do that.
That in some sense, anyway,
that's what we ought to do.
And we should at least be
trying to do as much as we can
in that direction.
And I think it is
true and I find
that have to say quite exciting
that there is now this emerging
movement known as
effective altruism which
is thinking along these lines.
I won't say it's
thinking exactly
in terms of "Famine, Affluence,
and Morality" article,
but it's certainly
thinking in some way that
is in that direction.
So essentially what people
who are effective altruists
are saying is I want
to do to something
significant that is for
the good of the world that
is going to make the
world a better place.
And I want that to be an
important part of my life.
Doesn't mean that
I'm going to go
to the point of
marginal utility.
Most of us are not saints.
I don't claim to have
reached that point myself,
but I do think that making that
an important part of your life
is something that I want to do.
So that's the altruism
part of effective altruism.
And then the
effective part of it
is it's not enough
just to say, I'm
going to make the
world a better place.
If I'm going to
put part of my life
into thinking about
thinking altruistically
about working for
some good cause,
I want to actually make the
biggest possible difference
that I can with the resources
that I have available
and that I'm prepared to put
into this activity, whatever
activity it happens to be.
Might be donating
money, it might
be donating my
skills and my time,
might be some combination
of those things.
So that's the
effectiveness part of it.
We want to use our
abilities to reason
and to think about things,
assess the evidence in order
to make our altruism as
highly effective as possible.
So to say this is now
clearly an emerging movement.
There was a pretty large lecture
theater in the Science Center
that was packed.
I'm told that the [? Battle ?]
Theater where I'm speaking
tonight is a sold-out event.
And I've been
doing a little book
tour, was in the San Francisco
Bay area and up in Seattle
I also had full houses there.
So there's clearly a
lot of interest in this
and there are EA groups
as they're known,
Effective Altruism groups, on
a number of different campuses
around the country.
And it's not specifically
a United States thing.
In fact, I think if you
said where did this begin,
I would say it began
at Oxford in England,
but it certainly exists in quite
a number of other countries.
There are groups
in Australia, where
I spend part of each
year, but there are also
groups in Switzerland
and Germany
and Czech Republic and a
number of other places.
So it's an interesting
emerging movement
and there's quite a
lot online about it.
And it's all fairly
new so there's things
like the Wikipedia page
on effective altruism
is only about two years old.
And that I guess gives you a
sense of when people thought,
well there ought to be
something more out there.
So let me just say a
little bit about how it got
started, because I said I
wrote this early article
and I've been writing a bit
more about it in recent years.
But I can't really take
credit for starting it
in an organizational sense.
To the best of my
understanding, the person
who took the initial steps
was a philosopher at Oxford
called Toby Ord.
Toby told me I think
back maybe in 2007
that he was thinking
of organizing something
at Oxford to try to
let more people know
about how effective
their giving could be.
And what Toby did he was then a
PhD student at Oxford expecting
to have an academic career--
which things are basically
going on course, he's a research
fellow in philosophy at Oxford
now.
And he decided he would and
he was living on a Graduate
Studentship so he decided to
work out how much money he was
likely to earn over
his academic career
and then assume that
he stayed roughly
on the level of
personal expenditure
that was his Graduate
Studentship, because he felt
that was enough to cover
what was important to him.
Well, adjusted for
inflation of course,
maybe put it up a little
bit, but not too much more
than that, and
see how much money
he would be able to donate
to effective charities.
And then when he did that sum,
so what his total earnings
would be, deduct the
studentship equivalent
for the rest of
his life and then
divide that by the
cost of something
that an effective
charity might do.
An example he took was to either
treat or prevent blindness.
So there's a lot of people
who are blind in the world
because they can't afford
cataract surgery which
is a very simple surgery that
everyone in the United States
who is blind
because of cataracts
would get either from
their health insurance
or from Medicare
when they reach 65,
Medicaid if they were poorer.
But in developing
countries, there
are millions of people who are
blind because of cataracts.
There are also millions more
people who have become blind
because of a condition
called trachoma caused
by a microorganism
that gets into your eye
when you're quite young and
gradually develops and causes
blindness and can again be
very inexpensively treated.
So putting some
reasonably good estimates
of the cost of these
treatments, Toby
calculated that if he did
live on the equivalent
of a studentship and donated it
to one of these organizations,
he could throughout his life
either prevent 80,000 people
from becoming blind or
treat 80,000 blind people
and restore their sight.
And he thought that was
quite an amazing figure.
He thought that would be an
incredibly important thing
to do.
So he thought firstly
that he ought to do that
and he took a pledge
and made it public
that he would live on
something not that much
more than his
graduate studentship
and donate the rest.
And he's doing that.
