A Rational Altruist’s Guide on How to Care More
Many of our readers are successful professionals with philanthropic aspirations of giving back at some point. If this applies to you, ask yourself: How much would you be willing to spend in order to save the life of a single bird after an oil spill? Maybe 3 minutes of your time? Or perhaps $3 in expenditures to have someone else do it for you?
After BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, many
thousands of birds were oiled. Extrapolating from the above, would you be willing to spend fifty thousand dollars to de-oil them all?
If you are like most people, you probably answered yes to the first question, and no to the second one. According to Nate Soares from
LessWrong, this means you have fallen prey to the trap of “scope insensitivity”.
Read on to learn why you cannot trust your care-o-meter in matters of philanthropy, and what happens when you suddenly realize that, all of a sudden, “everything becomes your problem”!
On Caring
LessWrong • 12-minute read
