Dillon Bowen

Want to be a good altruist? Check your biases.

When people invest in the stock market, their primary goal is to make as much money as possible. We know this because a massive industry has grown to ensure that stock investments yield optimal returns, stocks which yield poor returns quickly die out, and investors explicitly consider it their fiduciary duty to maximize profit for shareholders. 

When people give money to charity, or formulate opinions on how their tax dollars ought to be spent, their primary goal is not to help as many people as possible.

 We know this because only a tiny fraction of donors have even heard of organizations like The Life You Can Save, ineffective charities thrive alongside charities which are more effective by orders of magnitude, and people rarely seem to consider the size of the impact of their philanthropy.

There are many biases which hinder our efforts to make optimal economic decisions, such as the gambler’s fallacy or loss aversion. And when it comes to our fiscal health, we recognize that these biases are bad. We understand that, for example, having a successful fund for your child’s college education depends on overcoming psychological mechanisms favoring impulsive spending. As we’ve seen, there are also manifold biases that prevent us from making altruistic decisions effectively. But when it comes to our moral decisions, people often fail to see these biases as in any way problematic. Most importantly, people fail to appreciate that the fate of billions of people in the world today - and potentially the entire future of humanity - depends on us finding a way to overcome our moral biases.

As humans, we tend to underestimate the value of rewards and punishments based on how far into the future they will occur. This bias is known as ‘hyperbolic temporal discounting’[1]. For instance, people will often prefer a smaller, more immediate sum of cash to a larger sum of money which they will receive at some point in the future. This is an obvious impediment to certain financial goals, like saving for retirement. Yet, in spite of temporal discounting, many people somehow succeed in long-term monetary planning.

Perhaps people who are fiscally prudent are immune to temporal discounting? But no, this hypothesis is not borne out by the psychological literature. Rather, the conflict between immediate and delayed gratification involves two somewhat independent cognitive processes[2]. One - the fast, emotionally charged process - generates a strong visceral desire for immediate reward. The other - the slower, emotionally cooler process - responds to abstract reasons. Things such as saving for retirement require our slower, reasoning processes to direct or perhaps supersede our faster, intuitive processes.

Despite the fact that our economic decisions are plagued by biases, to a large extent we have learned to prevail over them. We’ve done this by explicitly evaluating our economic activity in terms of monetary yield. Having this aim allows us to make economic decisions empirically and rationally, rather than by relying solely on what intuitively strikes us as the correct way to invest our capital. I suggest that we should take these lessons from economics and apply them morality.

Extreme poverty could be eliminated for $330 billion annually[3]. Malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) could be permanently eradicated for $10 billion full stop[4]. This may sound expensive, but the costs of these projects could be paid for by the US and EU for less than 1% of their GDP[5]. Lest there be any doubt about the severity of these problems, consider that the poorest quintile of the global population is 20 times as destitute as the poorest quintile of the American population[6]. And children worldwide are being killed by malaria and NTDs at 5 times the rate that children die in the USA from all causes combined [7].

These problems are both more terrible and far easier to fix than most people understand. Yet the billions of people affected by them will continue to subsist in an incomprehensible depth of misery as long as we in the developed world fail to act. 

But they live far away from us. They are not of the same skin color as many of us. They are not citizens of our countries. We don’t see their faces or know their stories. And so we let them suffer and die.

As ineffective altruists, our potential for helping others is stifled by our moral biases. Charities and public policies gain support not based on the extent to which they improve the lives of conscious creatures, but based on the force with which they pull on our heartstrings. Hopefully the catastrophic consequences of the status quo have convinced you that 

we need to revolutionize how we think about morality. In addition to thinking emotionally, we need to think economically.

 Altruism should be explicitly viewed as an investment in the well-being of conscious creatures. And we should demand nothing less of ourselves than to see our investment yield maximum returns.

