Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life.
How Much Should You Give?
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En provenance du cours de Princeton University
Effective Altruism
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How Much Ought We Do to Help Others?
In this week you will meet three individuals who in different ways embody the ideal of effective altruism: Zell Kravinsky, Julia Wise and Alexander Berger.
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Peter SingerIra W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics
University Center for Human Values
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about that.
About having the things you need and still having enough and, I guess that raises
the whole question which is one of the key things I wanted to talk about today.
About where do you draw the line?
Because I often get asked that myself, and I find it a difficult question to answer.
In one sense the argument that I've used which I've discussed
with this class a few classes back, about saving the child drowning in the pond,
is one that when applied to global poverty, you can repeat indefinitely,
or at least indefinitely given the way the world is today.
So you save one child and that's a better decision than
buying an expensive pair of shoes, but they're more children to save so
you're going to end up never buying anything expensive at all and
maybe reducing yourself to not exactly a cardboard box to bare necessities.
So obviously, you've reached a level where you don't do that,
although you're still giving something very substantial.
Can you sort of talk to us about how you have Jeff
reach a decision about how much you give.
>> So, initially, before I made any sort of purchase I was thinking about
there's a woman somewhere far away from here who needs that money to buy food for
her children, or her kids need immunizations.
And do I need this carton of ice cream more than her kid needs to be vaccinated?
Like clearly the answer is no.
She needs it more than I do.
And I think that was very influential in my thinking about how to deal with money.
But I also think that can drive you crazy if you do it everyday multiple times a day
when you're considering every carton of ice cream,
like just grocery shopping was maddening.
So what we found worked for us was to every six months or
a year or so, say okay, this is our budget, this is what we're giving,
this is what we're gonna keep for ourselves and we'll try that out for
six months, try it out for a year, see how it goes and adjust after that.
And that worked a lot better for
us than the sort of daily angst of trying to figure out what you really needed.
What was a luxury what was a necessity.
And so
in doing that we're able to spend our money pretty much like other people do.
You know we have a budget.
Its a smaller budget than we earn but just like everyone we're working within
a budget, and that money is ours to do what we want with, and
then the other money is given away.
So that system has worked really well for us.
>> Right, so you say in the blog that
we each get about 40 dollars a week in spending money,
which covers clothes, cell phones, gifts, vacations, meals, etcetera.
I guess that means you don't dine out a whole lot.
>> Not a lot. >> I guess you don't spend a lot on
clothes either.
So you are still making decisions presumably within that overall budget.
I agree with you that I think it's impossible to do it on an every
purchase kind of basis, but you feel
like you're not really missing out on anything important within that budget?
>> I don't think so.
In fact, budget has gotten larger and smaller at different times.
But no,
I think we really prioritize spending time with people we enjoy.
We live near Jeff's family and we spend a lot of time with them.
We spend time with our friends and that's really what gives us the most enjoyment.
And the meals out and things like, yeah, we do it from time to time,
but not all that often.
And there are times when money certainly can facilitate
having things that are important, whether that's lunch with a friend or whatever.
And so there's some space for that.
But maybe just not huge amounts of money going to it.
So.
>> Right. What about the vacations?
Can you travel on a budget or you camping out in local parks or something?
>> So for example, when I finished grad school I wanted to work on my Spanish,
we both wanted to work on our Spanish.
So we had saved up for awhile, and we went to Ecuador, spent several
weeks there working on our Spanish and seeing the Indies and it was really great.
So, part of was, we had a reason that we wanted to,
and I now use Spanish in my work all the time.
So I think it was a good investment also, but, you pick and choose.
So, we don't go every summer, but we still travel some.
Yes. >> Right.
So let's talk about your decisions.
Obviously, yours have been different, firstly in that you had made a lot
more money, quite a lot of money, but also you had this situation with your wife and
children that were not really on board with what you were doing.
So how did you decide what to keep for yourself and to donate?
Well, I I set a fund for
my four kids and I set a fund for their college education.
Fortunately, Pennsylvania has a program that's packed towards tuition inflation,
so it has stayed constant and
will provide for them even if they go to place as expensive as this place.
And my daughter is going to Columbia.
Some of the articles don't mention that I did that, but everybody was provided for.
I guess no one will ever feel entirely provided for and people will continue
throughout your life to argue with you that the thing is unwise, but I think that
what you did is gonna be more propulsive an exercise, going to be more shocking.
How people begin to think about changing their lives than, say,
the [INAUDIBLE] profit pledge where fantastically wealthy
people will give away 90% but they'll still have one or two billion.
I have spoken to people about what you've done and a few other people and
I know that it's better than thinking a lot more than [INAUDIBLE] profit.
So I think that when you feel this inner compulsion you should act on it and
let your friends have the benefit of having their mind blown by it.
