Clive Thompson's latest column in Wired has an interesting thesis: Only geeks are smart enough to give away their money in ways that will truly help others. He points to the research of psychologist Paul Slovic to make his case:
We'll usually race to help a single stranger in dire straits, while ignoring huge numbers of people in precisely the same plight. We'll donate thousands of dollars to bring a single African war orphan to the US for lifesaving surgery, but we don't offer much money or political pressure to stop widespread genocides in Rwanda or Darfur.
You could argue that we're simply callous, or hypocrites. But Slovic doesn't think so. The problem isn't a moral failing: It's a cognitive one. We're very good at processing the plight of tiny groups of people but horrible at conceptualizing the suffering of large ones.
I believe Stalin once made the same observation: "One death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic."
But according to Thompson, the geeks of the world have the potential to rise above this human tendency. Bill Gates, the ruthless tycoon, might just become the greatest philanthropist in history:
The guy is practically a social cripple, and at times he has seemed to lack human empathy. But he's also a geek, and geeks are incredibly good at thinking concretely about giant numbers. Their imagination can scale up and down the powers of 10 -- mega, giga, tera, peta -- because their jobs demand it.So maybe that's why he is able to truly understand mass disease in Africa. We look at the huge numbers and go numb. Gates looks at them and runs the moral algorithm: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad.
While the rest of us get turned off by these numbers, Gates gets turned on. He's got the brainpower (or lack of natural empathy) to overcome this tendency. As Thompson notes:
Psychologists have long observed that our ability to discriminate among quantities is finely tuned when dealing with small amounts but quickly degrades as the numbers get larger. Our ears work that way, too. When a very quiet sound becomes slightly louder, we detect the difference right away. But once a noise is really loud, it has to increase dramatically for it to seem "louder." The same holds true for our judgments of weight and, of course, less tangible quantities like money. We'll break the bank to save Baby Jessica, but when half of Africa is dying, we're buying iPhones.
iPhones? Not Zunes? Not Xboxes? We'd better hope Steve Jobs has the same social handicaps as Gates, or the geeks might not save the world after all.
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Isn't this just a warmed-over re-hash of Plato's "philosopherz RUL!" argument?
And who exactly is it that's buying all those iPhones?
There are a hell of a lot of non-geeks doing a hell of a lot of really good work, much of it addressing problems that come with staggering numbers attached. When he says "[w]e look at the huge numbers and go numb", he should say "I look at the huge numbers and go numb." I strongly object to the idea that Bill Gates is the only person who can truly understand mass disease in Africa. I'm pretty sure that by the time you've spent a few years working in bush clinics, you can get a pretty good grasp on the scale of the problem, whether you're a "geek" or not.
Of course, even the people that do grasp the numbers seem to have a hell of a problem trying to grasp the underlying systemic causes. I'm look at you, Bob Geldof...
Seeking cures for 3rd World diseases (and its promotion of contraception-- promoting one without the other, clearly, would be self-defeating) is honorable and laudable, but one should note that other goals of the Gates Foundation are more self-serving. They came about around the time of the DoJ Anti-trust investigation, where MSFT was found guilty, but slapped on the wrist by the Bush-ites. The Foundation donates lots of monies to schools and libraries to "upgrade their IT infrastructure". I think we all know what that means; to promote MSFT's awful products over better ones, which would be far less costly in the long run. I think their tax status should be investigated.
This is stupid reasoning. Gates != the Gates Foundation.
Bill Gates: wow I got a lot of money!
Gates' Tax Attorney: You should donate a large portion of this money for tax purposes. In fact, better yet set up a foundation with your name attached.
Bill Gates: Oh excellent! That means I can just hire others to figure out where to donate to!
Also, the Gates Foundation is also Warren Buffet
Interesting. But, perhaps people realize there isn't really a solution for the huge numbers of people but if one can be helped they are all ready to do it.