But he also set
up an organization
called Giving What
We Can to provide
this information for people, to
let people know which charities
were highly effective at doing
not just treating blindness
but a variety of other
things, for example,
preventing child deaths from
malaria which is also something
you can do quite
inexpensively by distributing
bed nets in areas where
people don't have them
and where they're
prone to malaria,
or getting rid of intestinal
parasites in children,
deworming them, which
isn't lifesaving
because the parasites
aren't going to kill them
but has been shown to be
highly cost effective in terms
of their achievements at school,
both actually staying at school
and doing better at school,
because the parasites
obviously weaken them,
make them more tired,
less energy, and so on.
And again it's an extremely
inexpensive treatment,
about $0.50 a year to get rid
of intestinal worms in children.
So publicizing those
sorts of things.
And I think that was probably
the first real effective
altruism organization.
There's also another thing
that happened around that time,
around 2007, that was very
important for the movement,
and that was an
organization that
was set up to rigorously
assess charities
for whether they really
were effective in what
they were doing.
This was set up by two hedge
fund analysts, Holden Karnofsky
and Elie Hassenfeld, who had
made quite a lot of money
when they were
still in their 20s
and together with some
of their colleagues
decided to give a
portion of it away.
And then they debated among
themselves so where should we
give it?
And they had different
ideas so they said, well,
why don't we all write
to our favorite charity
and ask them to
say what they would
do with a significant
donation and then we
can pool the results
and decide what to do?
So they all wrote to
their favorite charities,
but instead of getting back
some real data about what
the charity would
do with a donation--
and of course these are people
who were used to analyzing lots
of data for their hedge
fund-- they got back brochures
with nice photos of smiling
children and a few words
about how much good
your donation could do,
but no hard information at all.
Well, they weren't
satisfied with that
and they tried to follow up.
They called some of
the charities and said,
look we're really
serious about giving you
quite substantial
amounts of money,
but we do want to know in
more detail what you would
do with it, how you decide
to fund this program rather
than that program,
what evidence you have
that the program is actually
getting the results that you
want it to have?
And they still got
really no useful response
and in some cases, they
got active hostility
with the suggestion
that these people
were making that their programs
were not working effectively.
Or that in one case,
one organization
suspected that they were from
a rival organization trying
to know what their programs
were and whether they
were going to copy
these programs
or something like that.
So Holden and Elie decided
that there was a vacuum here
that they needed to fill,
and their colleagues
agreed to support them for
awhile in setting up GiveWell
and actually to do some real
research on which organizations
were effective and to try
to get this information
from those organizations.
So GiveWell now has grown to
have quite a significant team,
I think about a
dozen researchers,
and it is-- it's really
raised the standard of what
you can know about
charities being effective.
Before GiveWell, and
some of you in the field
might know there was things
like an organization called
Charity Navigator
and another one
called GuideStar, but
really what they were doing
was getting the form
that the charity sends
to IRS which shows or states--
I should say probably rather
that claims to state the
proportion of expenses that
go on administration,
fundraising, and programs.
But firstly, that's
quite a rubbery figure.
Any creative
accountant can reduce
your administrative amount
and increase your programs
quite significantly.
Secondly, it doesn't
really tell you
very much about how effective
the charity is, because it
doesn't tell you anything about
how effective the programs are.
And you could spend 90% of
your revenue on programs
and still be much less effective
than another charity that
spends 80 or 70 or even 60%
of its revenue on programs,
if its programs
are more effective.
And given that it has
presumably more staff
to select those programs
and to supervise them,
it's quite likely that they
would be much more effective.
So you might do much
better to donate
to the charity that has
higher administrative costs.
So really we didn't know very
much until GiveWell came along.
And GiveWell has certainly made
it have a lot easier for people
who want to give particularly to
global poverty-related issues,
because GiveWell decided
early on that charities that
were spending
money domestically,
say on poverty in
the United States
just couldn't really compete
in terms of dollar for dollar
cost effectiveness
with those spending
money on global poverty.
So if you want to
find that which
are the most effective
charities, there are-- well,
let's say if you want to find
out which of the ones that
have most clearly demonstrated
their effectiveness,
then GiveWell is
the place to go.
And I put it that way because
the charities that they don't
recommend might be highly
effective, too, or some of them
might be highly
effective, but simply
have not been able to produce
the kind of evidence GiveWell
wants.
And sometimes that's not because
they aren't doing good work
but because they're more
diverse and more broad.
The charities that
GiveWell recommends
tend to be very focused on based
on one type of intervention.
So for instance, bed
nets against malaria,
de-worming kids.
There's one called Give Directly
that hands out cash grants
to very poor people.
When you do those things, you
can evaluate very rigorously.
You can actually do a randomized
study in which you get baseline
measurements for
a lot of villages,
let's say, or a lot of schools.
And then, you do
the interventions
in a randomly selected
portion of them.
And you go back and you measure
what difference you're making.
So you can do that
if you're doing
those sort of interventions.
If you're doing a
wide range of things,
as the bigger organizations--
the Oxfams, the Save
the Children's, the
Cares-- do, it's
much harder to evaluate all of
the things across the board.