Adopting this attitude will turn us into effective altruists. At a minimum, effective altruism says that to the extent we care about the well-being of others, we should try to improve the lives of as many people as possible by as much as possible. You don’t have to be a thoroughgoing 

 to accept this premise. For example, you don’t have to be willing to push fat people off footbridges or harvest your patients’ organs to be an effective altruist. All you have to believe is that it’s better to give more help to more people, rather than less help to fewer people.

And again, I want to emphasize that my argument is not necessarily that you should value all individuals equally. My point is simply that you shouldn’t value some individuals more than others based on obviously morally unimportant factors, like race, sexual orientation, nationality, or physical proximity. You are probably already devoting some portion of your time and money to helping people who are not your family, friends, or community members. So why not try to use this time and money to improve the well-being of conscious creatures by as much as you possibly can?

Once we accept that the purpose of altruism should be to eliminate as much suffering as we can, the question of where we should donate to charity or how our tax dollars should be appropriated is no longer a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact.

 Empathy may drive us, but reason and evidence need to steer us. This is the key to discovering and overcoming our moral biases. We need to recognize the immense amount of suffering in the world today, as well as the vast potential for happiness in the future, and take it as our mission to make the world as happy a place as it can possibly be.

Suppose you’re ready to think of your charitable donations in economic terms - as an investment in the well-being of conscious creatures. What are you to do next? You could attempt to systematically evaluate every charity in the world in terms of cost-effectiveness, but I would advise against it. Analogously, individual stock investors cannot reasonably be expected to create their own portfolios. We rely on experts - stock brokers - to gather this information for us. Similarly, several 

review charities based on proven records of cost-effectiveness

If you find yourself prepared to make an even greater commitment, consider increasing the amount of money you donate to effective charities. Until everyone can give more effectively, we need those who are giving effectively to give more. Over 1,000 people have pledged to donate at least a tenth of their income effectively. Consider 

taking the pledge with us at Giving What We Can

Should you find yourself even more inspired, you may want to consider effective career paths. Work for an effective charity, or attempt to start one of your own. Consider a career in politics, campaigning to devote more resources to foreign aid, and to make sure these resources are used effectively. Or perhaps take a high-paying job. The more you earn, the more you can donate. 

Green, L., Fry, A. F., & Myerson, J. (1994). Discounting of delayed rewards: A lifespan comparison. Psychological Science, 5, 33-36.; Madden, G. J., Begotka, A. M., Raiff, B. R., & Kastern L. L. (2003). Delay discounting of real and hypothetical rewards. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 11, 139-145.

Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3-19.; McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science, 306, 503-507.

Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.50 a day. Currently, 1.2 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty. Calculation assumes the income of those in extreme poverty is distributed normally.

Zelman 2014 (Zelman B, Kiszewski A, Cotter C, Liu J (2014) Costs of Eliminating Malaria and the Impact of the Global Fund in 34 Countries. PLoS ONE 9(12): e115714. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0115714) estimates the cost of eradicating malaria at $8.5 billion. Data from the WHO compiled by O’Brien 2008-2009 (O'Brien, Stephen, comp. "Neglected Tropical Diseases." (2008-2009): n. pag.World Health Organization. World Health Organization. Web. 17 Jan. ), p.13 puts the cost of eliminated NTDs at $1.4 billion.

In 2013, the GDP of the US was $16,768,100 million, and 

the GDP of the EU was $17,958,073 million

 (World Bank. "World Development Indicators." Data: The World Bank. The World Bank, n.d. Web. 15 Jan. 2015.0).

More precisely, the poorest 19% of Americans 

 (United States Census Bureau. "Annual Population Estimates." State Totals: Vintage 2011. United States Census, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. ). The poorest 17% of the world’s population live on less than $1.50 a day, meaning they are 18 times as destitute. Dollar amounts adjusted for purchasing power. Calculations assume income is flat or normally distributed.

