I really hope you enjoy this one - I worked super hard on it and tried my very best to keep things even-handed and educational! If you appreciate that effort, Patreon.com/PhilosophyTube is what helps me keep making work like this!
I like the joke in the title, the rich having ethics (of any kind). It seems hard to disprove that the 0,01% cause and benefit from everything negative on this planet.
Even more so that they even paid for a business class ticket instead of an economy class one and giving the rest as salary. It shows how this is always about optics. Instead of paying a small wage and modest transportation it's about luxury transport (to feel acknowledged) without paying a salary, as a ethics consultant shouldn't take a job based on the money...
I've worked for charities before, specifically animal rescue, and I've done independent charitable work and mutual aid in private. One of the realizations that hits you almost immediately is that charity is nowhere near enough, and cannot be relied upon as a solution to systemic problems. It comes down to a matter of scale, as charities can only help a small percentage of those who need it, and can't do anything to change the system that gave rise to massive inequalities in the first place. The average charity volunteer is giving everything they've got, and the vast majority of charity organizations are barely clinging to life. Unless an organization already has a ton of clout, or is corrupt like a lot of the big name charities, chances are it's struggling for survival itself. For people to act like we can just use charity to catch those who slip through the cracks is a gross misunderstanding of the scale and severity of the problems charity is meant to address.
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Essentially. I'm not one to downplay the good charity workers do, because I've been there myself. I'm just trying to give people an idea of how insurmountable the problem of inequality is. We can reach a few people here and there, and this is a tangible good in their lives, but it doesn't last long, and is not a long term solution without systemic change. So I'm not framing this as an either-or situation either, we need both. Ideally we'd live in a world where people's survival needs are taken care of by default, and charities are there to help on the side. They cannot and should not be an absolute requirement.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 I think it's sort of pointlessly overwhelming to consider charity through this lense. Like, the problems have been around for a very long time, and until capitalism is destroyed they will never ever be fixed. It's a waste of time to even consider deep systemic change in anything resembling a decent timeline. Maybe several centuries, but not in a lifetime, and definitely not in a generation. So every good deed should be considered it's own win. I guess my philosophy is like, kind pessimism? Like, it's fked, we are all fked, but that doesn't mean you dismiss anything good thats done
As someone qualified in AI, I can assure you that the real danger to humanity from AI isn't that it will go rogue and disobey its masters. The real danger from AI is that it will never disobey its masters, and it will carry out their instructions without any compassion or ethical considerations, making those masters ever richer and more powerful, forever.
Yep the most dangerous part about AI is that it's got everything from us , and we then get it into our heads it’s impartial just because we have an algorithm do exactly what we do.
@@tamarabrugara More that it's ideal for manipulation. Consider this scenario: You take a successor version of GPT. Is it intelligent? No. Actually, if you were to compare it to a human, it's a moron and a compulsive liar. But that's ok: You don't need an intelligent program for this, you just need something that can pass as a human in a brief conversation in internet comments. Now, direct this AI to your desired goal. It might be "promote by product" or "support my politician" or "insult this ideology" or "talk about this news story." Now, rent yourself some computing power, and duplicate your AI. Ten thousand instances. Tie them in to the APIs for some popular social media services. And there you have it: Your auto-troll. A tool with the power to flood the public conversation through sheer numbers and direct it, shaping public opinion to your own views. The AI isn't intelligent, but it's intelligent enough to pass in youtube comments. Within a couple of years, I expect to see the internet just flooded by billions upon billions of comments explaining why China is the best, safest, most successful, richest, cleanest and most free country, and anyone saying otherwise is just a sucker for western propaganda.
Another dangerous aspect of AI is that if we ask it do something it may not give us exactly what we want or the method it chose to obtain it may be unfavourable. AI hss no ethics, morajs or human understanding, you ask it to create a money making idea it would suggest hacking into a randkm person bank account.
That's A danger. Another is that humans will be displaced from their own world. Automation and robotics will make them unnecessary for manual labor, and AI will make them unnecessary for mental and creative labor. We will come to live in a world where we will not be needed and have no purpose or value. It's hard to imagine what would become of people in such a world.
I absolutely love how this F1nn colab is just a normal philosophy tube video but F1nn is just sorta there vibing. Like bring your femboy to work day. Iconic
This woman opened the video with telling a conference full of bankers to resign and wearing, like 6 inch platforms. Abigail Thorn, you are an inspiration to us all.
I might have missed a line somewhere but... I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to realize EA stood for Effective Altruists rather than Electronic Arts... I was starting to go crazy.
Omg same 😆 after years of watching James Stephanie Sterling rail against EA, each time I heard it mentioned in a non-gaming context was rather jarring 😅
I live on the Swinomish Reservation, where Shell had an entire train derail and spill into our watershed. I'm working now for a degree in Environmental Biology to deal with the long-term effects of this catastrophe. This video helped me a lot to understand what I'm doing and why. Thank you
But then Shell bought some malaria nets and donated to a bunch of rich men's tax evasion side gigs, I mean, charities. So we should all forgive them. Hash tag effective scam, I mean, altruism. BTW, good luck with your study. I think your approach is million times more effective way of securing the future than EA.
Best of luck in your education and future work! Idk if this is helpful, as I know it is still quite expensive, but the South East Technological University in Ireland has a robust environmental remediation department. Since it's been recently changed from a college to a university, SETU is desperate for graduate and postgraduate students. There are some fast tracked postgraduate scholarships that offer a research based opportunity to earn a PhD in 2 or so years, all tuition paid by the school, and you get paid a fairly decent stipend to live off of during your studies.
There's one thing for sure: her left shoulder is SAFE! 🦾 But seriously, she looks great! Plus, personally I love the cyber look, and extraneous/useless buckles, strips, straps, grommets... Especially after I saw the extent of what it could be in _The Fifth Element._ Remember Zorg (Gary Oldman) and his slick-as-hecc latex/rubber pinstripe 3-piece suit? And it was lined in red! SO FAB!
I think there's also a question about how good and harm exists in the first place. Many disabled people, myself included, suffer because we live in a world that routinely fails to accommodate them. Alleviating disability can be helpful, but it puts the cart before the horse.
I have a different view on this as a disabled person. I'd say that society coming up with ways to accommodate is more task intensive than "solving" the problem at the basis. Accommodating vs preventing the need for accommodation with out sacrificing those who would need said accommodation. IE if we eliminated disabilities (with regards to that some are considered as such only due to cultural implications, vs functional ability, which I understand is a whole other can of worms conversation to have) but say that we had a perfect way of doing that, I'd more agree with preventing the need for accommodation where possible, if that makes sense.
@@Existential_RobotThere are a multitude of disabilities that aren't curable. Knowing this makes the idea that eugenics was the intended goal an easier conclusion to reach
I read a book called The Anxieties of Affluence, which was a sort-of anthropological look at the ultra wealthy families of Manhattan. Nearly all of the (mostly women) in the families struggled a great deal with how to be rich "ethically", and how to best donate to charities. But the thing is, how is a random millionaire in Manhattan supposed to know what exactly their community needs, or how their money can best be implemented? As a result, the majority of wealthy people tend to donate to their children's (probably already financially healthy) schools. The book made the conclusion that rich people should simply be taxed more, as even though the govt is not by any means a perfect means to distribute wealth effectively, it is at least ran by people who are (theoretically) democratically elected to represent their communities. I really think philanthropy is just another big smoke screen the wealthy use to avoid taxes. It's an incredibly ironic twist of fate to me that most rich people donate to their children's private schools, while public schools languish due to a lack of tax revenue from their neighborhoods. Cool!
Ahhh, you forget the very useful action of busying one's meddling wife in charitable ventures and the subsequent validation she derives from it, freeing you to go back to pillaging the world she'll then ceremoniously apply a rhinestone band-aid to.
idk, no effective altruist would ever argue for spending on private schools. I feel like real, effective charities that work in super-impoverished countries doing things like feeding starving ppl can definitely be more effective than giving money to the US government
Abi mentions the rise of the charitable foundation, but doesn't mention its tax benefits. Eventually the taxpayer ends up subsidizing them because donations to them are tax deductible. Same with religious orgs.
“Somewhere in a parallel universe, there’s an alternate version of me. And she doesn’t have any integrity, but she does own a house.” Damn. I love that line.
"The crypto sphere is powered by the hype about how we're all gonna make it. Sometimes that hype is pretty unrealistic." - Abigail. So generous, careful, compassionate! Other times it's a deliberate predatory lie. - me
Ahhhhh I just need to mention that I absolutely love the way you show your sources during the video. It's a small thing (an annoying thing to edit in, I'm sure) but it gives so much more depth to the topic and works as a really effective way to raise interest to dig deeper without having to introduce essays in a repetetive way. You've done it in a visually non-intrusive and stylish way and I just really appreciate that extra mile! Oh and the latex is absolutely bomb!
i wish they would cite sources in that way on tv documentaries and stuff like that! where you're likely to tune in in the middle of it and might not see the credits, and theres no description you can look up. I know it's just a thing this channel does (much appreciated) but i wish it was adopted more widely!
Adam Ruins Everything used to do that. It was like having footnotes in an article. Super useful not having to scour the entire video description for further reading.
I completely agree and if you actually use sources in the creation of the video I doubt it's much of a hassle to edit. I'd guess the sources are already marked into the script and since the formatting is always the same all you have to do is copy paste.
"Somewhere in a parallel universe there is a alternate version of me. She doesn't have any integrity but she does own a house." This had me in stitches. Love the video!
Its doubly funny if you know how this particular scene thinks. Theres a lot of *really weird* beliefs popular within the EA crowd, one of which is a weird attachment to multiverse type ideas, along with "Were all in a simulation!" and its whackier corollory "If we piss off the robots they'll torture us in a simulation!". Its a weird little pocket of silicon valley culture and it *really* believes its own propaganda..
@shayneoneill1506 You mean Roko's Ballisk? It's funny because even if that *were* real, I don't see how I'm supposed to feep threatened by the AI torturing a simulation of me after I die, when the simulation of me *isn't me*, but a copy of me.
@@psuedonym9999I've been told I'm too stupid to understand the threat of a supercomputer capable of simulating consciousness thinking mean thoughts about me, but we have those already; they're called brains.
We had an effective altruistic talk at an atheist club, they talked about how if we all gave a small portion of our income we could do exceptional things. The specific example was how for this percentage we could reinvigorate the space program. I asked if what they were proposing was something we already had called "taxes". They did not like this
Really the key difference was they basically wanted libertarian taxes. In that it was totally voluntary, and more importantly each rational individual ought to decide how to earmark their funds. So each of us could decide if it was for malaria nets or rocket ships or whatnot, but the key aspect was that it wasn't a decision made by a government body.
@@CodyEthanJordan These are just covers. They are not honest justifications. Though that doesn't mean these people are lying, they may actually believe it. But belief itself is something that is nothing more than a behavioral regulator managing interactions of individuals of a social species. What it really comes down to. Do you remember when groups like Publisher's Clearinghouse would go make a big scene with a giant paycheck to someone that won money? Think about what that display gains for the person or group making that demonstration. It makes them look better. Now, think how much they then gain from that appearance, esp in a time that it can be pasted all over TV, or now the internet. Why did Mr. Beast or whatever his name is make a YT video about the whole getting people vision treatment? He could have just went and done it all without the camera. But then he'd not have gained the social benefit the display would then grant him. He probably has no conscious cognition of this fact, its something that is an inherent part of social behavior. But this is the root of it. Libertarian types hate governmental action because it takes away their opportunity to display their "altruism". It takes away the gains they would then receive.
I gave a similar "keynote speech" at a construction project meeting back in the 90s. I eventually left the business entirely and could not have been happier. Unfortunately I was forced to return to it and everything is worse than I could have ever imagined it becoming. I'm struggling to get out of it again in order to keep myself from going insane.
I'm so glad Abigail is trying to keep herself grounded while also growing. In case she reads this, the quality of the visuals seems to always be better than the last. This one was a little bit light on some of the deeper philosophy but on the whole the quality of that also increases over time. I hope you can manage to continue making content that makes me think, consider, and ponder while also having the career you'd like. I value your insights and the philosophical context even when I disagree so I know a different view and can empathize with those who espouse it.
As someone who has worked at a bank for years (and is looking for a way out), a sadistic part of me would’ve sold my kidney to be at that conference and watch the bankers being told the most ethical thing they can do is resign.
The problem I have with the non-identity problem is that it cancels itself. For, by NOT taking the bus (to extend the example), you have an equal-but-opposite impact on those same events in the other direction ... and, thus, an equal responsibility to THOSE children as well ... cancelling BOTH arguments with each other.
Indeed. It's not like either set of theoretically possible children has a higher likelihood of containing the child that will go on to cure cancer or become super hitler. Theoretically I could commit a murder and go to trial, and some juror has to serve when they would otherwise have been able to stay home, and thus they have sex at a different time and have a different child and that child happens to end all war forever and give every child a puppy. Doesn't mean it was right for me to commit murder, nor is it in any way possible for me to reasonably even use that as a justification for committing said murder because how would I know about a child that does not yet exist.
Trying to work off of unknown conclusions and butterfly effect ideas is not going to help anyone. All you can do is identify when an action or inaction actually has a domino effect and if it's positive or negative or both. There are a billion small things that change the course of the future. We have absolutely no way of knowing all of them. Even a super computer that could calculate all of the happenings and likely get very good probability considerations would never know everything. Being omniscient isn't possible. Because the act of existing from one point from non existence removes the data of knowing or understanding how one's existence factors in. And I say this as a person who thinks the world is deterministic and free-will makes no sense.
