I just finished watching the show The Good Place. It’s incredible and funny. It touches on tons of philosophical questions and makes you think about what it means to live a good life. It has several twists, and it ends with a proper ending (vs. being canceled, as it happens for many shows). I strongly recommend it if you haven’t seen it.
One of the big topics of the show (the underlying theme) is Utilitarianism. If you are like me (with very little background in ethics philosophy), Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that prescribes actions to maximize the happiness (or reduce suffering) of all people.
Two other things made me think and write about Shallow Pond’s argument (which I will describe in a couple of paragraphs). First, I am currently reading The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. And obviously, he talks about the argument. Additionally, I was listening to a podcast about Effective Altruism, and there were a lot of references and mentions of this argument. All of these came together, forcing me to think through this argument and check my motives and participation in charitable activities.
Finally, let’s talk about the argument itself.
The argument goes something like this: You’re walking to work when you notice that there is a child drowning in a shallow pond. You can easily save him (since the pond is shallow), but you will most likely ruin your new shoes and have to clean up your suit. Would you save the child? Will it change if you know you will be late for a business meeting?
Obviously, any sane person, who is not a full-blown sociopath, will answer, “Absolutely, I will go and save this child.” It doesn’t matter whether the person subscribes to ideas of Utilitarianism or another ethical theory or has spent zero minutes of their life thinking about philosophy at all.
Based on this thought experiment, we established that you are willing to sacrifice some amount of money (the cost of your shoes), and some inconvenience (a need to clean up your suit, being late to work) to save the child. Actually, to be precise, you are more than just willing, you would be eager to save the child and would consider not doing so absolutely abhorrent.
Usually, the next argument goes something like this: A child’s life is equally important no matter where the child lives. And again, it’s hard to argue. A sentence like: “Oh… this kid who is born and lives in Canada is valuable, but that one living in south Asia is not,” will make any empathic, ethical person horrified.
I think this argument is a little less airtight (I will talk about it later), but again, it’s hard to call yourself a good person if you will say some kids’ lives are valuable, but other kids’ lives are disposable.
And here comes the punch line. Okay, we established that you feel absolutely obligated to save a child’s life if all it takes from you is some small (inconsequential) amount of money and a bit of inconvenience. And we established that all kids’ lives have the same value. Kids in south Asia die from malaria (which is transferred by mosquito bites). And if you donate money to buy insecticide bed nets, you (statistically) guarantee to save the lives of kids in Asia. If the argument you just accepted is correct, it’s your moral obligation to do so. (I added the last sentence. It is usually implicit, but you can clearly read it between the lines).
If, like me, this argument has given you pause, it is because the arguments presented are strong, but something feels off. The feeling is akin to a magician performing a trick and pulling something out of a hat without understanding how it was done.
This is not even the strongest version of this argument. In fact, the next step in this argument, directly derived from Utilitarianism, is that one should minimize their own needs, refrain from spending on wants, and focus solely on allocating resources towards saving children. This is a classical Utilitarian idea: one should do everything that increases the total amount of happiness or decreases the total amount of suffering, even if it negatively affects the individual, as long as the total sum is positive.
In short, with just a simple sleight of hand, based on these three or four arguments (each of which is quite strong), one should become an ascetic and spend the rest of their days donating all their income to charities that buy insecticide beds nets.
Let me start with some meta-argument and after going into more specific arguments:
Based on my limited knowledge of philosophy, many philosophers aim to devise one or several maxims to guide decision-making throughout life. While I find this admirable, I also believe it to be unrealistic. Any idea, no matter how well thought out, can be dismantled when faced with a plethora of corner cases.
For example, the golden rule, which states that one should treat others as they would like to be treated, is a great principle that can be applied to many scenarios. However, if you are a meat eater and enjoy being offered beef when you visit someone, it does not necessarily mean that offering beef to a vegan is a good idea. Additionally, should a masochist follow the golden rule by inflicting pain on others?
Life and humanity are incredibly complex, making it impossible to find a maxim that will always work. And, as soon as one attempts to apply a maxim to all decisions, it becomes grotesque.
I am not suggesting that we should not try to find these maxims, nor am I suggesting that philosophers be banished to a deserted island. Rather, I believe it is important to understand that all ideas have limitations and should not be applied blindly or fanatically.
Yeah. A child’s life in a small developing country matters the same as a child from a big and well-developed country. However, if you had a gun at your head and you had to choose to save just one child — your child or a child who you have never met, whom would you choose? What if it was a choice between your friend’s child and a child from far-far away whom you have never met?
Absolutely, the majority of us (including me) will choose our own kids and the kids of our friends. This is embedded in our genes, in our evolutionary behavior over eons. You can be the most famous philosophy professor in the world, and your best argument won’t stand a chance against biology and psychology.
The truth is we (as a species) emphasize biological, societal, and physical proximity. We can dance all we want around this subject, but we do discount the lives of people who are far away, who don’t look like us, who don’t speak like us.
I think there is a counterargument against it. That we should actually actively (consciously) fight against it. And it makes tons of sense, because racism, xenophobia, and sexism are rooted in this particularity of human behavior.
