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glass_superman t1_itpthts wrote

>He seems to be saying that you can’t successfully change a whole economic system in a way that clashes with human nature but you might be able to work within in it to alleviate the problems.

It is kind of a ridiculous way of thinking on Singer's part, though. He suggests that our current system of capitalism can't be changed, though it's only 250 years old and came into being exactly as a change in economic system that no one thought could change.

So he suggests instead charity, which has been around for thousands of years and has yet to solve poverty.

If anything, a change in the economic system is more frequent (a few times in recorded history) than charity's ability to solve poverty (thousands of years, still no success). Yet he claims that the latter is more likely to work?

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Tinac4 t1_itpw3yy wrote

Singer doesn't advocate for giving to charity because he thinks it'll miraculously solve poverty--he advocates for it because it simply makes the world a better place. If you lived in a hypothetical world where you knew that you couldn't personally accomplish any political changes, and you saw a child drowning in a nearby lake, would you jump in and rescue them, or would you continue walking because saving the kid wouldn't solve any of the systemic problems of our economic system?

The question of whether to spend effort on getting people to donate to charity vs getting people to push for policy changes isn't so easy to answer when you factor in likelihood of success. Political change is quite difficult for any person to accomplish--there's no shortage of left-wing academic figures who got a lot of attention advocating for change but had little impact overall. In contrast, Singer has been extremely successful at getting a lot of people to donate to charity. What's better: A high probability of convincing 1,000 people to donate and save 10,000 lives, or an unknown but probably very low probability of convincing the entire US to reform its political system? Do you save the drowning children in front of you or do you gamble on a tiny chance of a vastly higher payoff?

(Plus, you can multitask by donating to charity and also voting for good politicians or policies. Singer votes, and isn't silent about who he votes for.)

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GrogramanTheRed t1_itpy4lt wrote

There's a useful concept in mathematics called a "local maximum."

One way to solve a problem is to simply do the thing that most directly relates to maximizing a desired attribute in ourselves and the world. This is roughly analogous to the "greedy algorithm" in computer science, and it's what Singer largely advocates for.

However, it usually results in getting stuck in local maxima--a space where any different incremental actions lead to a result that is worse than the result we're currently. It is often the case that in the total probability space of reachable solutions, there may be better solutions, but we will have to go through a temporary period of pain or reduced effectiveness to get there. But since we don't yet have that new solution--the problem isn't fully solved yet--we can't know for sure that we actually can get to a better solution than the local maximum that we've found.

There's a element of wisdom involved in apprehending that what we've found is merely a local maximum, not the global maximum. And there's a element of risk in striking out for the the higher peak across the valley. Call it a calculated risk or--if you want a drop of poetry--a leap of faith.

This criticism of Singer is essentially that he lacks the courage to step out from the local maximum that he's found. Whether it's a fair criticism or not depends on one's overall judgement of the situation.

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Tinac4 t1_itq21fx wrote

The difference between your stance and Singer’s has nothing to do with courage—it’s almost exclusively a matter of epistemics. Singer thinks we live in a world where systemic change is hard and where he would have a very small chance of accomplishing anything if he switched away from charity to advocate for it full-time. You (apologies if I’m making any bad assumptions) think we live in a word where systemic change is somewhat easier and where Singer would have a substantial chance of making concrete changes if he pushed for it. Courage doesn’t factor into it—and unless criticism explicitly focuses on why systemic change is easier than Singer thinks, it’s going to miss the mark.

(Another possible difference of opinion is that Singer is more risk-averse—that given a choice between saving 1 life with certainty and 101 lives with a 1% chance, he’d pick the former—but since he’s a utilitarian, and it’s hard to do utilitarianism without being at least somewhat comfortable with expected value theory, I doubt that’s his main objection.)

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GrogramanTheRed t1_itqezhn wrote

I was sort of describing a stance rather than presenting a stance of my own. I understand your first paragraph here to be something of an elaboration of my last paragraph.

My own stance is, however, remarkably similar to what I laid out. I don't have a particularly detailed understanding of Singer's work--I've only read brief papers by him, and not many of his longer works. However, I would describe my own position briefly, if you're interested.

It is a long tradition in philosophy going back to at least Plato to analogize between the individual (I almost want to put scare quotes around "individual" here) and society. I would like to do that as well. It may seem strongly disanalagous at first, but close introspection of one's own mind shows that while there is something unified or unifying about conscious experience, the mind itself is made up of many different parts, each of which has its own motivations, goals, and behaviors. Each of us can be treated like a society in and of ourselves.

This is talked about in great detail in the meditation traditions that spread out from India, as well as in various psychotherapeutic modalities, from newer modalities like Internal Family Systems and Core Transformation to more traditional modalities like paychodynamics.

When you spend some time working with the parts through therapy and/r meditation, it starts to become clear that there us a far broader possibility space for the state of the whole bodymind system than one initially thought possible. Things can be both far better and far worse than one thought was possible. One can become aware of ways that your parts interact with each other that are quite surprising. For example--over the last week in my own meditation practice, I have discovered that there is a part of me which functions as a "bliss limiter"--it tamps down on a particular body experience of fizzy joy and pleasure which the Buddhist tradition calls "piti." It has been tamping this down this experience specifically because other parts were afraid of losing control and being unable to fulfill their functions and their goals. But I have found a way to allow the bliss limited to safely ease up a little bit without threatening too many other parts.

