Charities and the most good
the world with lower living standards, spread across parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia) in the wake of colonialism.
Therefore, because we exist in a world where you could have been born as anybody, and where new people are born, in random identities, every second, as someone in the position to donate money, it is understandable to want to create the maximum good out of your donation. When it is statistically likely that somebody being born will be to some extent oppressed by society, whether you are also somewhat oppressed, if you have the means to donate money, some will even say you have a duty to try to help as many people as possible, because you have in some way benefited from the oppression of others, and so you have a moral imperative to stop, or at least mitigate, that oppression. This leads many to the conclusion of pure effective altruism, as it presents itself as an effective solution to help solve the problems that subjugate and oppress people across the world. Normally, an effective altruist would recommend buying mosquitos nets for people in malaria-ridden countries, as they are very cheap for a person in the Global North, and have the ability to save lives very easily. Here, effective altruism can be seen at its best, as it offers clear benefits; unlike most other approaches, effective altruism removes cultural bias from its decision-making, allowing donors to help especially deprived areas of society. This becomes even more important when reconsidered against the idea of the lottery of birth. One of the harsh lessons of the treatment of Ukrainian refugees has been the harsh contrast to the reception of refuges from Arab and African nations, such as Syria and Sudan. When it is increasingly clear that, as a group, the populations of the global North lack the ability to empathize with those with more different cultures and appearances, it becomes clear that choosing to donate money based on the effect only is especially important, as it removes bias from decision-making, in theory, and can help those whose plights who are less covered by news headlines and so would normally receive fewer donations. This vision, of using reasoning and science to identify efficient avenues of change, however, is something I sincerely doubt. While I recognize the possibility of researching problems and solutions, and comparing their merits, ultimately I believe that to claim any form of objectivity in the amount of ‘ good ’ created will fail. This is because of the reality of time, as well as the complex value systems, notably different for every person, that inform our sense of morality. To test effective altruism, I will continue to use the example of a mosquito net, as, more than anything else, it shows effective altruism at its best, being cheap, demonstrably effective and targeted at an often ignored problem. However, what effective altruism is still unable to do is prove any degree of good, as even if a person is at a high risk of malaria, and receives a mosquito net, the good done to them at best is an approximation: it is impossible to know truly whether they would have contracted malaria. At best, we can make approximations based on data to find the rough amount of good created, but even this is inherently of lesser value; once we are dealing with approximations of potential good, or potential harm averted, decisions to help seem much more rational. For example, the potential harm a meteor headed to Earth could cause could be considered the highest conceivable harm to modern humanity, as the chance it may wipe out all of us, however small, could easily be seen as something that you have the avert; even if the small part of your salary that you donate is not enough to fund a system to deflect this asteroid, on the basis of creating the most good, the potential, even if miniscule, of helping stop such a disaster means that, if anything, this is the ideal cause for you to donate to.
239
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker