Gianfranco Pellegrino has written an interesting essay arguing that effective altruism leads to what he calls the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion. In this post, I will provide a brief version of his argument and then note one possible response.
The Argument
Pellegrino beings by identifying the following as the core tenet of effective altruism:
"Effective Altruist Maximization (AM): We ought to do the most good we can, maximizing the impact of donating to charities on the margin and counterfactually —which means that among the available charities, the one that is most effective on the margin should be chosen" (2).
He next argues that this core tenet can best be articulated as the following principle:
"Doing the most good amounts to bringing about the greatest benefit to the greatest number" with "gains in diffusion compensat[ing] for losses in size, and vice versa" (7, 9).
He then poses a hypothetical in which an altruist is offered a choice.* The altruist can:
"[1] provide consistent, full nutrition and health care to 100 people, such . . . that instead of growing up malnourished they spend their 40-years long lives relatively healthy; [or]
[2] prevent[] one case of relatively mild non-fatal malaria [say, a fever that lasts a few days] for [each of] 1 billion people, without having a significant impact on the rest of their lives" (14).
Pellegrino argues that choosing the second option (the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion) is a "necessary consequence" of the principle from above, but that "[b]ringing about very tiny, but immensely diffused, benefits instead [of] less diffused, but more substantial, benefits is seriously wrong" (15).
Based on this, he claims that "either effective altruists should accept [the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion], thereby swallowing its repugnance, or they should give up their core tenet [of Effective Altruist Maximization]" (20-21).
You can read Pellegrino's full essay here.
A Possible Response
As Pellegrino acknowledges, "EA has often been the target of criticisms historically pressed against standard Utilitarianism[,] [and his] paper [is] no exception" (21). In light of this, one way to respond to his argument is to borrow from responses to other critiques of effective altruism that are premised on effective altruism accepting utilitarianism.
Specifically, one could argue that "[Pellegrino's] arguments appeal only to hypothetical (rather than actual) cases in which there is a supposed conflict between effective altruist recommendations and [intuition] and thus fail to show that effective altruist recommendations actually do [lead to a repugnant conclusion]."
Feel free to share other responses to Pellegrino's argument.
*Pellegrino's hypothetical is based on a similar hypothetical posed by Holden Karnofsky. In both Karnofsky's hypothetical and Pellegrino's hypothetical, there are three options. I have limited the hypothetical to two options for the sake of simplicity.
Would you also volunteer to be killed so that 10,000,000 people just like you could have $100 that they could only spend to counterfactually benefit themselves?
I think the probability here matters beyond just its effect on the expected utility, contrary, of course, to EU maximization. I'd take $100 at the cost of an additional 1/10,000,000 risk of eternal torture (or any outcome that is finitely but arbitrarily bad). On the other hand, consider the 5 following worlds:
A. Status quo with 10,000,000 people with finite lives and utilities. This world has finite utility.
B. 9,999,999 people get an extra $100 compared to world A, and the other person is tortured for eternity. This world definitely has a total utility of negative infinity.
C. The 10,000,000 people each decide to take $100 for an independent 1/10,000,000 risk of eternal torture. This world, with probability ~ 1-1/e ~ 0.63 (i.e. "probably") has a total utility of negative infinity.
D. The 10,000,000 people together decide to take $100 for a 1/10,000,000 risk that they all are tortured for eternity (i.e. none of them are tortured, or all of them are tortured together). This world, with probability 9,999,999/10,000,000 has finite utility.
E. Only one out of the 10,000,000 people decides to take $100 for a 1/0,000,000 risk of eternal torture. This world, with probability 9,999,999/10,000,000 has finite utility.
I would say D >> E > A >>>> C >> B, despite the fact that in expected total utility, A >>>> B=C=D=E. If I were convinced this world will be reproduced infinitely many times (or e.g. 10,000,000 times) independently, I'd choose A, consistently with expected utility.
So, when I take $100 for a 1/10,000,000 risk of death, it's not because I'm maximizing expected utility; it's because I don't care about any 1/10,000,000 risk. I'm only going to live once, so I'd have to take that trade (or similar such trades) hundreds of times for it to even start to matter to me. However, I also (probably) wouldn't commit to taking this trade a million times (or a single equivalent trade, with $100,000,000 for a ~0.1 probability of eternal torture; you can adjust the cash for diminishing marginal returns). Similarly, if hundreds of people took the trade (with independent risk), I'd start to be worried, and I'd (probably) want to prevent a million people from doing it.