How do you feel about satisficing? It seems to block out the most obviously inefficient options (like Make-A-Wish donations), allows for a fairly diverse range of options, and stops people from being paralyzed with guilt because they accidentally donated to the 3rd most efficient charity instead of the 1st most efficient. (I take it that even hardcore EA-esque utilitarians will want to avoid this, because people who are paralyzed with guilt aren't optimizing their altruism well.)
If you *know* what the optimal option is, it would seem irrational to deliberately donate elsewhere (even to the 2nd or 3rd best options). So there's an important sense in which you should always prefer to do more good rather than less (all else equal), and not be satisfied with just any old "good enough" option.
But if you don't know what the best option is (as in real life, we never do), I don't think you should obsess over this or feel "paralyzed by guilt". If you make a good-faith effort to optimize, and do so in a reasonable fashion (not, like, making reckless criminal gambles or anything), then I don't think there is any cause for guilt. Blameworthiness has more to do with quality of will, or making a decent effort, than actual outcomes (which are outside of our control). I discuss this more in "Uncertain Optimizing and Opportunity Costs":
A separate issue (for when all else is *not* equal) is how much we should be willing to personally sacrifice in other to do more impartial good for others. I'm a satisficer about that question:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Richard. I'll take a gander at the links you've posted. And yeah, I agree that you should be an absolute optimizer if you were omniscient - I was mostly thinking that satisficing is a pretty sound practical strategy if you're not.
Are dog and cat shelters a good example of low-return giving? Just based on my knowledge of cat rescue organizations in my city, the cost of taking a cat off the streets and getting it neutered, vaccinated, and ready for adoption, is around $300. That's a pretty low price for saving a life.
It's definitely a much higher return than giving money to your alma mater or to an arts organization. Depending on your relative valuation of cat life-years vs. human life-years, it might even be in the ballpark of the $3000 it takes to save a human life in a very poor country.
Farmed animal welfare interventions (which I take to be the most relevant comparison) are supposed to be orders of magnitude more cost-effective. But I agree that a lot of arts stuff is plausibly even less effective.
Not an expert on the topic, but I would caution about the counterfactual-ness of these types of interventions. Supply exceeds demand, so it's not obvious that rescuing cats/dogs entails a 1-1 cost per life "saved", even assuming the particular individual itself is "saved".
Perhaps the either/or assumptions here might be reconsidered with benefit to the overall idea? A more complicated, contextual, fractal view of life, in which there is no one optimality, could be worth exploring. This would open the good ideas into paths of action, rather than keep them as logical argumentative 'parts' that apply or don't apply across some sort of board.
How do you feel about satisficing? It seems to block out the most obviously inefficient options (like Make-A-Wish donations), allows for a fairly diverse range of options, and stops people from being paralyzed with guilt because they accidentally donated to the 3rd most efficient charity instead of the 1st most efficient. (I take it that even hardcore EA-esque utilitarians will want to avoid this, because people who are paralyzed with guilt aren't optimizing their altruism well.)
If you *know* what the optimal option is, it would seem irrational to deliberately donate elsewhere (even to the 2nd or 3rd best options). So there's an important sense in which you should always prefer to do more good rather than less (all else equal), and not be satisfied with just any old "good enough" option.
But if you don't know what the best option is (as in real life, we never do), I don't think you should obsess over this or feel "paralyzed by guilt". If you make a good-faith effort to optimize, and do so in a reasonable fashion (not, like, making reckless criminal gambles or anything), then I don't think there is any cause for guilt. Blameworthiness has more to do with quality of will, or making a decent effort, than actual outcomes (which are outside of our control). I discuss this more in "Uncertain Optimizing and Opportunity Costs":
https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/uncertain-optimizing-and-opportunity
A separate issue (for when all else is *not* equal) is how much we should be willing to personally sacrifice in other to do more impartial good for others. I'm a satisficer about that question:
https://philpapers.org/rec/CHASBE-4
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Richard. I'll take a gander at the links you've posted. And yeah, I agree that you should be an absolute optimizer if you were omniscient - I was mostly thinking that satisficing is a pretty sound practical strategy if you're not.
Are dog and cat shelters a good example of low-return giving? Just based on my knowledge of cat rescue organizations in my city, the cost of taking a cat off the streets and getting it neutered, vaccinated, and ready for adoption, is around $300. That's a pretty low price for saving a life.
It's definitely a much higher return than giving money to your alma mater or to an arts organization. Depending on your relative valuation of cat life-years vs. human life-years, it might even be in the ballpark of the $3000 it takes to save a human life in a very poor country.
Farmed animal welfare interventions (which I take to be the most relevant comparison) are supposed to be orders of magnitude more cost-effective. But I agree that a lot of arts stuff is plausibly even less effective.
Not an expert on the topic, but I would caution about the counterfactual-ness of these types of interventions. Supply exceeds demand, so it's not obvious that rescuing cats/dogs entails a 1-1 cost per life "saved", even assuming the particular individual itself is "saved".
Considering that dog/cat rescue always includes neutering the animal, it reduces supply as well.
Perhaps the either/or assumptions here might be reconsidered with benefit to the overall idea? A more complicated, contextual, fractal view of life, in which there is no one optimality, could be worth exploring. This would open the good ideas into paths of action, rather than keep them as logical argumentative 'parts' that apply or don't apply across some sort of board.