This isn't quite the nonidentity problem. The non-identity problem is just any moral problem which arises due to its effect on people who do not exist. The classic example is if you leave a broken glass out on the ground without cleaning it up, and 5 years later a child stumbles over it and cuts themselves, it doesn't seem like it matter morally whether the child is 6 or 4 years old (i.e. did or did not exist at the time you took the action). Or imagine a construction worker violating building codes and that ends up hurting a child years down the line. Another example is, of course, climate change: it seems wrong that oil companies of the past covered up evidence of climate change and that this will affect future generations' lives, even though they did not exist when they were doing it. It's not just wrong for its current effects, but for its future effects, too. But if future lives matter, how exactly do we weigh them, given they don't exist, and there are many people who could possibly exist? Do we weight them like they currently exist, or as their probability of existing? It's not just decisions like riding the bus, but what about having children yourself, or giving to charities which allow more people to have children, or political or financial actions which make the world a better place for future people. I recommend you also read about the "repugnant conclusion" of Derek Parfit. These are difficult philosophical questions which most philosophers agree there are no satisfactory conclusion, and problems of non-identity are much harder to solve than you might realize if you're only thinking about the bus example.
@@Fematika As a statistician it seems like a trivial problem, uncertain outcomes should always be weighted by their probability of occurring. The main problem is not philosophical but pragmatic - how do you estimate the probabilities of future outcomes?
On the off-chance you see this, I just joined Nebula and Patreon for you and your content. I'd been tempted by other brilliant creators, but I truly get SO much value from watching your content that it feels almost like an insult to not pay you back in some small way. You are incredible in every way, and I truly look up to you
@@PhilosophyTube Just one point. That alternate version of you that owns a house is likely a man, because men are usually quicker to compromise their morality in pursuit of perceived personal gain. My supporting evidence for this is over 50 years of observatation and experience, across several industries.
I was running home from work the other day along a river. I rounded a corner and saw a child in distress in the water. I immediately stopped, removed my backpack, took out my phone and saved two starving children in Africa (via an ethical donation) as two is clearly more than one that felt like a clearly better use of my time. By the time I looked up the kid wasn't there anymore, not sure what happened to them.
Peter Singer actually uses a drowning children thought experiment in his book Giving What We Can, although I think the point you're making is unrelated. An EA would tell you that your ability to save two starving children in Africa via donation is (almost) orthogonal to rescuing the child in distress. You ought to be aiming to do the _most_ good possible, not compensating for your decision not to rescue a drowning child. Same reason you it's silly to say "It's OK that I'm not vegan because I donate to charity". Your ability to donate to charity is (arguably) unrelated to your ability to avoid consumption of animal products. Otherwise I could morally justify murdering someone if I also donated US$3000 to Helen Keller International's vitamin A supplementation program. Wait did I just reducto ad absurdum a reducto ad absurdum wtf. I need to go to bed.
@@TheActualDP I would say it's silly to say "It's ok that I'm not vegan because I donate to charity" because I define neither action as good. One of the issues I have with EA is that no one has a clue as to where to spend their money to maximise goodness. No one is an island. This means that your actions effect you and others (whether you want them to or not). No one is in quantum superposition with all life. This means that your actions don't effect everyone and everything evenly. So basically there are two tenets of EA, that we can identify what is good and distance doesn't matter. And both tenets are horribly mistaken.
I don't think that's how it works. Saving the kid requires physical effort and time and not money. The outcome is instant and observable so it's quite obvious what should be done at the moment. Your example is a pretty bad one
@@ed1726 again another person missing the point. Helping someone is better than not helping someone. Putting a bit more effort and finding a more efficient way to help more people is even better. Waiting for the perfect solution to help a hypothetical maximum number of people and wasting time on that un obtainable goal. Is stupid.. it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be better than the previous option. And it can even end up being worse.. but if it's more efficient 80% of the times when it's done then it's still worth it. In other words it's trying to find the optimum solution not the maximum or a perfect solution
Irrelevant but I have fucking loved watching you come into your most fulfilled self through the years. I don’t care how corny this is, it makes my heart leap with joy.
Its really this that continues to motovate me to continue to fight for Trans rights. I am a cis-guy but I see people like Philosophy Tube, Jim-Stephanie Stirling and tens of people in my personal life become their most fulfilled self through transition. Fk people that oppose that.
An alternative perspective on Longtermism might be some of the decisions that John Green has talked about in various videos and podcasts. At one point he struggled with whether to donate money NOW to charities, or to invest his money and then as it grows, to donate it to charity. He decided that saving lives NOW affects the future just as much and should count as an "investment" as much as financial "investments" of larger monetary sums later on.
Nerdfighter here. I agree that we should donate now because charities invest into mankind, which has better returns on investment than growing a pile of money. However, I don't think this is a good criticism of longtermism. Longtermism doesn't recommend pooling a giant pile of money to be used at some future date, it also wants us to donate now to things such as biological weapons regulation efforts, as they have a chance of killing most humans in the future. They want to prevent a catastrophe before it happens. Technically if investment into people directly, has a greater return on investment than investing in companies, it should be included in longtermism, but I agree with you that it is not a big enough focus within the Longtermism sect of EA. There is little discussion of improving the economic structure of 3rd world countries because it is hard to solve government economic policy by brute force donating money.
@@tompw3141 after 100 years you wont be there to do anything with that money. And humanity might end sooner because people like you it was better to wait a century to start trying to make the world a better place
@@tompw3141 Except to the people that experience pain during those 100 years because we're sitting on our thumbs waiting for an investment to grow before helping people with their problem.
This new Philosophy Tube DLC slaps! I can't believe they added a Battle Nun costume to the character creator! I'm also glad they didn't fix the bug that makes your Abigail pronounce "poor" as "POO-rah". Sometimes a bug is just better off being a feature. EDIT: You can also recruit a Cat Girl companion!? HOLY SHIT! Move over Skyrim Lydia, you've been replaced. Maybe if you didn't complain about helping me carry 50 sets of heavy armor and a metric ton of ingots...
But also I think, your success wouldn‘t be less legit if it wouldn‘t shine for everyone else. Trans people don‘t profit if you were not successful or not taking chances to do what you care about or dream of.
Feeling bad for succeeding is a weird concept to me. Like trust me, I GET IT, but also, I feel like the feeling implies there’s some other hypothetical person being forgotten due to your success. But if anything, this is giving a lot of visibility to trans people in general. As a fellow trans person I prefer to see one of us succeed over zero of us.
The funny thing with the MrBeast blindness example is that I'm mostly only aware of it from the Twitter drama that followed MrBeast agreeing that it's actually not OK that these things are left to random celebrities instead of being addressed with public spending and triggering a backlash from the "fiscally responsible" crowd.
The ironic thing is that anyone "fiscally responsible" should agree that policies like this would ROI easily for any country which invested in it. That's a pretty cold way to think about life-altering healthcare procedures, but it uses their supposed framework of reasoning.
The section on how the EA movement doesn't listen really spoke to me cause its very true. In the last couple of years in tech that claims to be helping people and all these programs, they are headed by people whose focus is really more on optics then trying to solve problems. They are still living the billionaire lifestyle. The Theranos scandal was all about making a product that could help people, but it was headed by someone who was deeply paranoid, a bully and not remotely suitable for the job. Its such a jarring disconnect.
Well if you look like you're trying to help as many people as possible there is less chance somebody starts to seriously ask why aren't you paying any taxes. The only reason the rich do charity is because it's cheaper than taxes.
@@Rig0r_M0rtis I agree it is true that there are a fair amount of the rich that do this for tax reasons but I think like the video shows there are those in higher income brackets that was to actually use their money to do good but there is a fundamental leadership problem and it’s this tightrope you have to walk on with making money and trying to be helpful. Money has a way of tainting the entire process if not kept in check at all times. Like with Sam in the end he was spending lavishly at a hotel. Money has that affect on people because it works. If you suddenly don’t have to worry about money anymore I think it can be easy to fall into the mindset where you start to see the poor less as people who need help and more as social capital and “lesser then you” a mentality the ultra and legacy rich still have.
@@idontevenknow9758 there's also the problem that the wealthy want to be the ones who define what "good" is and it will never be anything that challenges their ability to be the decider.
Abigail this might be your best yet. I love reading your captions and it's such a clever way to keep people engaged through the end of the video to help metrics. The Prince was SO good. Thanks for the great video and excellent essay of things to chew on.
Finn's about to wrench open the third eye of all the libertarian tech-bro femboy-likers and make them collectively realize that their ideology is stupid.
Since the vid is about the ethics of rich people, there's no way that F1nn's top donor, TenMuses, is unmentioned. The guy donated $25k to transgender relief just because F1nn was about to end Girl Month one time. He promised $300k to charity for Finn to get breast implants, but then compromised just to have Finn learn a girl voice and do voice training. Apparently he's just a surgeon who made good choices with investing his money, and he's now free to just cross off items on his bucket list. Comically large donations to a femboy livestreamer were apparently on that list.
I wrote an essay on altruism and egoism, the case of dogs vs blind poor people is a matter of not effective altruism, altruism is not about being effective or not, is about a matter of sacrificing something or yourself in making other individuals feel better, it's just egoism put into the formula what cancellate altruism and make it a "positive egoism" action. I wrote that like 3 years ago...
Fun Fact: Pong isn't a program. It was made in hardware using timing circuits. Every version of the original Pong you have played on a computer is either emulating the hardware or written from scratch.
Some would argue that the difference between a software program and "hardware using timing circuits" is immaterial... Assembling hardware to do a specific task is just "writing" a program in something that is not bits and bytes.
@@Vogel612 I was going to make a very similar point. You could argue it's not a program *for a turing machine*, that is it's not code written for a general purpose code execution machine, so you can't copy-paste it into an emulator and get it to run on any computer that understands the instruction set. So in that sense the difference is more of a practical one. It's still a digital program, it's just made on purpose-build circuits, so once you're able to emulate how those circuits should behave you have a version of the program that is made for turing machines and then you can copy it however you'd like, which was the analogy made in the video. Honestly though I'd say almost all modern versions of Pong are just re-written from scratch and simply mimic the rules and the appearance of the original. It would be so much less work.
I always questioned the 'person asking for your help not getting it in lieu of someone who didn't ask you' scenario. Missionaries are a good example of this phenomena.
I think that Chidi from The Good Place is a criticism of EA. He was so wrapped up in trying to figure out all the consequences of his decisions he became a burden to everyone around him.
The whole series was about the world getting so complicated and intertwined with everything that effectively it's not possible to be a good person anymore. Like even buying flowers for your mom gives you bad karma because the flowers were picked by underpaid young people working long hours and by buying the flowers you're funding such operations. This lead to even the holiest people going to the bad place, as they were evil by simply existing in the current world.
The most effective altruism is the altruistic acts you do not the ones you think about. If you are spending an excessive amount of time trying to optimize your altruism you are not doing effective altruism.
@@Jackassik And at the same time, it also criticised the kind of people who got caught up in trying to maximise their "goodness" score by over-analysing the complexity of the world, instead of just bloody doing something.
I just want to take a moment to appreciate how this information is being delivered by a person in costumes that look like they come straight out of video games.
My knee jerk reaction to EA was "if the system wasn't bad this idea would be amazing." But then comes the idea that if the economic system we currently operate under wasn't bad, then the systemic issues EAs intend on solving would be much more manageable or even nonexistent. I feel as though EAs with money are truly attempting to help, but their wealth and detachment have created a mindset that only places gauze over exposed bone.
This is the biggest problem I have with the movement. Working so much with the rich and advising towards high-paying jobs makes it incredibly entrenched in the current system
What I dont get is that you need a movement for this idea. Cause found this idea myself and never heard of this movement. You get a job with money and can then give more money on the things you value the most in society.
I don't know why she dresses like a nun to talk about money, but she looks great and she talks smart, and what else do you need, really. Edit: Okay, now that I've finished watching: woah, what an amazingly made video! I love the way you credited your sources and how well picked they were! You also kept me attentive all the way through, something my adhd tries to make sure doesn't happen very often, lol. I'm definitely subbing. I like how sincere you are in the captions during the credits- it gives very nice insight to how you went about this. Just, a very lovely experience, even for a topic I didn't really care that much for hahah. I'll be staying around for more. Keep up the great work!
I clicked this video thinking I had time to wrap myself up in it - and within the first two minutes I was just thinking to myself "God, I love her". Ready to dive in, but I just wanted to say thank you for what you do Abigail - you keep my faith in humanity alive.
not gunna lie i was a bit on the fence when i saw that first outfit, but then the devil nun outfit had me realize she just likes dressing up in costumes. and then the bit with the femboy walking by in the background at the exact moment she says there are stranger things your son could be doing just completely killed me. instant sub, i too love her.
