Devil’s Advocate says Hi. Also: Philanthropy & ERE.

[jacob]

I think we'll let the Devil's Advocate answer that one. At least in this thread it seems to be restricted to the direct rescue of babies or paying for such rescue but not raising awareness of such rescue nor writing manuals about rescuing.

We could apply the duck-test (if it walks like duck and quacks like a duck) or the porn-test (I can't define it but I know it when I see it) but given how hard that is to do with retirement that's probably not going to work either.

[workathome]

"The poor you will always have with you"

I'm not sure how dumping food into starving population's mouths so they can just starve an an exponentially higher rate in a few years is a good idea if your goal is to eliminate human suffering. If you're goal is to feel righteous and important implementing band-aid solutions, go for it!

Far wealthier, far richer individuals (i.e. Gates & Buffett) are dumping insane amounts of wealth on these problems and running large organizations intent solely on finding fixes. Good luck to you if you think your brief life is best spent trying to outdo them.

[jacob]

@Seneca -

<satirical mode on>

I see, so in order to bring down the aggregate pain, I should have children so that they may outcompete other potential children's parents for food resources so that those who have lots of children die before they can reproduce. Even better, the parents of the future parents about to die would smile when they see my babies.

It's just like eliminating AIDS that way. Same argument.

And here's another thing. My children will all work in the defense industry and they will have ideas. And the more children I have the more ideas they will have to better kill other people. I can express this with a simple equation. All ideas = Sum individual with ideas. The ideas range from "hey lets put on a show" to "how can I build computers out of silicon" to "how do I take that person's food when I'm hungry" to "how do I kill him most effectively" to "how can I solve my problem of lebensraum with mass genocide". So the more children I have, the more ideas there will be in total. Makes me wonder why tech companies don't go and hire everybody they possibly can when theutility of ideas is neatly given by a quantitative argument. Clearly having ten kids and sending them to community college results in better ideas than having one child and sending them to MIT. The great thing about ideas is that they can be copied. So if I figure out how to take some one elses food, maybe they can copy my idea and take my food. Then we can use other ideas to fight each other.

Lets presume for a moment, that babies grow up. I know this is not in accordance with standard economic assumptions. Then at some point that baby is going to grow up. While the baby was a private liability when growing up to the parents (and perhaps some philanthropist who then didn't spend the money to cure cancer), the grown up baby becomes my externality and I pay the cost.

So if I emphasize all the negative qualities of humans, I conclude that the world is overpopulated.

<satirical mode off>

It is indeed about what the right population level is.

In particular, there's an issue which is hard for his mathematical simplification to capture, namely the difference between investing in the quantity of offspring and the quality of offspring when it comes to building a happier world. Another thing to consider is that the sum total of happiness of a world of 1 billion very happy people is higher than the sum total of a world with 10 billion occasionally happy people. It's not the total amount that matters but the average amount.

[Ego]

So does elevate it to the level of philanthropy?

Notice the presumption. Elevate. There are many cultures where that idea is silly, where that place in the sentence would naturally be filled with something like "diminish". Those cultures may be more coarse - and more brutally honest - than our own. Yet we don't even think twice about it because we have been indoctrinated into celebrating (worshiping) those who don the cloak of the altruist without even questioning whether it is possible to be one. Short answer, it isn't. For an example of this indoctrination see the despicable best-selling children's book, "The Giving Tree".

The gap of dishonesty between the truth (I am getting something from my philanthropy) and the charade (I am giving because I am altruistic - just look how altruistic I am!) causes a whole lot of problems. It assuages the guilt of bad behavior and it elevates what would otherwise be diminished.

[Chad]

I may brought this up before.

Mosquito nets. This is one of the most cost effective ways to save a life. However, it seems like all we are doing is saving a life for a long slow slog of pain. I'm all for philanthropy, but it seems that direct long term aid that just provides stuff (food, water, wells, nets, etc.) only postpones the inevitable and creates long term pain, while creating a dependency.

Concerning population levels, I do think we have to be aware of the strain our current level of population is putting on the resources of the world. The fish population of the ocean is a prime example. It would be better if we had the courage to institute rules/education now that encourage having fewer kids, as we wouldn't have to be draconian about it at this point. But, we will have to be in the future (sterilization, war, etc.) if we don't do the right thing now.

There is also the danger that nature will do it for us. The more of us, and our animals, living together, the more likely we finally catch something like Spanish Flu again.

[Ego]

Mosquito nets. This is one of the most cost effective ways to save a life.

Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 5999200083

Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They'll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.

