Proximity, Uncertainty, And Effort

A common criticism of utilitarianism is that it requires us to care just as much about individuals who we have nothing to do with as about those individuals closest to us. For example, US conservative columnist George Will on utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer:

But proximity, even familial attachment--these are moral irrelevancies in Singer's analysis of one's obligations to others. Should one spend a sum to ease the suffering of a family member or send the same sum to ease the sufferings of 10 Sudanese? Singer is consistent: In the Sudan the money will better serve the world's total amount of happiness."

"Life and Death at Princeton", Newsweek, 09/13/99, Vol. 134 Issue 11, p80

Utilitarianism requires us to weight all individuals' interests equally. It does not, however, require us to try to help all individuals equally. Indeed, in many common cases we actually should try to help those closest to us, because the closer they are, the better we understand how to increase their quality of life. Similarly, effort that could be spent figuring out how to increase the quality of life of more distant individuals could be spent actually increasing the quality of life of those closer to us.

For an extreme example, consider what shirt I should wear tomorrow. I should give it some thought so that I pick a shirt I feel like wearing which would be appropriate for tomorrow's weather, activities, etc. However, choosing what shirt I should wear would be a waste of your time, especially if you've got little to do with me.

I don't know for sure which shirt I should wear tomorrow in order to maximize quality of life on Earth. However, I can make a pretty good guess, and a much better one than you can. My estimations might look like:

in which case I'd choose shirt number two. However, unless you put a lot of extra effort into it, your estimations probably look like:

Thus, in order to maximize expected utility, I should choose the shirt and you should find something better to do with your time.

In a more serious example, consider where to donate surplus money. Money is interesting because it can go halfway around the planet to people you've never met before quite easily: just donate to Oxfam. However, if you haven't already, you should take at least a little effort to convince yourself that Oxfam really is a worthy recipient of your surplus money. Indeed, the whole Surplus Money post is about figuring out if we should donate to Oxfam or to some other organization. In other words, we're putting in effort to bring ourselves closer not just the to organizations but to the individuals that they would benefit.

Is this effort to analyze charities well spent? I believe so. First, we can easily share our results with the world both online and off, so others won't have to repeat our work. Furthermore, I personally enjoy the work and suspect it may help my career, which is worth something in its own right.

If you're interested in the work, join us! Otherwise, you can skip the effort and just take our advice or someone else's. Alternatively, perhaps you can make relatively effortless and effective donations such as via remittances. Would your remittances/etc beat Oxfam? That's probably your call, since we're unlikely to put the effort into analyzing the specific circumstances of the remittances/etc.