IMO, the weakness of longtermism isn't so much the obsession around outcomes (if morality isn't effective and practical, then it's more of an academic exercise/posturing than truly about empathy anyway). The issue is that you can argue for almost any position if you're allowed to arbitrarily expand the scope of the problem as you see fit. Part of this is just due to the limitations of extrapolating far into the future - something project managers are keenly aware of. We can barely give accurate estimates of tasks that take on the order of days, much less create and follow a detailed schedule spanning months. That's why the preferred approach is to iterate on short intervals and constantly readjust to unexpected issues or changes in requirements, landscape, knowledge, technologies, etc. Similarly, when you try to predict moral outcomes centuries into the future, things become so fuzzy that everyone is pretty much just making random-ass guesses. At that point it's purely about rhetorical ability rather than logic- and evidence-based actions. This lack of rigor and abundance of subjectivity is fertile grounds for injecting doubt into difficult courses of action the near-term benefits of which we can actually be extremely confident in.
THIS. Reminds me of how even just a few decades ago we had movies coming out with ideas of how they thought the future would look like and they were completely inaccurate. The way Effective Altruist works based on Longtermism is funny to me because it’s essentially people with a shit ton of money being given the authority of acting on behalf of charity based on their ideas of what the future would look like and what they should invest in based on that, except they have no expertise whatsoever to reach even a sliver of accuracy, thus wasting money on hypotheticals instead of the actual people in need or on correcting/tearing down the systems that allow people to be in need in the first place.
It seemed to me the jump from pascal's robber (and ideal/theoretic problem) to the talk about cloud and the rich (practical/implementation) was quite an abrupt one in this video. I don't think the example is a great point against welfarism concerned with future generations: There is no way, with our current understanding of the world, that a wizard with future seeing powers is possible. Sure, all of that could be wrong as well, but then we would lose nearly all meaning, including all claims of rationality. We don't have a framework/conceptual scheme in which the wallet inspector is what he claims and only a very peculiar definition of "rational" under which we should give it to him. There would be no issue with his demand if what he claimed would fit into our framework. In fact, in a world of reliable divination wizards (terrible subclass imo), we should give it to him. But no such certainty about the (far) future exists and we are often mistaken in our attempt to predict even simpler trends, while the consequences of extremely complex situations seem almost impossible to know. Putting your point in different words, there is a fundamental information problem. But when we regard those in the near future, there are some very likely harms (like the consequence of current climate change) we should seek to avoid for not just our sake, but those not yet born. No matter if their specific identity and thus the preferences they will develop are not yet set, there are some harms that apply to pretty much everyone no matter their personal preferences. Avoiding those should be uncontroversional. So while I agree with much of her criticism of the actual movement afterwards (as depicted here, don't know much beyond that tbh), consequentialist theory doesn't seem to be the issue.
The other ingredients being 1. the deliberate ignorance and downplaying of historical injustice, And 2. an elaborate rhetorical repertoire to smear anyone interested in the context out of which modern problems arise as "shortsighted"
@@SickegalAlienChosing between the imaginary past or the imaginary future is a false dichotomy. I personaly chose to imagine lovecraftian horrors in cosmic proportions beyond your pale imagination.
She has never struck me as particularly happy or stable so I agree. I was honestly expecting to hear about her tragic early death as dark as that sounds
Although I do have to wonder... it feels to me like Nebula using her as part of their sponsor read is some kind of ethical violation, even if she ostensibly agreed to it. Like, consider *why* she left youtube in the first place, and how that's still the reason she's not back. Using the fact that she's on your platform is directly connected to that original absence. That doesn't seem right to me.
I'm just starting my thesis for my Masters in Systems Thinking, with a focus on critically examining Effective Altruism, so this is excellent timing. Thank you, as always, for the fantastic insight and fun, educational videos!
I highly recommend looking into Critical development Theory and Human Development (economic) Theory, notably "development as Freedom" by Amartya Sen, for making sense of some of the limits and contrast to Effective Altruism. and generally the history of the failed approaches in development aid in the 80's and 90s. (which effective Altruism seems to repeat) we should move towards a world post-development. similarly, we should move aim to create a world post-charity.
I was expecting the ‘curing blindness’ examples to link up with the content on communities self-determining their aid, and on systems-reform. Cure isn’t always bad, but ableds weaponise it against our political organising. Our blind friends also demand workplace rights, Internet screenreader compatibility standards, accessible city/transit planning, etc. The stuff that makes bankers uncomfortable and EA overlooks bc measurability bias. Altogether still loved the video and congrats on the Prince xx
this. EA and similar idealogies fully ignore the material demands of disabled or impoverished communities, and operate on the assumption that we are too ignorant or downtrodden to meaningfully organize at all. it doesn't surprise me that this idea is based on the Rockefeller and gilded age era model of philanthropy, given its inherent racism, ableism, and paternalism.
Mr Beast kinda reminds me of how the west treats their former colonies Instead of giving them the means to invest in markets and open malls, they give food. That way, the former colonies are still dependant on western countries but can't say anything because they're being helped and should be grateful
EA focus so little on economic development in third world countries, which would probably be the most effective, just because economic government policy isn't a problem you can have by throwing money at it. It reminds me of the guy looking for his keys by the street lamp because that is where the light is. That said, most other international charities do the same thing, so this isn't just a problem with EA.
"And he may even have been sincere" No chance he was. He's admitted that he just used EA as a way to puff up his reputation, and has said that in part he justified it because other people are doing bad things as well.
Honestly I really love listening to you and getting into the vibe of philosophy with enthusiasm - just for F1nn5ter to jump in every now and then just for a quick meme. I like the vibe this video is giving me
Charity was always a demonstration of power. You decide who is doing a good thing and who isn't. Edit: The diversity of ideas expressed (respectfully) to answer to my statement is one of the reason this channel is so great.
As someone who's interested in this movement, but not really part of it, I appreciate this look at it. I'm reminded of a lot of the criticisms of utilitarian ethics, which itself seems pretty unquestionably part of the same intellectual branch as EA. Like, there's a core idea that seems pretty reasonable, but actually implementing it requires us to do a lot of calculation that we don't really have the information to do. And depending on how you fill in the gaps, the assumptions you bring to the table, you can go off in some very different and potentially pretty awful directions.
What's the alternative to working with assumptions, and filling in gaps? Simply assuming that certain moral rules are better, and cross those gaps more effectively? It just sounds weird to say it's a critique of a certain branch of philosophy when it applies to all of them right now.
The short lesson is, “Don’t try to be too clever or too novel, because you’re neither as clever or as novel as you think.” Robert McNamara thought he was very clever, but Vietnam didn’t turn out so well. There are strong parallels between Bob’s hubris, and that of EA proponents. Doing charity (or anything) by “feels” has merit because those emotions have stood the test of millions of years of mammalian social evolution. Of course we should examine them, but it would be foolish to dismiss them.
@@TheLastScoot The major issue here that exposes utilitarianism and effective altruism to this kind of criticism is that they are sometimes claimed to be rigorous and scientific. You're right that every branch of philosophy requires some assumptions to fill in gaps in our knowledge, and if you disagree about the assumptions then the final conclusion is meaningless. However, most branches accept this, and in the modern day a lot of philosophy is about questioning these assumptions. The proponents of effective altruism and utilitarianism approaches typically (but not always) ignore a lot of these assumptions.
All moral systems have pitfalls. Eg, the typical criticism of utilitarianism is that you might be tempted to harvest healthy people for their organs. Kill 1 to save 5. But besides such arguments typically pretending long term consequences aren't a thing (like how would people react to that?), you have to consider that deontology also has the same kinds of pitfalls. In deontology all that matters is rules, not consequences. So if your rules somehow say that somebody isn't a person, then you can kill them with impunity, and no amount of carnage changes anything because consequences are not part of that system. I think ultimately, charitable organizations are far closer to utilitarianism than to deontology. People form charities to enact specific changes in the world. That's a desired consequence, and something utilitarianism is equipped to work with.
@@jamesbedwell8793 yeah when all the puff pieces about effective altruism came out it triggered like a dozen red flags from just one article. the pitch featured such gems as "we all know the preceding philosophy that gets us to this world view" and "if you want to actually help the poor you should first become rich BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY"
I love reading the subtitles especially during the Patreon credits. Such a clever way to personally connect with your audience and share your experiences.
I keep forgetting that this channel's video actually comes with subtitles, as opposed to adding them months later like most channels. Now I have a great excuse to watch it again.
I wanted to find a good charitable cause many years back and this EA movement was basically the only apparent source of critical reviews of charities out there. I recognised that they've got some severe limitations: - How many charities can they cover, what level of detail can they measure, and how accurately can they extrapolate the likely long-term effects? - They hit the utilitarian problem of trying to quantify benefit and balance it with fairness. - They may be able to help confirm a charity is trustworthy in how the money gets used but then how do you trust their assertion? - They have the bias of being formed of people who are unrepresentative of who they want to help. But I couldn't really see any better alternatives around. Improving the world is a very vague/subjective and very complex optimisation problem and I think for people who want to try taking it seriously, there needs to be more ideas, critiques and investigations on the table from a wider range of people.
Guidestar has reviews of charities. I never heard of these EA folks, but that's because I never had anything to do with the world of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Oxford.
@@richardarriaga6271 More specifically it was GiveWell (who Abigail mentions directly) and The Life You Can Save (started by Peter Singer, who she includes in her sources) which popped up in my searches at the time - these are both part of the EA movement, which I found out about as I was looking into them. I'll check out Guidestar as the seem to have broader coverage, but at a glance, they are in the same movement and have similar results and backers.
If I was a billionaire, I would have things set up to help people with autism and such get lifeskills that will actually help them get into jobs and such. You get some where they work with horses and such and they have improved lives. Stay involved and make sure nobody gets taken advantage of. Obviously people get paid but I would not exploit donations because I'm not a wanker unlike most. Not to get political or anything but charities like BLM have misled people into being scammed. That particular group had a leader who used the money to buy mansions. So one has to be careful with who they deal with. Even those wanting to good can get involved in the bad ones.
Instead of turning to charities, it's better to implicate yourself directly to engage change. Of course a lot of people simply cannot. Personally, I like the concept of Wren. But then again...nothing is perfect.
Philosophy is baller and all, but I'm starting to think these videos are more of an opportunity for Abigail to play dress up with some of the most fire costumes and fits in the universe
MacAskill's line about the butterfly effect is copium distilled to its most pure form, it's impossible to make decisions based on that. In reality they're creating an emotional barrier by fixating on non-existent future people. Those future people may have whatever motives you assign to them, so you can be selective about whether or not to show them altruism - as opposed to someone who is right in front of you and visibly struggling, where refusing to be altruistic requires you to admit your own flaws. It's a self-defense mechanism that allows you to be altruistic only when it suits you, and still tell yourself that you're the good guy.
This reminds of people who are like "Im so glad I was a heroin addict for 10 years, sleeping on the street and being a prostitute for drugs. Because in rehab I met my future partner, we now have three kids and both have great jobs. Totally worth it." Like, come on, there was a million ways you could have been happy without ever having tragedy, and there's a million ways you could have died a horrible death while you were an addict. Random chance isn't an excuse for literally any motivation or action
You're doing the same thing as the slave owners of the past and meat eaters of the present, being too close minded in the extent of your moral circle. Also, saying future people don't deserve to be cared about because we don't know their intentions is just straight up cruel.
Fair to your balanced reading of the EA movement. I dated someone for 6 months who was into EA, it just comes off... icky! I work for a small charity doing peer support and I felt like they looked down their noses at me for being "less effective" ... These people are time holes who will spend hours debating but never spend a moment washing the dishes, let alone volunteering.
I'm an EA & also think mutual aid & building anit-capitalist political power is key. I understand how people can think parts of EA are "icky", but ultimately, if you live in an affluent country, spending your extra money on malaria nets rather than starbucks is the opposite of icky.
Sorry that I donated a third of my annual income (not big, by the way) to saving small children from dying of malaria. I'll keep in mind how much more important washing dishes is in the future. No, wait, sorry, mistyped there. I meant to type, "Fuck you."
@@bo_trilly How do you make philanthropy and mutual aid remotely compatible? Mutual aid is supposed to be a critique of bourgeois charity, which is exemplified by EA. One is grassroots, the other is top-down. One is revolutionary, the other is reactionary.
At the core of “Great Compassion” (of Tibetan Buddhism) many of these ideas were explored from a different, deeper thought perspective. This feels like an intellectualized version of how apply a sort of thought mathematics to decide the most impactful effect (reducing maximum suffering per dollar) with your charitable dollars. A sort of external appearing Bodhicitta effort.. without needing to do the difficult inner work the buddhist path requires.
Hearing Shanspeare's voice pop up from time to time made me smile, love that 2 of my fav creators worked together! Such an important topic, one which is very cloudy and I really appreciate how you tackled this
It is absurd to think that SBF was motivated by effective altruism to commit fraud. He himself admitted that he just used the EA language as a game to prop up his image as a selfless billionaire, while he was committing fraud.
@@themasstermwahahahah He was also fuelling a bunch of money into republicans. Based on the court filing he boosted both sides with about ~$100 milion keeping the contribiutions roughly equal. It's a very common thing big corporations do to help them hide the shady shit they're doing.
This video has a strong impact on me both visually and mentally, but it also creates a sense of conflict within me as I find myself being pulled in two different directions. Well played!!!
Of course you didn't get paid. You were lucky the travel and accommodation were refunded. Not joking, I did some work on Ethics for the UN some 20 years ago. Still waiting for expenses and invoice amount.
As a disabled person into direct action and mutual aid, it was very interesting to learn about this. I did find the example of blindness as a thing to be fixed a bit tiresome. When it comes to helping and engaging with disabled people, I find charities just miss the mark. As a positive, I do love your subtitles.