I agree with the point about exacerbating suffering.

[Chad]

Mosquito nets. This is one of the most cost effective ways to save a life.

Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 5999200083

Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They'll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.

I agree with the point about exacerbating suffering.

This is exactly what I'm talking about and it doesn't just apply to the nets.

On an interesting and somewhat connected side note Yellowstone found that introducing wolves back into the environment has actually impacted the rivers that run through the area.

Monbiot describes what researchers found after wolves were reintroduced in 1995. Elk had overrun the park, destroying the vegetation with overgrazing. Wolves began preying on the elk, which in turn started avoiding the valleys and gorges that provided less protection.

Those areas started to regenerate. Trees grew taller, and bare slopes filled with aspen and cottonwood.

"As soon as that happened, the birds started moving in," Monbiot says. "The number of beavers started to increase. ... The dams they built provided habitats for muskrats, otters, ducks and fish and reptiles and amphibians."

River banks grew sturdier with vegetation and rivers became less meandering, creating pools that attracted more wildlife.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_25 ... ange-parks

Changing one variable changes all the variables. The same obviously applies to philanthropy. It's not that it shouldn't be done, but it needs to be done with care and in the most organic process possible.

[jennypenny]

So does elevate it to the level of philanthropy?

Notice the presumption. Elevate. There are many cultures where that idea is silly, where that place in the sentence would naturally be filled with something like "diminish". Those cultures may be more coarse - and more brutally honest - than our own. Yet we don't even think twice about it because we have been indoctrinated into celebrating (worshiping) those who don the cloak of the altruist without even questioning whether it is possible to be one. Short answer, it isn't. For an example of this indoctrination see the despicable best-selling children's book, "The Giving Tree".

The gap of dishonesty between the truth (I am getting something from my philanthropy) and the charade (I am giving because I am altruistic - just look how altruistic I am!) causes a whole lot of problems. It assuages the guilt of bad behavior and it elevates what would otherwise be diminished.

Haha, yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb (in this crowd) and say 'elevate', and that philanthropy implies doing more than what any responsible person would do. To my mind, it even means more than sitting around congratulating myself for all of the things I didn't do for the greater good. It means getting off the couch and helping someone. Sure, if I feed that starving kid a meal, he might be hungry again tomorrow. You know what? I'm still feeding him, and as many others as I can. I just can't picture myself saying "Hey kid, I know you're really hungry, but if I give you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right now, you'll just get a sugar rush and be even hungrier tomorrow. It's so much better for you if eat this sandwich myself."

If that makes me a heartless bastard around here, so be it.


btw ... Even if I agreed with everyone's take on overpopulation, I'm too much of a doomer to worry about it. Something--pandemic, war, famine--will cull the herd.

[archi]

Philanthopy is not the same as charity.

Charity is about giving arbitrary amounts of money to people you choose, based on your own selection criteria. On top of that charity, if not anonymous, expects some gratitude from the person who receives.

As George the Original One says

Code: Select all

"Why not build a better society that doesn't require charity?

Charity is not about fighting inequalities. Charity assumes inequalities will always exist. Playing the devil's advocate myself, I would ask: what do you buy with charity ? Isn't it about easing the feeling that you participate to an unfair society ?

If you want to make the world a better place, the are many ways to invest time and money that are better than charity.

[Ego]

I've got a friend who is morbidly obese. He has a very big job with a very big corporation. While the company gives lip service to the health of their employees, there is a self-enforcing culture among management that says if an employee can find time and energy to exercise or otherwise be healthy, he is not giving enough (everything) to the company. After all - the theory goes - the company is the ultimate provider for the employee's family so the employee is expected to give everything to the company in exchange.

This self-destructive culture is not natural and does not simply appear out of thin air. It is promoted and reinforced in a thousand different ways. Right now it is being promote by the story of the evil Korean ship captain who abandoned his ship and his angelic cafeteria worker who stayed behind to help others and went down with it. And of course the story of Easter.

The highest praise we give to human beings is to those who sacrifice everything for others.

Devil's Advocate has considered going back to work so he can give almost everything to others. In the last few pages of this thread we've talked about how that giving affects the recipient. I'd like to point out that the culture of "give-everything" also affects the giver and the culture of giving in general.

When we look around us we are shocked by the self-destructive behaviors we see. Obesity, indebtedness, drink, drugs, gambling, self-violence,..... We see people making consistently bad decisions and we are perplexed as to why they continue to do it. What makes them do it? What are they getting from it?

