The real draw of EA/utilitarianism is abstracting away the need to make difficult ethical decisions by just throwing money at things and feeling good about it.
For example, to paraphrase the article: “I don’t want to grapple with the structural issues facing the US that lead to gun violence. Instead, if I look at the number of people killed by guns and save the same amount of people from dying from malaria, that’s equivalent and I can stop thinking about it, right?”
This whole article is a tactical blunder. He keeps bringing up the 200000 lives saved from malaria. That’s good! If you proved to me that an organization saved 200k lives, I wouldn’t have any animosity towards them unless you gave me a reason. Cue the rest of the commentary.
The real draw of EA/utilitarianism is abstracting away the need to make difficult ethical decisions by just throwing money at things and feeling good about it.
For example, to paraphrase the article: “I don’t want to grapple with the structural issues facing the US that lead to gun violence. Instead, if I look at the number of people killed by guns and save the same amount of people from dying from malaria, that’s equivalent and I can stop thinking about it, right?”
This whole article is a tactical blunder. He keeps bringing up the 200000 lives saved from malaria. That’s good! If you proved to me that an organization saved 200k lives, I wouldn’t have any animosity towards them unless you gave me a reason. Cue the rest of the commentary.