Shankar Vedantum's Lack Of Compassion

While Shankar Vedantum's assessment about humanity's lack of compassion seems convincing at first, his reasoning seems faulty at best when inspected. The dilemma he brought up of the drowning child is not valid, and his example of Hokget does not prove that people do not care. Not everyone lacks concern for mass suffering, but those that do may have other reasons other than evolution. Vedantum does not provide adequate proof of his idea of the telescope effect.

For starters, his dilemma of the drowning child does not make sense. He states that it would cost 200 dollars to save a child’s life, but this is not accurate. Against Malaria Foundation’s estimated cost to save a life is around 2,300 dollars, and some other charities’ estimations are even higher. This amount is not exactly pocket-money, and many would not be able to give it away so easily. While his original figure sounds

There is no guarantee that the effect of sending money to a charity would be larger than, or even as large as, the effect of the effort to save Hokget. Even if a person does donate the money to a charity, it would be impossible for them to know that the charity is honest and puts all the money donated towards the cause. Vedantum suggested that people should have sent their money to Rwanda, but it is unlikely that it would have been different if they had.

It is untrue that a person’s amount of concern depends on the amount of suffering involved. Those that do lack concern generally have reasons other than because of evolution. The fact that there are charities that exist to alleviate mass suffering shows that many people do care. These charities would not exist if there were not many people donating to them. If a person does not donate, it does not automatically mean they do not care. Some people do not donate for reasons already mentioned, such as lack of money or distrust of the