Plus if you're doing
things like advocacy work--
you're an advocate for
the poor, let's say,
trying to prevent
mining industries
from going into
areas where they're
going to damage the environment
and perhaps pollute rivers
that villages need for their
water or their fishing.
It's very hard to get any kind
of rigorous evaluation of that.
Because they're all
one-off situations.
You can't do a random study
of a large number of mining
companies, half of which you
tried to intervene on behalf
of the poor and half
of which you didn't.
So I'm not saying that these
other organizations are not
doing good work.
I'm just saying that
it's not been possible
for them to demonstrate
what they're doing as well.
Now, I think all of this is
a very significant movement.
Because I think it
challenges traditional ideas
of philanthropy.
And philanthropy is a big
industry in the United States.
Around $335 billion dollars
are given to charities
in the United States each year.
That's about 2% of GDP.
So it's a pretty
large slice of money.
And the majority of
that, about 2/3 of it,
is given by individuals.
The rest is given mostly by
foundations, but a small slice
by corporations.
The foundations, no
doubt, do some research
and have people,
in terms of what
they're going to donate to.
But we know that
most individuals
do no research at all before
donating to a charity.
And the minority that
do some research,
it's mostly very cursory.
And it's often things
like what I mentioned,
looking at the amount that
goes to administration rather
than to programs.
So not very useful research.
And when you add to that the
fact that some charities do,
I think, a very large amount of
good with your money and others
do negligible amounts,
I think that it
would be extremely
important to shift
some of this $240
billion dollars,
say, that's given by individuals
from the less effective
to the more effective charities.
And that may often mean shifting
the area in which it's given.
In fact, of the total $335
billion dollars that's given
to charity in the United States,
there's only a very small
percentage-- really, there's
not even very good statistics
to say what it is-- but perhaps
if it's something like 5%--
that was probably
on the high side,
in terms of what actually goes
to global poverty out of that
amount.
So if, say, GiveWell
thinks that that's clearly
more cost effective
than even charities that
are concerned to help the
poor in the United States,
then there's a big
impact you could have.
And then, when you add to
the fact that, in fact,
the largest recipients of
charity in the United States
are religious
institutions followed
by educational institutions,
and then a lot goes
to art and cultural
institutions,
I think there's clearly
a lot that could
be moved to better causes.
Now, some of it might
not really be movable.
I mean, perhaps people who give
to their religious institutions
will keep doing that and
will be hard to persuade
that they ought to get evidence
about the good that this does.
And you know, if
what you're doing
is giving to have a
better church built,
and you believe that that
is going to save more souls,
then it's certainly
difficult to produce evidence
about how much good that does.
But I've been trying--
I use in the book--
to show that there are very
good grounds for thinking
that you're going to do
more good if you give
to the sorts of things I was
talking about, helping people
who are blind to see,
helping children to survive,
than if you give
to, for example,
art galleries or museums.
Or take an example that was in
the news just a week or so ago.
If, like David Geffen,
you give $100 million
to the restoration
of what has up to now
been Avery Fisher Concert
Hall at the Lincoln Center
in New York, but is about to
become David Geffen Concert
Hall.
So this may seem fairly
obvious, that it's better
to give to the poor than to give
to the renovation of a concert
hall in Manhattan, but the
philanthropy industry, in fact,
resists the idea that you can
even make such comparisons
or that we should
try to persuade
people to go in one direction
rather than the other.
In fact, Rockefeller
Philanthropy Advisors,
one of the biggest philanthropy
advisors in the country--
if you go and look
on their website,
you can find a
brochure called Finding
Your Focus in Philanthropy.
And you could read
in that the idea
that-- to the sort of
question I'm asking,
what's the cause
you should give to?
--there is, they say,
"obviously"-- that's quotes--
no objective answer.
Well, there are certainly
some questions where
it's very difficult
to say, is it better
to give to prevent
climate change?
Or is better to give
to the poor now?
Is it better to give
to still further reduce
what are small risks
of human extinction
from bioterrorism or collision
with an asteroid or possibly,
some people think, the
singularity takeover
by artificially
intelligent machines
that are hostile
to human beings?
How do you compare
that with giving
to help the global poor now?
So there are some genuinely
difficult questions
in which you might
hesitate to say that there
is an objective answer.
But I think, if
you say, is there
an objective answer
to the question,
could David Geffen have
done something better
with $100 million than give
it towards the renovation
of a concert hall?
I think the answer
is clearly, yes.
And so, that's
part of the message
that effective altruists
are trying to get out.
Their trying to say, we
ought to be thinking harder
about philanthropy.
And we ought to be
trying to persuade
people to move away from
some sectors towards others.
And even if this
means people are
going to think that we're
philistines, well, so be it.
There are just
more urgent things
to do in the world
at the moment.
When we deal with those
more urgent things,
sure, let's go back to
supporting the arts financially
and a million other things.