I think a lot of charities... kind of cater to able-bodied folk, framing disabilities as something to be "fixed", not accommodated, understood... or even tolerated, it's another way to fit in an able bodied world.
I'm sorry but don't you think children who had their eyes destroyed by parasites shouldn't get a chance to not be blind? How is that not a denial of bodily autonomy?
@@theangryholmesian4556 I mean, by the tenets of Effective Altruism itself, you have to measure not just "is this good" but "is this the best good you could possibly do". What's bad about not being able to see? Genuine question to think about, not a gotcha. Take that list and ask yourself whether those things only apply to children with specific parasitic infections. Some of them might be things that don't even only apply to people with low vision. (The need for transportation assistance, for example.) EA tends to view the lack of ability itself as the only issue because it's related to something you can count. If you've got $X million and your whole thing is that you're supposed to be doing the most good, then you *have* to ask some more complicated questions about what "good" is than just "how do we make the number of sighted people go up". If you define effectiveness this way, you'll *never* get around to accessibility and broader social good because you've got a metric for "cured parasite infections" but not "net improvement to the lives of people".
@@theangryholmesian4556 You're missing the original point, many charities treat any disability as 'preventable' and often overlook the people that already have become disabled. Doesn't take away from further preventing others becoming disabled, but asks you to consider the people who just already have different disabilities and then in turn barely have any resources to get support from.
The wallet inspector thought experiment is interesting because, as the supposed reward increases, the likelihood of it decreases. I'd argue that the monetary reward _never_ outstrips the probability of being rewarded, so it never becomes optimal to hand over your wallet. If someone says "Give me your wallet, and tomorrow, I'll give you a hundred pounds" you wouldn't believe them. But if someone said "Give me your wallet, and tomorrow I'll give you a billion pounds" you'd believe them exponentially less.
that's not what an exponential is, but yes although one might argue that the inspector can make up an arbitratily large reward, but it might not be rational for you to say the probability of that reward is, for example, less than 1 in 10^10000, because a reasonably skeptical person shouldn't be that confident in anything.
@@youmukonpaku3168 I carry my old bus card in the instance this happens because I thought it'd be funny if it ever does. Like, "Enjoy my hotlisted bus card and library card I guess? Education is important :)"
I'm a social worker from Argentina, so I'm up from the systemic change, but in the meantime when you look for charitys is important to look at the ethicts of it. There are charitys that look for the "good poor" and "bad poor" and help the one that "deserves it". And the ones that understend that were is a need there is a violated (not guaranteed) right, look for the ones that fight for the rights of people at the time that they asist them and not for the ones that tell others how to live.
Thanks for the reminder. I feel like making companies accountable is more effective than earn to give. Nachunternehmerhaftung (German supply chain ethics) is supposed to avoid much of what people donate to alleviate
Incredible point, not all charities are equal in their help. In the US the American Red Cross does what you describe, and should be more well known for its anti... Well many kinds of folks policies. If you are queer, or have a non normative partner they'll often separate you from your partner or just deny one of you shelter.
@@AsadAli-jc5tg ...ah, yes- because Abigail is dumb enough to side with the people who want her (and trans people like her) to fucking die. 10/10 logic, bravo.
Oh yes, her mind is incredible! But her looks distract me all the time... I'm an old conservative fart but I don't give a damn about her past. She's just steaming hot.
I found this video certainly more balanced than expected. If you'd like to get into why some people in the Effective Altruism community defend billionaires, you can check out Scott Alexander's "Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy". Edit: Allow me to clarify that it's mostly about defending billionaires being philanthropic over buying expensive things for themselves, but it can extend further.
It was actually nice to see that all of my concerns I've ever had in the world today of unfettered capitalism and the rich class were elucidated. It was one of those things where I could see a problem but I could point my finger at the nature of the problem. It's like if you are writing a snippet of code and you know what you want the code to do, you understand the logic behind it, but you can't translate it into something readable. You gave me the tools I needed to understand categorically and the logic and concepts behind the things I see wrong in the world today. Thanks.
Abby and Finn5ter! Also Peter Singer was preaching what the Effective Altruism movement said a decade before this at least. And I don't mind giving the homeless money, if they spend it on drugs or alcohol that's no big deal, that's what I would have spent it on.
How were you on this video 15 hours ago, when the video was only posted 4 hours ago? Are you a time traveller? Can you see the future? Can you tell me where my wallet is?
So i am coming back to this video, since it was the first video of yours that i have watched. Since then i have watched a total of 18 of your videos within the last 3 weeks or so. And I got to say, the more you become you, the better these videos get. These videos have helped me get out of a mental stalemate. That combined with some therapy, and a joint here and there, has gotten me back into the saddle of a horse I had unknowingly had left in the stables for years. And I must thank you for that.
I lived in Silicon Valley for a bit and once had a friend sneak me into LinkedIn's employee cafeteria (a friend of a friend was an employee). I remember sitting there eating unlimited gourmet food and thinking about how I was living on poverty wages and food insecure a few streets over. I was on food stamps, and benefits had been recently cut. I also worked in charity at the time and knew how difficult it was to get tech companies to even pay attention to local crises. I have to admit that this colors a lot of my deep skepticism of things like "effective altruism."
You can be an effective altruist and see that the predatory silicon valley billionaire fucks who tout the ideology only do it to ease their cognitive dissonance. Just like you can be Christian and disagree with homophobic bigots, Jewish and disagree with Israel's human rights abuses, an environmentalist and disagree with the greenscaping corporations, socialist and disagree with the policies of the DPRK, etc. etc. etc...
I always love to watch your videos with subtitles because of the extra stuff hidden in there, especially this time! You are an inspiration and I strive to be as kind, strong and humble as you are- thank you for making this show
Jealous much? In all seriousness, don't knock it until you've tried it. When I was a performer, I could write off most of my clothing purchses as costumes. I even worked with a couple of seamstresses to make some amazing costumes that I'd never have been able to create on my own.
This is the first time I have found your UA-cam Channel. The first one I watched was the thumb nail that drew me in. The red and white latex nun outfit with the title about the rich and having there own ethics. At first I thought this was click bait and some high school psy major... telling me how people think. Using outfits to get my attichion. Then to my surprise, it came in a very clear and artful tone. It had quirky little jokes, and yes I would be lying the outfits kept my focus. I am a person who loves to listen to things in the back ground, on history, philosophy and many different things. I am happy to say I will be adding your page to my first choice sets too.
I really hope you enjoy this one - I worked super hard on it and tried my very best to keep things even-handed and educational! If you appreciate that effort, Patreon.com/PhilosophyTube is what helps me keep making work like this!
definitely one of my favorites from you :)
I like the joke in the title, the rich having ethics (of any kind).
It seems hard to disprove that the 0,01% cause and benefit from everything negative on this planet.
@@guyfawkes5012 What do you mean????? It's still 7 hours away, and you posted this comment 9 hours ago wtf
@@graymeinders7645 Abi's vids drop on Nebula about a week before YT, so some people have already seen it
@@freemansteinslab ahhhhh fair enough
Being a consultant at a banking conference where you didn’t get paid. That tracks. That tracks so hard, in fact for a financial institution.
And an *ethics* consultant specifically... like okay Mr Bank Manz I'm sure this talk will really get thru to u
@@ayyydn And they probably also got tax deductions etc for all of it too!
It tracks so hard it just became a trolley problem
Even more so that they even paid for a business class ticket instead of an economy class one and giving the rest as salary. It shows how this is always about optics. Instead of paying a small wage and modest transportation it's about luxury transport (to feel acknowledged) without paying a salary, as a ethics consultant shouldn't take a job based on the money...
No it doesn’t…that’s actually really unusual. Consultants get paid a lot in all industries, but especially finance and tech
I've worked for charities before, specifically animal rescue, and I've done independent charitable work and mutual aid in private. One of the realizations that hits you almost immediately is that charity is nowhere near enough, and cannot be relied upon as a solution to systemic problems. It comes down to a matter of scale, as charities can only help a small percentage of those who need it, and can't do anything to change the system that gave rise to massive inequalities in the first place. The average charity volunteer is giving everything they've got, and the vast majority of charity organizations are barely clinging to life. Unless an organization already has a ton of clout, or is corrupt like a lot of the big name charities, chances are it's struggling for survival itself. For people to act like we can just use charity to catch those who slip through the cracks is a gross misunderstanding of the scale and severity of the problems charity is meant to address.
I don't understand, what are you suggesting? That charities are nearly worthless because the system is so entirely broken?
@@skeetsmcgrew3282sounds like you understood exactly what they said
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 yes?
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Essentially. I'm not one to downplay the good charity workers do, because I've been there myself. I'm just trying to give people an idea of how insurmountable the problem of inequality is. We can reach a few people here and there, and this is a tangible good in their lives, but it doesn't last long, and is not a long term solution without systemic change. So I'm not framing this as an either-or situation either, we need both. Ideally we'd live in a world where people's survival needs are taken care of by default, and charities are there to help on the side. They cannot and should not be an absolute requirement.
@@FrozEnbyWolf150 I think it's sort of pointlessly overwhelming to consider charity through this lense. Like, the problems have been around for a very long time, and until capitalism is destroyed they will never ever be fixed. It's a waste of time to even consider deep systemic change in anything resembling a decent timeline. Maybe several centuries, but not in a lifetime, and definitely not in a generation. So every good deed should be considered it's own win. I guess my philosophy is like, kind pessimism? Like, it's fked, we are all fked, but that doesn't mean you dismiss anything good thats done
As someone qualified in AI, I can assure you that the real danger to humanity from AI isn't that it will go rogue and disobey its masters.
The real danger from AI is that it will never disobey its masters, and it will carry out their instructions without any compassion or ethical considerations, making those masters ever richer and more powerful, forever.
Yep the most dangerous part about AI is that it's got everything from us , and we then get it into our heads it’s impartial just because we have an algorithm do exactly what we do.
@@tamarabrugara More that it's ideal for manipulation. Consider this scenario: You take a successor version of GPT. Is it intelligent? No. Actually, if you were to compare it to a human, it's a moron and a compulsive liar. But that's ok: You don't need an intelligent program for this, you just need something that can pass as a human in a brief conversation in internet comments. Now, direct this AI to your desired goal. It might be "promote by product" or "support my politician" or "insult this ideology" or "talk about this news story."
Now, rent yourself some computing power, and duplicate your AI. Ten thousand instances. Tie them in to the APIs for some popular social media services. And there you have it: Your auto-troll. A tool with the power to flood the public conversation through sheer numbers and direct it, shaping public opinion to your own views. The AI isn't intelligent, but it's intelligent enough to pass in youtube comments.
Within a couple of years, I expect to see the internet just flooded by billions upon billions of comments explaining why China is the best, safest, most successful, richest, cleanest and most free country, and anyone saying otherwise is just a sucker for western propaganda.
Another dangerous aspect of AI is that if we ask it do something it may not give us exactly what we want or the method it chose to obtain it may be unfavourable. AI hss no ethics, morajs or human understanding, you ask it to create a money making idea it would suggest hacking into a randkm person bank account.
As an AI researcher, I agree with this statement.
That's A danger. Another is that humans will be displaced from their own world. Automation and robotics will make them unnecessary for manual labor, and AI will make them unnecessary for mental and creative labor. We will come to live in a world where we will not be needed and have no purpose or value. It's hard to imagine what would become of people in such a world.
F1nn wandering around the video like your office managers lost puppy is so fun
I absolutely love how this F1nn colab is just a normal philosophy tube video but F1nn is just sorta there vibing. Like bring your femboy to work day. Iconic
Hahaha ok i want that for my work day too
@@capucnechaussonpassion14 Everyone deserves to bring a femboy to bring your femboy to work day.
A low-key Derol from Glass Onion reference, perhaps?
Ideal.
Timestamps 4:35
This woman opened the video with telling a conference full of bankers to resign and wearing, like 6 inch platforms. Abigail Thorn, you are an inspiration to us all.
@@higginswallop5009 wow what a cutting edge take 😐
@@higginswallop5009 sounds and looks like a woman to me
its a man
@user-fo8yu1hy1r was a man, is now a trans-sexual woman.
i think it is a story from a guy, jeff realname
I might have missed a line somewhere but... I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to realize EA stood for Effective Altruists rather than Electronic Arts... I was starting to go crazy.
Omg same 😆 after years of watching James Stephanie Sterling rail against EA, each time I heard it mentioned in a non-gaming context was rather jarring 😅
Took me a second, too xD
"Effective Altruist Sports. IT'S IN THE GAME!"
Effective Altruism Sports: It's in the game.
I mean the comparison fits
For more human well being you have to buy the DLC
I live on the Swinomish Reservation, where Shell had an entire train derail and spill into our watershed. I'm working now for a degree in Environmental Biology to deal with the long-term effects of this catastrophe. This video helped me a lot to understand what I'm doing and why. Thank you
But then Shell bought some malaria nets and donated to a bunch of rich men's tax evasion side gigs, I mean, charities. So we should all forgive them. Hash tag effective scam, I mean, altruism.
BTW, good luck with your study. I think your approach is million times more effective way of securing the future than EA.
Best of luck in your education and future work! Idk if this is helpful, as I know it is still quite expensive, but the South East Technological University in Ireland has a robust environmental remediation department. Since it's been recently changed from a college to a university, SETU is desperate for graduate and postgraduate students. There are some fast tracked postgraduate scholarships that offer a research based opportunity to earn a PhD in 2 or so years, all tuition paid by the school, and you get paid a fairly decent stipend to live off of during your studies.
