A couple of years back I listened to https://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/, a podcast by Tim Ferriss where he interviews Will Macaskill, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University. A good portion of the interview is about the ideas of effective altruism. This is not altruism in the truest sense of the word, where the person doing good gets nothing from it, as there is generally the feeling of having made a difference to the lives of others - call this a narcissistic bent, to feel good, but so be it.
The questions which are discussed are the following (amongst others):
If someone was drowning in a lake in front of you, you would jump in to save them, not worrying too much about the cost of your clothing (even if it were a several hundred dollar suit). You put the life of that person above the monetary cost that you might incur. However, the fact that we might be able to spend that money for a person who we don't know in order to save their life is not something that most people would do. This begs the question, should we not allow ourselves to be just as moved by the person whose life is at risk thousands of miles away as the person in the lake in the park that we are walking in? The fact is that in many places in the world there are hundreds of thousands of lives at risk which are at risk mostly because of vast economic inequalities, and to thus indulge in relatively extravagant lifestyles leaves many serious moral questions to be answered.
So, if we agree that our desire to live relatively expensive lives, spending money on non-essentials means that others are suffering, should we not try to see how we can alter our lives in ways that don't mean that our own suffering is vastly increased, but such that we can alleviate the most suffering in others as possible? The big question then is, what is the best way to go about doing this? There are many ways to give time and money which may have positive impacts (as well as many which have negative), but shouldn't we be asking what is the most good we can do?
Peter Singer has asked exactly that question, in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23168483-the-most-good-you-can-do in this he looks into ways of giving, from pledging a proportion of income to effective organisations (particularly related to malaria prevention - essentially the cheapest way to save a life) to the more extreme end of anonymous organ donation.
So, I can ask myself the same question. What is the most good I can do? There are a number of things that I have implemented already which I will not discuss here, but I wanted to see if simply spreading the word could be a good use of my time and money.
Here is the offer:
Listen to the above podcast. If you find it compelling and would like to read the book by Peter Singer, write in the comments and I will arrange to have a copy of the book sent to you. However, there are caveats:
- If you find that the book has a positive impact on your view of doing good, then I ask that you also pledge to give the book to however many people you feel you can manage, and that you let me know how many that was.
- You let me know the order of magnitude of giving that you make due to the podcast and the book.
I will limit it to 10 books, but I will send them anywhere in the world, so if you would like one (having listened to the podcast), write in the comments and I will arrange for it.
I am doing this, with the caveats, to see if indeed this is an effective way of my spending money (perhaps order of magnitude a couple of hundred dollars). I have a certain amount that I can give, but if I can affect others to give, then I have multiplied the utility of my actions.