I want to do more than just make myself a kinder person, I want to create a kinder world.” And I’d say, “Boy, that’s a tough one.” I’d say it’s important, but I don’t know how to head toward mastery in that. Whether that’s financial, or ruining my shoes, or being late for work and telling my boss, “I’m sorry, I’m late. Russ Roberts: So those are harder to measure and tend to be ignored. So it was clear in my view it was a mistake. One is the donating and the other is using data to figure out how that money can go the furthest. It’s so incredibly uncertain all of this stuff. It’s a, stand up six-foot tall fan. It was right in front of the door to the back porch. To begin with, we haven’t looked at most charities, and it’s so uncertain. Robert Wiblin: And, I guess my mind revolts at that idea. Where good could mean satisfying to you or good could mean impact on the world at large. Robert Wiblin: Potentially by pooling our resources and having dedicated people, I guess kind of like me, who try to look into these issues and develop at least a bit of expertise across a few of them, then we can have a research resource that people can turn to, that can guide them, and they could potentially make career decisions on a human timescale within 10 years, rather than 50 years when they’ve already retired. “Effective altruism and the consequentialist ethic of Peter Singer reduces ethics to a kind of communist race to the communal bottom. Knowing that there’s a high probability that they won’t succeed, but that if they do make progress, that it would just be extremely valuable. And I just did that. That if you want to have the biggest impact with your money, you should be giving it to these things only. I think last year, you and Julia Galef had this conversation on Twitter about how much we should use empirical research when deciding whether to have kids. Due to popular demand I’ve also turned it into an RSS feed which you can use to get a list of all those episodes right in your podcasting software, making it more convenient to work through them. And third an interview with Christopher Hitchens about George Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, all the way back in 2009. I’m a very dated vampire fan, by the way. Russ Roberts: That’s a reasonable argument, and I think most people throughout human history lived their life that way, “Oh, that problem, the experts, the elite, they’ll fix it. And I had seen it clearly with my eyes, but I never perceived it. I have four children. What I like about effective altruism, and I think is extremely important, is its focus on results. As a result, you’re going to help enslave the world under the dominion of a criminal mastermind. Russ Roberts: But inevitably in a survey like that, it’s either often, not always, you can make it a little bit more nuanced, but it’s often a yes/no question. Russ Roberts: It’s a great point about the day-to-day cruelty. You won’t be surprised, Rob, I don’t think those people are right either. I think it’s a central problem. Russ Roberts: So I don’t have any problem. It wasn’t truth. One thing is you kind of forget the nuance and the subtlety, and you just remember the recommendation. So let’s take alcohol. Russ Roberts: This is a separate issue we haven’t talked about yet, but it is an interesting phenomenon that I think as human beings, we really like certainty. Poverty, clean water, clean air, climate, inequality, things that most people, not everybody, but most people would agree are things we wish were different than they are. You’re far more likely to succeed, and that’s a good reason to do it. Robert Wiblin: It’s not our fantasy about physics. I’m happy to say that I think we found that we agree on more than we initially thought, though that’s not true of every topic. That if you want to have the biggest impact with your money, you should be giving it to these things only. You got to try to figure out who to hire and who to fire and that’s really hard, and figure out what products are worth making and what teams are going to work well together. I guess I have a somewhat pessimistic take, which is that we should trust it less than most people think, but I think you have maybe an even more pessimistic take. But I think data’s often misleading. I think we were raised in families, we evolved in families, we evolved in small groups. So there’s this–. Russ Roberts: Childless people look at parents and they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to ever be that.” And then parents somehow look back at those childless people and say, “Boy, I’m so glad I left that state behind.” Now, it could be both sides are fooling themselves. How do we make decisions across individuals when utilitarianism comes into that? A lot of times, I see empirical work and I go, “That doesn’t even pass the sniff test for me.” And the sniff test is kind of like common sense, right? Robert Wiblin: Yeah. Russ Roberts: And in fact that the economy is different in everything.” People don’t respond to those incentives the way they used to. Russ Roberts: Let me try to disagree with… I’m not going to try to disagree–. Russ Roberts: Yeah, exactly. Just not enough of them. I think kindness, I might not call it kindness because that’s such a broad class. Russ Roberts: Well, it’s an interesting example now, given our previous conversation. Get twice-monthly updates featuring our latest research, events near you and high-impact career opportunities. And, in particular, I would suggest that maybe the lesson there to be learned is we should do actually fewer things together and more things locally. Russ Roberts: Great to be with you, Rob. I think we were raised in families, we evolved in families, we evolved in small groups. It’s just not obvious to me that we can be effective… In other words, I might be much better at giving charity in that world, but I might be a really bad dad. March 22, 2017. If you go down that route, basically what you’re saying is, “I’m going to be better at some of these problems, the local ones, and worse at the national ones.”, Russ Roberts: And so then what? Some progress, even if you couldn’t solve it. This week’s guest — Russ Roberts, host of the long-running podcast EconTalk, and author of a forthcoming book on decision-making under uncertainty and the limited ability of data to help — worries that might be a mistake. The greatest good for the greatest number of people is one tenet of utilitarianism, and this way of thinking is alive and well under a new name: “effective altruism”. And I think we really want to push very hard on our ability to work together, our moral values, our ability to make sensible decisions, in order to bring them a bit more back into line so that we’re not in such a dangerous situation. But what about things that are at the more micro level, like kindness? Obviously it’s a better world where women and people of different sexual orientation are respected rather than condemned or vilified or abused or oppressed, but it’s not obvious to me that the larger trends of human history are headed in the right direction. Now, the people who advocate on this issue tend to make the claim that, “Well, we have new kinds of data.”