Post No.: 0913
Furrywisepuppy says:
Making charitable donations isn’t irrational – but if our aim is to save as many unfortunate lives as possible with our donations, we frequently make irrational choices. (We also often similarly behave irrationally in commercial contexts when our aim is to maximise our utility from what we pay too.)
There are many biases at play whenever we choose which people in crises we pay our attentions to, show our sorrows for and/or give donations or help to. It was absolutely sad in 2023 when the OceanGate Titan tourist submersible imploded and 5 people died whilst sightseeing the Titanic wreckage. But during the very same week, an estimated up to 750 migrants were feared dead off the Greek coast in a watery demise too yet the media coverage, attention, empathy and emotional outpouring for the latter was only a small fraction given to the former. That was hardly the only crammed migrant boat ever lost at sea too. There was a young person onboard that submersible, but there are hundreds of even younger kids who are frightened and don’t know what’s going on onboard migrant vessels. The former were a few wealthy tourists who were doing what they wanted for leisure whilst the latter were multiple times as many far poorer migrants who were escaping persecution and/or seeking a better life with little real choice. So why didn’t most of us feel 150x the sorrow for the latter compared to the former? Why didn’t most of us following the news even feel 0.1x the sorrow for them at the time?!
Some of the biases at play were the identifiable victim effect. A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic, as it were. (We can even ignore thousands of faceless and nameless victims in the same predicament e.g. one abducted child case receives millions to help in that investigation when the thousands of other abducted child cases receive very little or nothing each.) We also get desensitised to more common deaths than rare calamities, hence even the more numerous wealthy tourists who die when climbing Mt Everest and other mountains don’t receive that much media coverage compared to wealthy tourist submersible deaths anymore.
Then there are ingroup biases where we care most about those whom are most close or similar to us – and for many of us it’s as if the migrants aren’t ‘one of us’ (e.g. they’re very poor and foreign-looking) thus they don’t matter as much to us. All else being equal, rich and/or famous people’s lives are also considered more important than poor or ordinary people’s lives it seems. (Even a non-living but very famous building like the Notre Dame can receive more media coverage, emotional outpouring and donations than certain causes for the living.)
The media prefers to present stories that grab our attentions, and they want to do this because they want to generate clicks and ultimately revenue (frequently to the point of presenting clickbait). And compared to a statistic, it’s easier to build a more personally-captivating emotional story to follow from one day to the next when there are only a handful of names and faces to get to know, remember and feel attached to. So there are media biases. Yet it’s supply and demand – we influence supply with our demand. We learn more about the world when we also read with similar levels of interest the news articles that are lower down the front page of a news app. So as news consumers, we could choose to follow and engage with the less sensationalised stories and care about what’s not merely happening on our doorsteps too.
It’s not easy to fight one’s (predictable) instincts but I wished we were more rational in this regard. We’re instinctively drawn to emotional clickbait like we’re drawn to junk food, but it doesn’t mean we ought to be – we can adapt. To claim to know about the tricks that the media use yet not fight to negate them is just like claiming to know about the tricks that con artists employ yet accepting that we must still do as they want us to do(!) Or it’s like learning how to cook but then deciding to never cook. What’s the point of knowing about the irrationalities of human psychology if we don’t better ourselves from such knowledge? If the fact of the matter or reality is that women get discriminated against in many contexts, for instance, does that mean we should accept things as they are, or should we try to be better people; at least in ourselves? Real life isn’t a fictional novel thus we need to focus on the cold, hard statistics more than what most tugs our emotions, in order to direct our attentions and resources to save the most number of lives – that’s, ironically, if we want to express the most warm, heartfelt compassion and charity.
The media needs to continue highlighting the disasters around the world that need relief efforts and donations as they happen, at the same time as showing that people’s donations do make a difference – as evidenced by the strong long-term trend of decreasing death rates from disasters over the past century.
Now animal charities don’t receive more donations than humans (although I’d argue that animals should because there are far more other animals than humans in this world – woof!) The elderly apparently receive the most.
National lottery funding is crucial for many causes so although playing the lottery is irrational, one can feel good that a portion of one’s bets go to good causes even if one doesn’t win.
Should or can a distinction be made between the ‘deserving poor’ (those considered hardworking who, through not fault of their own, found themselves in hardship) and the ‘undeserving poor’ (those assumed to be able to find it easy to help themselves if only they worked harder)? Is it a problem of society or of individuals? Well if something seems systemic and widespread enough then I’d look at improving society. (It’s like great designers blame themselves rather than the users if many users make the same undesirable actions.)
