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mugasofer:

brin-bellway:

justice-turtle:

this is me thinking out loud some more, not exactly replying, but.

“kindness costs nothing” is a popular saying for why you should be nice. but if you give what costs you nothing, what merit is there in that? if you give only kindness and empathy without material, measurable help, are you giving anything at all?

it comes back to christianity, again. it always does for me. talk about brainwashing.

specifically: the widow’s mite. (a coin, like a farthing or a centime, not a bug.) the story goes – jesus was chilling near the donations box at the temple, and these rich holier-than-thou people came and put big bags of money into the box and made a big deal about how much they donated. and then this poor widow woman came and put in two halfpennies, or mites as some version of the Bible translated it.

and jesus said “see you should be like her. those other people all gave money they didn’t need, and they made a big deal about it so people would think they were holy. she gave god all the money she had, and she didn’t make any fuss about it, because she loves and trusts god That Much. y’all do that too k?”

so, yanno, i mean, brainstuff. giving more than you can afford is How To Be Good. give money, time, gifts, food, but always give what you need for yourself, not just the stuff you could spare or didn’t want anyway; that stuff is no good cos you’re not giving it From The Heart. this is the mindset.

“faith without works is dead.” i think that’s from the book of st james. it’s a Really Big Thing in the catholics vs protestants headbutting match, bc if you boil them both down to a reductio ad absurdam in the bottom of the stockpot (i might be getting sleepy and overextending my metaphors), protestants say “if you have faith you are saved! doesn’t matter what you do!” and catholics say “if you do good things you are saved! doesn’t matter what you believe! although you should still be catholic cos of reasons.” ^_^ so – like brin said, we have no concept of supererogation (i.e. where is the mark that when you go above and beyond that you are going Above and Beyond), you have to do all the good things. and if you catholic this thing in your brain, you cannot be a good unless you are always doing the good things. (idk how that psychological part works if you are protestant. i never really talked religion with any observant mainstream protestants.)

so but like. there’s a line from hamilton the musical, i see it on gifsets. “(death) takes and it takes and it takes”. and i feel like… you give and you give and you give, and there’s a void out there of infinite… it’s like an infinite sponge. it can soak up everything you give it, your whole existence, and you won’t have even made a tiny little difference to the infinity of need. you give and you give and you give, and when you’ve given everything you are, it’s just like you never existed at all.

i know it’s late and i’m getting morose. i had thoughts about dying for a cause too but i’m not sure what they were yet. and what stuntmuppet said about revolutionary selfishness, ethan would like to expand on that at GREAT LENGTH. not tonight tho.

i will mention though cos i think it fits here. i keep feeling like a good way to do assisted suicide, like officially incorporated into society and everything, would be to drain out the person’s blood, put it all in those donation bags like the red cross uses, and then you could give the blood to other people who actually wanted to stay alive. it would be nice. if that was available i would probably do it. and i suspect part of why it seems so appealing is that you can literally give your life helping others live. (also it wouldn’t hurt much and you could just quietly slip off and stop caring.)

The thing is, food still has nutrition regardless of whether you gave it From The Heart. A dollar buys a dollar’s worth of stuff, no matter how small a percentage it is of the donator’s net worth*. And someone who gives a smaller, sustainable portion of their wealth can end up donating more over the long run than someone who goes out in a blaze of glory.

Blood donation is actually a very good example of that. An adult human body contains somewhere around 10 pints of blood, depending on the individual. The regulation quantity and frequency of blood donation is 1 pint every 8 weeks. Someone who donates every 2 months for 2 years has donated more blood than someone who gave every drop in their body, and can still donate again in another 2 months. (And, you know, they’re alive, for whatever that’s worth.) (Some people take longer to recover and can’t sustainably/safely donate every 2 months, but even if you can only do every 4 months, or every 6, all you have to do is live 6 years to outproduce a one-time 10-pint donation.)

I’ve never met a cause worth dying for, but some causes are better served by living, anyway.

(This argument does assume a basically consequentialist mindset, that the amount of help you provide is more important than how you felt while you were doing it. As you described above, there are moral systems that don’t accept this assumption. That’s something fundamental enough that I don’t think I could really talk you in or out of it: if you think “things would go better if you became a consequentialist” is a good reason to become a consequentialist, you already are one.)