Are our self-flagellating friends wearing their selflessness, their charity, their ultimate philanthropy for all to see? Could it be that the Easter story, the beatification of the cafeteria worker and my friend's work culture all conspire to turn self-destruction into a virtue?

[Devil's Advocate]

Thank you for your inputs, people. Your thoughts have greatly helped me clarify mine own.

A quick apology first. The question I had put you here is an intensely personal one. This kind of ethical question it is necessary to ask oneself, else we would be only half-human ; but equally, it is nothing less than obscene to ask this question of another. Because it is tantamount to questioning free will, which I hold to be sacrosanct above all else (as long, of course, as no overt harm is being done, and that isn’t the case here). But this group is, I believe, “strong” enough not be ‘damaged’ by such introspection, dissonance or knee-jerk reaction. And now, at the end of this discussion, I fully retract any implicit blame I may have indirectly apportioned. That question was and remains mine own, for me to answer for myself. (Unless you choose to retain it for yourselves, in which case that is your business.)

My position, my what-I’ll-do-now answer, is still not fully crystal. But I do see that this case is indeed like any other consumerist decision (although with a different level of urgency for me, but that is personal : someone else may well have a similar urgency for something entirely different, or for nothing at all, and that is fine too). This one question will probably not throw me back into the dog race, but it will definitely get me off my fat ass to do a bit just now (and do more later, should I happen to opt to get back to the hurly burly later on for other independent reasons).

But one important thing : simply throwing dollars is a total cop-out. If one does anything, one must do it all the way. Else it is simply an exercise in self-gratification, a sort of masturbation of the conscience, no matter how big the dollar amount. This is one important “take-away” that I am, well, taking away from this whole discussion.

And yet another thing I’m carrying away. A reminder that no matter what one does, it is essential to keep on examining one’s inner motivation and thinking process. If one is doing a lot, but doing it only to inflate one’s ego or one’s “legacy”, that is definitely off. Although of course, counter-point even to that : that any good action even with questionable motives may be better than no action with the best motives. But that’s a long rabbit hole, and probably cannot be answered definitely and objectively one way or the other, and remains a subjective take.

Ego, I agree this sort of thing can degenerate into self-flagellation, and the sort of attitude you describe is perhaps actually systematically encouraged, leading down into a giddy vicious cycle, but I really don’t think that is the case here, in this instance. Think of it as someone perturbed about, say, the falling standards of popular music or popular art and wanting to do something about it (at least as regards their own immediate surroundings). Or whatever. I mean, something entirely subjective and personal and value-free. And in any case, I detract the question altogether now, having had it answered already to my satisfaction, more or less. You needn’t keep it any longer unless you yourself want to.

Spartan Warrior, of course I believe both you and JennyPenny when you say that should you come by some windfall you will donate it or otherwise use it for good. Wouldn’t dream of thinking otherwise if you yourselves say so after carefully thinking about it! In any case, it is not even remotely my business. Just an abstract discussion, this, with the specifics only used as examples, no more.

As to the definition of philanthropy and charity and doing good, well, a quick riffling of the dictionary pages should answer that. And a few clicks online will answer that in greater detail. It is quite clear what these three things mean. [Charity is giving a man fish to eat, and does not necessarily exclude hunkering down and teaching a starveling how to fish ; philanthropy is doing the same thing in a more corporate-ish way, that is, setting up a trust or a system or a volunteer group to give fish, or to teach folks fishing ; while a more permanent, deeper way of doing good is to bring about a world and a system where no one may be brought to the stage of starving if on some day the fish do not bite, and this third very commendable course of action is neither charity nor philanthropy—although its scope may actually be even more valuable (or, of course, not—it depends on the individual case). Of course each of these could address less urgent means too, and charity could, for example, encompass sponsoring a non-starveling’s college education or even an educational tour abroad, and philanthropy could entail providing a well-equipped playing field or free lessons in classical music for fairly well off children. Which issue to choose is a personal decision, although my own personal feel is that the more basic and urgent needs should take precedence. The wider ‘jacobish’ way (if I may call it that, based on Jacob’s posts here) of doing good would almost always be more broad, encompassing both the urgent and the non-urgent, but only indirectly and incidentally.] The meanings are plain : the values we ascribe to these three activities may differ, but the meaning won’t change with those values. So, Jacob, you may do ten times as much real and long-lasting good with some deep-rooted indirect social change project, but that won’t qualify as philanthropy unless it is indeed philanthropy—you can’t change dictionary meanings just like that (unless of course you started the trend, I followed it, everyone here followed the trend too, and the word changed its meaning through usage as words tend to do over time, but that’s a different story). But then, once we are clear what we’re talking about, you needn’t feel in the least bad or diminished by it at all! I would be the first to acknowledge the terrific work you’ve done with this whole ERE movement—as would this whole crowd of us sitting here in its shade! (Incidentally, Wikipedia tells me that back in ancient Greece, it was Jacob’s meaning that was called philanthropy, and Socrates—no less—was held to be a philanthropist because he changed the world through his ideas for the better. But that was two and a half centuries ago, and a different language, and a different world, and only of philological interest to us now.)

