What do you think about that parallel.

Is that a sound parallel.

Have I overlooked important differences that also

are relevant to the moral judgement, so

that while you might want to, stick to the moral judgement that it would be wrong

of somebody not to rescue the child in the pond, we're not, led to make a

similar moral judgment, about people who don't help to do anything about global

poverty and therefore to help save the lives

of people who are dying because of global poverty.

Yes, there.

>> I think it's harder just to know [UNKNOWN].

>> Okay, so the first suggestion is that there's

a difference in how to help, or in a

knowledge of how to help that's, that's very straightforward

in the case of the child in the pond,

you just run in, pull the child out, find

the parents presumably, and give the child back, maybe

give them a little lecture about looking after their

child better, but anyway you, you know what to do.

Whereas in the other case it's seems more difficult.

How do we help.

How do we know that we're helping.

So, let me just take that point rather than comment on it

at moment, see whether there are other points people want to raise.

One here.

>> What is the difference between saving a fetus and saving this child.

Okay, good.

So, you've taken us back to the debate about abortion where I've said the fact

that the fetus has the potential to be a rational being is not enough, given the

fact that the world has lots of rational beings in it, maybe as many as it

can comfortably support, is not enough reason to

say, that it's wrong to abort the fetus.

what's, what's the difference here.

Well, since that is, that it relates to something we

talked about before I'll, I'll, I'll respond to that right now.

One difference clearly is that, you could think about the parents of the child.

So, in the case of a woman who wants to have an

abortion, she's made that decision that she doesn't want to have this child.

And clearly, while she may well have some regrets that her

circumstances are such that she can't have a child, but on

balance that's her judgment, that's her decision, that's what she wants, and she's

not going to, therefore, be grief stricken over the abortion.

You know, sometimes later she may have remorse,

but in general, I think women who terminate

their pregnancies continue to think that they made

the right decision, tough as it sometimes is.

So, in the case of a child who dies, a child, under five

who dies, parents are going to be grief stricken about the loss of their child.

Even though the deaths of children in developing countries may be more

common than they are here, much more common than they are here, it's

still not the normal run of events, and parents who have a child

still love and cherish that child, and are going to care for that child.

So, one thing is you could just think of it, if you like,

in terms of the, the parents and their attitude, but you can also

think of it in terms of the child suffering because the child

is, you know, for example, if a child has malaria, it's an unpleasant disease.

You don't die from it immediately or quickly.

You go through lots of episodes of fever and distress.

So, you could think about that.

And, depending on whether this is a newborn child or an older, somewhat older

child, we're talking about children under five, you know, you may well feel that

the, the child itself now has started to have interests in going on living

in a way that a fetus, which is not even a conscience being, doesn't have.

So, that may not be true for early

newborn deaths which we talked about with Professor

[UNKNOWN], but I certainly think it is true once you get a little bit past birth.

So, I think that there's those

differences, but it's a reasonable question.

Anybody else.

Yeah, all right, down in front here.

>> I think there is a difference in the responsibility of the community.

>> Okay so a second, a second difference is that in the

case of the child in the pond, I've said that you were

the only person there, so the

responsibility falls entirely on you, whereas

what I've been talking about, you

suggested, the responsibility falls on the public.

You could say that.

You could say, also, it falls on everyone of us

individually, that would be another way of looking at it.

But, certainly it's true that there are many, many

people who could be doing something, not just me.

So, in that sense, the responsibility seems to be diffused.

Okay, let's take that one on board, and there's a hand right behind you as well.

Yeah.

>> [INAUDIBLE].

>> Okay, So, so this point of difference was that, as I

described a child in the poem, you only do this once, you know.

In fact, probably none of you will ever be

in a situation to rescue a small child from a

shallow pond, but if you were, it would be

quite extraordinary if that were to happen more than once,

whereas if you do something to donate to an

organization to provide bed nets for children who are in

danger of getting malaria, having made that donation today,

you could also make it tomorrow, and the next day,

and for a very long time to come, at least.

Hopefully, one day we'll solve this problem, but until

we do solve this problem, you are going to

be able to do that, and then there will

be other problems, not just malaria, but so on.

So, you could say, yes, there's a question about how demanding this morality can be

given that the problem is such a large problem that we can't solve individually.

So, that's also true.

Anybody else.

Anybody, who I'm missing up in the gallery wants to comment.

Yes, okay, we'll take you, and maybe we'll finish with that.

>> [UNKNOWN].

>> Okay, that's interesting.

So, you've pointed to an emotional difference, that we, we see

this child in front of us, there's some connection, that we

have, and we don't have that with 6.6 million children who

we don't see and which is, in a way, just a statistic.

And that's an interesting point.

And, let, let, let me go on with that one for a, for a few moments.

I think you're, you're undoubtedly right as a matter of psychological fact.

We relate to individuals in a way that we don't relate to the mass.

And there's some interesting research on this

which shows the importance of connecting in some

way with an individual, even if it's not an actual individual in front of you.

The research was done, by a psychologist called Paul

Slovic and his colleagues, and they did it like this.

They got students at a university to volunteer to come in for

a psychology experiment for which they were going to be paid $15.

