EA - Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed by ColdButtonIssues

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Toby Ord’s The Scourge, Reviewed, published by ColdButtonIssues on August 30, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Cross-posted from Cold Button Issues. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I was having lunch with a friend and mentioned that some of my friends donated money to buy bed nets to prevent malaria. “Waste of time,” my friend said. “Do bed nets not work?” I asked. “Oh, that’s not it. Rather, people in developing countries just don’t have moral standing. People say that all lives are of equal worth, but they’d rather go on a nice vacation than donate enough to save a life through an effective charity, which I’ve heard costs $5,000.” She then showed me her new emerald brooch (market value: $5,001). “And even if we thought people were just dumb about charity, we would still expect politics to revolve around global poverty if all lives were of equal worth, and it doesn’t. Deep down, we all know foreigners don’t matter.” Then I ate my veal entrée. People have told me that animal suffering is wrong, but since they seemed to rarely act on that claim, I had concluded that animal suffering was no big deal. Anyways, this is a review of Toby Ord’s The Scourge. Ord’s Argument Moral indifference justifies itself. Or at least that is Ord’s argument when it comes to embryos. Some argue that human embryos have just as much moral worth as the normal, walking around type humans. Some religious people use the phrase “womb to tomb,” indicating that a human life is a human life, from conception to death. Some argue against embryos having equal value to walking around type humans, by appeals to intuition or incredulity- it’s a clump of cells! Others point out that embryos lack some features that might make people morally valuable- desires, consciousness, self-identity, friendships with others. Ord instead poses a thought experiment: if a new disease emerged that caused the vast majority of human deaths and targeted the young, would responding to such a nightmarish pandemic be the instant priority of all humanity? Yet if human embryos matter just as much as normal humans and we now know that the majority of embryos suffer spontaneous abortions, why is there no outcry? Why do people claim that life expectancy in the United States is near 80 years of age, instead of acknowledging that life expectancy from conception is remarkably low? Ord produces this helpful life expectancy chart from conception. If embryos really mattered, people would care about the vast number of embryos that die naturally. Ord argues that the “marked lack of curiosity about what is claimed to be of immense importance suggests that even now, few people really believe that full moral status begins at conception.” People barely care about this, so embryos matter little or none. Therefore, Ord argues, appeals to the value of human embryos to argue against abortion or IVF fail. Extensions An obvious extension of Ord’s claim is the field of global poverty. Many people say that your moral worth doesn’t depend on where you live or that your obligation to others doesn’t depend on a shared race, nationality, regional proximity, or language. However, almost everyone acts like lives are not of equal value, ergo, they are not. The number of animals suffering in factory farms is immense. Only a small number of people are vegans and only a trivial number of people are full-time animal welfare activists or factory farm saboteurs. Ergo, animal suffering is no big deal. Now and then, some people will say we should care about future generations. While people do appear willing to make some sacrifices for their children and grandchildren it doesn’t normally extend much further than that. As I rested in my mansion’s east wing (paid for by mortgaging my great-grandchildren’s future!), I read a book another friend had recommended, coin...