On the other hand, this very evolutionary behavior, which causes so much pain to others, also has a purpose. The purpose was (and still partially is) the survival of the species/Selfish gene. In mammals, kids require TONS of work to survive to adulthood. And parents are most interested in preserving their genes (vs. some other genes). So, parents have to be more invested in their offspring vs. some random kids. The same goes for a community. Communities that were less interested in investing in themselves disappear, and communities with some level of selfishness will survive and pass on their ideas.
Getting back to the Peter Singer argument. This is the reason why I mentioned that the argument is not airtight. The child who is drowning right here will be valued more (by our ancient brain) than a child far away, who we have never met/will never meet and are not even sure whether we saved or not.
The shallow pond argument works so well because it hits all the soft places:
- It talks about a child. And we obsess with child safety in the 21st century in developed countries.
- It forces us to confront our egoism. And nobody wants to look bad and egoistic (that they would rather keep their shoes dry).
- It removes as many other variables as possible (except one related to egoism). So you have zero wiggle room.
Pretty much this argument is constructed that way that you are either a hero or a monster. Nothing in between.
Let’s change the argument. You are transported to some unholy evil place. You see millions of pounds. And somebody is drowning in each of these ponds — kids, adults, all kinds of animals, insects. What the f@ck will you do? Will you start saving randomly? Will you concentrate on human beings? Will you concentrate on kids? Will you continue saving them until you die of exhaustion, or will you take a break after some period of time? Will you become absolutely numb and stop saving anybody altogether?
Sit on this for a minute. Do you think you have settled on your answer?
Ok, you, monster… How come you didn’t save them all? Why didn’t you choose to die trying? (BTW. I assume that probably 95% of the population, in this case, won’t decide to sacrifice themselves).
The problem with the Shallow pond argument is that it creates a very simple scenario. You have a current state (a child is drowning), and you have a perfect state (a child is saved). The distance between the current state and the perfect state is trivial. It would be terrible not to travel this distance.
Unfortunately, the reality is way messier. Life is much closer to these millions of ponds. The current state is that each day about 180,000 people die (old age, illness, accidents). I don’t know how many of them are kids, but my guess would be dozens of thousands. Obviously, there are animals, insects, and so on who die too. And there is some perfect state where everyone lives in heaven, doesn’t ever have to die, and doesn’t ever get sick, and so on.
In this scenario, the distance between the current state and the perfect state is probably infinite (or at least way more than we can even imagine). How much are you willing to sacrifice to move a bit closer from the current state to the perfect state?
The thing which pisses me off about Peter Singer’s argument is that it doesn’t concentrate on how much you did/do to move in the right direction. It rather (implicitly) concentrates on how much you don’t do and try to call you out on that. It works really well with one child to save (when not saving that child is a terrible act). It doesn’t work well when the perfect state is so far removed that it’s unachievable.
As an offshoot of my previous counter-argument, I came up with a nifty idea. In most references to this whole argument, it goes something like this: you already have some savings, and you should be using them to save children’s lives. So, you’re pretty much spending money (reducing your happiness a bit), while increasing the immense happiness of a saved child and their family.
My counterargument: okay, that’s all good. However, if you only have $1000 dollars, you can, let’s say, save only one child. Based on the theory, you should be willing to spend dozens of hours easily to save another child. Why don’t you invest time in your education to get a better job, earn more money to save more children? You’re currently a middle school teacher, earning $60k/year. How about becoming a nurse practitioner or software engineer? You will earn $120k/year, and over the next 20 years, you will earn an additional $1.2M ( less after tax), which could be converted to tons of children saved.
However, why do you stop there? You should become a pharmaceutical researcher, find a cure for cancer, and save hundreds of thousands of kids’ lives. I think you should spend each waking moment of your life on this singular goal (damning your family, friends, and sanity too boot). I’m sorry, but any hardship that you need to go through will be easily covered by the utility provided by this.
So, you see, instead of starting from some financial point and saying that you should go down (and stopping at some limit, when you can’t spend less or you will die), I flipped the script and said that you should go up. Oh…and there is no limit in going up in your earnings. So, not becoming Jeff Bezos and curing cancer is totally your fault, and you are an unethical monster.
And last thought on this, as soon as you start pushing the initial Peter Singer argument to the extreme, you notice that somehow all the world’s responsibilities were put on your shoulders. And this feels incredibly wrong. Extracting myself from philosophy and going back to psychology, this feels like a serious abuse of boundaries. I can see that Utilitarianism can easily set roots in a person who has weak boundaries (who are not willing to say No to external requests). I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel it’s right to try to increase humanity’s happiness by abusing people with weak boundaries.
I think making the world a better place is absolutely critical. I have been on the receiving end of help multiple times, and I understand how critical it is.
I believe we should participate in charities and save lives when we can. (BTW, I really implore my readers to look at Give Well and donate through them).
However, I really dislike the Shallow Pond argument. It is extremely black and white and tries to twist our arm into doing the right thing. I would rather focus on praising people for what they do (versus implicitly shaming them for not doing enough).
And finally, it’s important not to forget that we are not angels. There are many things that are hardwired into us. We don’t have to act on our lowest instincts, but it would also be strange to expect angelic behavior and ideal adherence to some maxima from ourselves.
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