You are joking right?
@@colonela7815 look it up
Finally someone else referring to him by his proper title; "Grimes' Ex"
I prefer Elon Husk.
Given Elon's proclivity for putting "X" at the end of everything, it would be more appropriate if it were "Grimes' X"
Timestamp?
@@trinitym5552 Is music for the deaf?
@Trinity M the oc is defining musk based on his relationship with grimes, not the other way around. And not all women are dope 😭
I love Abigail’s commitment to video games’ idea of future fashion. Belts. Belts everywhere.
Oh man yeah, every character in cyberpunk has suspenders belts and holsters that hold nothing.
Ironically, this is also video games' idea of past fashion and fantasy fashion.
@@nucleargandhi2709 it's just video game fashion, and the fashion i want to do
Bit skimpy on the pouches though 🙃
There's one thing for sure: her left shoulder is SAFE! 🦾 But seriously, she looks great! Plus, personally I love the cyber look, and extraneous/useless buckles, strips, straps, grommets... Especially after I saw the extent of what it could be in _The Fifth Element._ Remember Zorg (Gary Oldman) and his slick-as-hecc latex/rubber pinstripe 3-piece suit? And it was lined in red! SO FAB!
Disclaimer for gamers, EA is referring to Effective Altruism, not Electronic Arts
Thank you 😂. My gamer brain was confused 💀
@@stansmith7445 I didn't want to admit it when I first saw your reply, but tbh same
Effective Altruism (It's in the game)
Thank you so much holy shit
😂😂😂
I think there's also a question about how good and harm exists in the first place. Many disabled people, myself included, suffer because we live in a world that routinely fails to accommodate them. Alleviating disability can be helpful, but it puts the cart before the horse.
I have a different view on this as a disabled person. I'd say that society coming up with ways to accommodate is more task intensive than "solving" the problem at the basis. Accommodating vs preventing the need for accommodation with out sacrificing those who would need said accommodation. IE if we eliminated disabilities (with regards to that some are considered as such only due to cultural implications, vs functional ability, which I understand is a whole other can of worms conversation to have) but say that we had a perfect way of doing that, I'd more agree with preventing the need for accommodation where possible, if that makes sense.
@@vixxcelacea2778what do you mean by eliminating disabilities...eugenics?
@@fawn2911 By... curing them? That's a really weird leap in logic.
@@Existential_RobotThere are a multitude of disabilities that aren't curable. Knowing this makes the idea that eugenics was the intended goal an easier conclusion to reach
As someone whose been homeless and works multiple jobs to keep from going back, I wish the world was more accommodating for everyone.
I read a book called The Anxieties of Affluence, which was a sort-of anthropological look at the ultra wealthy families of Manhattan. Nearly all of the (mostly women) in the families struggled a great deal with how to be rich "ethically", and how to best donate to charities. But the thing is, how is a random millionaire in Manhattan supposed to know what exactly their community needs, or how their money can best be implemented? As a result, the majority of wealthy people tend to donate to their children's (probably already financially healthy) schools. The book made the conclusion that rich people should simply be taxed more, as even though the govt is not by any means a perfect means to distribute wealth effectively, it is at least ran by people who are (theoretically) democratically elected to represent their communities. I really think philanthropy is just another big smoke screen the wealthy use to avoid taxes. It's an incredibly ironic twist of fate to me that most rich people donate to their children's private schools, while public schools languish due to a lack of tax revenue from their neighborhoods. Cool!
Ahhh, you forget the very useful action of busying one's meddling wife in charitable ventures and the subsequent validation she derives from it, freeing you to go back to pillaging the world she'll then ceremoniously apply a rhinestone band-aid to.
This
idk, no effective altruist would ever argue for spending on private schools. I feel like real, effective charities that work in super-impoverished countries doing things like feeding starving ppl can definitely be more effective than giving money to the US government
More taxes for the ultra rich, yes please, sure! But not avoiding the little they should pay would be a start aswell
Abi mentions the rise of the charitable foundation, but doesn't mention its tax benefits. Eventually the taxpayer ends up subsidizing them because donations to them are tax deductible. Same with religious orgs.
“Somewhere in a parallel universe, there’s an alternate version of me. And she doesn’t have any integrity, but she does own a house.”
Damn. I love that line.
It's the pink-suited girlboss character with the American accent who has some company I can't remember 😂
OOOft same it was so good!!
I felt that, too.
It's stupid. She has made enough money to buy a house multiple times. Why does she keep pretending to be poor?
@@adamafzall4618 You said it wrong. It’s Pooah.
"The crypto sphere is powered by the hype about how we're all gonna make it. Sometimes that hype is pretty unrealistic." - Abigail.
So generous, careful, compassionate!
Other times it's a deliberate predatory lie. - me
Ahhhhh I just need to mention that I absolutely love the way you show your sources during the video. It's a small thing (an annoying thing to edit in, I'm sure) but it gives so much more depth to the topic and works as a really effective way to raise interest to dig deeper without having to introduce essays in a repetetive way. You've done it in a visually non-intrusive and stylish way and I just really appreciate that extra mile! Oh and the latex is absolutely bomb!
It really is one my favourite little details about her channel, I wish more UA-camrs who made video essays did it.
i wish they would cite sources in that way on tv documentaries and stuff like that! where you're likely to tune in in the middle of it and might not see the credits, and theres no description you can look up. I know it's just a thing this channel does (much appreciated) but i wish it was adopted more widely!
Adam Ruins Everything used to do that. It was like having footnotes in an article. Super useful not having to scour the entire video description for further reading.
I too hope to have the time to track sources for my work, lol
I completely agree and if you actually use sources in the creation of the video I doubt it's much of a hassle to edit. I'd guess the sources are already marked into the script and since the formatting is always the same all you have to do is copy paste.
"Somewhere in a parallel universe there is a alternate version of me. She doesn't have any integrity but she does own a house." This had me in stitches. Love the video!
Hopefully those stitches didn't come from the American Healthcare system
Its doubly funny if you know how this particular scene thinks. Theres a lot of *really weird* beliefs popular within the EA crowd, one of which is a weird attachment to multiverse type ideas, along with "Were all in a simulation!" and its whackier corollory "If we piss off the robots they'll torture us in a simulation!". Its a weird little pocket of silicon valley culture and it *really* believes its own propaganda..
That line hit me the hardest in the video! There's a lot of humour in the truth!
@shayneoneill1506 You mean Roko's Ballisk? It's funny because even if that *were* real, I don't see how I'm supposed to feep threatened by the AI torturing a simulation of me after I die, when the simulation of me *isn't me*, but a copy of me.
@@psuedonym9999I've been told I'm too stupid to understand the threat of a supercomputer capable of simulating consciousness thinking mean thoughts about me, but we have those already; they're called brains.
We had an effective altruistic talk at an atheist club, they talked about how if we all gave a small portion of our income we could do exceptional things. The specific example was how for this percentage we could reinvigorate the space program.
I asked if what they were proposing was something we already had called "taxes".
They did not like this
Really the key difference was they basically wanted libertarian taxes.
In that it was totally voluntary, and more importantly each rational individual ought to decide how to earmark their funds. So each of us could decide if it was for malaria nets or rocket ships or whatnot, but the key aspect was that it wasn't a decision made by a government body.
Shhhh do not expose the man behind the curtain
@Denise Jaimes and putting a facility on low earth orbit will be easier and cost effective based on your "donation"?
@@CodyEthanJordan Libertarians are supporting an unrealistic Ideal
@@CodyEthanJordan These are just covers. They are not honest justifications. Though that doesn't mean these people are lying, they may actually believe it. But belief itself is something that is nothing more than a behavioral regulator managing interactions of individuals of a social species. What it really comes down to. Do you remember when groups like Publisher's Clearinghouse would go make a big scene with a giant paycheck to someone that won money? Think about what that display gains for the person or group making that demonstration. It makes them look better. Now, think how much they then gain from that appearance, esp in a time that it can be pasted all over TV, or now the internet. Why did Mr. Beast or whatever his name is make a YT video about the whole getting people vision treatment? He could have just went and done it all without the camera. But then he'd not have gained the social benefit the display would then grant him. He probably has no conscious cognition of this fact, its something that is an inherent part of social behavior. But this is the root of it. Libertarian types hate governmental action because it takes away their opportunity to display their "altruism". It takes away the gains they would then receive.
I gave a similar "keynote speech" at a construction project meeting back in the 90s. I eventually left the business entirely and could not have been happier. Unfortunately I was forced to return to it and everything is worse than I could have ever imagined it becoming. I'm struggling to get out of it again in order to keep myself from going insane.
The closed captioning during the credits is so sweet and pure. Love PhilosophyTube CC. I'm rooting for you, Abigail! :)
Thanks for pointing it out! I had otherwise missed them. The cc are indeed incredibly adorable
lol I went back and watched the credits bc of this comment. I loved the little hidden treat
I'm so glad Abigail is trying to keep herself grounded while also growing. In case she reads this, the quality of the visuals seems to always be better than the last. This one was a little bit light on some of the deeper philosophy but on the whole the quality of that also increases over time. I hope you can manage to continue making content that makes me think, consider, and ponder while also having the career you'd like. I value your insights and the philosophical context even when I disagree so I know a different view and can empathize with those who espouse it.
As someone who has worked at a bank for years (and is looking for a way out), a sadistic part of me would’ve sold my kidney to be at that conference and watch the bankers being told the most ethical thing they can do is resign.
Hey, you can still donate your kidney! Save a human life and stick it to the finance bros ;p
ay u just watched the result for free, how about that :3
F1nn5ter's cameo was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
The problem I have with the non-identity problem is that it cancels itself. For, by NOT taking the bus (to extend the example), you have an equal-but-opposite impact on those same events in the other direction ... and, thus, an equal responsibility to THOSE children as well ... cancelling BOTH arguments with each other.
Indeed. It's not like either set of theoretically possible children has a higher likelihood of containing the child that will go on to cure cancer or become super hitler. Theoretically I could commit a murder and go to trial, and some juror has to serve when they would otherwise have been able to stay home, and thus they have sex at a different time and have a different child and that child happens to end all war forever and give every child a puppy. Doesn't mean it was right for me to commit murder, nor is it in any way possible for me to reasonably even use that as a justification for committing said murder because how would I know about a child that does not yet exist.
Trying to work off of unknown conclusions and butterfly effect ideas is not going to help anyone. All you can do is identify when an action or inaction actually has a domino effect and if it's positive or negative or both. There are a billion small things that change the course of the future. We have absolutely no way of knowing all of them. Even a super computer that could calculate all of the happenings and likely get very good probability considerations would never know everything. Being omniscient isn't possible. Because the act of existing from one point from non existence removes the data of knowing or understanding how one's existence factors in.
And I say this as a person who thinks the world is deterministic and free-will makes no sense.
This isn't quite the nonidentity problem. The non-identity problem is just any moral problem which arises due to its effect on people who do not exist. The classic example is if you leave a broken glass out on the ground without cleaning it up, and 5 years later a child stumbles over it and cuts themselves, it doesn't seem like it matter morally whether the child is 6 or 4 years old (i.e. did or did not exist at the time you took the action). Or imagine a construction worker violating building codes and that ends up hurting a child years down the line. Another example is, of course, climate change: it seems wrong that oil companies of the past covered up evidence of climate change and that this will affect future generations' lives, even though they did not exist when they were doing it. It's not just wrong for its current effects, but for its future effects, too.
But if future lives matter, how exactly do we weigh them, given they don't exist, and there are many people who could possibly exist? Do we weight them like they currently exist, or as their probability of existing? It's not just decisions like riding the bus, but what about having children yourself, or giving to charities which allow more people to have children, or political or financial actions which make the world a better place for future people. I recommend you also read about the "repugnant conclusion" of Derek Parfit. These are difficult philosophical questions which most philosophers agree there are no satisfactory conclusion, and problems of non-identity are much harder to solve than you might realize if you're only thinking about the bus example.
@@Fematika thank you for this excellent explanation
@@Fematika As a statistician it seems like a trivial problem, uncertain outcomes should always be weighted by their probability of occurring. The main problem is not philosophical but pragmatic - how do you estimate the probabilities of future outcomes?
Not a cross over I ever expected to see, I'm quite tickled about it
maybe she’ll finally crack his egg
I have also been tickled
If I were tickled, it'd be a crime, but so am I!
Tickling is the devil!
I bet there was a lot of tickling going on when the cameras were off
On the off-chance you see this, I just joined Nebula and Patreon for you and your content. I'd been tempted by other brilliant creators, but I truly get SO much value from watching your content that it feels almost like an insult to not pay you back in some small way. You are incredible in every way, and I truly look up to you
Welcome aboard! Thank you so much!
@@PhilosophyTube Just one point. That alternate version of you that owns a house is likely a man, because men are usually quicker to compromise their morality in pursuit of perceived personal gain. My supporting evidence for this is over 50 years of observatation and experience, across several industries.
Came for F1nn5ter, stayed for the lesson
oh hey Kyle, on an alt.
I just came
I too, came for F1nn5ter
came for f1nn5ter, came for f1nn5ter, left the video, cried.
I was running home from work the other day along a river. I rounded a corner and saw a child in distress in the water. I immediately stopped, removed my backpack, took out my phone and saved two starving children in Africa (via an ethical donation) as two is clearly more than one that felt like a clearly better use of my time. By the time I looked up the kid wasn't there anymore, not sure what happened to them.