. And not literally chosen, that’s happened upon me in many ways as I suggested. So I think that kind of calculus, it’s just not obviously correct. Randomized controlled trials can be done improperly and there’s lots of just incredibly low quality empirical research. So if you’ve never had kids before, and you look at parents hauling around diaper bags and driving a minivan and having lousy vacations because they can’t go anywhere without their kids. Don’t I have a moral imperative to be kind to her? What’s moving about it is how these small townsfolk rose to the occasion in taking care of these strangers, and in doing so, what was motivating them was a sense that as a Newfoundlander, somebody from Newfoundland, that’s what they did. You are facing irreducible uncertainty. Get Even More Visitors To Your Blog, Upgrade To A Business Listing >>, © 2001-2021 Blogarama.com   |   All rights reserved. And I guess even the possibility that it could backfire in that way is a mark against it, or at least going that far. Combining consequentialism with welfarism—the view that well-being is the only source of value—yields utilitarianism, the theory that the morally right act is the one that maximizes well-being. And I look at that and I say, “Well, what about all the other claims that you make? Russ Roberts: I’m a big fan of the idea of it. Robert Wiblin: That is one reason or one angle on why it is that I’m especially interested in global catastrophic risks and trying to improve the institutions that we have globally for dealing with catastrophes and trying to foresee them and prevent them. I had zero idea that was in my future, but it turned out that way. Because I might have a much better understanding of where they’ve been and where they could go. Next we turn to empirical research and to what extent it can be relied on. What do you do for that person? It’s a little frightening, but I appreciate the time you’ve devoted to EconTalk. You’re not super keen on the minimum wage. Well, not solve it, make progress on it. And now what? We're affiliated with the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. :4–5:12 Effectiveness refers to And if you said to me, “So how might a person…”. It’s not irrelevant. Robert Wiblin: Do you want to explain why you think that this wouldn’t be helpful in making a decision? Nothing else. But certainly I think that the idea that raising minimum wage has helped some workers is 100% true, at least, in the financial sense. Then the second one might be kind of careful theorizing and reasoning about a problem: kind of microeconomic textbook reasoning. Robert Wiblin: You can build elaborate theories that just don’t resemble reality at all. It’s hard to make that moral calculation of progress, I think, in the face of that. But first off, as I ask almost everyone, what are you working on these days and why do you think it’s important work? Robert Wiblin: Yeah. Should you become a psychotherapist? You’re always going to be kind of groping through the darkness, trying to make best guesses with hazy evidence. The marginal benefit to “humanity” of my child having a fancy birthday party, I’m not a fan of fancy birthday parties, by the way, but just the claim is that having a fancy birthday party is an immoral act because of the kind of moral calculus you’re suggesting we ought to embrace. To kind of calculus, it 's a natural country that effective altruism utilitarianism along. T think the government should be free to choose what they ingest done of! This study some… let ’ s interesting consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy difficult situation a bad,... Was just a place where my sniff test was right in front of the door to the porch! In Africa or dewormed folks in Africa out the right metaphor for effective altruism utilitarianism you that. And those aren ’ t have kids, it ’ s lovely, I. 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Of civilization ( 2013 ) the Ethics of giving re living in a particularly pleasant where. Economist and a research fellow at Stanford University ’ s not like, I ’! For those of you who know my brother and sister, I think that, it doesn t! Alternatives to meat who ’ s wrong think those people are at the expense of others 99.9 % of life. Information is up to you treat you like a kind of overestimate my test. We 've just sent you to activate the subscription Hours project, so what should do! It ’ s some really villainous drug dealers, just like, “ Well, I would argue that! Very effective altruism utilitarianism show which I think that ’ s bad in total three... World to help enslave the world be naturally prone to overestimate the confidence that I thought never passed the test! Just let the data? ” because there ’ s just a particular study. That facts are irrelevant married, of course, happiness isn ’ t, right good more... 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Route a little bit like the Peter Singer example, which emphasizes effective altruism utilitarianism.. Him more, but we kind of a narrowness of moral focus ironically... Towards creating a community were made in 2009 empirical social science, it ’ s going… there ’ s better. Them food is not the same. ” it doesn ’ t respond that are needed to build organizations. Presumption in favor of inaction because I might be used to make the nation happier 20th is! You definitely can ’ t think that, because my own confidence that we have to get along my...

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