{"items": [{"author": "Danner", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463599526984413", "anchor": "fb-463599526984413", "service": "fb", "text": "There is something to be said for occupying your mind and body with things that let it grow, in ways that pure functional utility do not. I'm reminded of 'those that do not bend, break' - while trying to keep a hard line on your ideals is an excellent goal, I think that without some flexibility, encountering a currently unsolvable issue in them might break you before you have a chance to find the solution. Better to bend to a few of your own whims before breaking into train of logic that later is decided to be unsustainable.

Alternatively, damn dude, you certainly go a distance down the logic road for the good ole classic 'What the hell am I doing with my life?' post.", "timestamp": "1340682723"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/112947709146257842066", "anchor": "gp-1340684373375", "service": "gp", "text": "What's wrong with being selfish?\n
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\nAlso, the fact that you're discussing selfishness in terms of what you do for people you like is... interesting. Most people would characterize the actions you describe as highly unselfish. ", "timestamp": 1340684373}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463629053648127", "anchor": "fb-463629053648127", "service": "fb", "text": "I think it's helpful to draw a distinction between two statements:

A: \"Each human's happiness is equally valuable.\"
B: \"I should use my life to maximize human happiness, without regard to whose happiness it is.\"

I agree with statement A (insofar as happiness can be measured and compared). I disagree with statement B.

The reason is that I believe firmly in statement C: \"Each human has the right to seek meaning and joy in the world.\" As such, I do things that I love - like teaching and writing - even though this does not maximize total human happiness.

Being born into a life of privilege, I feel that I have an obligation to help others. After all, if the roles were reversed, and I was born into a life of poverty and disease, I would want privileged strangers to help me. But I wouldn't want them to become miserable doing so; I would still want them to find meaning and joy in the world, no matter what that meant.", "timestamp": "1340688041"}, {"author": "Cecile", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463778836966482", "anchor": "fb-463778836966482", "service": "fb", "text": "Do you think that if everyone took your idea of what is \"right\" to its logical conclusion, it would result in greater overall human happiness? I think that your friends and family are happier being cared for by you than they would be being cared for by strangers, and likewise for the people around the world. I think there's something valuable about concentrating our attentions on a smaller set of people and doing a good job with them rather than being spread too thin, but also not hoarding resources that we can easily spare to help others out.", "timestamp": "1340718037"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463789266965439", "anchor": "fb-463789266965439", "service": "fb", "text": "@Cecile: The problem is that rich people tend to live near other rich people. I mean that globally: the poorest people who live anywhere near me are pretty well off if you compare them to poor people in many other countries. This is even more pronounced with family: as much as I want to help people in my family when things go wrong there's no way my help is doing even 1/100th as much as it could with effective international charity. What I can do goes a lot further helping unrelated strangers than helping nearby people. I think right now there is much too little of people trying to help strangers and the ideal amount is much higher, but if everyone were to take seriously the idea of valuing the joy and suffering of all people equally you're right that we would do better to spend disproportionate effort on the people around us. We have a better sense of what they need and it means more coming from friends and family.", "timestamp": "1340719384"}, {"author": "Daniel", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463856733625359", "anchor": "fb-463856733625359", "service": "fb", "text": "Are you familiar with Peter Singer's \"Famine, Affluence, and Morality\"? His ideas are very similar to yours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine,_Affluence,_and_Morality
Also relevant, demandingness objection linked from first article.

Here's my take on it: we have to differentiate on some level our own happiness and that of the people closest to us from the overall world. Taking care of ourselves, family, and close friends is important. If we didn't, we'd burn out. In failing to take care of ourselves, we would over time lose our worth to the world, our ability to take care of others. Imagine taking your ideas to the extreme, not replacing your own clothes as they wore out, because that money could do more good elsewhere...but then losing your job because you look like a homeless person, or like you don't care about your hygiene. Obviously this is extreme, but it seems to be where your ideas might lead you if taken to their logical conclusion.

If you accept that there's a difference between helping yourself and those closest to you, and helping someone on the other side of the world, the question then becomes how big a difference? To what extent should we bias the metrics towards ourselves and those closest to us? I think there is a threshold of how much we should take care of ourselves to reach our own potential, after which a large portion (but not 100%) of the rest could be given to charity. If it's 100%, motivation can be an issue -- if it's 90% or 95%, we give a lot of benefit to the rest of the world, but we're still able to reward ourselves for the good work we've done.

I think it's important also to note that the fate of the whole world is not in your hands. No matter how much you did, no matter if you gave so much you put yourself in poverty, there would still be a huge amount of suffering in the world. And that's not your responsibility -- it's fabulous that you give so much, but the world needs to be involved to solve the world's problems, not just one relatively affluent person with a big heart. One approach is to quantify the world's problems -- how much money/food would it take to adequately feed everyone, to solve all the major issues we see? Divide this by the number of people in a position to help, and we get a required contribution per capita to solve the problem. If you're in a position to do so, your contribution should be MORE than this amount (because, let's be honest, not everyone is going to do it), but less than an amount that makes you a pauper.

