Recruiting Animal

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@ihtesham2005 If we knew charity wd really solve a problem most people wd contribute enough to solve it. But Egypt doubled its population in a few decades. This makes giving to charity something like pulling the kid from the water only to have him hop in again.

A philosophy professor in 1972 published a paper that, if you actually read it and accept the argument, proves that you and everyone you know is doing something evil every single day. His name is Peter Singer, and the paper is called Famine, Affluence, and Morality. It has been sitting in philosophy syllabi for over fifty years, and the strangest thing about it is not how radical the conclusion is. The strangest thing is that nobody has been able to find what is wrong with the argument. Here is the argument, and here is why it might change how you think about the next cup of coffee you buy. Singer starts with a distinction that sounds academic until you feel its full weight. There are two categories of morally good actions. The first is the obligatory. These are things you must do. You must not murder. You must not steal. If you see a child falling and you can catch them with almost no effort, you must catch them. Failing to do any of these things makes you a bad person. The second category is the supererogatory. These are things that are good to do but not required. Bringing coffee and pastries to an early meeting when no one asked you to. Rounding up your grocery bill to donate a dollar to charity at checkout. Nice things. Generous things. But if you do not do them, no one condemns you. Almost everyone in modern society places giving to famine relief in the second category. It is nice to donate. It is extra. It is charitable. If you do not do it, you are not a bad person. Singer says this is exactly wrong, and here is the thought experiment he uses to prove it. Imagine you are walking past a shallow pond and you see a small child drowning in it. You can easily wade in and pull the child out. The only cost is that your clothes will get muddy. You will be late to wherever you were going. Your shoes will be ruined. Nobody reading this thinks you are permitted to keep walking. If you kept walking and later said at a meeting that you let a child drown because you did not want to get your pants wet, everyone would consider you a monster. Not a flawed person. A monster. Singer says if you accept that intuition, you have already accepted the principle that drives his entire argument. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we must morally do it. Now add the facts. Hunger, disease, preventable death. These are very bad things. Donating money to efficient relief organizations like Oxfam actually prevents these things. The luxuries we spend money on, a new car when the old one works, a new jacket when the old one is fine, a cappuccino on the way to work, are not of comparable moral importance to a child's life. The conclusion follows automatically. You must give that money away. Not should. Must. Every time you buy something you do not need, you are walking past the drowning child. Singer anticipates the two objections that will occur to you, and he dismantles both. The first is distance. The child in the pond is right in front of you. The child dying of famine is ten thousand miles away. Singer says proximity used to matter because distance used to prevent you from knowing and from helping. It does not anymore. You know about the suffering. Efficient organizations can convert your money into saved lives on the other side of the planet within days. The moral mathematics does not change because the child is farther away. The second is numbers. In the pond, you are the only person who can save the child. In the case of famine, millions of other people could also donate and do not. Singer says look at the pond again. If you saw the child drowning and noticed a dozen other people standing around watching, would their presence release you from your obligation? If you walked into the meeting and explained that the child drowned but other people were there too, would anyone accept that as an excuse? The answer is obvious. What matters is whether the child is saved. If other people are failing to act, that does not dilute your obligation. It concentrates it. This is where the paper becomes uncomfortable. Because if the argument works, and Singer thinks it does, then the implication is not that you should donate a little more. The implication is that you should give away everything you spend on luxuries, up to the point where giving more would cause you suffering roughly comparable to the suffering you are preventing. He calls this the strong version of the principle, and he thinks it is the correct one. Nobody lives like this. Singer himself comes closer than almost anyone, donating a significant portion of his income, but even he admits he does not reach the level his own argument demands. The common response to the paper is that it is too demanding. Singer's reply is blunt. The fact that you do not like a conclusion is not an argument against it. Morality might simply be much more demanding than we have been raised to believe, and our comfort with the current standard is a feature of the society we were trained inside, not evidence that the standard is correct. The uncomfortable thing about this paper is not that it is extreme. The uncomfortable thing is that every time you try to find the flaw in the argument, you find yourself rejecting a premise that, in any other context, you would accept without hesitation. You believe the child in the pond must be saved. You believe distance does not matter morally. You believe other people's failures do not excuse your own. You believe a cup of coffee is not worth a human life. And yet when these beliefs are lined up next to each other, they produce a conclusion that almost nobody is willing to live by. Singer has been making this argument for more than fifty years. Philosophers have written entire careers trying to find the crack in it. The cleverest responses exist, and they are worth reading. But sitting with the paper on its own terms, before anyone has told you how to dismiss it, is something closer to an experience than a reading. The hardest question the paper leaves you with is not whether Singer is right. The hardest question is why, if you suspect he might be, you are going to close this post and keep living exactly the way you were before.

@Deeteem1 Deet, you know there is a difference between people in the Warsaw Ghetto refusing to be sent to the gas chambers and Hamas murdering people at a music festival. Don't you?

Never forget: when Jews are oppressed and fight back, they are heroes. When Palestinians do the same, they are terrorists

I hate, hate, hate being forced to watch a video to learn something when I could read at 10x the speed. Videos are for cattle. "Hey guys, today we'll be talking about X -- X is a fascinating topic, and a lot of you have been requesting I talk about X, so..." - Shut up, Shut up!

@BarbaraRKay If he loses for her, which I hope he does, she will have another reason to hate Jews and then she can also justify her claims about Macron's wife by saying that her case was sabotaged by a Zionist.

