Singerian1. Suffering is bad, a lot of suffering is really really bad2. If you can stop something really really bad from happening, then you should do it, unless if by doing so something really really bad would happen to you3. Your shoes are not as important as starving children4. Give money“ But Mr.Singer Sr., what about...”... the fact that there are a lot of people in a very similar situation to me that do f**k all?!! Not important son, that’s morally irrelevant, it also helps you to know tha...

Brilliant! Singer first wrote this book 30 years ago and the contents are very much relevant to this day. I don't think there is a single person that would read this book and not be profoundly touched by it. In fact, in his preface he speaks about the various people who have contacted him after having read it and gone on to change their lives dramatically. This book should really be mandatory reading in every school. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Includes Singer's classic 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" as well as two related 2006 articles in The New York Times Sunday Magazine: "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" and "What Should a Billionaire Give—And What Should You?", both aimed at a more general (nonacademic) U.S. audience with the rather explicit intention of increasing donations to charitable organizations involved in foreign aid.

This book actually includes three essays, but I most enjoyed and was most challenged by Famine, Affluence, and Morality itself. Singer's arguments over the course of all three essays hold dramatic implications for the way most of us live our lives, especially in terms of how we spend our money. I personally hesitate to praise major philanthropists (especially those who have made their fortunes through large corporations) because I'm not sure how feasible it is to amass such great amounts of weal...

Famine, Affluence, and Morality centers on Peter Singer's 1972 essay of the same name, a classic in the area of applied ethics. This is one of those rare works by a philosopher that offers plenty of complexity with which to wrestle while also being accessible to a large portion of the general public. Revisiting this essay renewed my interest in applied ethics and may well kindle or rekindle the same in you.The original essay was a response to a very specific situation but, as mentioned in the ot...

It's succinct and tough to refute. I would like a more detailed discussion of how the 'drowing in a lake' analogy could be applied to encourage more charity (e.g. to the AMF which is an extremely efficient way of saving lives) but this was a sound starting point.

I feel like this helps develop an incredibly shallow perspective on providing aid.It seems to center around offloading effort onto others rather than analyzing how one can more directly contribute to aid, or how structures that lead to extraordinary affluence tend to create the very conditions that charities are meant to alleviate.It feels like effective altruism can't be particularly effective if it never grapples with conditions that generate disparity.

A compelling argument for affluent and relatively affluent people to spend more on providing life-saving aid to people in drastically impoverished regions of the world. Compelling but I don't think airtight, which in some ways is irrelevant to Singer's greater point, but does come into play when those will the ability to help must determine how to quantify "reasonable" and "rational." The weakness in Singer's argument (which I won't rehearse here) is that the difference between the toddler in fr...

'If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.' And of course we should. Singer asks the question of what a human life is worth and discusses the moral code that most who earn an income can save a child's life by donating to charity, instead of spending frivolously on luxuries that one never needs but instead wants. Singer poses a situation of if a child nearby falls into a pond and

I didn't realise when buying this book that it is only a very slight expansion on Singer's 1972 article (which I have already read). If I had known that I probably wouldn't have bought it. Still, the other two articles, and Singer's preface, were quite interesting. I knew most of what was discussed in there but I'm always happy to have that sort of stuff solidified through additional reading. So I think ti was worth reading.Further, I think this would be an excellent introduction to most people

This momentous essay was written at the height of the refugee crisis caused by indo pak war,1971. Here, Singer argues in favour of donation to help the global poor. He provides two versions of his core argument. The strong version - we ought to give until we reach the level of marginal utility- i.e., the level at which, be giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or my dependents as I would relieve by my gift.The moderate version - we should prevent bad occurrences unless, to do so...

Despite being involved in Effective Altruism (or perhaps for this very reason), I didn't get all that much from this. His writing didn't strike me as philosophically rigorous or informative, and he uses arguments based on moral obligation that I don't find compelling. (In particular, my position is that words like "duty" and "supererogatory" don't apply to anything real.) In the end, I'm not even sure whether the book contained anything that will help me spread EA ideas to others.It was still wo...

This book seems to be very basic, trite, and idealistic. It is easy to read. It encourages us to be more moral, arguing that if we can do something to improve the lives of other people, then we should (assuming it doesn’t lead to other bad outcomes). He argues that individuals should give much more of their income to poor people.Throughout the book, I kept wondering what Peter Singer’s own arrangements are, but there was no mention of it, which is odd. I believe in people doing what they preach....