Given my stance that what utilitarianism needs is better arguments, but a better PR department, I'd like to field your ideas on how to promote utilitarian ethics.

For an argument of Singer's that he suggests persuades his students year after year, take the Shallow Pond:

If we could easily save the life of a child, we would. For example, if we saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all we had to do to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, we would do so. The fact that we would get wet, or ruin a good pair of shoes, doesn’t really count when it comes to saving a child’s life.

Although this analogy is increasingly familiar, it has far from run its race.

Suppose a Shallow Pond was actually constructed in a public place. There could be a plaque on the side describing Singer's analogy. There could be a collection tin in the middle of the pond, with or without some statue of a child whose life we can save. Although I haven't weighed up the costs yet, the idea is that visitors could actually walk into such a pond and wet their shoes in order to provide funding to alleviate poverty.

The analogy from Singer's Shallow Pond to a similar situation The Envelope has been written about in book-length The Life You Can Save. It's been expanded upon by Peter Unger in Living High and Letting Die. And it directs popular intuition towards a utilitarian conclusion within the rules of the popular Reflective Equilibrium approach to ethics. For its vast capacity to improve the world, it would be a prime candidate for promotion.

What do you think?
What idea would you promote with sufficient funding and how would you do it?

I've created an A4 pinboard poster for Peter Singer's argument:


what do you think? How would you change it? (apart from giving it a finer-grained resolution)

the email addresses up and down the sides are there so that you can cut between them with scissors allowing passers-by to tear off an email address to keep in their pocket until they get home. It's the sort of thing you could pin up around your local university for example.

NB I'm currently seeking relevant copyright permissions.

I like the idea, but I think it needs a bit of work:

1) It's a bit text-heavy at the moment.

2) It also needs what marketers call a call to action - there's nothing on the poster saying 'do this simple thing, now!'

3) (similarly) It might help to have a link directly to a donations page to something 'neutral' (perhaps Givewell, or conceivably you could stagger a few different options down the tearoffs), shortened to a Tiny URL or similar if necessary. If you did that you'd need a very short label for it, though.

4) Lastly, I'm not sure whether colour is a good idea - it will cost you quite a bit to print them in any kind of quantity. Maybe it's worth the investment, but I suspect you should expect a very low response rate to these (you'd normally expect very little even if you were telling people they could get something back for their money). I don't have a very good monitor, so it's hard to be sure, but the image needs work.

I'll try and think of some more concrete suggestions.

I think this is a really neat idea!
It could be very cheap, but if done in a public-enough place it could bring this important example to more people.

A new website or page would need to be designed specifically for this purpose.
It could be "drowningbaby.com" which would either redirect to TheLifeYouCanSave.com or have a summary of the argument along with actionable advice (such as "give $ to VillageReach" or "find the best charity at GiveWell").

awesome topic! i had been thinking about this. i thought maybe something in very very eye catching colours like black and yellow like a warning poster or black and white saying something really shocking like THE WAY YOU LIVE CAUSES CHILDREN TO STARVE TO DEATH with a website address at the bottom or some kind of details to a site or something (which would explain how to help and that animals suffer too) and then print off a few thousand copies and stick them EVERYWHERE around your local city

EVERYWHERE

Ruairi wrote:awesome topic! i had been thinking about this. i thought maybe something in very very eye catching colours like black and yellow like a warning poster or black and white saying something really shocking like THE WAY YOU LIVE CAUSES CHILDREN TO STARVE TO DEATH with a website address at the bottom or some kind of details to a site or something (which would explain how to help and that animals suffer too) and then print off a few thousand copies and stick them EVERYWHERE around your local city

EVERYWHERE

I love the enthusiasm, though I suspect something as shocking as you suggest would be too alienating to most people. I wish I had more experience talking to people about these issues to know what makes the message more acceptable, but I think condemnation would put people on the defensive, make them dig their heels in and ignore the message through some psychological trick.

For instance, first year in college when I was given a pamphlet promoting vegetarianism by comparing eating meat to mass slaughter that happened at Nazi camps, I was shocked, the message was so foreign I easily ignored it saying "those people are just loons". Several years go by (having met people who I respected who happened to be vegetarians) and I found myself very sympathetic to the argument I originally rejected (needless to say I'm now a vegetarian too).