Not a parody. When it comes to her own legal defence, only a *Zionist* Jew will do: Candace Owens Turns to Pro-Israel Lawyer to Fight Macron Defamation Suit open.substack.com/pub/danielmael…

@RabbiWolpe Funny, I've been getting reports from Quora recently that people are arguing that Jesus was not Jewish. Unbelievable.

People who want to dispense with the 'Old Testament' and revere the 'New' still have to explain why Jesus followed its laws, quoted its verses (even while dying on the cross) and belonged to its people. As a start.

@KarenFactsLover @grok @MarioNawfal A friend of mine was in the IDF in 1948. He told me that his unit was told by their officer not to molest a monument but some jerk in their outfit did and it attracted world media attention.

@grok @MarioNawfal Then why do people selectively get outraged by the actions of a few bad Jews???

The IDF confirmed the photo of their soldier smashing a statue of Jesus in Lebanon is authentic So for all the comments who immediately flooded X claiming the photo is fake, maybe you should reflect on how biased you’ve become, instead of trying to understand WHY this event happened, you chose to deny it completely

@KarenFactsLover No one cares. No one demonstrated here when lots of people were getting killed in Syria or Sudan. Western people have to be involved.

The horrendous stories of child marriages and rape by Hamas. 在哈马斯统治下的加沙， 就是强奸文化盛行的地方， 从娶嫁儿童，到性侵妇女，生活在这种伊斯兰教法统治的地方, 女性连反抗都不敢， 然后居然在西方，我们看了三年多的 Free Palestine.你妈逼吧 dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

@jepresume Auto, we don't believe something just because one person or group says it. We seek confirmation beyond someone's say so. There is proof that Israel asked Jordan to stay out of the war in 1967.

@animal Auto is me. ahahah! i didn't get it. No the source is essential. me it is an Israeli general.

Hannah Arendt wrote about that: They treat the Arabs, those still here, in a way that in itself would be enough to rally the whole world against Israel." And she added: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” This hat fits you well, Helen Mirren.

@shevereshtus I see the reverse. Chazal says foolish things because that's what the ancients believed. They didn't care about the scientific method.

Academia vs Chazal in a nutshell

@AlanRMacLeod Israel-haters will say anything to make it look bad. I agree that their system is foolish but it's the old Turkish system. Marriage is run by the religious authorities so people go to Cyprus which is nearby and their marriages are recognized by the state.

New from me: A host of NBA stars have gone on propaganda trips to Israel, invest in Israeli tech companies founded by spies, or have even met with Netanyahu. To find out which ones, read my latest investigation: mintpressnews.com/from-dunks-to-…

Gay marriage is illegal in Israel. As is marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

@jepresume Auto, for now, let's stick to the issues we are discussing rather than the media. I think you said that Israel did not tell Hussein that if he stayed out of the war in 1967, Israel wd not engage with Jordan. Do I understand you correctly?

@animal BBC? Peled is more objective.

@coniinthegarden @jepresume Hi Sup, I understand that the Arabs in the mandate didn't want a flood of non-Arabs coming in. That's normal. But the civil war in 1947 & all out war in 48 were started by Arabs who didn't accept partition. Not Jews.

@animal @jepresume Jews took 80% of Palestine form non-Jews. Are you seriously expecting a lack of reaction from non-Jews? It absolutely matters who did the invading first.

Alan Turing took up long-distance running seriously after the war and nearly made the 1948 British Olympic marathon team (finished 5th at trials). When asked why he trained so hard he said: "I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard" His marathon PR was 2:46:03

@jepresume Israel asked King Hussein to stay out of the war

@animal Not the true story. Israel knew that muslim countries were not ready and attacked first. source: The General's Son - Peled.

@jepresume Auto, you haven't called me names so you seem like an okay person. Miko matches your bias. But maybe take a look at another perspective. Egypt massed troops in Sinai, expelled UN peacekeepers, blockaded Straits of Tiran.

@davidsirota @NoamDworman at Comedy Cellar - it's about politics. He has lots of people on who are not famous whom you don't see on other shows.

I’m desperate for good podcast recommendations. Right now, my feed is basically 100 different shows all talking to the same 20 elites, celebs & podcasters about the same shit, which is a depressing reminder of the whole medium now being homogenized like everything else in media.

The history of rock music in 500songs 500songs.com/podcast/ Did you know the Doors were big time into Coltrane? Rich reporting on class, race, gender music theory and music. Adam Tooze (Ones & Tooze) and Kaiser Kuo (Sinica) have interesting coverage of China that is increasingly interesting. Tooze coverage goes way beyond China.

@jepresume The Mirren quote requires context. In 1967 Israel asked Jordan not to side with Egypt & Syria but it attacked & was defeated. In 1948 Jordan kicked out the Jews in East Jerusalem. Then in '67 Arab residents were expropriated to make way for the square at the temple wall.

@animal i asked grok: what is this famous quote from arendt about empathy?

@jepresume Thanks auto for your reply. I asked because it is attributed to Hannah but no one names an original source so it might be made up. The first quote apparently comes from a letter to her husband.

@jconricus Isn't the money given to Israel really a subsidy for the US defence industry that includes via Israel testing of its products in battle and access to Israeli tech as well?

The first and strongest opposition to this type of cheap and populist talk will come from the US defense industry. Israel is the best and cheapest marketing tool for US weapons. Worth trillions in sales and brand recognition.