Reddit reviews The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
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Yale Univ Pr
read this
your options are basically
If money can buy you happiness, them presumably one is not choosing money rather than happiness. Instead, one is choosing more happiness over less happiness.
I can't think of any philosopher who has ever argued that it makes more sense to get money than to be happy, except for the ones who have argued that one has a duty to help others as much as possible, which entails earning lots of money and donating it to charity. See here and here for details. Apart from that though, the choice seems pretty easy: happiness, because money is only useful as a means to some other end, whereas happiness is an end in itself.
Have you been reading Peter Singer? He talks about this in The Most Good You Can Do. Regardless, here, here, and here are some quick reads on kidney donation.
I'm not knowledgeable enough, from a medical perspective, to give you a definitive answer, but I would encourage you to research, in particular, the risks of donating a kidney at such a young age. You should make sure that kidney donation won't affect your development. If you find any legitimate concerns there, you can simply wait until your mid-20's.
Looking beyond its medical aspect, you should ensure that donating a kidney will have minimal effects on your family. Specifically, you should thoroughly research its financial implications. I don't think it's likely to happen, but you certainly don't want to saddle your parents with a lot of medical expenses.
Ultimately, because it's such a major decision, I would urge you to give yourself adequate time to ensure you don't regret your choice to donate a kidney. After doing research, assuming you decide that you want to go through with it, consciously choose to put off acting on the decision for a set period of time. Maybe six months, perhaps a year (3 years?) - I don't know that there's an ideal length of time, but give yourself that time to ensure that you are confident in your decision, as you won't be able to reverse it. If you remain fully committed to the idea at the end of that predetermined period, go for it.
> One thing I would have liked seen addressed in Singer's essay is the worth of an individual human or non humans 'right' to keep existing.
He addresses the specific question of whether death constitutes harm elsewhere, but the argument comes down to what I outlined in my previous post. What were your thoughts on the idea that being deprived of the rest of your life constitutes a harm? I assume you would prefer not to be killed, so what are the reasons for that preference?
> If I were to extend the equal rights, in the manner specified in the essay, to all other animals, my life would technically be of equal worth as pretty much any species we chose as it would have to capacity for pain, interest and impact on others. However, this really seems like a gross simplification.
I think a lot of people get misdirected by the title of the essay. He's not actually arguing for equal rights, or that a human life is worth the same as a given animal. I think he specifically addresses that actually. So it's not equal treatment but rather equal consideration, as in, our consideration of their preferences ought not be biased by speciesism. But that doesn't mean ignoring their capacities. We would factor in those capacities when making moral decisions.
> He also does little to address egoism. With the principles he discussed, how can I morally justify spending $10,000 to go to the hospital to get a cast on a broken arm, when I could save several human or even nonhuman lives.
That's actually something he's written several books about, e.g. He would argue that while this egoism exists, it doesn't mean it's moral or that we should value it. He discusses all the ins & outs of this at length, including what people are willing to sacrifice and what's actually practical without turning people off the whole idea of altruism.
> It feels like he presents an argument that cherry picks when to use human nature. For example when he described someone who is permanently retarded and how we would not suggest to off them based on intelligence but doesn't mention that owning a pet would conflict with animals having equal, appropriate rights.
Yeah, the idea of pet ownership is interesting, and he does address that elsewhere too. The answer isn't straightforward either, from a consequentialist point of view. He's definitely not cherry-picking -- the example of killing a mentally handicapped person is just a way of illustrating our speciesist bias given a similar level of cognitive function.
> > No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering
> just ignores that all suffering is not equal
The key phrase there is "like suffering", meaning suffering of an equivalent kind & severity. It's not saying that all suffering is equal regardless of kind & severity.
> > To mark this boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?
> doesn't explain why those characteristics are arbitrary and uses skin color as if it is equivalent. In fact, mental traits and the lack of disparity in them were the driving force in many of the equal rights movements.
He's just saying that they're arbitrary in the sense that these metrics don't determine "the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness", which he asserts is the "only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others". In that sense, IQ doesn't determine these capacities any more than skin colour. Intelligence might be roughly correlated with these capacities over the broader spectrum of species, but the point is that the thing that matters to the moral question is the capacity to suffer & experience happiness.
> What makes us, us? Is it the suffering, the interest and the fact that we can positively impact other people? Or is there more to it?
I think you're asking, "what makes us qualitatively different to other species". I suppose it's lots of things. You identified, "the fact that we can positively impact other people" which is a great point. In terms of consequences, perhaps it does make sense to treat people differently according to their capacity to do good. When Singer said in that essay that the only defensible boundary of concern is "the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness", that's not actually a complete / accurate representation of his position. Many of the utilitarian thought experiments ask you to choose between killing a medical researcher vs. an unemployed junkie, for example, and Singer acknowledges & discusses this elsewhere. To be honest I'm not sure why he excluded this capacity here. But it's certainly something to factor in between species.
Which factors would you say are grounds for justifying different treatment between humans and, let's say, dolphins?
> Thanks for having this conversation by the way. It is very interesting and educational.
Sure, I'm enjoying it! I love talking philosophy. Moral philosophy / utilitarianism is interesting to me, perhaps because of the practical relevance.
Also, apologies for the novel-length reply. Don't feel like you have to respond to any of it or to continue the navel-gazing on my account, I know these long discussions can get draining.