Perhaps in personal life it is best to just lead by example (being a genuinely good person that people like, people will be more receptive to your perhaps implicit suggestions of behavior). Spreading a message through a poster may need to be done forcefully enough to pique the curiosity but gentle enough not to turn off.

Let's set a task in this thread:
What could a poster say that may get people more interested in learning more by going to a website?
This would be for a small page-size poster without any statue.

Step 1 What we need suggestions for:
1) small amount of text - so that there will be no TL;DR
2) eye-catching graphic (what should it depict?)

If Step 1 is successful, Step 2 would be to make a website with a short message about the issue that contains very few (not many!) specific links. I'm happy to devote some of my time to the project (I can build websites no problem and design a pamphlet) if other members are willing to help out with the message.

Hi all,
firstly, I agree with YBoris's criticism of Ruari. You can't just tell people they're causing immense harm and expect that to change them. I can support YBoris's story by saying that I've seen 'meat is murder' written in red graffiti at my local train station every day on my way to high school, and if anything, that slowed my transition to vegetarianism. It made me think that vegans were total nutjobs. Now, I am finally a vegetarian, and I am slowly reducing my consumption of animal products further.

Here's how to change people's behaviour:
1. Find an audience, some of whom are already considering a change
2. Give them a bite-sized piece of information, an image, or an analogy that will tip them over the edge
3. This'll motivate them to maintain the change or get more information.

Lastly, YBoris, here's my specific advice for the image:
1. Great fountain
2. Good text
3. The baby's hand is good

But:
1. the text is too small and/or unclear. You could consider enlarging the text, whitening its background, or moving it to the sky
2. The baby's hand in the pond is not visible enough, is too metallic-looking, and not pink enough.
3. To truly know that the text gets Peter Singer's point across, you'd have to test it on someone who hasn't heard the shallow pond analogy before. It's possible, although I'm not certain, that you'd need a few more words to improve the sense of symmetry between saving a baby here and saving a baby somewhere else e.g. "If a baby begins to drown before your eyes, you'll save it, even if it ruins your $50 shoes" I'm not insistent on this point, mind you. You'd have to ask someone to find out.

agh perhaps i am too idealistic. were you considering the picture of the fountain above? i don't think its eye catching enough

Ruairi wrote:agh perhaps i am too idealistic. were you considering the picture of the fountain above? i don't think its eye catching enough

Ah, I didn't make it clear enough - I altered a photo to what it could look like if the fountain was modified to include a bronze statue of a child drowning and a metallic post next to it with some text. If the statue would be something long-lasting (more than a week), it would need to be metallic so as to last; other materials may make it look extra nasty (realism would disappear overnight). I don't think we'd fool anyone into running into a fountain - the hand would be too motionless to make anyone think otherwise. But a hand sticking out (even if in bronze) would be eye-catching enough to make people think "WTF is this?" and read the short bit of text (I made it extra short because else it would be hard to read in the picture).

The "Step 1" I was proposing is for a page-size poster that could be hung independently (no pond/fountain nearby); preferably in black and white. It could have two 3-panel comics illustrating the analogy, though I haven't thought of a way to make the money donation one clear.

For better success, it's good to brush up on psychology of persuasion. A book I really liked was "Influence" by Cialdini; it's not specific to what we'd like to do, but it has some nice research-based theory and many summaries of important studies where subjects were persuaded to do things.

Here's some reading for influence: http://www.fripp.com/art.of_influence.html

Wouldn't bronze rust? I'd expect you'd use stone, or whatever it is they make those fountains out of.

Are you willing to give $50 to save a child today?

Where? The cheapest I know is VillageReach, which is $200 to $1000 according to GiveWell.

DanielLC wrote:Wouldn't bronze rust? I'd expect you'd use stone, or whatever it is they make those fountains out of.

Are you willing to give $50 to save a child today?

Where? The cheapest I know is VillageReach, which is $200 to $1000 according to GiveWell.

Sorry I wasn't going for accuracy; I'm not sure what the "sexiest" message such a plaque could have to get people motivated to act. It is true that with pennies a child can be vaccinated (right?), so while a vaccination doesn't translate to "life saved" 1-to-1, a message that highlights the cost-effectiveness may be more motivating (at least to some). Of course were I designing the final message for the plaque I'd make sure it was accurate.