But the world in which we
live-- with more than six
million children dying each
year, children under five,
from poverty-related
causes and, as I've
said, millions of people
blind, whose blindness could
be cured-- that's
not a world in which
we want to go on
supporting these things.
I want to make
sure that you have
time to ask for some questions.
So I'll just say one
more thing very briefly.
And then I'll stop.
And you might ask, well,
why are people doing this?
Are we supposed to
believe that they are just
purely altruistic?
And some people are
skeptical about altruism.
The Effective Altruism
Movement is, despite its name,
not really very concerned
about people's motives.
That is, in particular,
it's not really concerned
to focus on the idea of people
making sacrifices for others.
That's a view of
altruism, right?
That if you're not
making a sacrifice,
if you're not somehow
making yourself worse off,
then you're not an altruist.
Or maybe, you're not even
a morally virtuous person.
I don't need the Effective
Altruism Movement is really
very interested in that.
They're interested
more in the outcomes,
in getting more good
done in the world.
And certainly, I--
and I think most
other effective
altruists-- are actually
very happy if people find that
a rewarding and fulfilling thing
to do.
And there is a lot of
psychological evidence
that people do find it
rewarding and fulfilling,
that people who are generous--
if you do surveys in which you
ask people whether they've given
to charity in the past month,
and then you also ask them
questions about how happy
are they?
What sort of mood are they in?
Are they satisfied
with their life?
--the answers do correlate.
And of course, correlation
is not causation.
But it does seem that generous
people tend to be happier.
Maybe they give generously
because they're happy.
But there is some other evidence
that may suggest causation.
There's evidence of
neuro-imaging studies
where people are having their
brains scanned in real-time.
And they're given a kind
of a kitty, some money.
And they're asked
questions about what
they would like to do with it.
And they're given charitable
options as well as more selfish
kind of spend-it-on-yourself
options.
And when people make
the charitable choice,
the reward areas of their
brain, as they're known-- those
that light up when you have
delicious food or great sex--
light up as well.
So there is some evidence
that the causation
goes in that direction.
Anyway, as I say, I
think a lot of people
in the effective
altruism movement
do find this a fulfilling
and rewarding thing to do.
And it's possible
that one reason why
it's developed at this point is
that there are a lot of people
who feel that they
are not worried
about their economic
security, but they
do lack a sense of
fulfillment in their life.
And this gives them something
that can enhance that sense.
OK, I'll stop there.
And we have, anyway, at least
20 to 25 minutes for questions.
So who would like
to ask a question?
AUDIENCE: Hello,
Professor Singer.
Thank you for coming today.
I've been following GiveWell and
using that to guide my giving--
PETER SINGER: Terrific.
AUDIENCE: --for the
last couple years.
It's been very useful.
I'm also very concerned
about global climate change.
And I feel like if we aren't
doing something about that now,
there's not much point
doing anything else.
Is there a GiveWell
that would help
me decide which charity I should
give to around global climate
change?
PETER SINGER: Not yet.
The closest it comes
to that is GiveWell
has received significant
financial support
from a foundation
called Good Ventures.
And with that support,
their doing something
called the Open
Philanthropy Project.
So whereas the sort of more
traditional work-- if you
can call something
traditional that's only
been going about eight years--
is assessing these charities
quite rigorously, the
Open Philanthropy Project
is doing broad surveys
of different areas
where it might be possible to
have some particular leverage,
where there might be a tipping
point where some input will
make a difference.
So they are looking
at climate change
among a range of other things.
I haven't very
recently gone back
to see what the state
of their report is.
I don't know whether
anyone else in the room
has and knows about that.
But that would be
a place to look.
And if they do find that
climate change is something
that might be an effective
use of charitable dollars,
they will then start looking
at potential organizations
in that field.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
PETER SINGER: Thank you.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Does the thinking around
effective altruism
try to take into account
situations of leverage that
is, for example, instead
of giving money directly
to blindness-- to
lobbying for government
to spend tax money on
that sort of thing?
Or is that just too
difficult to measure?
PETER SINGER: People certainly
do talk about in the Effective
Altruism Movement?
Again, as far as
GiveWell is concerned,
that would be something that
comes under this newer Open
Philanthropy Project rather
than its traditional assessment.
In the book, I have a little bit
of discussion about advocacy.
I have an example
from Oxfam, that they
had an advocacy project.
So Ghana discovered
oil offshore,
which was some sort of
economic boom for them.
It produced hundreds of
millions of dollars of revenue.
And the question was, what
would happen to that revenue?
And we've already seen, in other
African countries like Angola,
that essentially it's
gone to the elite.
It's being corruptly
siphoned off.
Now, Ghana is a
more hopeful country
in that it's more democratic,
got a more functioning
civil society, unlike Angola.
So Oxfam worked with local
civil society in Ghana
to get passage of a law called
Oil for Agriculture, which
allocated 15% of the
government's oil revenues
to help develop agriculture
in impoverished regions.