I swear I have seen writings from charity nerds about how (and why) to avoid burning yourself out, but I’m having some trouble finding them. Perhaps the charity nerds among my followers know of some?

*Although sometimes a dollar can buy more than a dollar’s worth of stuff if you have enough of them, because of bulk discounts. This is why–though food donations are certainly better than nothing–food banks generally prefer monetary donations: they get excellent discounts and can stretch your dollar farther than you can.

It’s worth noting that, in both Mark and Luke, the story of the Widow’s Mite (from the KJV, which translated the relevant copper coin into the then-contemporary mite) is immediately preceded by a passage condemning … well:

⁴⁵ While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples,⁴⁶ “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.⁴⁷ They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

These are clearly part of the same anecdote, and some commentators argue they should be interpreted as the same passage – rich people take from the poor, then laud themselves for being generous with their money. The widow hasn’t helped more than anyone else; she’s been cost more than anyone else.

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Of course, Jesus was famously in favor of people selling their possessions and becoming wandering monks who may or may not get murdered for their troubles – it was, after all, his own career path – so maybe this theory is wrong, and it’s just a feel-good message.

Still, I think it’s important that Jesus never advocates starving. Letting people stab you in the face, sure, but not starving. Wandering preachers get fed. (And there’s a limited market for them, and it’s hard to build a movement entirely out of penniless wandering preachers; which is one reason I tend to lean toward interpretations where it’s decidedly not meant as a universal calling.)

The Widow is merely cutting things rather close, not sacrificing her life, even in the standard interpretation. 

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No, I think the closest thing to the standard interpretation would be the also currency-nicknamed Parable of the Talents.

In the parable, with which I daresay most readers are familiar, different servants are given different amounts of money to look after. Two servants invest them and make good returns, and thus are rewarded; one merely holds onto it and then gives it back, and is punished.

If you just give what was given to you, then what’s the point? You’re supposed to invest it, to make more.

One person can’t save the world. Ten pints of blood is nothing against the darkness. But invest it? Use that life wisely? And that can become a whole flood of blood in what is an increasingly sticky metaphor.

Of course, even that probably isn’t enough. A servant given two talents isn’t going to make the same amount of money as one given five. But it’s better than handing back your seed money with nothing to show for it.

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catholics say “if you do good things you are saved! doesn’t matter what you believe! although you should still be catholic cos of reasons.” ^_^ so – like brin said, we have no concept of supererogation (i.e. where is the mark that when you go above and beyond that you are going Above and Beyond), you have to do all the good things. and if you catholic this thing in your brain, you cannot be a good unless you are always doing the good things. (idk how that psychological part works if you are protestant. i never really talked religion with any observant mainstream protestants.) 

Many but not all Protestant denominations regard supererogation as a Catholic heresy.

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Focusing on the bottom line is important. But there are two opposite, but related, mistakes in effective altruism that stem from focusing on it too much.

One is, of course, the rich person who goes “oh I saved fifty lives this year, why not buy another yacht?” TBH I have never encountered this mistake, but it definitely happens with non-EA charitable movements, and I don’t know a lot of rich people, it probably happens. 

But the other mistake is the opposite. 

Most people aren’t rich. It’s easy to look at your bottom line and say this is too small, I’m not doing enough because you don’t have very much to give.

But this misses the entire point. 

Utilitarianism not about getting the bigger number. It’s about getting the biggest number. Whether this is larger or smaller than the other guy’s number, whether it’s large or small on an absolute scale (probably small), is not a concern.

If you only have two pennies, and you invest them wisely, then you are a better investor than the rich guy who has an enormous amount of money and spends half of it on a yacht. Simultaneously, he has more money. But you’re still better.

Tithing is a good idea, and I’m glad EA has adopted it. 

But you have to apply that to other things too. Giving more than 10% of your blood, of your life, is definitely supererogatory.

I’m not saying that sacrifice is bad, but for most people, you run into diminishing returns after the first few sacrifices. Being smart about what you do with that sacrifice is far more effective.

And yeah, sometimes that involves “wasting” time making yourself better; using the perfume instead of selling it, being Mary instead of Martha.

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#(October 2016) #(I have decided to queue aglet posts; queue is currently set to four times per day) #conversational aglets #death tw #suicide cw #scrupulosity cw