The Burning House, a Picasso, and a Kid
How choosing the right thing is harder than it seems
The burning house, a Picasso, and a kid
There’s a house in your neighborhood, you walk past it often. There is a particular place and moment when you walk by that you can spot a painting on the wall. You look at it, without fail, whenever you pass by the house on your walks.
You did your thesis on Picasso, and that painting screams Picasso to you. You know Picasso made around 50 000 artworks in his lifetime(an unfathomable average of 2 per day). You finally decide to do some research and find out it’s indeed a Picasso. One worth a couple of million.
One day on one of your usual walks, you see the house burning. It looks bad, you notice a kid in one of the rooms screaming for help. There is no one around and there isn’t a lot of time.
You break down the entrance door, try to make your way up, then a thought occurs to you. The Picasso. I should also save it!
For a split second you reason that if you save the Picasso you can sell it, you can donate the money and save so many lives and reduce a lot of suffering. Much more lives could be saved with that money… than the death of one child.
But there’s no time! You can either save the kid or the Picasso.
Fuck the Picasso, you save the kid.¹
In theory it’s less overall suffering, one child’s life against countless others. But that is not how we are wired and that is not our nature.
Many argue that the Picasso should be saved and not the child. Utilitarians and most effective altruists in particular. Both utilitarianism and effective altruism have mostly excellent points and are data driven. Perhaps at some point we will get to a point where we can look at things so rationally and emotionlessly, but for now we can’t decouple ourselves from our emotions.
I personally could not do it, regardless of knowing how much more good would be done by saving the Picasso. The child is right there, right now. The others are somewhere abstract and in the future. I could not sleep at night, no matter how rationally I would explain it to myself.
The lake, your shoes, and a kid
You had a traumatic experience, but you feel proud of yourself for saving the kid. You feel it was the right thing to do. You don’t walk your usual way anymore, you don’t want to be reminded. Instead you start walking around a nearby lake.
As a creature of habit, you pretty much start making the same rounds every day. You really enjoy your walks, so you decide to spoil yourself with some really nice and expensive walking shoes. They look great and most importantly they’re so comfortable!
The next day, you go for your walk. You’re still walking in your shoes. There’s usually only a few people that you encounter on your route. Today, however, the weather is lovely and there’s a lot more.
At the part of your route, where you are very close to the lake, you notice a kid drowning in the lake. People are gathering around and staring at the kid, some are just walking on like nothing is happening.
You start running towards the drowning kid, while thinking, how careless kids are these days, they’re always in some life threatening situations. You are about to jump in, but then you remember your new walking shoes, if you jump in, they’ll be ruined! They’re so comfortable!
There’s no time, it’s either the shoes or the kid.
Fuck the shoes, you save the kid.²
This would be everyone’s answer, save the kid. We are instead not doing so on a global level. For an amount that would have very little impact on us, we can make a massive difference for others. We are the lucky ones, born at the right place, at the right time, yet we choose our shoes over a drowning child.
There is also a massive difference between just giving anywhere and anyway, and giving effectively. This is were I highly agree with effective altruism, if you are going to give, give where it’s the most effective. The best way it seems is to donate to a fund that will maximise the distribution of donations to the most effective funds. I found Give Well does the best job on managing such a fund.
I think it’s hard to build an argument that you can not commit even 1% of your income on a monthly basis where you know it will go to the reduction of suffering.
Every month you can tell yourself:
Fuck the 1%, I’ll save the kid.
References:
[1] Original thought experiment mentioned in Doing Good better by William MacAskill
[2] Original thought experiment by Peter Singer https://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm
