I think this is the strongest section, and maybe sufficient to carry the argument by itself:
4. Scott wouldn’t have given the money to charity anyway
Scott writes:
[T]he most effective way to give is the one you actually do.
I think this is related to the point above—I can’t actually claim that costing me $19,000 costs 6.3 lives, because for any given $19,000 in my bank account, I only spend 10% of it on charity. Although I always ‘could’ choose to spend all of it on charity, I don’t, and I can easily predict that I won’t do so going forward. So I don’t think it’s helpful to bring up the hypothetical where I do. If I were morally perfect, then yes, kidney donation would take away time and money that I could spend doing even better morally perfect things. Since I’m not morally perfect, my real budget of time and money is less important than my motivation budget of “what will I actually do?”, and for some reason I found myself motivated to do this and not other things.
I have two objections. First, I think this just includes too much within the EA umbrella so as to strip away the E entirely. What heft does Singer’s critique of the make-a-wish foundation have if I can say, well, at least I did it, so it was effective, so kick rocks? Then any charity counts as EA. Hell, even things that are not really charity at all—say you decide to shop local for groceries—could be considered “effective” forms of altruism because the most effective stuff is the stuff you actually do, and you’re actually doing that. Any altruism ever is EA under these guidelines. In reality, EA sprang to life as a criticism of, and supposedly an improvement on, these old institutions.
Second, I just think it outsources his agency which is central to the whole ethical question we’re arguing about. If you have no free will and can’t control yourself, then it makes no sense to talk about what you ought to do at all. In fact, he does have free will, and could easily have increased his donation rate from 10% to 11%. But, as he puts it, “for some reason I found myself motivated to do this and not other things.” To which I say: yes, that motivation comes from non-EA ethical commitments.
This bit about rule utilitarianism was weird, though:
Similarly, the decision to take “thou shalt not lie” extremely seriously tends to indicate some level of deontological component to one’s moral system. But even if you assume that, for most people in most situations, it’s a good rule not to lie, it’s just clearly not for Scott. He has a lot of political reach and a blog that has a lot of persuasive power. It is very obvious that all the most influential political and media pundits lie in service of their goals, like proper consequentialists. As a rule utilitarian, he’d be better off changing the rule to “I’ll only tell lies when there’s a lot of good consequences of doing so,” or something similar, and then following that rule instead. But he doesn’t do that—presumably because lying is just wrong, and maybe it’s as simple as that.
Although, thinking about it a bit more, I think this is not quite right:
To which I say: yes, that motivation comes from non-EA ethical commitments.
Scott explains his motivation for donating a kidney in My left kidney:
It starts with wanting, just once, do a good thing that will make people like you more instead of less. It would be morally fraught to do this with money, since any money you spent on improving your self-image would be denied to the people in malarial regions of Africa who need it the most. But it’s not like there’s anything else you can do with that spare kidney.
Still, it’s not just about that. All of this calculating and funging takes a psychic toll. Your brain uses the same emotional heuristics as everyone else’s. No matter how contrarian you pretend to be, deep down it’s hard to make your emotions track what you know is right and not what the rest of the world is telling you. The last Guardian opinion columnist who must be defeated is the Guardian opinion columnist inside your own heart. You want to do just one good thing that you’ll feel unreservedly good about, and where you know somebody’s going to be directly happy at the end of it in a way that doesn’t depend on a giant rickety tower of assumptions.
I see no reason to disbelieve his self-description, and wouldn’t describe that as a “non-EA ethical commitment” (though obviously it can’t be described as an “EA ethical commitment” either).
I think this is the strongest section, and maybe sufficient to carry the argument by itself:
This bit about rule utilitarianism was weird, though:
This is false, see Ends Don’t Justify Means (Among Humans).
Also, the random insults are kind of déclassé.
Although, thinking about it a bit more, I think this is not quite right:
Scott explains his motivation for donating a kidney in My left kidney:
I see no reason to disbelieve his self-description, and wouldn’t describe that as a “non-EA ethical commitment” (though obviously it can’t be described as an “EA ethical commitment” either).