The Life You Can Save

Is there an important difference between a child drowning in front of you and one dying in a far off land? The philosopher Peter Singer thinks not. He acknowledges that we have biases that lead us to favour those near us over those further away, but argues these are irrational. Read by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

and the animations were created by Cognitive.

[cfcfan]

well personally i would take of my shoes before helping the child, as quickly as possible of course

[emblememphasis]

if I was wearing a hundred pound shoes wouldn't I sink and drown too?

[oskarlothe]

The problem is that when you give money ti charity, you dont get confirmed that u saved a life. But you do when you save a drowning child.

[Donteatacowman]

Folks in the comments are saying that the metaphor isn't 1:1 because you don't have 100% confirmation that your money is used by the right place. Okay. Let's go with that. What percent certain should we be to donate money to help others? If I told you that 100 pounds would have a 75% chance of saving someone's life, would you be morally obligated to give the money, or would you only be 75% morally obligated? What if we mix up the ratios a little, where it only costs you 5 pounds but has a 10% chance of saving someone's life. Would it be worth it then? What if we switch the kid around--you see a kid falling from a building, you run to catch them, but it gets your five buck thrift store pants all dirty and gross. You probably aren't going to catch the kid, and even if you did, they might still die on impact... AND you'd be wasting your pants! I hope that last one sounds ridiculous because that's what I"m hearing from the comment section. Besides, geography isn't the distance. Human empathy is limited, and our world is so big now, we can't feel bad about every person who's suffering on earth. Unfortunately this feeds into disparity--if the kid isn't drowning, but is in a dangerous situation in an abusive home, and you know something isn't quite right there but it's super impolite to pry... if the kid isn't drowning but has parents who are drug addicts, and you prefer to vote for a politician who's tough on drug crime, and one of the kid's parents is incarcerated and the other parent can't put food on the table now...

Look. Here's my actual take. 1) Yes, we ARE always morally obligated to give as much money as we can to charity. That doesn't mean that we all will do it or even that we all should do that, as an individual choice / for our own wellness... but there's no way to squirm out of the moral issue of "my $5 snack could have helped a stranger with something more important." Maybe that's just my ex-Christian guilt "we're all sinners" instinct though. It's hard to balance the idea of having private profit saved up when you see a dozen GoFundMes a day. 2) Part of charitable giving is the responsibility of choosing your charity. "Charities might be corrupt" is not a good counterargument. Find a charity that you think ISN'T corrupt and donate to that. Reach out to individuals most at risk and give to them directly, even! But most importantly 3) We're finally moving away from the concept of individual blame for systemic problems. Individual charity is not going to solve this issue. It's a bandaid solution to a huge and awful problem. I don't have any moral imperatives for this one, because if I knew how to fix worldwide hunger, infant mortality, and other evils, I would already be doing it.

[YarbroK]

I would argue that people are willing to ruining the shoes than donate the money because the person took a direct action to solve a problem. They see a direct result. When a person donates money, even though they work tirelessly to gain the money, they don't see it nor they did anything.

This can boil down to animal behavior. An animal prefer to work for their food than giving directly. There are been studies that humans are no different. You can see this in cooking. A person is more proud of the pizza they made from scratch than what they bought from a store. Even though the store's pizza might be higher quality, better tasting, and nutritious and that person soaked blood and sweat to gain the money to buy it. Because the person didn't directly took action to make the pizza- they will not be more emotionally invested.

[nitugoel]

This is very good and thought provoking episode.
The shoes are a bit weird though.

[billhader]

except the charity will take 90 pounds for itself and for advertising. its goal is to perpetuate itself. doesn't care about solving the issue, unless you do a very careful job finding the right charity

[luisangelo]

Or.... You can just take off your shoes before you jump in?

[Liamwillis]

I think there is a difference regarding responsibility. Assuming I am the only one to see this child drowning, I know I am 100% responsible for the child's life or death.

However, in the case of children dying of starvation in another part of the world, anyone else in the world who has the money can save them. I naturally won't feel as much of an obligation to save them. For example, I might think: 'Why me? Someone wealthier than me should save them.'

[lukebowen]

first option but take my shoes of then save him and after that sell my shoes for charity

[Benl]

Oh my god, I don't know where to start with this one.

Saving a drowning child using your own means is a direct way of saving someone, spending money on a charity to do the job for you is a means of indirectly saving someone.

We are not sure where the money's truly going, whether the money is being filtered out to governments & banks or whether it's going to those in need.