Fn Cute Ed
Peter Singer actually uses a drowning children thought experiment in his book Giving What We Can, although I think the point you're making is unrelated.
An EA would tell you that your ability to save two starving children in Africa via donation is (almost) orthogonal to rescuing the child in distress. You ought to be aiming to do the _most_ good possible, not compensating for your decision not to rescue a drowning child. Same reason you it's silly to say "It's OK that I'm not vegan because I donate to charity". Your ability to donate to charity is (arguably) unrelated to your ability to avoid consumption of animal products.
Otherwise I could morally justify murdering someone if I also donated US$3000 to Helen Keller International's vitamin A supplementation program.
Wait did I just reducto ad absurdum a reducto ad absurdum wtf. I need to go to bed.
@@TheActualDP I would say it's silly to say "It's ok that I'm not vegan because I donate to charity" because I define neither action as good. One of the issues I have with EA is that no one has a clue as to where to spend their money to maximise goodness.
No one is an island. This means that your actions effect you and others (whether you want them to or not). No one is in quantum superposition with all life. This means that your actions don't effect everyone and everything evenly.
So basically there are two tenets of EA, that we can identify what is good and distance doesn't matter. And both tenets are horribly mistaken.
I don't think that's how it works. Saving the kid requires physical effort and time and not money. The outcome is instant and observable so it's quite obvious what should be done at the moment. Your example is a pretty bad one
@@ed1726 again another person missing the point. Helping someone is better than not helping someone. Putting a bit more effort and finding a more efficient way to help more people is even better. Waiting for the perfect solution to help a hypothetical maximum number of people and wasting time on that un obtainable goal. Is stupid.. it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be better than the previous option. And it can even end up being worse.. but if it's more efficient 80% of the times when it's done then it's still worth it. In other words it's trying to find the optimum solution not the maximum or a perfect solution
Irrelevant but I have fucking loved watching you come into your most fulfilled self through the years. I don’t care how corny this is, it makes my heart leap with joy.
Personally, I echo this sentiment with only a minor pivot to appreciation and admiration. But, these are the essence of love, fuck yes.
Its really this that continues to motovate me to continue to fight for Trans rights. I am a cis-guy but I see people like Philosophy Tube, Jim-Stephanie Stirling and tens of people in my personal life become their most fulfilled self through transition. Fk people that oppose that.
@@narvuntien amen bruthur. We cis gotta fight for our trans brethren, to the last breath. I'll be damned before I let fascists wipe them out.
i want her
I thought the same!
Been on almost a 3 year break from Philosophy Tube, glad to be back in it, and what a lovely surprise to see the YOU I see now!
hahah, welcome back!
@@PhilosophyTube Same here! You look amazing!
@@PhilosophyTube are you trans?
Pro tip: nobody becomes a billionaire without exploiting someone. They are not people any decent human should look up to or take advice from.
An alternative perspective on Longtermism might be some of the decisions that John Green has talked about in various videos and podcasts. At one point he struggled with whether to donate money NOW to charities, or to invest his money and then as it grows, to donate it to charity. He decided that saving lives NOW affects the future just as much and should count as an "investment" as much as financial "investments" of larger monetary sums later on.
Nerdfighter here. I agree that we should donate now because charities invest into mankind, which has better returns on investment than growing a pile of money.
However, I don't think this is a good criticism of longtermism.
Longtermism doesn't recommend pooling a giant pile of money to be used at some future date, it also wants us to donate now to things such as biological weapons regulation efforts, as they have a chance of killing most humans in the future. They want to prevent a catastrophe before it happens.
Technically if investment into people directly, has a greater return on investment than investing in companies, it should be included in longtermism, but I agree with you that it is not a big enough focus within the Longtermism sect of EA. There is little discussion of improving the economic structure of 3rd world countries because it is hard to solve government economic policy by brute force donating money.
If humanity lasts just another 10,000 years then waiting on 100 years of investment before donating is worth it if the ongoing effects are 1% greater.
@@tompw3141 nice pascal's mugging
@@tompw3141 after 100 years you wont be there to do anything with that money. And humanity might end sooner because people like you it was better to wait a century to start trying to make the world a better place
@@tompw3141 Except to the people that experience pain during those 100 years because we're sitting on our thumbs waiting for an investment to grow before helping people with their problem.
This new Philosophy Tube DLC slaps! I can't believe they added a Battle Nun costume to the character creator! I'm also glad they didn't fix the bug that makes your Abigail pronounce "poor" as "POO-rah". Sometimes a bug is just better off being a feature.
EDIT: You can also recruit a Cat Girl companion!? HOLY SHIT! Move over Skyrim Lydia, you've been replaced. Maybe if you didn't complain about helping me carry 50 sets of heavy armor and a metric ton of ingots...
Best DLC considering it's free for bettering the community 👍
Meh, I prefer Philosophy Tube 2.
@@patfitch6660 Philosophy Twobe.
"Poo-er" not "Poo-rah"
@@thomasfisher4833 oh, they used to be "Poo-er", but by now they're even "Poo-rah"...
Abby please don't ever stop talking to us in your CC
💯! All the love.
But also I think, your success wouldn‘t be less legit if it wouldn‘t shine for everyone else. Trans people don‘t profit if you were not successful or not taking chances to do what you care about or dream of.
Feeling bad for succeeding is a weird concept to me. Like trust me, I GET IT, but also, I feel like the feeling implies there’s some other hypothetical person being forgotten due to your success. But if anything, this is giving a lot of visibility to trans people in general. As a fellow trans person I prefer to see one of us succeed over zero of us.
I am so happy that I found your channel. You’re phenomenal at storytelling and educating.
I'm really excited by this novel "landmines for children" idea. I think it has got legs.
Which is more than you'll be able to say about the kids once it's up and running!
Not for much longer
bruh
I think it will run far
“Legs”
The funny thing with the MrBeast blindness example is that I'm mostly only aware of it from the Twitter drama that followed MrBeast agreeing that it's actually not OK that these things are left to random celebrities instead of being addressed with public spending and triggering a backlash from the "fiscally responsible" crowd.
The ironic thing is that anyone "fiscally responsible" should agree that policies like this would ROI easily for any country which invested in it.
That's a pretty cold way to think about life-altering healthcare procedures, but it uses their supposed framework of reasoning.
The section on how the EA movement doesn't listen really spoke to me cause its very true. In the last couple of years in tech that claims to be helping people and all these programs, they are headed by people whose focus is really more on optics then trying to solve problems. They are still living the billionaire lifestyle. The Theranos scandal was all about making a product that could help people, but it was headed by someone who was deeply paranoid, a bully and not remotely suitable for the job. Its such a jarring disconnect.
Well if you look like you're trying to help as many people as possible there is less chance somebody starts to seriously ask why aren't you paying any taxes. The only reason the rich do charity is because it's cheaper than taxes.
@@Rig0r_M0rtis I agree it is true that there are a fair amount of the rich that do this for tax reasons but I think like the video shows there are those in higher income brackets that was to actually use their money to do good but there is a fundamental leadership problem and it’s this tightrope you have to walk on with making money and trying to be helpful. Money has a way of tainting the entire process if not kept in check at all times. Like with Sam in the end he was spending lavishly at a hotel. Money has that affect on people because it works. If you suddenly don’t have to worry about money anymore I think it can be easy to fall into the mindset where you start to see the poor less as people who need help and more as social capital and “lesser then you” a mentality the ultra and legacy rich still have.
@@idontevenknow9758 there's also the problem that the wealthy want to be the ones who define what "good" is and it will never be anything that challenges their ability to be the decider.
How do you feel about GiveDirectly
@Denise Jaimes Taxation is bad because there's war in Ukraine? Can you elaborate?
Abigail this might be your best yet. I love reading your captions and it's such a clever way to keep people engaged through the end of the video to help metrics. The Prince was SO good. Thanks for the great video and excellent essay of things to chew on.
I am SO curious to see how this pairs up with finn lmao
Finn's about to wrench open the third eye of all the libertarian tech-bro femboy-likers and make them collectively realize that their ideology is stupid.
pretty much just for comedic relief, so not in a major way :)
Since the vid is about the ethics of rich people, there's no way that F1nn's top donor, TenMuses, is unmentioned. The guy donated $25k to transgender relief just because F1nn was about to end Girl Month one time. He promised $300k to charity for Finn to get breast implants, but then compromised just to have Finn learn a girl voice and do voice training.
Apparently he's just a surgeon who made good choices with investing his money, and he's now free to just cross off items on his bucket list. Comically large donations to a femboy livestreamer were apparently on that list.
@CrashCoptr Nope isn't mentioned, just a short clip where F1nn gives 50,000 to charity which might relate to that
SAME
Wasn't expecting a F1nn5ter guest spot! Love him so much.
I spit out my drink when Finn walked through the background when she mentioned "your college aged son getting into internet culture."
Femboys!
I wrote an essay on altruism and egoism, the case of dogs vs blind poor people is a matter of not effective altruism, altruism is not about being effective or not, is about a matter of sacrificing something or yourself in making other individuals feel better, it's just egoism put into the formula what cancellate altruism and make it a "positive egoism" action. I wrote that like 3 years ago...
This sounds super interesting
if you have the essay still id really love to read this! it sounds super interesting
Fun Fact: Pong isn't a program. It was made in hardware using timing circuits. Every version of the original Pong you have played on a computer is either emulating the hardware or written from scratch.
Some would argue that the difference between a software program and "hardware using timing circuits" is immaterial... Assembling hardware to do a specific task is just "writing" a program in something that is not bits and bytes.
@@Vogel612 I was going to make a very similar point. You could argue it's not a program *for a turing machine*, that is it's not code written for a general purpose code execution machine, so you can't copy-paste it into an emulator and get it to run on any computer that understands the instruction set.
So in that sense the difference is more of a practical one. It's still a digital program, it's just made on purpose-build circuits, so once you're able to emulate how those circuits should behave you have a version of the program that is made for turing machines and then you can copy it however you'd like, which was the analogy made in the video.
Honestly though I'd say almost all modern versions of Pong are just re-written from scratch and simply mimic the rules and the appearance of the original. It would be so much less work.
As Tony Stark said “he beat me by one second”
Chiming in something something, Lovelace, Babbage Jacquard loom, something...
Every program is just software emulation of some other hardware.
I always questioned the 'person asking for your help not getting it in lieu of someone who didn't ask you' scenario. Missionaries are a good example of this phenomena.
I think that Chidi from The Good Place is a criticism of EA. He was so wrapped up in trying to figure out all the consequences of his decisions he became a burden to everyone around him.
He's a criticism of ineffective decision making. Part of effective decision making is deciding when to stop analyzing.
The whole series was about the world getting so complicated and intertwined with everything that effectively it's not possible to be a good person anymore. Like even buying flowers for your mom gives you bad karma because the flowers were picked by underpaid young people working long hours and by buying the flowers you're funding such operations. This lead to even the holiest people going to the bad place, as they were evil by simply existing in the current world.
The most effective altruism is the altruistic acts you do not the ones you think about. If you are spending an excessive amount of time trying to optimize your altruism you are not doing effective altruism.
@@Jackassik And at the same time, it also criticised the kind of people who got caught up in trying to maximise their "goodness" score by over-analysing the complexity of the world, instead of just bloody doing something.
Everyone in the OCD community agrees that he definitely had OCD lol
I loved the end notes in the captions, that was such a cute way to connect with your audience! Like a sweet little easter egg. Love these videos!!
I just want to take a moment to appreciate how this information is being delivered by a person in costumes that look like they come straight out of video games.
latex nun makes my pp feel funny
... Yes. Video games...
Kinda her whole schtik. Abigail's costumes are always a vague reference to the topic at hand
abby killing us with not only facts and logic, but these latex outfits 🥺
I'm so jealous
She made me gay² ngl
Such a badass vibe
Shes so fine
Absolutely! She never fails to take my breath away! 😍
Ikr idk if I wanna be her or be with her >
My knee jerk reaction to EA was "if the system wasn't bad this idea would be amazing." But then comes the idea that if the economic system we currently operate under wasn't bad, then the systemic issues EAs intend on solving would be much more manageable or even nonexistent. I feel as though EAs with money are truly attempting to help, but their wealth and detachment have created a mindset that only places gauze over exposed bone.
This is the biggest problem I have with the movement. Working so much with the rich and advising towards high-paying jobs makes it incredibly entrenched in the current system
What an image you've conjured in that metaphor. Gauze over bone. Nice.
What I dont get is that you need a movement for this idea. Cause found this idea myself and never heard of this movement. You get a job with money and can then give more money on the things you value the most in society.
When a philosophy judges that giving the rich more money is good, actually, because they can decide where to spend that money with logic™ and data© it's obviously not capable of making any meaningful systemic changes. After all, our current system is very well optimized to provide more money to the richest members of society. They obviously got wealthy by being the best rational actors, so they must also be the best at deciding where those resources can help the most people, and unbiased logic has indicated that their wallets are the most useful place for all that money.
@@TomOmnom the philosophy isnt about giving the rich more money.
I don't know why she dresses like a nun to talk about money, but she looks great and she talks smart, and what else do you need, really.
Edit: Okay, now that I've finished watching: woah, what an amazingly made video! I love the way you credited your sources and how well picked they were! You also kept me attentive all the way through, something my adhd tries to make sure doesn't happen very often, lol.