, 25.5 children per 100,000 US children die each year. Child mortality for NTDs is estimated from data gathered by the 

 (End Fund, The. "NTD Overview." NTD Overview. The End Fund, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. ). Of the 1.5 billion infected with NTDs, 800 million are children. 500,000 people will die from NTDs per year, so assuming NTDs are equally lethal for all age groups, 270,000 of those who die will be children. WHO estimates that 

 from malaria each year. Given that there are 633 million children in the world (British Association for Child and Pediatric Health), the global death rates are 42 for NTDs and 92 for malaria.

The Economics of Morality

Picture yourself vacationing in a developing country in the hills overlooking the coast. One day during your stay, a devastating typhoon hits, leaving hundreds of people without food, water, or shelter. Fortunately for you, you’ve not been affected by the storm. You’ve got a cozy little cottage which is high on a hill and well stocked with everything you need. The destruction on the coast has made it impossible for you to travel down the hill, but you can still help by giving money to the relief effort, which is already under way. Do you have an obligation to help?

If you’re like most people, you answered ‘yes’.

Now picture yourself sitting at home. One day, your friend, who is vacationing in a developing country in the hills overlooking the coast, calls to tell you about a devastating typhoon which has just hit, leaving hundreds of people without food, water, or shelter. Fortunately for your friend, he’s not been affected by the storm. He’s got a cozy little cottage which is high on a hill and well stocked with everything he needs. During the call, he shows you a live audiovisual stream of the destruction on the coast in real time. You can help by giving money to the relief effort, which is already under way. Do you have an obligation to help?

If you’re like most people, you answered ‘no’.

Why? In both scenarios, these villagers are not assumed to be your friends, relatives, or community members. In both scenarios, the villagers are equally in need of your help, and you are equally capable of helping. In both scenarios, there are just as many other people who can help in the same way you can. And yet, twice as many people believe that they would be morally obligated to help in the former scenario compared with the latter[1].

The only salient difference between these two vignettes is one of physical proximity. In the first case, the villagers are suffering near to you, and in the second, they are suffering far away. This experiment demonstrates an important feature of our psychology: People who are physically distant appear less morally important.

Intuitively, physical proximity matters. But should physical proximity matter? Our responses to these two scenarios demonstrate a cognitive bias, in the sense that geographic displacement is not the sort of thing we think we should care about when we give it a moment’s thought. For instance, imagine that a charity solicitor asks you for a donation to, say, feed starving children. It would be quite odd, to put it mildly, if you responded with, ‘Well, that depends. How far away from me are these children you’ll be feeding?’ This just doesn’t strike us as an appropriate question to ask.

At first, the physical proximity bias might seem like merely a curious feature of our psychology - that is, until you recognize the enormous amount of human misery for which it is responsible. 

Since you began reading this article, a child has died from malaria. By the end of this year, more than half a million children will have died from malaria[3]. These tragedies are entirely and easily preventable by the actions of those in the developed world. At the individual level, already 1,000 people have pledged at least ten percent of their income to fighting malaria and other causes of extreme poverty with Giving What We Can. If another 100,000 followed suit, we could eradicate malaria in the next fifteen years[4].

 At the government level, the same feat could be accomplished for just 0.2% of the annual US federal budget[5].

Why aren’t we doing this? A large part of it has to do with the fact that children don’t die from malaria where we live. They die far away, in Africa, where their suffering and the suffering of their mothers and fathers seems unimportant. Never mind their nationality - if hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five were dying in the US, we would find 100,000 people willing to donate to help them. We would increase the federal budget by 0.2% to help them. But instead, these children live thousands of miles away from us, and so we don’t experience the same level of empathy that would otherwise drive us to save them. This is the power of the physical proximity bias.

People perform acts of altruism every day. When I talk about ‘altruism’ in this context, I’m not talking about acts of kindness towards family, friends, or community members. The sort of altruism I’m interested in involves some personal sacrifice for the sake of people you will probably never know or even have the chance to meet. This could be anything from holding the door for a stranger to donating a substantial portion of your personal wealth to charity. But there are many problems with our altruistic behavior. And there is no more stark an illustration of these problems than the fact that we in the developed world will continue to allow hundreds of thousands of children die from malaria despite it being well within our power to save them.