Particularly, the north
of Ghana is in the Sahel
and very subject to
drought and so on.
So for an expenditure
of a couple of $100,000,
they will now have, I think,
15% of their oil revenues
is over $100 million
going each year, hopefully
effectively-- though we don't
quite know that really--
to help Oil for Agriculture.
So that's like winning
the lottery almost.
Of course, you could do
advocacy on dozens of programs
without it paying off like that.
So it is pretty speculative.
But at least, some
of these programs
do seem to pay off well.
You know, bigger things like
trying to change US government
legislation-- Oxfam has also,
with many other organizations,
tried to get the Farm Bill
changed so that we don't
subsidize the US agricultural
producers that then undercut
developing country agricultural
producers trying to sell
into the same global market.
As you would know, that's
been unsuccessful so far.
Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thank you for coming.
I don't know if you're up for
evaluating specific charities.
Historically, I-- and I think
a number of other coworkers--
have given to Doctors
Without Borders.
I was wondering if you would
consider them effective.
PETER SINGER: So again, this
is difficult for me to comment.
I think they're-- like some
of the other larger ones I
mentioned-- Oxfam and
Save the Children--
GiveWell finds them
difficult to really evaluate.
Because they do a number
of different things.
And so I think you can certainly
look at what GiveWell says
about Doctors Without Borders.
And you'll see why they're
not one of GiveWell's
top-ranked charities.
And I think you should
then look at that
and, then, decide for yourself
whether this is something that
really counts against
them being effective
or merely demonstrates
the difficulty
of proving their effectiveness
by GiveWell standards.
So--
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
PETER SINGER: --I think
that's about all I can say.
Thank you.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So your analogy of the
drowning child scenario
reminds me of something
that I've seen a lot now
on social media with these,
like, pop-up, GoFundMe
campaigns.
Where somebody says, like,
I just have X disease,
and I'm losing my
house, and-- and it
elicits that sort of
drowning-child reaction.
And usually there are photos.
And maybe it's a
friend of a friend,
somebody you sort of know.
And sometimes it elicits
a really huge response.
And I've seen this many times.
How do we weigh something that
does have that kind of impact--
especially if it's somebody
that you know or it's
somebody your friend
knows-- relative to people
that seem so removed?
Or are we just
overreacting, because it
feels like this kind
of drowning child?
I don't know.
PETER SINGER: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I don't know
what to make of it.
PETER SINGER: So I think
we are overreacting,
which is not to say
that you may not want
to do things for your friends.
Even effective altruists
do things to their friends.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be very
nice people to be friends with,
I guess.
But effective
altruists would see
that as something different
from the effective altruism
they would do.
I mean, I think I have
one case I mention
in my book of somebody who's
gives a huge proportion
of his income away.
But he paid a lot
of money to a friend
whose dog was really ill,
so that the dog could
have surgery that was
really quite expensive.
And he sees this
sort of parallel
to deciding to go on a
really expensive holiday
to a tropical island
in winter, not
something that's really
part of his altruism.
But the phenomenon
that you mentioned
is really interesting.
And since writing
that article, I've
learned a lot more about
the psychology of the way
we respond to things.
And one of the most
well-confirmed results
is that we respond to
identifiable individuals.
So Paul Slovic, a
psychologist at Oregon,
did a study where
he got students
to come in for an experiment.
Didn't tell them what
the experiment was.
Said they'd be paid $15.
Gave them a clipboard with
some questions, which they then
answered, assuming that
was the experiment.
They then got paid
$15 in small bills.
And as they were paid it,
the person paying them
said, by the way, our
lab has a charity, which
it supports each month.
Here is some information
about our charity.
Would you mind reading this?
And then, perhaps, you'd like
to give some of what you've just
earned to the charity.
Now, randomly, some of them
got identifying information
about an individual
girl, her name, her age,
and a picture of her.
And others didn't.
They just got
statistical information
that there are children, right?
Well, as you would know from
what you've been saying,
the response with the
identifiable information
got a lot more.
So that's what's going
on here, I think.
And that was, I
guess, what was going
on to some extent
in my pond example.
I was asking you to
imagine there's this child.
You can see this child.
It's an identifiable
child in front of you.
And so, people will give
more in those circumstances.
But I think really, we ought
to become more self-aware
of the little tricks that
our brain plays and try
to compensate for them, really.
We ought to know that,
just as perhaps we
become aware that,
some of us, maybe
there's some sort of tendency
for us to prefer people who
look like us, and
this can fuel racism
and we guard against
that-- so I think,
we ought to be aware
that we have a tendency
to prefer giving to these
identifiable individuals
and guard against that too.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
PETER SINGER: Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thank you for coming.
I was recently introduced to
the Effective Altruism Movement
by some of my colleagues here.
So I consider
myself as a novice,
but someone who is very
interested in learning more.
I think my question today is--
so the effectiveness seems
to be based on a
return or a yield.
For every $100, I get this
X demonstrable effect.
