Instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this “make them a better person” or “is the right thing to do”—essentially throwing this all away.
Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there’s more to life than practical consequences.
I think you’d need to be specific about your definitions for ‘practical’ and ‘consequences’ to argue for that. I think in hereabouts parlance, you’re saying something like “Your utility function might put a higher value on ‘love’ and ‘charity’ than on strangers’ lives”. Which would be a harder bullet to bite.
They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place
Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there’s more to life than practical consequences.
I think you’d need to be specific about your definitions for ‘practical’ and ‘consequences’ to argue for that. I think in hereabouts parlance, you’re saying something like “Your utility function might put a higher value on ‘love’ and ‘charity’ than on strangers’ lives”. Which would be a harder bullet to bite.
I was saying that “they could just as easily argue”—ie. I was using the terms that those people would use.
But that is an appeal to practical consequences.