While Gates is far from a perfect humanitarian, I think his choices in that regard make a lot of sense and certainly more than most people seem to be giving him credit for. Personally, as an empathy lacking person with Aspergers, my main criticism is that it would make more sense to focus on climate change since I believe that would save more lives in the long term.
I would be careful about assuming a relationship between an intellectual appreciation of the moral good and genuinely morally good behavior. The evidence suggests (as I interpret it) that religious believers and moral philosophers don't behave any morally better than anyone else, despite, presumably, better moral understanding in one or both groups.
I'm not sure why religion had to enter the comments other than the annoying trend of science bloggers obsessing over religion.
I like the first comment. Geeks have no monopoly on the ability to ponder suffering. Many, many people give a much higher percentage of their income to good causes than the tycoons do.
I think there are quite a few psychological and philosophical implications that follow this thesis. Why is it that most people can't conceptualize large scale tragedy? I can detect the pattern in my own mind - the idea of a child in my hometown suffering is almost unbearable, however the daily starvation of children every day around the world seems to push at some sort of glass ceiling in my ability to empathize. I know it's wrong; I know I should do something about it. Yet, my inaction doesn't bring the same sense of guilt as choosing not to help a child whose brown eyes I can look into and see the pain does.
Maybe as the amount of those who suffers increases, my ability to connect on a personal level to the situation and/or individuals involved decreases proportionately, or even exponentially. The less the personal connection, the easier to suffer the continuing tragedy. It's not something one would like to think of oneself.
It is worth noting that the most reliable way to reduce the quantity of human suffering (measured as the sum of individual suffering over all living people) is to have fewer people. This comes with the ancillary benefit that there's more in the way of natural resources to split amongst the remaining people. Yet, birth control is not at the top of the philanthropy agenda, and sterilization (not to speak of euthanasia) doesn't even make the list. Direct food aid to starving populations, in contrast, encourages the production of additional hungry, unhappy mouths.
Interesting hypothesis but there are too many problems/alternative explanations:
(1) I don't think too many people would classify Mother Theresa or Gandhi as geeks (relative to Bill Gates anyway)
(2) It's much easier to help a significantly greater number of people when you have the means (i.e., money) to do so. Therefore, it's more likely that the amount of help that one provides to others could be proportional to their financial (not intellectual) capacity to do so.
(3) There's much debate as to whether there's such thing as genuine altruism (i.e., helping for the sake of helping). Instead, reciprocal altruism (i.e., helping for benefit) also exists. As an example, some people might help others because it makes them feel good--the benefit of helping is the positive emotional state. This form of altruism might be the alternative explanation for the finding that (some) people tend to help more when there are fewer people to help. This is primarily because their helping is more noticeable with fewer people (e.g., the one person being helped might be more likely to say thank you to the persons who helped them). For someone like Bill Gates, perhaps helping one person is not going to have as profound a (reciprocal) emotional impact as helping a few million people given his status.
(4) Academic (geek) intelligence is probably not the best construct to discuss the phenomenon of helping others. Probably emotional intelligence is better. And that is going to vary from person-to-person whether you're a geek or not, and, will ultimately decide whether one chooses to help (or harm) others regardless of the number.
"it would make more sense to focus on climate change since I believe that would save more lives in the long term."
Congrats, Ben. You thought of the third option of doing all kinds of activity and not helping anyone!
Seems like we're doing math there. What value do we assign and substitute to "Preventable"? Whole number? Fraction of a number? For what value of preventable does death = good?
With all due respect, all Gates is doing is bypassing democracy in setting public policy because he can. It's an exercise of power that bypasses transparent discourse by the population.
Actually, I think that being a heartless genius - or just heartless - is what is needed for the making of enough money to be a philanthropist, not the spending of it.
"It is worth noting that the most reliable way to reduce the quantity of human suffering (measured as the sum of individual suffering over all living people) is to have fewer people...Yet, birth control is not at the top of the philanthropy agenda"
Well, I'm not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation, but they HAVE put money towards contraception (see Wikipedia).One plus to the rich is that they are somewhat less "bribe-able". In my community, our city council keeps approving new subdivisions we don't have the roads, schools, or water to support. Why? They get perks-- gifts of deeply discounted property.