By analogy, I strongly suspect that there are aociety-wide modes of relating which are both far better and far worse than what we experience now. And just as clinging too hard to what works now in the individual status quo can lead the individual to severe depression, anxiety, suicidality, etc., I suspect that clinging to status quo methods of working with society can also lead us to dark places.

Singer's work is a little bit like the standard advice for dealing with negative mental health states. Giving to charity and changing to more prosocial personal habits and modes of consumption is rather like eating your vegetables, getting exercise, and trying to get enough sleep. They are indeed helpful and have been shown both scientifically and in many people's personal lives to improve things overall. However, they are limited in what they can do. There are other, very surprising ways of working which can have much more dramatically positive impacts.

Similarly, I suspect that there are things we can do as a society which can improve the overall state much more dramatically than we usually think possible. I think we can point to world history over the last 500 years for many such previous examples. (As well as many times where the local situation became much worse than people thought was possible quite suddenly! Which should be a warning!)

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Tinac4 t1_itqqhvu wrote

Thanks for taking the time to explain! I think I understand a little better now. It does seem like the difference of opinion is going to come down to how easy to find and how common those transformative policies are--although I think you could plausibly put them into the same category of explorative research, where you cast a wide net to find a few major discoveries.

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Smallpaul t1_itpxb7e wrote

I don’t think anyone knows which is more likely to work at a global system level. But it is demonstrably easier for a single individual to dramatically change the life of another individual through charity (I have done it several times). For me to achieve the same through politics is incredibly diffuse and difficult to prove, especially if I eschew electoral politics as many Jacobin writers would probably suggest.

Obviously I’m happy that some people work on behalf of the poor through politics, and I vote for them. But I could spend my whole life without accruing any evidence whatsoever that I had actually improved anyone’s life. It’s almost a faith based activity, whereas the fruits of my charitable work are obvious,

The other issue is that in politics, the harder you work, the harder your opponents are motivated to work. In charity there are seldom opponents. Hardly ever is there a person who makes it their life goal to re-impoverish people.

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glass_superman t1_itq7k2e wrote

> Hardly ever is there a person who makes it their life goal to re-impoverish people.

It's basically the mission statement of many corporations. The IMF has austerity plans to "help" poor nations.

Nestle buying up the sources of water in order to resell water to poor people is an attempt to reimpoverish people, for profit.

No one explicitly has the aim to impoverish people but we set up systems to allow us to do it while obfuscating the guilty. And when we fail to obfuscate the guilt, we give charity! Charity was invented to relieve us of our guilt.

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Smallpaul t1_itqa3un wrote

> No one explicitly has the aim to impoverish people ....

Yeah that’s what I said before you contradicted me and then contradicted yourself.

> ... but we set up systems to allow us to do it while obfuscating the guilty.

Sometimes the guilty are pre-obfuscated. When America set up its highway system rather than a decent train system, nobody knew they were contributing the flooding of Tuvalu. The world is hella complex and only a tiny minority of problems are caused by identifiable “bad guys” and a much smaller minority of those “bad guys” are capitalist CEOs, as opposed to warlords, authoritarians and others who get power outside of democracy or capital markets.

> And when we fail to obfuscate the guilt, we give charity! Charity was invented to relieve us of our guilt.

No. Charity was invented to help people.

But yes it does also assuage guilt. Another way to assuage guilt is to say that charity does nothing. Then you can do nothing and feel justified.

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SalmonApplecream t1_itrdxtg wrote

He literally does not say it cannot be changed. He just says that random individuals can't do very much to change it.

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glass_superman t1_itrxc67 wrote

Is not every change in society made by random individuals? Sometimes working together?

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Mkwdr t1_itq09i3 wrote

I don’t think it’s ridiculous if we take it as improve on rather than just change. It’s always possible to change just not necessarily for the better. There’s certainly lots to be improved in capitalism but whether it can be improved on is yet to be demonstrated. It’s certainly possible but the writer is far clearer on Singer’s faults than any alternative.

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glass_superman t1_itq4vwd wrote

> There’s certainly lots to be improved in capitalism but whether it can be improved on is yet to be demonstrated.

Probably the same was said of every economic system. It can't be bettered until it is.

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Mkwdr t1_itq7czb wrote

Or not. But it’s up to someone to suggest an alternative and why it might work better bearing in mind what we know about people etc ( and indeed better than a reformed version of what is already there) and persuade people that is the case.

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pickleshoesteve t1_itqzo1r wrote

Charity isn't about "solving" poverty. It is about doing what you can to help lessen the suffering of others.

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Vainti t1_itq3sig wrote

Changing our economic system is obviously possible. We can become more authoritarian and less capitalistic. But we have never been able to create a non oppressive economic system. Creating such a system through democracy without having your movement co-opted by dictators may very well be unrealistic.

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