One argument against charity donations is that if you give a desperate person €10 to survive then you’re just prolonging their life so that they suffer a little longer i.e. it’s better off if they just perish. But the real solution is to help them more so that they can escape from poverty altogether.
There are postulations as to why it’s not so trivial to solve yet still hugely frustrating to find that both obesity and famine simultaneously exist on this planet! There’s contestably a ‘ratchet effect’ when giving food donations to chronic famine zones because during relatively good times, more children survive, hence there becomes more mouths to feed, which requires more food aid. But the long-term answer isn’t to let people die but to do more than just donating food – systematic improvements must be made to the area’s local food supply. It’s the principle of ‘give them a fish and they’ll eat for a day but give them a net and they’ll catch and eat food for a lifetime’.
The state of self-sufficiency isn’t always possible (e.g. the elderly are expected to increasingly become dependent on others as they age) but we should try to ultimately help in a way that helps people/other animals to eventually help themselves. Doing something for someone is different to helping them to do it. Most of us do want to help people enough to eventually help themselves but not too much that they’re not incentivised to work. Help a person enough and they’ll be able to give back to society so much more.
The overall economics also needs to ultimately make sense because money (with any value) from either voluntary donations or compulsory taxes doesn’t come from nowhere. The redistribution of wealth has to be sustainable.
Being mentally prepared for the possible eventuality of one day performing a sudden and unexpected extraordinary act of heroism may require imagining scenarios in your head that require heroic intervention and imagining how you’d react in those thought experiments. For instance, right now imagine seeing someone being bullied or drowning – now visualise your heroic response to this situation. People who frequently participate in such mental role-playing tend to be more vigilant of such scenarios in real life, and for having mentally rehearsed their response to such situations, are more willing and swift to heroically intervene if such a situation arises in their daily life. They’re more prepared and ready to be the first to speak up and stand up for what they believe in with their words and actions when it counts, and less likely to rationalise inaction. So pause for a moment, even if you’re in a hurry, to think about your own values whenever faced with a person in need.
A moral code of honour (e.g. to protect the vulnerable) may also be a factor as to why some people are more likely to be heroic than others.
Ask for help yourself too if and when you need it, whether you need it directly for yourself or when you need help to help someone else.
Of course, stories of individual heroism tend to make the headlines for being salient, but the portrayal of solitary heroes is often misleading. This may be because, like the ‘identifiable victim effect’, there’s an ‘identifiable hero effect’? The vast majority of everyday heroes work in teams where there’s no ego (e.g. rescue teams, medical teams, firefighters – even fictional superheroes frequently assemble or form a league!) Heroes aren’t just those who perform brave physical deeds either – one can vocally inspire mass action and social change too.
True altruism exists and isn’t selfish because people who are even willing to die for others exist. And such heroes are considered sexually attractive and revered too, rather than foolish – so we know that most of us think they’re worthy role models. Most of us prefer stories of self-sacrificing protagonists – we root for them. Good is focused on others whereas evil is focused on oneself. Selfish people are egocentric and like to self-publicise. Not being so self-focused can mean we’re less focused on our own relatively insignificant problems too – we can understand that others have it worse than us and our life isn’t that bad after all, which reduces our grumpiness and boosts our happiness. Grumpy people talk about past experiences where they did favours for others but never got anything directly back in return.
We don’t do things purely for the benefit of others. Yet we don’t do things purely for ourselves either. What’s the monetary price of civil harmony and peace for one’s life? It’s arguably priceless. A kinder society is ultimately a better one for one’s family to live in. It’s perhaps about thinking about our long-term and overall self-interests then?
Whenever you think of your own successes in life – think about your fortunes and those who helped make it happen. Even in Rocky – a story about individual grit – if many external things didn’t happen, he wouldn’t have succeeded. For instance, he only had a chance at the championship because another boxer got injured, he was selected out of a book of local boxers largely due to his Italian name, he actually first refused this fight until the promoter convinced him otherwise, his loan shark boss gave him time off and funds to train, Paulie gave him free daily steaks, and Adrian unconditionally supported him! This simple thought exercise encourages us to understand that our wealth comes with a responsibility towards others. It may thus also make paying taxes feel less disagreeable. Post No.: 0906 compared public spending with philanthropy.
Woof! Connect socially with others or with your community and the more charitable you’ll feel with your time and money. Plug yourself into a network of relationships and people’s lives and you’ll care more about others.
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