"I don't think too many people would classify Mother Theresa..as a geek.."
Mother Theresa was deeply flawed from a philanthropic POV; she certainly toed the Party Line on Birth Control and such.
This reminds me of an article I read a while back basically about the Dunbar number and our inherent limitations on the ability to empathize.
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html
Obviously the folks who write for Wired don't do much reading of the Economist, which frequently tackles the issue of humanitarian aid to third world countries and what many NGOs are doing about getting aid money where it needs to go. There's a whole lot more to the story than just who can conceptualize giving away big bucks; as another poster pointed out, Gates != Gates Foundation. It is likely that the Gates Foundation is run by a professional who understands the business of large charitable organizations.
Does this make the CEOs of NGOs geeks? Clearly they "get it" about tackling problems that are massive in scale, and they have to understand a lot more complexity than just save-more-people-good-thing-to-do (how social and political climate in the cultures to which they distribute aid affect the effectiveness of that aid, for example).
I think this may be more an issue of how a business-oriented person is better at resource allocation than a non-business-oriented person, regardless of 'geekness.' Regardless it's nice to see the problem getting more attention, in whatever way. Lead on, Wired!
First, let's be fair to Gates -- his business practices were hardly fair, and Micro$oft *IS* an Evil Empire -- but it was actually Bill and Melinda Gates, themselves, who made the decision to tackle measles in Africa. They told their foundation this should be done, not the other way around.
And they ARE closely involved in other funding decisions that their foundation makes.
Now, as for this principle -- I think that (a)the principle itself is well established*, and (b)probably having impaired personal empathy DOES have an effect on decision-making as to what to give money to, and where. How could it not? But it is certainly plausible that a "most good done for greatest number of people" principle becomes more easily applied than the principle of personal sympathy.
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*Precisely what Justin S said: see http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html for the best description of how this works that I have ever seen.
I have no problem with the idea of "thinking globally and acting locally." Since my resources are limited, I prefer to put them to use in my community because there are plenty of social ills right here. However, I don't think impaired personal empathy is the problem with people making good decisions. I think over-active sentimentality, which is NOT real empathy, helps others make poor decisions.
A "sentimental" person is easily conned by a sad-eyed kid poster or is too "overwhelmed" to help out in a crisis. Someone who has empathy and problem-solving skills can get things done in a crisis and can make good decisions about which charity to support while still caring about the recievers of the charity.
Who would you rather have help you as a doctor, police officer or paramedic--a sentimentalist or an empathetic problem-solver?
We do have some evidence that the brain is very good at empathizing with another person, which has probably come from evolutionary changes, although there's no way to know for sure. I don't know of any evidence that the brain is good at empathizing with a collective and--here's some very speculative evolutionary psych--there probably wasn't a need to do so because one typically observed the pain of one particular individual at a time. Phenomena such as genocide and aerial bombing didn't exist until very recently.
People are complex and life is full of ironies, paradoxes and apparent contradictions. Unemotional thought can allow us to reach deeper feelings that we couldn't bear otherwise. Scientific language (descriptive words) do give us more access to the whole brain. They're saying that genius is more how the brain is used and descriptive words causes a change in level of consciousness, as does looking at our favorite theories and opinions from both sides. Sort of a 3D look at the world, the same as we do by having two eyes. Extreme objectivity can lead to more insight and empathy. So can a high level of ability in any area. Mother Teresa no doubt accessed the right hemisphere of her brain and applied it to people and business, instead of computers and numbers. It's just intuition, sometimes called common sense and it can be learned. The previous commenter was right, emotional intelligence puts your emotions under your control for clearer thinking. I never could think straight when I was emotional. Who can? The right brain seems to have all our humanity and love and joy in it.