Already I’ve alluded to my diagnosis of the root cause of these problems - our failure to notice and overcome moral biases. Physical proximity is just one of a host of obviously morally unimportant factors which nevertheless influence our altruistic behavior. Other examples include the race and country of origin of those in need. Presumably, the goal of our altruistic behavior is not to help those who happen to be close to us, or who happen to be of the same race or to have been born in the same country as us. Take a moment to think about what the purpose of altruism actually is. The answers will vary somewhat based on cultural differences, but almost everyone tends to converge on a single, core ideal - to improve the lives of conscious creatures by as much as you possibly can.

When you first hear this, it seems like a strikingly obvious idea. For example, if I donate $100 to charity, and I have the choice between donating to a charity which can save 2 children from starvation or 20 children from starvation, I ought to choose to save the 20. This intuition is shared almost universally. As Joshua Greene - a leading researcher of moral psychology at Harvard - once told me, never has he run an experiment in which a subject said anything like, ‘Saving more lives? Why would I want to do that?’.

The reality is that we are faced with these choices all the time. 

Every dollar we donate to charity, or that our governments spend on the public good, can do more or less to improve the lives of conscious creatures depending on how it’s spent.

 However, when helping others, the question of how much good our money is going to do often doesn’t cross our minds. We see people in need, feel a strong visceral desire to help, and donate to the cause. End of moral calculus. Rarely do we ask ourselves how much good the same amount of money could have done had we donated it to, say, the Against Malaria Foundation, ranked as the most effective charity in the world by GiveWell.

At present, most people are ineffective altruists, whose generosity is at the whim of moral biases, and whose kindness ends up giving less help to fewer people than it otherwise could. The problem is not that resources are too scarce. We’ll have enough food, water, and energy to sustain humanity for the foreseeable future[6]. The problem is not even that we need to give more. Private contributors in the US alone donate enough money end extreme poverty[7]. The problem is that we need to give more effectively.

In the domain of morality, objective thinking saves lives.

 So how can we learn to make altruistic decisions more objectively? Before answering this question directly in my next post, I want to draw an analogy between how we think about morality and how we think about economics. When it comes to altruism, our objective - or at least, one of our most important objectives - should be to improve the lives of conscious creatures to the greatest extent that we can. When it comes to economics, our objective is to increase our personal wealth to the greatest extent that we can. Both are plagued by myopic cognitive biases, which impede our ability to achieve these aims. But the two domains are strongly disanalogous in that, in the case of economics, we have largely learned to identify and triumph over our biases. Perhaps the methods by which we’ve overcome our economic biases can overcome our moral biases as well.

Musen, Jay. "Moral Psychology to Help Those in Need." Thesis. Harvard University, 2010. Print., as described in Greene, Joshua David. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print.

 WHO. N.p., Apr. 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.

Zelman 2014 (Zelman B, Kiszewski A, Cotter C, Liu J (2014) Costs of Eliminating Malaria and the Impact of the Global Fund in 34 Countries. PLoS ONE 9(12): e115714. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0115714) predicts $8.5 billion will be needed over the next 15 years to eliminate malaria. Calculations assume those pledging 10% of their income have an average yearly nominal income of $50,000, which is fairly typical in developed nations.

The US federal budget in 2015 is $3.9 trillion (National Priorities Project. 

"Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go."

 National Priorities Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015., “Federal Spending”).

"Water, Food, or Energy: We Won't Lack Them."

 Practical Ethics. University of Oxford, 22 Nov. 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

 (Giving USA. "Annual Report on Philanthropy." Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. ) reports that private contributions from US donors amounted to $335 billion in 2013. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.50 a day - which 1.2 billion people now do. Assuming their income is normally distributed, we could simply give them enough money to put them above the extreme poverty line for $330 billion annually.

Dillon is a former committee member of Giving What We Can: Oxford and helped to organize EAGx Boston 2016.

Dillon Bowen

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Want to be a good altruist? Check your biases.

The Economics of Morality