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In complete honesty, I disagreed with much of this article and found it a little troubling. I came to believe that the ‘Effective Altruism’ organization itself has its heart in the right place, but their execution is what left me feeling frustrated. Personally, I don’t see why anyone could hate art and I also can not understand how you can weigh the intangible such as good deeds.

Specifically, I disagreed with the passage “does your preferred good deed make as much of a difference as simply handing over the money? If not, how good a deed is it really?”. To me, I just don’t see how anything could be that black and white, certainly not good deeds. You could give somebody a million dollars or you could help them just by being there for them or put them in the right direction of someone who could help them more than you yourself could.

Another place I disagreed with the ‘Effective Altruism’ organization was when the text said “Artists paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns”. Now again, I have the same argument as before that you can’t be so cut and dry with the world. I found that this statement was generalizing and stereotyping artists and art itself. Art can be something that is very therapeutic and lots of psychologists recommend it to their patients which ironically, could be thought of as a good deed.

One Comment

  1. elishaemerson

    First of all, your About Me page is fantastic. I am excited about your worldview and priorities. I hope you will find the opportunity to include them in future papers.

    I enjoyed reading your reflection above. I want to challenge you to consider about why the EAs views ARE so black and white. Consider their LOGIC and reasoning–how they understand the world. I commend you for inviting the idea of the intangible into the conversation. I wonder: Can intangible things be measured, and if not, how are we to understand them?

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