I'm definitely subbing. I like how sincere you are in the captions during the credits- it gives very nice insight to how you went about this. Just, a very lovely experience, even for a topic I didn't really care that much for hahah. I'll be staying around for more. Keep up the great work!
@@wserthmar8908 No, I'm pretty sure that's a real woman. Get out of my comment. Trans rights.
I clicked this video thinking I had time to wrap myself up in it - and within the first two minutes I was just thinking to myself "God, I love her". Ready to dive in, but I just wanted to say thank you for what you do Abigail - you keep my faith in humanity alive.
not gunna lie i was a bit on the fence when i saw that first outfit, but then the devil nun outfit had me realize she just likes dressing up in costumes. and then the bit with the femboy walking by in the background at the exact moment she says there are stranger things your son could be doing just completely killed me. instant sub, i too love her.
IMO, the weakness of longtermism isn't so much the obsession around outcomes (if morality isn't effective and practical, then it's more of an academic exercise/posturing than truly about empathy anyway).
The issue is that you can argue for almost any position if you're allowed to arbitrarily expand the scope of the problem as you see fit.
Part of this is just due to the limitations of extrapolating far into the future - something project managers are keenly aware of. We can barely give accurate estimates of tasks that take on the order of days, much less create and follow a detailed schedule spanning months. That's why the preferred approach is to iterate on short intervals and constantly readjust to unexpected issues or changes in requirements, landscape, knowledge, technologies, etc.
Similarly, when you try to predict moral outcomes centuries into the future, things become so fuzzy that everyone is pretty much just making random-ass guesses. At that point it's purely about rhetorical ability rather than logic- and evidence-based actions. This lack of rigor and abundance of subjectivity is fertile grounds for injecting doubt into difficult courses of action the near-term benefits of which we can actually be extremely confident in.
THIS. Reminds me of how even just a few decades ago we had movies coming out with ideas of how they thought the future would look like and they were completely inaccurate. The way Effective Altruist works based on Longtermism is funny to me because it’s essentially people with a shit ton of money being given the authority of acting on behalf of charity based on their ideas of what the future would look like and what they should invest in based on that, except they have no expertise whatsoever to reach even a sliver of accuracy, thus wasting money on hypotheticals instead of the actual people in need or on correcting/tearing down the systems that allow people to be in need in the first place.
It seemed to me the jump from pascal's robber (and ideal/theoretic problem) to the talk about cloud and the rich (practical/implementation) was quite an abrupt one in this video.
I don't think the example is a great point against welfarism concerned with future generations: There is no way, with our current understanding of the world, that a wizard with future seeing powers is possible. Sure, all of that could be wrong as well, but then we would lose nearly all meaning, including all claims of rationality. We don't have a framework/conceptual scheme in which the wallet inspector is what he claims and only a very peculiar definition of "rational" under which we should give it to him. There would be no issue with his demand if what he claimed would fit into our framework. In fact, in a world of reliable divination wizards (terrible subclass imo), we should give it to him. But no such certainty about the (far) future exists and we are often mistaken in our attempt to predict even simpler trends, while the consequences of extremely complex situations seem almost impossible to know. Putting your point in different words, there is a fundamental information problem.
But when we regard those in the near future, there are some very likely harms (like the consequence of current climate change) we should seek to avoid for not just our sake, but those not yet born. No matter if their specific identity and thus the preferences they will develop are not yet set, there are some harms that apply to pretty much everyone no matter their personal preferences. Avoiding those should be uncontroversional.
So while I agree with much of her criticism of the actual movement afterwards (as depicted here, don't know much beyond that tbh), consequentialist theory doesn't seem to be the issue.
The other ingredients being
1. the deliberate ignorance and downplaying of historical injustice,
And 2.
an elaborate rhetorical repertoire to smear anyone interested in the context out of which modern problems arise as "shortsighted"
@@SickegalAlienChosing between the imaginary past or the imaginary future is a false dichotomy. I personaly chose to imagine lovecraftian horrors in cosmic proportions beyond your pale imagination.
Finding out that Lindsey Ellis is doing well and still making content was nice to hear. She's one of the good ones.
She has never struck me as particularly happy or stable so I agree. I was honestly expecting to hear about her tragic early death as dark as that sounds
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Let's be happy that didn't happen
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Considering how much hate has been thrown at her for so long, that's not surprising. Much love to her
Although I do have to wonder... it feels to me like Nebula using her as part of their sponsor read is some kind of ethical violation, even if she ostensibly agreed to it. Like, consider *why* she left youtube in the first place, and how that's still the reason she's not back. Using the fact that she's on your platform is directly connected to that original absence. That doesn't seem right to me.
@@misirtere9836 What? Because they have a mutual interest in making money and her fans would want to know she's making content?
One thing I always appreciate about your videos is the settings and outfits. I never know what to expect from your visuals
I'm just starting my thesis for my Masters in Systems Thinking, with a focus on critically examining Effective Altruism, so this is excellent timing. Thank you, as always, for the fantastic insight and fun, educational videos!
I highly recommend looking into Critical development Theory and Human Development (economic) Theory, notably "development as Freedom" by Amartya Sen, for making sense of some of the limits and contrast to Effective Altruism. and generally the history of the failed approaches in development aid in the 80's and 90s. (which effective Altruism seems to repeat)
we should move towards a world post-development. similarly, we should move aim to create a world post-charity.
All the best with your Masters thesis.
@@Mumra2K Thanks!
I was expecting the ‘curing blindness’ examples to link up with the content on communities self-determining their aid, and on systems-reform. Cure isn’t always bad, but ableds weaponise it against our political organising. Our blind friends also demand workplace rights, Internet screenreader compatibility standards, accessible city/transit planning, etc. The stuff that makes bankers uncomfortable and EA overlooks bc measurability bias.
Altogether still loved the video and congrats on the Prince xx
this. EA and similar idealogies fully ignore the material demands of disabled or impoverished communities, and operate on the assumption that we are too ignorant or downtrodden to meaningfully organize at all. it doesn't surprise me that this idea is based on the Rockefeller and gilded age era model of philanthropy, given its inherent racism, ableism, and paternalism.
Mr Beast kinda reminds me of how the west treats their former colonies
Instead of giving them the means to invest in markets and open malls, they give food. That way, the former colonies are still dependant on western countries but can't say anything because they're being helped and should be grateful
EA focus so little on economic development in third world countries, which would probably be the most effective, just because economic government policy isn't a problem you can have by throwing money at it. It reminds me of the guy looking for his keys by the street lamp because that is where the light is.
That said, most other international charities do the same thing, so this isn't just a problem with EA.
Screenreader compatibility standards are upheld by everyone in web dev, even in personal projects.
As a follower of F1nstser, it is wild to see something from him on Philosophy Tube.
yeah definitely not a collab that i expected, this is some wild shit lol
"And he may even have been sincere"
No chance he was. He's admitted that he just used EA as a way to puff up his reputation, and has said that in part he justified it because other people are doing bad things as well.
I feel like F1nnster won a bet and lost a bet at the same time
He lives in this limbo perpetually
That's just the nature of F1nnster
@@jesustyronechrist2330 roleplays "eboy" ?
Honestly I really love listening to you and getting into the vibe of philosophy with enthusiasm - just for F1nn5ter to jump in every now and then just for a quick meme. I like the vibe this video is giving me
Yeah haha F1nn5ter is here to do what he does best, look good, and he looks good while doing it!
Charity was always a demonstration of power. You decide who is doing a good thing and who isn't.
Edit: The diversity of ideas expressed (respectfully) to answer to my statement is one of the reason this channel is so great.
Veblen would approve of this comment
And for some EAs it's a short hop to 'i know better than these people', then 'i AM better than these people'
yup, thats why i never donate to anything or anyone.
@@Randomkloud Still a choice and a demonstration of power :P
You are deciding the very concept of choice
your subtitles are always the best on youtube! even if i didnt need them i wholly recommend turning them on XD
As someone who's interested in this movement, but not really part of it, I appreciate this look at it. I'm reminded of a lot of the criticisms of utilitarian ethics, which itself seems pretty unquestionably part of the same intellectual branch as EA. Like, there's a core idea that seems pretty reasonable, but actually implementing it requires us to do a lot of calculation that we don't really have the information to do. And depending on how you fill in the gaps, the assumptions you bring to the table, you can go off in some very different and potentially pretty awful directions.
What's the alternative to working with assumptions, and filling in gaps? Simply assuming that certain moral rules are better, and cross those gaps more effectively?
It just sounds weird to say it's a critique of a certain branch of philosophy when it applies to all of them right now.
The short lesson is, “Don’t try to be too clever or too novel, because you’re neither as clever or as novel as you think.” Robert McNamara thought he was very clever, but Vietnam didn’t turn out so well. There are strong parallels between Bob’s hubris, and that of EA proponents.
Doing charity (or anything) by “feels” has merit because those emotions have stood the test of millions of years of mammalian social evolution. Of course we should examine them, but it would be foolish to dismiss them.
@@TheLastScoot The major issue here that exposes utilitarianism and effective altruism to this kind of criticism is that they are sometimes claimed to be rigorous and scientific. You're right that every branch of philosophy requires some assumptions to fill in gaps in our knowledge, and if you disagree about the assumptions then the final conclusion is meaningless. However, most branches accept this, and in the modern day a lot of philosophy is about questioning these assumptions. The proponents of effective altruism and utilitarianism approaches typically (but not always) ignore a lot of these assumptions.
All moral systems have pitfalls.
Eg, the typical criticism of utilitarianism is that you might be tempted to harvest healthy people for their organs. Kill 1 to save 5. But besides such arguments typically pretending long term consequences aren't a thing (like how would people react to that?), you have to consider that deontology also has the same kinds of pitfalls. In deontology all that matters is rules, not consequences. So if your rules somehow say that somebody isn't a person, then you can kill them with impunity, and no amount of carnage changes anything because consequences are not part of that system.
I think ultimately, charitable organizations are far closer to utilitarianism than to deontology. People form charities to enact specific changes in the world. That's a desired consequence, and something utilitarianism is equipped to work with.
@@jamesbedwell8793 yeah when all the puff pieces about effective altruism came out it triggered like a dozen red flags from just one article. the pitch featured such gems as "we all know the preceding philosophy that gets us to this world view" and "if you want to actually help the poor you should first become rich BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY"
I love reading the subtitles especially during the Patreon credits. Such a clever way to personally connect with your audience and share your experiences.
I keep forgetting that this channel's video actually comes with subtitles, as opposed to adding them months later like most channels. Now I have a great excuse to watch it again.
I didn't know they existed there, thank you for bringing it up! 😄
I wanted to find a good charitable cause many years back and this EA movement was basically the only apparent source of critical reviews of charities out there. I recognised that they've got some severe limitations:
- How many charities can they cover, what level of detail can they measure, and how accurately can they extrapolate the likely long-term effects?
- They hit the utilitarian problem of trying to quantify benefit and balance it with fairness.
- They may be able to help confirm a charity is trustworthy in how the money gets used but then how do you trust their assertion?
- They have the bias of being formed of people who are unrepresentative of who they want to help.
But I couldn't really see any better alternatives around.
Improving the world is a very vague/subjective and very complex optimisation problem and I think for people who want to try taking it seriously, there needs to be more ideas, critiques and investigations on the table from a wider range of people.
Guidestar has reviews of charities. I never heard of these EA folks, but that's because I never had anything to do with the world of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Oxford.
@@richardarriaga6271 More specifically it was GiveWell (who Abigail mentions directly) and The Life You Can Save (started by Peter Singer, who she includes in her sources) which popped up in my searches at the time - these are both part of the EA movement, which I found out about as I was looking into them. I'll check out Guidestar as the seem to have broader coverage, but at a glance, they are in the same movement and have similar results and backers.
If I was a billionaire, I would have things set up to help people with autism and such get lifeskills that will actually help them get into jobs and such. You get some where they work with horses and such and they have improved lives. Stay involved and make sure nobody gets taken advantage of. Obviously people get paid but I would not exploit donations because I'm not a wanker unlike most. Not to get political or anything but charities like BLM have misled people into being scammed. That particular group had a leader who used the money to buy mansions. So one has to be careful with who they deal with. Even those wanting to good can get involved in the bad ones.
Instead of turning to charities, it's better to implicate yourself directly to engage change.
Of course a lot of people simply cannot. Personally, I like the concept of Wren. But then again...nothing is perfect.
EA to me still matters more how you got to the top, but yes it's politically powerful and should be used wisely
You contributed so much to the conversation by being excellent and making these arguments accessible ❤
Philosophy is baller and all, but I'm starting to think these videos are more of an opportunity for Abigail to play dress up with some of the most fire costumes and fits in the universe
You say that as if it's a bad thing
[stylishly dressed astronaut] always has been
Why not both?
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 Not at all! She rocks those outfits!
@@loadeddice4696 stylishly dressed cosmonaut, please.
MacAskill's line about the butterfly effect is copium distilled to its most pure form, it's impossible to make decisions based on that. In reality they're creating an emotional barrier by fixating on non-existent future people. Those future people may have whatever motives you assign to them, so you can be selective about whether or not to show them altruism - as opposed to someone who is right in front of you and visibly struggling, where refusing to be altruistic requires you to admit your own flaws. It's a self-defense mechanism that allows you to be altruistic only when it suits you, and still tell yourself that you're the good guy.