I also wonder about what you did, if there are some ancillary
benefits beyond even the philanthropic benefits.
For instance, if you or your husband went into to business,
you would have this wonderful penny pension you have been
carrying to your business enterprise and that would make you very rich.
Or when it comes to spending things other than money, like spending time and energy,
don't you find you're more efficient because you are watching the dollars?
>> I hope so.
It's hard to know what I would have been like if I were different, or
had had a different life.
But I actually think one of the main benefits is that
after you finish undergrad,
unless you keep going in academia, you don't always get the chance to have these
sort of stimulating discussions that you were having when you were in school.
And so for a few years, I was sort of missing that in my life.
And now that there's a lot more action around this effective altruism movement,
I've really enjoyed being able
to talk with people about these really important and really interesting problems.
And there's so many aspects to it, both the lifestyle but
also sort of all this development stuff and how do the economics of it work,
how do the [INAUDIBLE] >> [COUGH]
>> Of it, or there are all these
interesting questions and I've met so many interesting people through this.
But, I wouldn't have met people at Princeton and Oxford and all these places.
That's been one of the main benefits to me.
So, that's been one of the main benefits to me.
>> You have the time to visit these people because you're not blowing out time
shopping.
>> [LAUGH] >> Spending your money, you know?
>> Or even, running up a big cellphone bill obviously.
>> [LAUGH] Alexander, let's come to you.
Are there discussions going on among people at Goodwill about how much
each of you give and what your attitude is to spending on yourself?
>> Yes. This is a topic that comes up for
us a lot to say the least.
None of us, I think give at sort of the Jeff and Julia level, although,
we read their blogs and talk about their ideas.
So, it's nice to see Julia in person-ish, for the first time.
But, yeah.
This is an ongoing topic on patient for us.
I think, the typical discussion point is to start with the idea of tithing,
but not for any, particularly, strong reason, just a inherited idea.
I think one of the things we're always conscious of
is the overhoaxing on limiting spending seems like
it can lead to other kind of inefficiencies.
Sometimes I could spend a long time, like, cooking a meal for the week.
But if I was willing to eat out, I would save my time and
I could just spend more time doing my job.
And there's definitely cases of efficiency gains, like that, where you can spend
money to buy time or to buy other things that'll make life easier.
That given the sort of the overall bench of my work,
I think it can be sort of net positive buys.
I got a total focus on sort of minimizing expenditure
as opposed to maximizing output or something like that.
I think missing something, obviously it's different if you're earning to get, or
really the focus is on trying to maximize the amount that you're
going to give monetarily as opposed to, via like other mechanisms.
>> Julia you were nodding about that you also- [INAUDIBLE]
>> Yeah, I think that's absolutely true,
and certainly early on I was very focused on the penny pinching aspect of it.
And eventually my husband pointed out,
if you earned more money, you would have more money to donate and that's a lot.
It's more significant than are you going to eat out or
you gonna cook your dinner tonight.
So I do think emphasizing what you can actually get done
is more important than how little can you spend.
So if you can get more done whether, that's through earning more and
donating more or doing a different sort of work or whatever it
is where you can help, that's more important than, how little can I live on?
>> What do you say to somebody who says, and
a lot of people make this argument, sometimes it's valid.
For a lot of folks,
they feel the way they're donating is they're doing something less lucrative
than they could be doing.
What do you say to people when they say that?
I feel I don't have to give because I could have been a doctor and
instead I'm teaching school.
>> I think it depends on what the impact is.
If you chose to teach school, but actually you could have been a lawyer or
a doctor and higher in several other teachers say,
maybe not in the U.S., but in another country.
Maybe it's better to have those three other teachers and have you be a lawyer or
doctor than it is for you personally to do that.
>> They should commit the decisions to a utilitarian calculus.
>> Sure.
So in your writing Jeff, you often talk about numbers, sort of, and
obviously you have, you're a mathematically gifted person.
Do you feel that you see these things in terms of numbers,
in terms of numbers of lives that you can save?
>> I try to, you know I I may not be as philosophically sophisticated as you but
I think of myself as somebody who, I'm versed on utilitarianism,
and I don't see any other calculus.
People are always saying, how do you compute good to people?
How do you figure out the greatest good for the greatest number?
And then the argument that I think comes out of your writing is at the extremes
of the great good and the- >> Right.
>> Negative that are easily discernible like, the saving of a life.
Yeah, there seem to be some cases that are very clear I guess, but
obviously not everybody thinks about it in those relatively numerical terms,
about the number.
A lot of people think well I want to do some good with my life, but
not necessarily, I want to do the most good.
That's the sort of maximizing idea.
And it's good that some of these organizations like [INAUDIBLE] the whole
affect of altruism movement is forcing charities 501c3s to be
evaluated on essentially a totalitarian- >> Yeah, broadly so.
I think that's fine.
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