At the risk of derailing the discussion, asking that we temper our sanctions on Russia by measuring its cost to starving people in Africa, looks a lot like an isolated demand for rigor.
Nearly all policy choices, both foreign and domestic, involve tradeoffs like this. Almost nobody ever says, “We shouldn’t choose that policy because we could have redirected money to help people in Sub-Saharan Africa instead.” Perhaps we should! But singling out the war in Ukraine, and our response to it, is too parochial for a productive discussion of what tradeoffs we should be willing to make.
I appreciate you making this comment. I think it does a great job of articulating the feelings that a lot of people are probably having about this post. I myself do not share those feelings. I was wondering why there was such a strong negative reaction to the post, and seeing this comment along with it’s upvotes has helped me understand the reaction.
Viewing the OP as making an isolated demand for rigor violates the principle of charity, I think.
The OP doesn’t really demand rigor in the case of Ukraine. It doesn’t claim that we should shift our resources to Africa and away from Ukraine. It simply asks the question of whether we should.
Even if it did demand rigor, it is not clear that this demand is isolated. Ie. it is not clear that the author wouldn’t also demand such rigor in other situations.
Now, I think that the principle of charity can be applied too strongly. If Really Bad Person says Really Bad Sounding Thing, you don’t always want to say “Well, Really Bad Sounding Thing has some ambiguity to it, and could be interpreted as meaning Kinda Good Thing, so I’m going to interpret it that way. Because Principle of Charity.” At some point that just becomes naive and unproductive. However, I think that we as a community should lean quite strongly in the direction of interpreting things charitably, and I think that this particular situation deserves that charitable interpretation.
My read on it is that the author probably thinks that such a rigor should be applied universally, not just in the case of Ukraine. But discussing the case of Ukraine is a productive step in that larger conversation (concreteness is great), so he posed this question. And both conversations seem to me like valid and important ones to have. I also assume that he would agree that the cold/raw calculus of simply adding up QALYS misses important things. And, additionally, I’m like 90% confident that he believes that taking altruistic actions that tug at the heart strings, but that perhaps aren’t the 100% most effective, is something that should be encouraged.
Regardless, I don’t think that such assumptions should really be acted on. At least not without clarifying with the author first. Ie. “To what you actually said, I think A. It also sounds like you are saying, or that you believe B. Is that true? If so, I disagree because of C. It also seems like you might believe D. Is that true? If so, I disagree because of E.”
Furthermore, I am fearful that such a strong negative response to posts like this will push the community away from, let’s call it courageous viewpoints (well, here no viewpoints were really expressed in the OP, just questions posed). Some courageous viewpoints are counterproductive for the community and should be discouraged. And it’s not always easy to know where to draw the line. I’m having a hard time articulating this, but I think that a line has been drawn in this scenario, and it is quite far from where I personally would like it to be.
The OP doesn’t really demand rigor in the case of Ukraine. It doesn’t claim that we should shift our resources to Africa and away from Ukraine. It simply asks the question of whether we should.
I don’t even ask that question. I ask what kind of tradeoffs we should accept.
“I don’t think we should accept tradeoffs like 1,000,000 million Africans starving to rescue 100,000 Ukrainians but I also don’t think that this is what the tradeoffs are in reality” would be a valid answer.
My read on it is that the author probably thinks that such a rigor should be applied universally, not just in the case of Ukraine.
I do also believe that there should be fewer economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. I believe that economic sanctions are generally imposed because of the belief that “action should be taken” and not any analysis about the actual consequences of the action.
Regarding the tradeoffs, I downvoted the original question because it weighs one first-order effect of the sanctions against one second-order effect, and that seemed like a misguided way of weighing such tradeoffs.
For instance, levying sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine also makes them more likely to be levied against China if it invades Taiwan. This hopefully disincentivizes such an invasion, but if it happened nonetheless, it would contribute to more suffering.
It’s unclear what’s first and what’s second order here. If you block Russia from selling Africans wheat and as a result Africans starve that seems like a first order effect.
On the other hand sanctions don’t have a direct first order effect or Russian military actions in Ukraine.