But earlier in your remarks,
you were talking about advocacy.
So I'm wondering if effective
altruists have, sort of,
the stack rank or the
hierarchy of goods
that are worth pursuing?
Because at the human level,
we connect with something,
like a problem, you see
right in front of you.
And that can be very motivating.
It can help an
important cause and make
you feel good about it.
But it's just one of many.
So particularly things,
like human rights
is a hard thing to measure.
PETER SINGER: Mm-hmm.
AUDIENCE: You know,
when someone is working
to create rights for
disenfranchised classes,
whether you give to one
political organization
or another, which one
is doing the most good?
But maybe you can
help be broaden
the question a little bit.
But speak to, how do
sort or stack-rank--
PETER SINGER: So I think
effective altruists--
AUDIENCE: --effectively?
Thank you.
PETER SINGER: --mostly, are
concerned about well-being,
really.
So they're concerned
about reducing suffering,
improving welfare, happiness.
And again, not all of them,
but I think most of them
would try to convert
other things into that.
So if you talk about human
rights as an example,
they would say, well, I think
human rights are important.
But human rights are
important because, really,
in a society that
respects human rights,
there will be fewer abuses,
therefore less suffering.
And there will be
higher welfare.
So I would say, most of
them do have some idea
that if you could somehow
cash-out how much you're
improving welfare by
advocating for human rights,
then you would have
a metric whereby
you could tell whether
advocating for human rights
compares favorably or
unfavorably with providing
basic health care for example.
And in the absence
of that information,
of knowing how that cashes out,
it's very difficult to compare.
And there may be some
people who would actually
think that human rights are
intrinsically valuable even
if they don't lead
to higher welfare.
That's a possibility too.
But that seems to me to be not
the mainstream of the movement.
AUDIENCE: OK, thank you.
PETER SINGER: OK, thanks.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Hi, I
have two questions
on very different ends
of the spectrum of how
to choose how much to give.
And one is, is there thought
among the Effective Altruism
Movement about what's enough
and about when to stop?
And then, on the
other side, I think
tying into some of
the conversation
about human connection and
human psychology-- I wonder some
if one of the reasons why
people prefer local charities
is that it's easier to convince
themselves to give more
or to give more wholeheartedly
or expand that pie of what do
they consider for charity when
it's something that they can
see and connect with?
And if that doesn't
provide some value as well.
But at the same time, there's
also that scaling factor
of how effective they are.
So that's two questions, sort
of on very different ends
of the spectrum.
PETER SINGER: OK, so sorry.
Just while listening to the
second one, the first one
went out of my head, I'm afraid.
AUDIENCE: What's enough?
PETER SINGER: Yeah,
what's enough.
AUDIENCE: And how do you
decide what's enough?
PETER SINGER: OK, good.
So that's really the question
that, as I said, I began with.
And my original
1970s article seemed
to suggest that you never
got to enough until you
got to the point of
marginal utility.
And there's a sense in
which that is the only place
you can draw the line.
And anything else is going
to be unsatisfactory,
if you're really trying to
draw a moral line, right?
But you know, what
I now say-- and I
think what a number of
other people in the movement
would say-- is although that
is the ideal moral limit,
you shouldn't think
of it as, somehow,
if you don't reach that
limit, then you're a failure;
then you're acting wrongly;
then you're an unethical person.
We standardly think of
morality in terms of,
if you don't do what's right,
then you doing what's wrong.
And it's just the
either-or dichotomy there.
And that works for things.
Traditional morality is where
you have these simple rules.
Don't murder.
Don't lie.
Don't cheat.
Don't commit adultery.
Those things you can
either do or not do.
But once you take into account
positive obligations to assist,
I think it's better to
think of morality there
as on a spectrum.
So instead of
saying you've either
reached that point or
you haven't, you've
said, well, I'm here
on the spectrum.
It would be better,
perhaps, morally
if I was further over there.
But I do have these
other interests.
I do have friends
that I care about,
my own interests, those
of my family, and so on.
And even if morality would
tell me I should do more,
this is as far as I'm going.
And you don't have to feel
really terrible about that.
Because, firstly as I say, it's
not a black and white matter.
Secondly, if you look
at how you compare
with pretty much
everybody else in society,
if you're in the Effective
Altruism Movement at all,
you're doing something
slightly or more substantial
than 99 point something of
the population are doing.
So you needn't feel too
bad about that, right?
And now, I've forgotten the
second half of the question,
now that I've
answered the first.
AUDIENCE: My other question
is, does perhaps local giving
and that direct connection
because of human psychology--
PETER SINGER: Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: --give a
bit more or that--
PETER SINGER: Yeah,
do they give more?
Well, maybe.
This is how some
people push back when
I talk about global poverty.
They say, look, you're
going to put off givers.
People give because of their
emotions, their passions
and, perhaps, sometimes also
their personal connections.
And if you tell
them that they have
to give in this more objective
sort of way, they'll give less.
