In a recent piece for the New York Times, atheist utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer placidly explained the value of voluntary assisted suicide beyond the usual requisite medical conditions. His calmness is where we find significant cause for alarm.
Not because one man, along with his co-author and co-podcast-host, is himself unalarmed by it, but because his approach is descriptive of a progressively complacent society at large. When it comes to “decolonization” and the like, not so; but when it comes to technological advances, quite. Singer’s loose bioethics are no longer shocking or contested.
In the piece, Singer presents the case of psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s voluntary assisted suicide, whom Singer interviewed not long before the procedure and resultant death this past March. His overall conclusion is that, “if, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you.”
Singer bases the right to life on whether a human can hold rational preferences. His evaluation of Kahneman’s end-all comes off very reasonable. He’s a skillful writer, but more than that, it’s supposed to come off as coolly reasonable. That is the way of rational, “effective altruism,” of which Singer, as we know, is an intellectual founding father.
Effective altruism is a philosophical movement aimed at maximizing good deeds, ultimately with the goal of separating altruistic acts from emotional (unreasonable) assessments of them. There is nuance to its definition, and as such, commitment comes in degrees. Some people merely donate here and there in very consistent, measured manners. Others base their lives around it and wind up deeper in the hole of neuroticism. The New Atlantis editor Ari Schulman wrote a criticism of effective altruism, examining the spectrum of commitment to it, where it’s basically innocuous, and where it falls into evil.
Now, some of the first names that come to mind regarding effective altruism are tech executives, all of whom have undeniable influence: Disgraced entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried is one, along with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. So too OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, though neither has entirely attached himself to the philosophy. With Musk, especially, the utilitarian tendency is in the limelight — see the doors he opens for surrogacy.
An indiscriminate techno-optimism opens society up to all this and more. The rest of the technological advances embodying the ethos are likewise bad and equally pervasive: In vitro fertilization, gene editing, and social media are a few. There is even the possibility of brainless, human “bodyoids” on the horizon.
A spirit of optimization, “completeness,” and maximization governs them in the vein of the “needless miseries and indignities” which Singer and Kahneman advocate avoiding by assisted suicide. Such stains and deficiencies point to nothing of substance anymore — especially as we no longer believe spiritual illnesses to be real, and weighty. The “egregoric,” or demonic, possession which UnHerd editor Mary Harrington proposes is the fate of OnlyFans star Lily Phillips, is of less weight than what EA society has replaced it with: Lengthy consideration — Singer’s “careful reflection” — is the only semblance of acceptable moral development.
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Time, with individual discernment, takes the God role. Since “intellectualized impulsiveness and profound insecurity” — how Schulman describes the motivators of effective altruism — are normal mental dispositions in the digital age, the demands of the immediate moment are of no use, are even adversarial. Accordingly, Singer leaves it out of his utilitarian calculations.
As for the commoners downstream of all this: We are, of course, not missing the link between effective altruism and technological innovation. But we’re comfortable with the link, and that’s where it grows. Speedy, space-bound advances are characteristic of its outputs. But on the human side, it is inherently a long game.