Hi-Phi Nation: Effective Altruism and its Critics

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Curtis is setting aside a large chunk of money to donate to charity, and it is up to us to persuade him where he should donate it. Luckily, philosophers, economists, and the nonprofit world has been thinking a lot about this issue in recent years. On this episode, effective altruism’s defenders and critics try to persuade Curtis of where he should donate. Who is the most effective in persuading an ordinary person as to the right way to donate to charity? And do the recent scandals involving effective altruism’s biggest donor implicate its philosophical foundations? We start with arguments that you should always try to save the most lives possible, no matter where they are on the planet. We then hear a critic of that view, who argues that local giving can also be a good. We then turn to the view that we should save humans from extinction from threats like pandemics, nuclear war, and AI takeover. And finally, we hear from a critic of that view, who says we should not blow future risks out of proportion. Guests include philosophers Richard Yetter-Chappell (Miami), Savannah Pearlman (Indiana), Shakeel Hashim (Center for Effective Altruism), and Seth Lazar (Australia National University). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Crypto doesn't sleep, so neither do we.
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0:19.0	Crypto trading involves risk of loss.
0:23.0	I'm a financial.
0:25.0	I show where philosophy and reality meet.
0:28.0	From sleep, sleep, sleep.
0:32.0	My friend Curtis has a problem, a very good problem to have.
0:36.0	He has a very wealthy father.
0:38.0	For a number of years as part of his estate planning, I guess my father has been giving me and my sister a pretty large amount of money every year.
0:51.0	And this is wonderful to have when you're a young man, when you're broke in college and graduate school.
0:57.0	As I got older and had my own income, and I started to sort of realize how unearned this money was and how unneeded it was.
1:07.0	So I'm helping Curtis with his problem.
1:10.0	He's going to give his money to charity.
1:13.0	But what charity? Or what charities?
1:16.0	That's where I come in.
1:18.0	Because it turns out in the last ten years or so, philosophers have built a movement around charitable giving.
1:24.0	It's called effective altruism.
1:27.0	And there are many critics of that movement.
1:30.0	What better way to get into those issues than to try to convince Curtis?
1:34.0	So Curtis, you have agreed to come on high-fination for this episode and listen to arguments about the proper way to give to charity.
	...

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