The other thing being that not everyone's characteristic virtues are the same, morally, and so the "terrible temptation to do good" will take different forms for different people. I have learned to my cost there are some kinds of good I am bad at, and maybe that's a fear of getting my hands dirty, but it's also a fear of hurting others instead of helping.
Been thinking for months about why I disagreed with the essay even though it was interesting, and I think it comes down to disagreeing with this point: "And any morality that prioritizes the distant, whether the distant poor or the distant future, is a theoretical-fanaticism, one that cares more about the coherence of its own ultimate intellectual triumph—and not getting its hands dirty—than about the fate of human beings..."
This contradicts my own view on the primary moral failing of people in general, something I call "proximity is a hell of a drug," where the distant count for less than those nearby and those nearby--who is nearer than the self?--get priority at the expense of those further away, whether physically or in terms of relatability. The distant future is theoretical, but the distant poor are emphatically real and the mosquito net that means they don't die of malaria that day is a real good even if not the sum of all goodness. The thing that is beautifully good to me--and I am not in any way an effective altruist or a Singer fan--is in the person who can admit and then live by the truth in the math--that when the seemingly cold and distant numbers represent premature deaths, those numbers matter much more than one's personal comforts. Math can be wonderfully egalitarian, and if every human life is equal, then quantity does matter. To me, a morality that prioritizes the proximate over the distant is at the root of many of humanity's problems, economic, political, or otherwise. Prioritizing the distant with imperfect knowledge of their circumstances has its own problems and in some cases has become distinctly cultlike and blinkered, but it can also be a powerful ethical corrective. The fraud is particularly horrific because it took advantage of money meant to prioritize others' needs and used that to feed Sam Bankman-Fried's grotesque and inflated wants instead. Where the EA's went wrong IMO was less in their goals than in their lack of attention to means--it does matter how you get the money, and working for a hedge fund and donating the money to save kids from malaria has its own repercussions, except due to distance/lack of proximity, those EA's may never see the lives their hedge fund hurt or destroyed.
The other thing being that not everyone's characteristic virtues are the same, morally, and so the "terrible temptation to do good" will take different forms for different people. I have learned to my cost there are some kinds of good I am bad at, and maybe that's a fear of getting my hands dirty, but it's also a fear of hurting others instead of helping.
Been thinking for months about why I disagreed with the essay even though it was interesting, and I think it comes down to disagreeing with this point: "And any morality that prioritizes the distant, whether the distant poor or the distant future, is a theoretical-fanaticism, one that cares more about the coherence of its own ultimate intellectual triumph—and not getting its hands dirty—than about the fate of human beings..."
This contradicts my own view on the primary moral failing of people in general, something I call "proximity is a hell of a drug," where the distant count for less than those nearby and those nearby--who is nearer than the self?--get priority at the expense of those further away, whether physically or in terms of relatability. The distant future is theoretical, but the distant poor are emphatically real and the mosquito net that means they don't die of malaria that day is a real good even if not the sum of all goodness. The thing that is beautifully good to me--and I am not in any way an effective altruist or a Singer fan--is in the person who can admit and then live by the truth in the math--that when the seemingly cold and distant numbers represent premature deaths, those numbers matter much more than one's personal comforts. Math can be wonderfully egalitarian, and if every human life is equal, then quantity does matter. To me, a morality that prioritizes the proximate over the distant is at the root of many of humanity's problems, economic, political, or otherwise. Prioritizing the distant with imperfect knowledge of their circumstances has its own problems and in some cases has become distinctly cultlike and blinkered, but it can also be a powerful ethical corrective. The fraud is particularly horrific because it took advantage of money meant to prioritize others' needs and used that to feed Sam Bankman-Fried's grotesque and inflated wants instead. Where the EA's went wrong IMO was less in their goals than in their lack of attention to means--it does matter how you get the money, and working for a hedge fund and donating the money to save kids from malaria has its own repercussions, except due to distance/lack of proximity, those EA's may never see the lives their hedge fund hurt or destroyed.