All of PeterSinger's Comments + Replies

As it happens, more or less simultaneously with this AMA, there is a Pea Soup discussion going on in response to a text about my views by Johann Frick.  My response to Johann is relevant to this question, even though it doesn't use the satisficing terminology.  But do take a look:

https://peasoupblog.com/2024/07/johann-frick-singer-without-utilitarianism-on-ecumenicalism-and-esotericism-in-practical-ethics/#comment-28935

I'm going to stop answering your questions now, as I've got other things I need to do as well as the Pea Soup discussion, includi... (read more)

In practice, no.  For example, I am willing to bite the bullet on saying that torture is not always wrong - the case of the terrorist who has planted a nuclear bomb in a big city that will detonate in a few hours, unless we torture his small child in front of him.  How much weight should I give to the possibility that, for example, torture is always wrong, even if it is the only way to prevent a much greater amount of suffering?  I have no idea.  I'm not clear how - in the absence of a divine being and who has commanded us not to do it - it could be wrong, in such circumstances. And I don't give any serious credence to the existence of such a being.

I give more credence to the idea that some insects, and a wider range of crustaceans than just lobsters and crabs, are sentient and therefore must be inside my moral circle.  But see my reply to "justsaying" above - I still have no idea what their suffering would be like, and therefore how much weight to give it.  (Of course, the numbers count too.)  

The things that most people can see are good, and which therefore would bring more people into the movement.  Like finding the best ways to help people in extreme poverty, and ending factory farming (see my above answer to what I would do if I were in my twenties).  

One common objection to what The Life You Can Save and GiveWell are doing - recommending the most effective charities to help people in extreme poverty - is that this is a band-aid, and doesn't get at the underlying problems, for which structural change is needed. I'd like to see more EAs engaging with that objection, and assessing paths to structural changes that are feasible and likely to make a difference.

Thanks, Tyler.  Here is the piece: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/peter-singer-is-committed-to-controversial-ideas

It's really hard to know what relative weights to give chickens, and harder still with shrimp or insects.  The Rethink Priorities weights could be wrong by orders of magnitude, but they might also be roughly correct.  

Re the Meat Eater Problem (see Michael Plant's article in the Journal of Controversial Ideas) I don't think we will get to a better, kinder world by letting people die from preventable, poverty-related conditions.  A world without poverty is more likely to come around to caring about animals than one in which some are wealthy a... (read more)

Good question, but I don't have a good answer.  My answer is more pragmatic than principled (see, for example, my previous response to Devon Fritz's question about what EA is getting most wrong.)

Placing too much emphasis on longtermism.  I'm not against longtermism at all - it's true that we neglect future sentient beings, as we neglect people who are distant from us, and as we neglect nonhuman animals. But it's not good for people to get the impresson that EA is mostly about longtermism. That impression hinders the prospects of EA becoming a broad and popular movement that attracts a wide range of people, and we have an important message to get across to those people: some ways of doing good are hundreds of times more effective than others.

M... (read more)

If you want a more concrete example of what Parfit took to be an irreducibly normative truth, it might be that the fact that if I do X, someone will be in agony is a reason against doing X (not necessarily a conclusive reason, of course). 

When Parfit said that if there are no such truths, nothing would matter, he meant that nothing would matter in an objective sense.  It might matter to me, of course.  But it wouldn't really matter.  I agree with that, although I can also see that the fact that something matters to me, or to those I lov... (read more)

Getting too far ahead of where most people are - for example, by talking about insect suffering. It's hard enough, at present, to get people to care about chickens or fish. We need to focus on areas in which many people are already on our side, and others can be persuaded to come over.  Otherwise, we aren't likely to make progress, and without occasional concrete gains for animals, we won't be able to grow the movement.

I'm not sure that I'd be a philosopher today.  When I was in my twenties, practical ethics was virtually a new field, and there was a lot to be done.  (Of course, it wasn't really new, because philosophers had discussed practical issues from Plato onwards, but it had been neglected in the 20th century, so it seemed new.)  Now there are many very good people working in practical ethics, and it is harder to have an impact.   Perhaps I would become a full-time campaigner, either for effective altruism in general, or more specifically, agai... (read more)

My introduction to philosophy was Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which I read while in high school (there were no philosophy classes in Australian high schools then) so that clearly had a significant influence on me, but more in informing me about what philosophy is, and in interesting me in some of the ideas discussed, rather than in the sense of influencing me in specific beliefs.  Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics had a much greater influence on me, firstly in showing me how many commonsense moral rules can be explained as offerin... (read more)

Daniel, Thanks for referring people to that Future of Life podcast interview in which I explain why I became a moral realist.  Given that I've dealt with the issue quite fully there, I'll move on to other questions.

Why is the choice not directly comparable? If it were possible to offer a blind person a choice between being able to see, or having a guide dog, would it be so difficult for the blind person to choose?

Still, if you can suggest better comparisons that make the same point, I'll be happy to use them.

These are good points and I'm suitably chastened for not being sufficiently thorough in checking Toby Ord's claims,
I'm pleased to see that GiveWell is again investigating treating blindness: http://blog.givewell.org/2017/05/11/update-on-our-views-on-cataract-surgery/. In this very recent post, they say: "We believe there is evidence that cataract surgeries substantially improve vision. Very roughly, we estimate that the cost-effectiveness of cataract surgery is ~$1,000 per severe visual impairment reversed.[1]"
The footnote reads: "This estim... (read more)

I don't understand the objection about it being "ableist" to say funding should go towards preventing people becoming blind rather than training guide dogs

If "ableism" is really supposed to be like racism or sexism, then we should not regard it as better to be able to see than to have the disability of not being able to see. But if people who cannot see are no worse off than people who can see, why should we even provide guide dogs for them? On the other hand, if -- more sensibly -- disability activists think that people who are unab... (read more)

Regrettably, I misspoke in my TED talk when I referred to "curing" blindness from trachoma. I should have said "preventing." (I used to talk about curing blindness by performing cataract surgery, and that may be the cause of the slip.) But there is a source for the figure I cited, and it is not GiveWell. I give the details in The Most Good You Can Do", in an endnote on p. 194, but to save you all looking it up, here it is:

"I owe this comparison to Toby Ord, “The moral imperative towards cost-effectiveness,” http://www.givi... (read more)