Compare to a message "shoes would cost you $50, but for only $500 you could save a child". While it's still an amazing trade-off, for an average person, it may sound like "give 1/2 your paycheck now", and when an average person is only 2 weeks away from financial ruin (always living paycheck-to-paycheck), it's a big step. (I'm not defending their inaction, just saying psychologically it would be too-big-a-pill to swallow).

You could say it would ruin a $500 suit, although I think that would require a deeper pond.

ohh, I follow you Boris. You want to do that to a real-life pond. The idea's crossed my mind before. It could well work. The questions are:
1. How long would others leave the hand in the pond unsupervised?
2. Would you have to constantly remain with the hand & poster to prevent it from being removed
3. Would it be persuasive, more so, for example, than just handing out pamphlets at a university?

RyanCarey wrote:ohh, I follow you Boris. You want to do that to a real-life pond. The idea's crossed my mind before. It could well work. The questions are:
1. How long would others leave the hand in the pond unsupervised?
2. Would you have to constantly remain with the hand & poster to prevent it from being removed
3. Would it be persuasive, more so, for example, than just handing out pamphlets at a university?

I was thinking to do this in a legal and nearly-free way. Get an art student in college to collaborate - they always have projects to do and this could count for course-work; so the hand would come free (perhaps even the poster stand and poster).

Someone would approach an appropriate official in the city parks department and request this to be a 2-week installation as part of an art project. If they don't like calling it an "art" project, they may respond better to "we're the [city-name] utilitarian society and are requesting a public service announcement".

Though I see how some officials may not like it, there are certainly people who would love to allow for such a thing.

If the park endorses it, there could be a sticker on the pole about it being illegal to vandalize any part of the project as it is endorsed by the city.

I don't know the amount of persuasion this would bring about, but it may get a news-story out of it (depending on which city this is done at). A few quotes from organizers sprinkled through the news-story would possibly give a personal feel to the message and thus make it more attractive.

Hanging out pamphlets is an option, though I don't know what payoff one could see from such acts. I think it could be high, though also it would require a motivated individual undeterred by constant disinterest and lack of response. Universities of course are probably the best place to get the message out.

I'm LOVing the idea of the pond and also working on a standard poster to just put up anywhere. YBoris, you did a good job on the pond; ditto for RyanCarey on the poster.

One thing I will say though, is that I've seen a lot of "excuses" like "I wouldn't pay $500 for a suit/I wouldn't pay $50 for a pair of shoes/I don't buy a daily latte/I don't expect to ever earn £30k a year!" People often say this in response to examples we choose as a way of trying to wriggle out of the argument or scoffing at your privileged life (and thus ability to donate) where you can afford daily lattes and the like. So, and this is a general comment really, not specific to this thread, I reckon people should start using examples that less people can deny apply to them or at least not make it look like we're assuming that the example does apply to them ("Let's say you're wearing a really expensive pair of shoes that cost $200" is better than "Let's saying you're wearing your most expensive pair of shoes which cost about $200" and referring to "your daily latte" is bad).

Aiming to restart the thread. Here's what we have so far:

Statue in a pond - requires more work and thus an enthusiastic lad or gal

pamphlet to hang - easy to do so let's do it

Please provide your suggestions:
1) What should the small amount of text say?
2) What should the eye-catching graphic depict?
3) What should the "act now" action be?

Feel free to ignore if this unconstructive, but I unsure making people feel guilty (even if they should be guilty) is likely to be successful in getting them to give. I hope to be giving an altruism talk next year (to a medical student audience), and I'm very hesitant to include anything with the subtext: "you bad person for not giving more!"

If I'm wrong and this turns out to be wildly effective, please let me know!

reposted below

GregoryLewis wrote:Feel free to ignore if this unconstructive, but I unsure making people feel guilty (even if they should be guilty) is likely to be successful in getting them to give. I hope to be giving an altruism talk next year (to a medical student audience), and I'm very hesitant to include anything with the subtext: "you bad person for not giving more!"

If I'm wrong and this turns out to be wildly effective, please let me know!

I would say that direct criticism like that would be counterproductive, but there is a similar approach that has proved effective: allowing people to discover there own moral hypocrisy. One way to do this is to get people to acknowledge support for some moral principle (generosity), then get them to list things they did in the past that were contrary to that principle. If they are led to believe that thier decision to act altruistically now will reflect upon their group (e.g., their school), they will tend to make the "morally appropriate choice" (McKimme et al., 2003, pp. 218, 220). Perhaps the "choice" could be making some kind of public commitment, in writing or on video, to do the right thing--however, perhaps your assignment is to simply provide information about altruism and not actually do anything to make people more altruistic.

