Why don't you donate all your money to Malaria prevention programs in Africa?

[Carl-Richard]

I think my answer to this ethical altruism conundrum is that we don't just value the sheer quantity of human life or even alleviating human suffering, but we value things like music, art, and we need different people to do different things to make society go around. We need air traffic controllers, train station workers, nurses, physicians, academics, politicians, etc.

Even people who suffer, value music, art; they might go to those things to alleviate their suffering, and if you take that away from them but you assure their life through Malaria prevention, you might have made their life less worth living.

So what to do?: Do what you feel called to do. A person who feels called to do something, who feels motivated to do it, will do it better than somebody else who does not feel as motivated. And that way you will contribute greater to that part of the world you choose to contribute to. If you feel very called to donate money to Malaria prevention programs, do that. If you feel very called to find a cure for cancer, do that. Charity is a way of using your time on something you think is valueable. So use your time on something you think is valueable.

"But can't you donate like 5% of your savings to Malaria prevention and save a big chunk of lives that way and still do what you feel called to do?" Well, yes, but what about other programs like water sanitation, cancer prevention, other disease prevention? "Just choose one that has a high life-saving conversion rate". Well, why do you ought to use 5% of your savings on initiatives with high immediate life-saving conversion rates and not say finding a cure for cancer or just landing a recording contract?

[yetineti]

It seems, although you're suggesting curing somebody's malaria could actually lead them down a wrong path away from a creative future more worth living. 

If so, that's a fucked up argument. 

To the "why not this, why not that" question, you answered it yourself. People do what they're called for. 

[Carl-Richard]

47 minutes ago, yetineti said:

It seems, although you're suggesting curing somebody's malaria could actually lead them down a wrong path away from a creative future more worth living. 

If so, that's a fucked up argument.

What you wrote is grammatically incorrect and I don't understand it.

[Elliott]

You do what best helps shape the world into what you want it to be, which can include pestering others to donate to malaria charities.

 

On 8/19/2026 at 3:17 PM, Carl-Richard said:

What you wrote is grammatically incorrect and I don't understand it.

I'm caught between supporting the new asshole Carl I like, or being concerned.

[yetineti]

@Carl-Richard

It seems as though you’re suggesting that curing somebody’s malaria could actually lead them down a wrong path, away from a creative future more worth living.

If so, that’s a fucked up argument.*

—

It’s also not believable that you identified the grammatical errors in my sentence but couldn’t decipher the meaning.

It almost seems like you were high and posted this as ‘food for thought.’

 

 

[Carl-Richard]

@yetineti "It seems, although [...]" is a fucked up typo for "it seems as though", with the comma and everything; extremely specific and multi-step typo. Besides, your referent "them" is highly ambiguous (are you talking about the curer or the cured?). I would kindly request you to try again.

Edited 18 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[yetineti]

@Carl-Richard

You’re being pedantic. The opening clause of my sentence was unnecessary; remove it, and the intended meaning remains completely obvious. I’d implore you to apply the same standard of clarity and rigor to your own writing. Framing a post around rhetorical questions does not, by itself, make the underlying argument clear.

If your point is that society would lose art, music, and other meaningful pursuits if everyone devoted everything to maximizing lives saved, then say that directly. But nobody needs to abandon their art, career, or calling to donate 5% of their income. Presenting those as competing alternatives is a false and misguided ultimatum.

 

[LordFall]

I think humans like ROI for their investments and thinking about children in Africa is not enough to make you feel good about spending your money. I think we should honor philanthropists a lot more and the rich people that help solve problems should get statues made.

We should do whatever it takes to solve all of humanity's biggest problems asap and not virtue signal about Christian piety and "you should feel good about helping others with no reward in return!" 

Speaking of, MrBeast has done phenomenal work with TeamWater and some of his other charity projects. People are still dumb and found ways to hate him for it lol because his mere existence makes them feel small and irrelevant.

This is why I think acquiring power is very important and demonizing this quest is a huge blindspot for stage green. Without power you will not accomplish much in life. At best you will try to band together and achieve collective power but that can be misdirected in all kinds of ways. 

Edited 8 hours ago by LordFall

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, yetineti said:

@Carl-Richard

You’re being pedantic. The opening clause of my sentence was unnecessary; remove it, and the intended meaning remains completely obvious. I’d implore you to apply the same standard of clarity and rigor to your own writing. Framing a post around rhetorical questions does not, by itself, make the underlying argument clear.

I know you just used Puke GPT to write that because that was absolutely a load of horseshit. Imagine copypasting my post into AI and copypasting back its answer to me when I asked you to merely clarify your answer, instead of merely clarifying your answer. That explains the absolutely horseshitted AI response you just got. You get out of it what you put into it. The fact of the matter is you made a ridiculous typo and you also bombed the "them" referent and you can't just accept it and clarify so everything is clear.

 

1 hour ago, yetineti said:

If your point is that society would lose art, music, and other meaningful pursuits if everyone devoted everything to maximizing lives saved, then say that directly. But nobody needs to abandon their art, career, or calling to donate 5% of their income. Presenting those as competing alternatives is a false and misguided ultimatum.

Tell your AI that I asked whether it's worth it to spend 5% of your income on malaria prevention OR that 5% on your art/career/calling, not that they should abandon their art/career/calling and then donate 5% of their income (uh, what?). Tell your AI that it sucks at reading comprehension and should be scrapped or 300x its token usage. And tell yourself that you're lazy and don't deserve to talk to other people in this thread if you can't even clearly state what you are saying when asked to do so.

Edited 6 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, LordFall said:

I think humans like ROI for their investments and thinking about children in Africa is not enough to make you feel good about spending your money. I think we should honor philanthropists a lot more and the rich people that help solve problems should get statues made.

We should do whatever it takes to solve all of humanity's biggest problems asap and not virtue signal about Christian piety and "you should feel good about helping others with no reward in return!" 

Speaking of, MrBeast has done phenomenal work with TeamWater and some of his other charity projects. People are still dumb and found ways to hate him for it lol because his mere existence makes them feel small and irrelevant.

This is why I think acquiring power is very important and demonizing this quest is a huge blindspot for stage green. Without power you will not accomplish much in life. At best you will try to band together and achieve collective power but that can be misdirected in all kinds of ways. 

So you're saying if somebody wants to donate to malaria prevention, they should also post about it on youtube and monetize it so that they can get a ROI and so they want to do it more (unless they feel better to just donate without getting anything in return)? 😆

Edited 6 hours ago by Carl-Richard