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How to Save A Life (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

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In 1972, the philosopher Peter Singer proposed a simple thought experiment: Imagine you’re on your way to work and you come across a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re tall enough that you can run in and rescue him, but if you do so you’ll ruin your new suit. Should you save the child? Almost everyone says yes: the value of saving a child’s life far outweighs the cost of losing your new suit. Indeed, someone who would let a child die to save their clothes seems like a monster. But aha, Singer says. You — yes, you, the reader — probably spent several hundred dollars on new clothes recently, clothes you didn’t really need. (Or if not clothes, perhaps a dinner out, or music, or books you could’ve gotten from the library.) And instead of spending that money on luxuries, you could have sent it to Partners in Health, and they could have used it to save a child’s life in the developing world. (GiveWell estimates that you can save a life for between $150-$750.) How are you not a monster?

How to Save A Life (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz How to Save A Life In 1972, the philosopher Peter Singer proposed a simple thought experiment: Imagine you’re on your way to work and you come across a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re tall enough that you can run in and rescue him, but if you do so you’ll ruin your new suit. Should you save the child? Almost everyone says yes: the value of saving a child’s life far outweighs the cost of losing your new suit. Indeed, someone who would let a child die to save their clothes seems like a mo

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