On the Malthusian argument here : I don’t buy it at all, and was surprised it was even made. It was bull when Malthus made it, and it remains bull now. I’m sure most everyone here knows why, and if not a quick google research into Malthus and his theory and how it was proved wrong, time and again, will make it clear. No need to reinvent the wheel by revisiting that old chestnut. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware of or guard against the dangers of over-population and all that, naturally we should : and naturally there can be no guarantees that it will happen every time, only the hope that it will. (But even as I say this I realize I’m trusting serendipity more than I should, and actually advocating a bubble-mentality in the conviction that human enterprise will keep on making the bubble sustainable, time and again. So perhaps I don’t know, I’m undecided on that one after all, despite what I started out saying. Although I’m quite sure that wiping out 90% of our population through a pandemic or a sterility virus—I know the suggestion was made in jest, but still—will not only not improve the overall situation but take it down to nightmarish depths best left to the imagination of writers of dystopian fiction.

--------------

Incidentally, Jacob, your tendency to change definitions—in this case, getting carried away by the force of your very correct arguments to question and attempt to re-set the very definition (as opposed to questioning just the value) of philanthropy—set me on another tangent. I’ve been re-reading the ERE wiki as well as checking out some of your past blog entries about how you define “retirement” as a near-synonym for FI. I think it’s unnecessarily misleading. Not that the concepts are wrong, of course, but I feel this re-defining has, in this case, led to an unnecessary confounding of accepted usage that only confuses the issue, without gaining anything. But I’ll take that up separately, in another Devil’s-Advocate thread.

[JasonR]

o

[Dragline]

“Anyone who seriously intends to become a philosopher must ‘once in his life’ withdraw into himself and attempt, within himself, to overthrow and build anew all the sciences that, up to then, he has been accepting.” -- Edmund Husserl

I think Montaigne did ok -- but he never professed to have all the answers. Rousseau was a complete disaster of hypocrisy. For those who want some Cliff Notes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books ... d=all&_r=0

[Ego]

The question I had put you here is an intensely personal one. This kind of ethical question it is necessary to ask oneself, else we would be only half-human ; but equally, it is nothing less than obscene to ask this question of another. Because it is tantamount to questioning free will, which I hold to be sacrosanct above all else (as long, of course, as no overt harm is being done, and that isn’t the case here).

Hat tip to spartan....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

[jennypenny]

You guys are killing me with this thread.

Do motivations even matter as long as the goal is accomplished? In a roundabout way, it reminds me of a scene in The Break-Up where Jennifer Aniston is trying to get Vince Vaughn to help her wash dishes. Aniston says "I want you to want to do the dishes." and Vaughn says "Why would I want to do the dishes?"

Ethical consistency also seems like something that's only impressive if you agree with the person. Why would I be impressed by ethical consistency if someone is an asshole?

[jacob]

Self-consistency is the last vestige of postmodern morality.

[Seneca]

Dragline hinted at it so I figure I'll drop a link as Montaigne's discussion of self consistency was one of my favorites.

http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/ ... r_actions/

[archi]

Dan Brown, Husserl, Jennifer Aniston and Montaigne as reference in the same thread. I really enjoy this forum

[JasonR]

o

[jacob]

@D-A - If we aren't allowed to redefine words, expand their meaning, or use them in the way they were meant historically, or the way they pertain to a minority group (are retired professional football players banned from ever working again according to the definition of the word?), then I think we unduly restrain the ways we can think about something.

For example, if the word "free" could only be used in the sense that "the garden is free from weeds" and not in the sense that "the people are free", then it is impossible to think about freedom.

Similarly, if "retirement" only means "receiving a pension with benefits and not enganging in any DIY efforts but volunteer work is acceptable" and "philanthropy" only means "either working for or donating to organizations that help the needy", then we are significantly controlling what people can imagine doing and consequently will do. It's very hard to think of alternatives if the words are missing and we're not allowed to use existing ones in anything but the approved manner.