Now, for fair disclosure, I don't give nearly enough, I think, to meet my own ideals let alone yours. Though I do contribute some money to charity. I think your level of giving is very admirable, and I hope you continue -- but be careful of increasing it faster than your income grows. You need to take care of yourself, too, and it's okay to be a little bit selfish.", "timestamp": "1340727920"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463885206955845", "anchor": "fb-463885206955845", "service": "fb", "text": "@Daniel: I've read \"Famine Affluence and Morality\" and I think it's argument is reasonable.

I don't think the \"demandingness objection\" makes sense: if a toddler is drowning in a small puddle because they can't stand up, rescuing them isn't morally optional. If you decide not to help them because you don't feel like it today, that's the wrong choice. How can it matter that the toddlers in real life are far away and dying of malaria instead of nearby having fallen into puddles?

\"Taking care of ourselves, family, and close friends is important. If we didn't, we'd burn out. In failing to take care of ourselves, we would over time lose our worth to the world, our ability to take care of others. Imagine taking your ideas to the extreme, not replacing your own clothes as they wore out, because that money could do more good elsewhere...but then losing your job because you look like a homeless person, or like you don't care about your hygiene.\"

This is an argument that taking insufficient care of ourself and those around us is bad because it limits the help we can give to those far away. I accept it, and don't think that a person trying to do the most good in the world should refuse to buy clothing that lets them keep their job or get a better paying one. But the amount I would need to spend on myself and those around me as a bare minimum to avoid burnout and keep my job is less than what I currently spend. The difference between that minimum and my actual spending is what I'm currently struggling with.

\"If you accept that there's a difference between helping yourself and those closest to you, and helping someone on the other side of the world, the question then becomes how big a difference? To what extent should we bias the metrics towards ourselves and those closest to us?\"

This doesn't follow from your previous paragraph. The reason I object to your \"extreme conclusion\" is that it's not actually a good way to go from the perspective of helping other people, so there's only a moral \"difference between helping yourself and those closest to you, and helping someone on the other side of the world\" in as much as letting the people immediately around me suffer may contribute to burnout.

\"I think there is a threshold of how much we should take care of ourselves to reach our own potential, after which a large portion (but not 100%) of the rest could be given to charity. If it's 100%, motivation can be an issue -- if it's 90% or 95%, we give a lot of benefit to the rest of the world, but we're still able to reward ourselves for the good work we've done.\"

This is in fact pretty much what I do, but it's not something I can fully back up morally. (My threshold is currently that I keep $10K per person in our family, then give a minimum of $20K, then save $30K, then give 30% of total income.)

\"No matter how much you did, no matter if you gave so much you put yourself in poverty, there would still be a huge amount of suffering in the world.\"

This weighs on both sides of any potential action, so it doesn't affect decisions. I'm pretty sure what matters is just the relative difference in joy/suffering between a pair of competing actions.", "timestamp": "1340731568"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=463968936947472", "anchor": "fb-463968936947472", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, I'm with you on the burnout argument. Keeping just enough for yourself to avoid burnout would probably not lead to a very happy life.

I'm curious - do you not believe that each human has a right to pursue their own happiness?

If you pass one drowning toddler, then you're obligated to help. Agreed. But if you live in a world filled with millions of drowning toddlers, then I don't think you're obligated to spend every minute of your life saving them.", "timestamp": "1340740923"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=464030966941269", "anchor": "fb-464030966941269", "service": "fb", "text": "@Ben: \"do you not believe that each human has a right to pursue their own happiness?\"

I don't really think of things in terms of rights, just consequences of actions. So \"what is the consequence of me choosing to let this toddler drown instead of continuing to work\" -> \"the toddler doesn't die (good) I get muddy (bad) I get to work late (bad)\" where the benefit of the toddler not dying is greater than the harm of getting muddy or getting to work late. I'm not sure how a \"right to pursue their own happiness\" fits into this.

\"if you live in a world filled with millions of drowning toddlers, then I don't think you're obligated to spend every minute of your life saving them.\"

If the most useful thing I can be doing really is rescuing toddlers (not putting up fences around puddles or something) and I'm careful to get enough undepressing stuff in my life that I don't burn out, and I figure out some sort of income, this seems like a reasonable thing to treat as a job.", "timestamp": "1340747460"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/463595590318140?comment_id=464043920273307", "anchor": "fb-464043920273307", "service": "fb", "text": "So if I try to boil down your philosophy into a few tenets (with apologies for being a little reductive), I get:

1. Each human's happiness is equally valuable.
2. The worth of an action is measured by its consequences alone.

Those are the assumptions. From these, we can deduce:

3. I should act to raise total happiness, never prioritizing my own happiness above others'.

It's logical. It's simple. It's internally consistent. It also leads - inevitably, I think - to the dilemma you're facing now, which is that actually acting on this philosophy would require making yourself fairly miserable (just not SO miserable that you burn out).

That's why I favor a third tenet, as fundamental to me as the first two: \"Each human has a right to pursue their own happiness.\"

It may sound arbitrary, but you know as well as I do that every argument must begin from bedrock assumptions, for which there can be no logical justification, only intuition. And this assumption feels as natural and intuitive to me as any other. Besides which, I don't see any other way out of your dilemma (call it \"Kaufman's paradox\") that being a \"good\" person will almost certainly make you unhappy. Either you have to abandon one of your two assumptions, or you build in a third which prevents them from yielding an unacceptable conclusion.", "timestamp": "1340749146"}]}