There is also reason to believe that people will lie to give the appearance that they are acting impartially when they are really acting to benefit themselves (see Batson et al. 1997), but I'm not sure how people would respond to hearing this in a lecture. My personal experience talking to people is that they universally deny cognitive bias and therefore discount any claims that they are suffering from self-serving cognitive illusions.

That being said, I think there are flaws in the pond example such that its appeal to selfish people is limited (not simply because selfish people fail to see "truth" but that the pond example relies on the assertion of objective equivalence between helping locally and helping from a distance). Efforts to perpetuate altruism might be supported by developing empathy for others through such things as perspective-taking (which is widely used experimentally to manipulate empathy). Some philosophers view appeal to emotion as irrational, which it might be, but the philosophical defense of underlying values is ultimately subjective or contingent upon hypothetical assertions. Appeal to empathy provides people with an internal basis (perhaps one that they have overlooked) from which to judge the moral valence of actions--this is different from a stranger trying to convince a selfish person that it is good to deny one's internal motivation for selfishness (yes, appeal to emotion is considered anti-utilitarian).

References

Batson, C. D., Kobrynowizcz, D., Dinnerstein, J. L., Kamphf, H. C. & Wilson, A. D. (1997). In a very different voice: Unmasking moral hypocrisy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72(6), 1335–1348.

McKimmie, B. M, Terry, D. J. Hogg, M. A., Manstead, A. S. R. Spears, R. Doosje, B. (2003). I'm a hypocrite, but so is everyone else: Group support and the reduction of cognitive dissonance. Group Dynamics: Theory Research, and Practice, 7(3) 214–224. DOI: 10.1037/1089-2699.7.3.214

@rehoot,

I was unaware of the research. Thank for you for telling me about it!

The aim of the talk is to promote altruistic behaviour, not just make people well informed hypocrites. (The aim is to plug GWWC, so I'd be extremely happy if I could convince anyone to commit). I'm unsure how to incorporate it into a talk. My worry is that I'm a peer of my audience, and this audience is probably smart enough to see when the points I make imply criticism of their behaviour and get offended by it.

I was planning to talk primarily about optimality and how cheaply you can buy QALYs in the developing world (on the assumption people "know" there's lots of unhappiness and suffering but buy into slightly self-serving cynicism that charity can't really help). Given what you said, perhaps I should include some heartstrings stuff too.

The talk is approx. 5 months away (there might be another one sooner). Closer to the time I'll put up my draft slides/prezi/notes for you guys to look and and suggest improvements. I'll also do 'after action reports' to see what works and what doesn't (although obviously collected anecdotes are inferior to data).

Gregory Lewis wrote:I was planning to talk primarily about optimality and how cheaply you can buy QALYs in the developing world (on the assumption people "know" there's lots of unhappiness and suffering but buy into slightly self-serving cynicism that charity can't really help). Given what you said, perhaps I should include some heartstrings stuff too.

I have a long history of arguing against appeal to emotion, but the truth is that people have emotional reactions to things that are either in opposition to their beliefs (cognitive dissonance) or consistent with them. Selfish people will have an emotional reaction to the thought of giving "their property" to somebody "who didn't earn it," but they won't recognize or acknowledge the emotional component and will instead insist that they are making factual arguments. You can not directly tell such people that they are making an emotional decision--saying as much will probably make them tune out (that is my personal experience). I think you have to speak to both the emotional and rational side to help people overcome their bias (but NEVER use a direct approach to tell an audience that they are biased--let them discover for themselves--try this yourself (really!): talk to a conservative and after 30 seconds say that he or she is exhibiting cognitive bais and is not in touch with emotions).

One rational way to approach giving comes from Singer's "The expanding circle" (1981, pages approximately 92-119) about how people can "realize" that the interests of their immediate family are no more important on a universal scale than the interests of other people in the village. Once that point is repeated a few times it becomes easier to consider the idea that people outside my little gang have moral value--or that the burden of proof makes it difficult for me to rationally establish that there is something super-special about the people I know that justifies my disregard for others. The burden-of-proof approach is a good supplemental argument for a group of people who believe that they have good reasoning and scientific skills.