And that's quite possible.
I can't say that that's untrue.
What I would say
is that, sometimes,
even if they're giving
less, because it
will do a multiple times as
good, it might still be better.
The other thing I'd
say is-- although I'm
excited by the emergence of this
Effective Altruism Movement-- I
don't think it's really ever
going to completely dominate
philanthropy.
I think there's always going
to be quite a lot of people
who will give on an emotional
basis and will give locally.
So I don't think
these other charities
are going to disappear.
I think they're still going
to get plenty of funding,
whether we like it or not.
Yep?
AUDIENCE: OK, so I
wrote down part of this.
Because it was a
lot of thoughts.
Kind of on the spectrum
of environmental care
versus poverty
and health care, I
can understand both of those
actually being heavily weighted
for the hierarchy of needs of
the survival of our species.
But my question is pertaining to
the amount of discounting arts
and humanities.
Because, well yes,
it's important to take
care of health and your
basic survival needs.
Those problems-- I
might be pessimistic--
don't see them going away
in a measurable future.
And to say that we
should take care of arts
after all of that is taken
care of-- what kind of humanity
and what kind of
culture would we
have if we focus in that way?
And isn't art and
humanities and culture
a part of well-being and
the full-rounded person
and connection between
multiple people?
PETER SINGER: Yeah.
Look, I'm certainly not against
the arts and humanities.
Especially, obviously, I've
spent my life doing philosophy
in various ways.
And not all of it is directed
to effective altruism.
So I'm clearly interested in
philosophy in its own sake
as well.
But what we're
talking about here
is the charitable
dollars, if you like,
and what good they do.
I think arts and
humanities would not
disappear if we stopped donating
charitable dollars to them.
I think that there is a
desire for artistic expression
in people.
That is something you see
in a huge range of cultures
where there's no commercial
value in it at all.
The indigenous Australians did
rock art, which they certainly
couldn't sell.
They did drawings in the sand,
which were quite ephemeral.
People in concentration
camps tried to create art
if they possibly could.
So I think there is a
human desire to create art.
And you don't really need to
give to support it financially.
I guess what you do
need to do, given
that there's a huge heritage of
art, you need to preserve it.
I'm not suggesting that no money
should go to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art or
Boston equivalent
and, therefore, the building
should fall into disrepair.
And eventually,
all the paintings
there should get ruined.
I certainly think that we
ought to maintain the heritage
for future generations.
But in terms of saying, do
we need to build a new wing?
Or take an example I
used in an earlier book.
Was it really important that
the Metropolitan Museum of Art
acquired a small Madonna by
Duccio, the Sienese painter
for $45 million?
Would it have really
mattered if that painting had
gone to some other art museum?
Or perhaps even to
a private collector?
I think it wouldn't have
mattered as much as what
$45 million could've done.
AUDIENCE: I think that I'm
thinking more of community
based art that's
happening in real-time.
I'm thinking of things that
bring together communities
and liven up
environments to help
connect humans no than
preservation of antiquities.
PETER SINGER: Well,
that's fairly low cost
I would've thought, right?
And--
AUDIENCE: No.
I help throw some
events in Boston.
And it's quite
expensive actually.
It's--
PETER SINGER: Well, there may
be expensive ways of doing it.
But I mean, as I said, I think
communities will create art
without a lot of funding.
And I think that would
be as true in Boston
as it would be in Outback,
Australia, really.
AUDIENCE: Well actually,
funny you should say that.
There's actually
an organization I'm
involved with called Figment.
And we both have events
in New York, Boston,
around the United States,
and Geelong, Australia.
And they're all
community-supported, free
events that require fundraising.
And as far as the value for your
dollar goes, all of the money
that goes into those
foundations goes directly
to the permits and
all of those things
to pull to make these
festivals possible.
And those, then, bring
together communities
and cross socioeconomic
boundaries.
PETER SINGER: OK.
Well, you clearly
are more involved
in this particular
area than I am.
And I won't argue with you.
I would still think that,
if it comes to a choice,
I would rather make
it possible for people
to see than make communities
come together over art.
And I would hope
that you could find
other ways of encouraging people
to have that artistic activity.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
PETER SINGER: Thank you.
Over to this side.
AUDIENCE: Thank you once again
for your wonderful remarks.
You are a philosopher.
Most philosophers are
not effective altruists
as far as I can tell.
You visibly talk to a lot of
your philosophical coworkers
from time to time.
And philosophers do love
arguments, I'm told.
What sort of arguments have
you heard from your colleagues
against effective altruism?
PETER SINGER: Well,
there are some
who present a
different ethical view.
Effective altruism goes
well with a consequentialist
or utilitarian ethic.
But when I say,
goes well with it,
I think you can be an effective
altruist as a deontoligist,
that's somebody
who thinks that we
ought to observe moral rules.
Because generally speaking,
being an effective altruist
doesn't require you to
violate moral rules.