They were not told anything about the nature of the experiment.

So, they came into a room, they were given a questionnaire

and told to fill in the questionnaire, that took them 15 or 20

minutes, they came back, to somebody at the desk handed in

the questionnaire, he gave them $15 in small notes, and

in fact, only at that point did the experiment really begin.

As well as giving them the money, he gave them some

information, and on a random basis they were divided into two groups.

One group was told, each month our Psych lab adopts a particular charity.

The charity we're supporting this month is helping children in Malawi.

There are thousands of children in Malawi who go to bed every night,

this was on a piece of paper, who go to bed hungry every night.

Would you like to help some of them.

And then there was a box into which they could put,

if they wished, some of the $15 that they were given.

The other students were given a similar piece of paper,

but it had a picture of a small African child.

And it said on it, this is Rokea.

She's seven years old.

She lives in Malawi.

She goes to bed hungry because her family is poor and

can't afford enough, they can't afford to give her enough to eat.

Would you like to help her.

And there was the same box.

Well, as you might guess from what I've said,

significantly more students gave when they were given the

identifying information about Rokia, than those who were

given the more broad information about thousands of children being hungry.

If you think of it, this is sort of strange.

If you think of this from a purely sort of rational point of

view, this is strange because these

were university students, they presumably weren't stupid,

they must have known, if they'd stop to think for a minute, that

it wasn't that the lab was collecting all this money to give to Rokia.

I mean, you know, then Rokia, one child

in Malawi, was going to really become relatively wealthy

for a child in Malawi, whilst all the rest

of the children were just as hungry as before.

They must've realized that Rokia is a kind of a token child, a

token of the type child that we're helping, but in fact they gave more.

So presumably, it was as you were suggesting,

that they felt an emotional pull to this child,

and although they didn't think they were only giving

to her, that emotional pull prompted them to give.

And I think that is a real problem in terms

of getting people to address global poverty as an issue.

It's a problem because, it is a statistic.

It's very hard to make it individual in this way.

You can do things as, as that said,

you can, you can appeal to people, individuals.

Some charities try to get people to adopt a

child in the sense of sending money to a particular

child, but that's not really the most effective way of

helping because a lot of problems need more systematic approach.

If you put in safe drinking water for

a village, not an individual family for instance.

So, so there is this problem that we're not emotionally moved by global poverty

in the way that we would be moved by a child in front of us.

But, the question I want you to think about is, that may explain why we don't

give that much to the global poor, but does it justify the difference.

Does it justify us in thinking it's less wrong not to give.

I mean, once you realize this, don't you

also realize that this shouldn't really make a difference

to whether it's right or wrong to help somebody,

the fact that you are emotionally drawn to them.

I mean, our emotion's maybe triggered by all sort of things.

Again, there's research showing that we're more likely to

respond emotionally to somebody who looks rather like us.

But we know that that's not a good basis for deciding how to help.

That's uncomfortably close to racism, and we

may consciously try and get around that.

So, shouldn't we also try to consciously try to get around the fact here that,

actual, that, we are not emotionally pulled in the same way.

Okay, let's look at some of these, other things that, were said.

So, for example, it was said that, it's not just my responsibility

in this situation, it's, everybody could take part.

And I think that's also another reason why we give less.

Again, there's research showing that when we're not the

only one responsible, we are less likely to help.

Let me give you another example of that, that kind

of research which in a way is, I think, quite disturbing.

So, its another example of, you, you

need to be careful about psychology experiments.

It's another example where students were actually

deceived about the purpose of the experiment.

They they were asked to come in to do an experiment, weren't told what

it was about, given questionnaires to fill in, and sometimes they filled in these

questionnaires in a room where there was

another person also filling in a questionnaire,

and sometimes they walked into the room and there was nobody else in the room.

The person who gave them the questionnaire then went into another room where they

couldn't see her, but they could hear her moving things around the room, dragging

furniture or something perhaps, and then, they heard a thud as if she'd fallen off

something, and she started crying out and saying, oh help, I've hurt my leg.

Now if the person, who was the real person

doing the experiment, was alone in the room, they

almost always jumped up and ran into the next

room to help, as you would hope they would.

But, if there was somebody else in the room, that person was actually

a stooge, not just another student filling the experiment, and when the cry for

help came, that person sort of looked up, it was obvious that he'd

heard the cry for help, and then went back to filling in the questionnaire.

And that made it significantly more likely

that the other person would not help either.

In other words, the other person who was genuinely the subject of

the experiment took his or her cues from, from other people around.

And I think that that's what we do in this situation, too.

We're influenced by the fact that we know a lot of other people are not giving.

We may also be influenced by a feeling of, that it would be unfair if

we gave and other people, some of whom are wealthier than us, were not to give.

So, I think that also influences us, against giving.

And then there's the factor that we feel that this is

potentially a limitless obligation, a very demanding obligation.

That one I'm not going to really address now because we're going to talk about

that, I think it's the first class after

the mid semester break if I remember correctly.

We're going to talk about, about how demanding morality might be.

Objections to the Pond Analogy

Effective Altruism

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