Knew it was always a cop out
This reminds of people who are like "Im so glad I was a heroin addict for 10 years, sleeping on the street and being a prostitute for drugs. Because in rehab I met my future partner, we now have three kids and both have great jobs. Totally worth it." Like, come on, there was a million ways you could have been happy without ever having tragedy, and there's a million ways you could have died a horrible death while you were an addict. Random chance isn't an excuse for literally any motivation or action
Think about people who are born right now, that's more than enough and they will already face tons of problems.
You're doing the same thing as the slave owners of the past and meat eaters of the present, being too close minded in the extent of your moral circle.
Also, saying future people don't deserve to be cared about because we don't know their intentions is just straight up cruel.
@@JD-jl4yy and ignoring currently living and suffering people for the benefit of ephermeral future people is any less cruel?
Fair to your balanced reading of the EA movement. I dated someone for 6 months who was into EA, it just comes off... icky! I work for a small charity doing peer support and I felt like they looked down their noses at me for being "less effective" ... These people are time holes who will spend hours debating but never spend a moment washing the dishes, let alone volunteering.
Lmao I don't think these people you are meeting are actually EAs
I'm an EA & also think mutual aid & building anit-capitalist political power is key. I understand how people can think parts of EA are "icky", but ultimately, if you live in an affluent country, spending your extra money on malaria nets rather than starbucks is the opposite of icky.
Sorry that I donated a third of my annual income (not big, by the way) to saving small children from dying of malaria. I'll keep in mind how much more important washing dishes is in the future.
No, wait, sorry, mistyped there. I meant to type, "Fuck you."
@@bo_trilly How do you make philanthropy and mutual aid remotely compatible? Mutual aid is supposed to be a critique of bourgeois charity, which is exemplified by EA. One is grassroots, the other is top-down. One is revolutionary, the other is reactionary.
that's why it''s "effective"
At the core of “Great Compassion” (of Tibetan Buddhism) many of these ideas were explored from a different, deeper thought perspective. This feels like an intellectualized version of how apply a sort of thought mathematics to decide the most impactful effect (reducing maximum suffering per dollar) with your charitable dollars. A sort of external appearing Bodhicitta effort.. without needing to do the difficult inner work the buddhist path requires.
Hearing Shanspeare's voice pop up from time to time made me smile, love that 2 of my fav creators worked together! Such an important topic, one which is very cloudy and I really appreciate how you tackled this
Me too! I recognized Shanspeare's voice almost immediately and it's so much fun to see my faves collaborate.
Same! I was so cool to see
Time stamp 11:26
Ikr?!?!😄
Yeah and I SWEAR that's Alice Caldwell-Kelly at 32:00 and I LOVE to see her in random places
It is absurd to think that SBF was motivated by effective altruism to commit fraud. He himself admitted that he just used the EA language as a game to prop up his image as a selfless billionaire, while he was committing fraud.
I agree, he was also a major Biden donor for example, just playing the hungry for power games.
@@themasstermwahahahah and a dark donor to Republicans.
@@themasstermwahahahah He was also fuelling a bunch of money into republicans. Based on the court filing he boosted both sides with about ~$100 milion keeping the contribiutions roughly equal. It's a very common thing big corporations do to help them hide the shady shit they're doing.
I actually thought that exactly that was implied in the video.
@@tamago5765 It also means that no matter who wins, the winner owes them something.
Ahhh yay! My first Philosophy Tube video where I'm listed as a patron!!! Absolutely honored!!! Love your work!
15:15. love how the futurist costume harks back to “prehistoric/tribal” tropes and motifs
Abigail is an icon, a stunning spectacle of artistic expression and public education.
I love your videos to begin with.
Finnster walking around randomly was hillarious for me and brought me a weird ton of joy.
How does Abigail manage to slay literally every outfit ever to exist
That’s my job 🙋🏻♂️
FR!
Right like I’m totally listening and paying attention and developing thoughts and ideas on the subject at hand. But also she so pretty 😍
He*
@@Bricon91 and excellently done, as always!
This video has a strong impact on me both visually and mentally, but it also creates a sense of conflict within me as I find myself being pulled in two different directions. Well played!!!
"I was hired as an Ethics Consultant for a major Banking Firm." This won't end well.
Do we ever get to see the clip of Abby saying “Oi bankers. You wanna help? Quit your jobs you dense fucks”
🤣
Of course you didn't get paid. You were lucky the travel and accommodation were refunded.
Not joking, I did some work on Ethics for the UN some 20 years ago. Still waiting for expenses and invoice amount.
And she didn't even get paid!
sounds like an oxymoron sadly 😭
As a disabled person into direct action and mutual aid, it was very interesting to learn about this.
I did find the example of blindness as a thing to be fixed a bit tiresome. When it comes to helping and engaging with disabled people, I find charities just miss the mark.
As a positive, I do love your subtitles.
💯
I think a lot of charities... kind of cater to able-bodied folk, framing disabilities as something to be "fixed", not accommodated, understood... or even tolerated, it's another way to fit in an able bodied world.
I'm sorry but don't you think children who had their eyes destroyed by parasites shouldn't get a chance to not be blind? How is that not a denial of bodily autonomy?
@@theangryholmesian4556 I mean, by the tenets of Effective Altruism itself, you have to measure not just "is this good" but "is this the best good you could possibly do". What's bad about not being able to see? Genuine question to think about, not a gotcha. Take that list and ask yourself whether those things only apply to children with specific parasitic infections. Some of them might be things that don't even only apply to people with low vision. (The need for transportation assistance, for example.)
EA tends to view the lack of ability itself as the only issue because it's related to something you can count. If you've got $X million and your whole thing is that you're supposed to be doing the most good, then you *have* to ask some more complicated questions about what "good" is than just "how do we make the number of sighted people go up". If you define effectiveness this way, you'll *never* get around to accessibility and broader social good because you've got a metric for "cured parasite infections" but not "net improvement to the lives of people".
@@theangryholmesian4556 You're missing the original point, many charities treat any disability as 'preventable' and often overlook the people that already have become disabled. Doesn't take away from further preventing others becoming disabled, but asks you to consider the people who just already have different disabilities and then in turn barely have any resources to get support from.
"I didn't mean to commit one of the largest frauds ever, I just took all the steps to help me get away with it for as long as possible!" - SBF
F1nn5ter hadn't finished cooking at this stage
The wallet inspector thought experiment is interesting because, as the supposed reward increases, the likelihood of it decreases. I'd argue that the monetary reward _never_ outstrips the probability of being rewarded, so it never becomes optimal to hand over your wallet.
If someone says "Give me your wallet, and tomorrow, I'll give you a hundred pounds" you wouldn't believe them. But if someone said "Give me your wallet, and tomorrow I'll give you a billion pounds" you'd believe them exponentially less.
that's not what an exponential is, but yes
although one might argue that the inspector can make up an arbitratily large reward, but it might not be rational for you to say the probability of that reward is, for example, less than 1 in 10^10000, because a reasonably skeptical person shouldn't be that confident in anything.
I subvert Pascal's Mugging by carrying two wallets.
That's true. The answer is usually to just say that "wallets" are a stand-in for utility or "hedons". Promises of eternal and unlimited bliss/torture.
@@youmukonpaku3168 I carry my old bus card in the instance this happens because I thought it'd be funny if it ever does. Like, "Enjoy my hotlisted bus card and library card I guess? Education is important :)"
I'm a social worker from Argentina, so I'm up from the systemic change, but in the meantime when you look for charitys is important to look at the ethicts of it. There are charitys that look for the "good poor" and "bad poor" and help the one that "deserves it". And the ones that understend that were is a need there is a violated (not guaranteed) right, look for the ones that fight for the rights of people at the time that they asist them and not for the ones that tell others how to live.
Thanks for the reminder.
I feel like making companies accountable is more effective than earn to give.
Nachunternehmerhaftung (German supply chain ethics) is supposed to avoid much of what people donate to alleviate
Incredible point, not all charities are equal in their help. In the US the American Red Cross does what you describe, and should be more well known for its anti... Well many kinds of folks policies. If you are queer, or have a non normative partner they'll often separate you from your partner or just deny one of you shelter.
Were you quoting/paraphrasing Evita there?
@@emisor9272 almost hahaha. Evita says something like" where there is a need a right will be born"
Donde hay una necesidad nacerá un derecho.
buena compa
Came for the philosophy, stayed for the philosophy.
@@AsadAli-jc5tg ...ah, yes- because Abigail is dumb enough to side with the people who want her (and trans people like her) to fucking die. 10/10 logic, bravo.
@@AsadAli-jc5tghow so?
Have to be honest. Mostly came for the cosplay, which was amazing.
@@Dunybrook I came for the the philosophy then I came to the costply lmfaoo
@@Dunybrook I'm sure most of you "came" for the cosplay!
Anything she puts on fits her so well! Her stylist and dresser are very under sung. But the star of the show is her perfect mind.
And the make-up too!
That's what tailoring does. I assume a lot of the outfits (at least the very unique ones) are sewn for Abigail specifically.
Oh yes, her mind is incredible! But her looks distract me all the time...
I'm an old conservative fart but I don't give a damn about her past. She's just steaming hot.
Seriously
WHY DID I READ THAT AS 'THE STAR OF THE SHOW IS PERFECTLY MID'??????
I found this video certainly more balanced than expected. If you'd like to get into why some people in the Effective Altruism community defend billionaires, you can check out Scott Alexander's "Against Against Billionaire Philanthropy".
Edit: Allow me to clarify that it's mostly about defending billionaires being philanthropic over buying expensive things for themselves, but it can extend further.
It was actually nice to see that all of my concerns I've ever had in the world today of unfettered capitalism and the rich class were elucidated. It was one of those things where I could see a problem but I could point my finger at the nature of the problem. It's like if you are writing a snippet of code and you know what you want the code to do, you understand the logic behind it, but you can't translate it into something readable.
You gave me the tools I needed to understand categorically and the logic and concepts behind the things I see wrong in the world today. Thanks.
I googled a new word because of you.
Love reading your captions at the end of videos, feels like listening to a friend talk. I'm proud of your progress! You go girl!
Abby and Finn5ter! Also Peter Singer was preaching what the Effective Altruism movement said a decade before this at least. And I don't mind giving the homeless money, if they spend it on drugs or alcohol that's no big deal, that's what I would have spent it on.
One of your best video essays. Essential viewing for all in my opinion.
“Modern philosophies require modern analyses.”
- Abigail in my imagination putting on her Terminator 2 sunglasses
WAIT THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS HAHAHA F*** YESSSS
14:42 to 15:23
@@deadfr0g *one minute later
FINALLY! A PhilosophyTube video that premiers on a day where I don’t have to go into work!
How were you on this video 15 hours ago, when the video was only posted 4 hours ago?
Are you a time traveller? Can you see the future? Can you tell me where my wallet is?
@@humanperson8418 Patreon members get early access.
So i am coming back to this video, since it was the first video of yours that i have watched. Since then i have watched a total of 18 of your videos within the last 3 weeks or so. And I got to say, the more you become you, the better these videos get. These videos have helped me get out of a mental stalemate. That combined with some therapy, and a joint here and there, has gotten me back into the saddle of a horse I had unknowingly had left in the stables for years. And I must thank you for that.
22:08 "Wait what?"
I had to pause the video there to laugh a good hearty laugh because that's one of the funniest jokes I've heard in WEEKS! 😀
I lived in Silicon Valley for a bit and once had a friend sneak me into LinkedIn's employee cafeteria (a friend of a friend was an employee). I remember sitting there eating unlimited gourmet food and thinking about how I was living on poverty wages and food insecure a few streets over. I was on food stamps, and benefits had been recently cut. I also worked in charity at the time and knew how difficult it was to get tech companies to even pay attention to local crises. I have to admit that this colors a lot of my deep skepticism of things like "effective altruism."
Vote to for taxes, vote for transparency, vote for a fairer society where money spreads and flows rather than pooling
EA is bad because... tech companies give good perks to their employers?
You can be an effective altruist and see that the predatory silicon valley billionaire fucks who tout the ideology only do it to ease their cognitive dissonance. Just like you can be Christian and disagree with homophobic bigots, Jewish and disagree with Israel's human rights abuses, an environmentalist and disagree with the greenscaping corporations, socialist and disagree with the policies of the DPRK, etc. etc. etc...
No offense, but this has nothing to do with EA?
I always love to watch your videos with subtitles because of the extra stuff hidden in there, especially this time! You are an inspiration and I strive to be as kind, strong and humble as you are- thank you for making this show
Ah, yet another episode of "Abby Writes Off Fetish Gear As A Business Expense"
Monetise and expense narcissism.
Glad somebody said it
We love a savvy queen
That's living the dream right there.
Jealous much? In all seriousness, don't knock it until you've tried it. When I was a performer, I could write off most of my clothing purchses as costumes. I even worked with a couple of seamstresses to make some amazing costumes that I'd never have been able to create on my own.
This is the first time I have found your UA-cam Channel. The first one I watched was the thumb nail that drew me in. The red and white latex nun outfit with the title about the rich and having there own ethics. At first I thought this was click bait and some high school psy major... telling me how people think. Using outfits to get my attichion.
Then to my surprise, it came in a very clear and artful tone. It had quirky little jokes, and yes I would be lying the outfits kept my focus. I am a person who loves to listen to things in the back ground, on history, philosophy and many different things. I am happy to say I will be adding your page to my first choice sets too.