At the risk of derailing the discussion, asking that we temper our sanctions on Russia by measuring its cost to starving people in Africa, looks a lot like an isolated demand for rigor.
Nearly all policy choices, both foreign and domestic, involve tradeoffs like this. Almost nobody ever says, “We shouldn’t choose that policy because we could have redirected money to help people in Sub-Saharan Africa instead.” Perhaps we should! But singling out the war in Ukraine, and our response to it, is too parochial for a productive discussion of what tradeoffs we should be willing to make.
I did downvote the question for this reason. It seemed to me written to elicit a reaction more than an honest question
I appreciate you making this comment. I think it does a great job of articulating the feelings that a lot of people are probably having about this post. I myself do not share those feelings. I was wondering why there was such a strong negative reaction to the post, and seeing this comment along with it’s upvotes has helped me understand the reaction.
Viewing the OP as making an isolated demand for rigor violates the principle of charity, I think.
The OP doesn’t really demand rigor in the case of Ukraine. It doesn’t claim that we should shift our resources to Africa and away from Ukraine. It simply asks the question of whether we should.
Even if it did demand rigor, it is not clear that this demand is isolated. Ie. it is not clear that the author wouldn’t also demand such rigor in other situations.
Now, I think that the principle of charity can be applied too strongly. If Really Bad Person says Really Bad Sounding Thing, you don’t always want to say “Well, Really Bad Sounding Thing has some ambiguity to it, and could be interpreted as meaning Kinda Good Thing, so I’m going to interpret it that way. Because Principle of Charity.” At some point that just becomes naive and unproductive. However, I think that we as a community should lean quite strongly in the direction of interpreting things charitably, and I think that this particular situation deserves that charitable interpretation.
My read on it is that the author probably thinks that such a rigor should be applied universally, not just in the case of Ukraine. But discussing the case of Ukraine is a productive step in that larger conversation (concreteness is great), so he posed this question. And both conversations seem to me like valid and important ones to have. I also assume that he would agree that the cold/raw calculus of simply adding up QALYS misses important things. And, additionally, I’m like 90% confident that he believes that taking altruistic actions that tug at the heart strings, but that perhaps aren’t the 100% most effective, is something that should be encouraged.
Regardless, I don’t think that such assumptions should really be acted on. At least not without clarifying with the author first. Ie. “To what you actually said, I think A. It also sounds like you are saying, or that you believe B. Is that true? If so, I disagree because of C. It also seems like you might believe D. Is that true? If so, I disagree because of E.”
Furthermore, I am fearful that such a strong negative response to posts like this will push the community away from, let’s call it courageous viewpoints (well, here no viewpoints were really expressed in the OP, just questions posed). Some courageous viewpoints are counterproductive for the community and should be discouraged. And it’s not always easy to know where to draw the line. I’m having a hard time articulating this, but I think that a line has been drawn in this scenario, and it is quite far from where I personally would like it to be.
I don’t even ask that question. I ask what kind of tradeoffs we should accept.
“I don’t think we should accept tradeoffs like 1,000,000 million Africans starving to rescue 100,000 Ukrainians but I also don’t think that this is what the tradeoffs are in reality” would be a valid answer.
I do also believe that there should be fewer economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and North Korea. I believe that economic sanctions are generally imposed because of the belief that “action should be taken” and not any analysis about the actual consequences of the action.
Regarding the tradeoffs, I downvoted the original question because it weighs one first-order effect of the sanctions against one second-order effect, and that seemed like a misguided way of weighing such tradeoffs.
For instance, levying sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine also makes them more likely to be levied against China if it invades Taiwan. This hopefully disincentivizes such an invasion, but if it happened nonetheless, it would contribute to more suffering.
It’s unclear what’s first and what’s second order here. If you block Russia from selling Africans wheat and as a result Africans starve that seems like a first order effect.
On the other hand sanctions don’t have a direct first order effect or Russian military actions in Ukraine.
There a difference at looking how many people get killed by policy X and looking at whether you could spent money instead of X on a better Y.
I don’t think there are many policies that kill as much Africans.