I have an example of this case, Doctors Without Borders is an organization with a fairly good reputation, but through some investigation, I have confirmed the organization traffics migrants from Africa to Italy despite the government's block on immigration.

By finding a charity, are we funding the tools of our own demise? As in A wolf in Sheep's clothing using the poor children as a ploy to say "These children are starving, poor without drinking water, what are you going to do about it"? How would you ever know?

There is a HUGE difference to actually making an impact and perceiving an impact through confirmation bias.

So let me send you a better analogy, you're at the beach spending time in the sun when you hear a scream from a child being taken away by the riptide, this is a potentially dangerous situation if you decide to jump down with him so you get the coast guard who returns the individual to the shore.

[scruffdawgx]

Actually there is another important difference.  When I jump into the lake to save the child, I ruined my shoes but I got the real life, face-to-face experience of saving the child.  I was not only responsible for the salvation, but I witnessed the events first hand.  And nowhere in this scenario was it possible that some portion of the value of my shoes was "wasted" on some kind of middle man.

None of this is true when I give $100 to charity.

[applesewer]

This analogy really convicts me. I actually think Peter Singer is right. Even if there were a million drowning children, I don't think it would be morally right for me to devote an ounce of energy on anything other than saving those children. The problem I have is that the standard is just too high to bear. There are more than a billion people living on less than $1 a day right now. I can't save them all myself. So I would have to drive myself to the brink of starvation myself in my attempt to give all that I can to help those in need. And I just don't think I can do that. So I just give what I can. I give 10% of my income and then I just have to live with the knowledge that I fall short and ought to be doing more.

[VOXivero]

Can Tom Mison do one of these videos, please? I would SO listen to that... In repeat.

[jaysonreyes]

The thing is u are not sure that the money you sent for donation 💯 % reached the children’s support.

[irinalupu]

I wouldnt jump to save the child. So me not donating to a charity is not hypocritical, as I do not help strangers in general

[coffichu]

If I take this thought experiment literally for a minute: if a child was drowning and I had my one-hundred pound shoes on, I'd take them off. One, I'd be lighter and therefore can save the child more efficiently, two, I'm not ruining an expensive pair of shoes. It doesn't take long to throw them off anyway if you heel them, (yes it may hurt the shoes, but better that then completely drenching them in water). Since I didn't ruin my shoes, I didn't lose the worth of them, so technically I still have roughly one-hundred pounds AND have saved the child's life. Best of both worlds. Let's now think about the charity scenario. We can either spend that one-hundred pounds on materialistic goods (like our shoes) for our self, or we can give it to a charity that's far off. The difference is that we can physically see the difference we have made via. our purchase/investment. With a charity, (unlike some such as GuideDogs which gives you "Pupdates" with little leaflets of how your guide dog is doing) you aren't always guaranteed to see the specific difference YOU make with your funding, and therefore is a prime reason why people are put off; this is unlike the first scenario, as you are seeing the difference you make. It's a little selfish, but it's only wise to want proof that your money goes to the greater good for others, and if not for yourself. You can't guarantee that all charities use your money wisely, and if MORE put in a program to monitor online where an individual's money goes, more will be inclined to supporting them. It's very much circumstantial. People want to see good change, especially when they're giving up their (most likely) hard-earned money. I definitely get the idea though. Good thought, hard to put into practice.

[Mr.Not_Sure]

Let's equate conditions. Let's say there are 8 billion people around this shallow pond, 4 billion of them closer to the pond than you are. Would you still do it?

[gregoryefs]

What I dont see anywhere in the comments doing is pointing out the illogical assumption that the reason you jump into thr pond is to save a life instead of get a reward, be it fame, money or even a heroic story to tell in the future. A faceless charity xheck cant get you any of those

But even if we assume that the person does it to get that warm, fuzzy feeling, even then the faceless receipts he gets by charities dont offer that in even close to thr same quantity as a child tagging at your arm and saying thank you while hugged by its mother does

[kiljupullo]

My country Finland gives billions of dollars to development aid for Africa(ranging from 0, 6 billion to 1.4 billion). Yet you guys have NEVER heard of this and it does absolutely nothing to Africanas, quite the contrary - it ruins their economy because of free food, ruins their agriculture because farmers cant sell their crops thus they go out of work, now they are jobless and their finances are in ruins, thus infrastructure is fucked up, and now they have to go to Europe because of revenge, money and religion. Yeah, just keep donating money to charity. This is a grand example that altruism can have devastating consequences. Hypocrite gives money to someone so that would help someone. True helper GOES to that place to help someone.