So clearly, in a lot
of use-- for example,
in a standard
Christian ethic, there
is room for helping the poor.
That's something
that's emphasized.
So you certainly don't
have to be a utilitarian
or a consequentialist.
But there has been a
fair amount of discussion
in the literature about
the sorts of arguments
that I've put forward.
Generally, people talk about
the importance to individuals
of pursuing their own projects.
This is something that goes
back to Bernard Williams,
no longer alive,
a philosopher who
claimed that,
somehow, if you like,
every human being has
their own commitments,
their own projects,
their own desires.
And what I'm
suggesting is somehow
to take an external point
of view to that, something
that I've called the
point-of-view of the universe.
Not that the universe
really has a point-of-view,
but to get across
that sort of idea.
And Williams thinks that this
is an abstract notion that
doesn't really motivate
people and that
shouldn't motivate
them, that people should
feel as though
they're able to pursue
their own projects independently
of the external circumstances.
In other words, it's not
that you're free to do that,
even if the circumstance
is such that you could
do more good in another way.
So others talk about
rights and say, well, we
have a right to a
certain level of comfort
or a certain level of
meeting our needs beyond just
the basic needs.
So there certainly is
a literature on that.
I don't know.
I guess that debate is
going to be an ongoing one.
As you say, philosophers
like to argue.
And for any philosophical
thesis that anyone puts up,
there'll certainly be counters.
OK.
And this'll be
the last one then.
AUDIENCE: OK, so I graduated
college two years ago.
And so, I'm relatively new to
this whole having-a-paycheck
thing.
And the first thing
that you learn
about when you get your
paycheck is, here's your 401K.
And you should start saving
for retirement, which
feels ridiculous at the moment.
But then, you see all
these numbers about, well,
if I save this much now,
well then, when I'm 65--
and you don't know
what will happen.
And maybe I'll
have medical costs.
So how do you weigh-- especially
speaking towards the younger
crowd-- preparing for
potential risk in the future
and being safe, prepared,
saving for retirement,
versus being an
altruistic person,
particularly in the
earlier phases of life?
PETER SINGER: So I think you'll
find your own balance in that.
I think people do want to put
some money towards those plans.
As far as medical
costs are concerned,
I think, in the United States,
as long as you're working,
you're going to have
good insurance cover.
When you get to be
65, you're going
to have access to
Medicare, which is vastly
better than most people have.
And should you get dismissed
and fall into serious poverty,
you're going to have Medicaid,
which is not a great program.
But it's probably
pretty unlikely, really,
that you're going to need that.
So that seems to me
to be less of a worry.
Although, in-- I think--
all other affluent nations,
It's less of a concern than
it is in the United States.
Because they have a
better national health
service provision.
But admittedly, you're here.
And then, there are some holes
that you could conceivably
fall through.
So I think you will
still find, though,
that when you've covered
those to a reasonable degree,
you have a surplus
that hangs over
and that that would
enable you to make
those sorts of decisions.
But I don't know, Jeff, whether
you want to comment on this.
Jeff Kauffman is
somebody who has
faced these decisions together
with Julia Wise, his partner.
And Julia has written
about it online.
Shall I ask people or
suggest that they go to that?
JEFF KAUFFMAN: We try
to half of what we earn.
And we end up saving
for retirement.
We do the full Google match.
Because it's, sort
of, free money.
And after that, we save maybe
another 5% to 10% on top
of that.
We were saving for a house.
Now, we've actually
been spending that down.
Because we just bought a house.
But the basic idea being, that
we set a budget for donation.
We put half our money into that.
And then, the rest of it we
divide the way anyone who
earned half as much
as us would divide,
thinking about what
we'll need in the future
and what we need now.
AUDIENCE: I take a
similar but, maybe,
opposite approach,
which is actually
that I save, like, half of
my income for retirement.
And I give a few percent now.
And my thinking is, if I don't
want to retire in 10 years,
I can keep working and just
donate all my income after that
and still have a safety net.
PETER SINGER: OK.
AUDIENCE: You guys are awesome.
It's great.
PETER SINGER: A couple of
interesting and impressive
strategies.
Good to know that they're there.
Have we got--?
Lovely.
AUDIENCE: You could
save for retirement
and then put in a
will that whatever
you didn't need to take
care of you in your old age
could go to charity.
PETER SINGER: You could do that.
Well, for one thing,
I think it's actually
a fulfilling thing to do
to give while you're alive.
And you can see where it's going
and know what you're doing.
And I think, in some
ways, that's better.
Also, you do need to be careful.
Because things change.
For example, in giving,
GiveWell changes its list
of most effective charities.
Each year, it revises
it and those change.
So if you make a will at some
time and revise it frequently,
it can become out-of-date,
in terms of where it's going.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for that.
PETER SINGER: You're welcome.
OK, I think we're
probably out of time.
Thanks very much for coming.
I appreciate your questions.
[APPLAUSE]
