New Video! A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place

This video focuses on the increased technological, including medical, advances possible with increased education opportunities made possible by increased material wealth beyond subsistence. I had not thought of that. Cool! However, more people studying problems is not limited to simply how to increase material wealth. Those additional people thinking new thoughts can also be contributing to understanding how to live more satisfying, happier lives within the constraints of limited resources. Perhaps new perspectives from cultures just emerging from subsistence lives is just what is needed to produce well-functioning, as opposed to just materially wealthy, societies.

Mark Sloan

I hope many, many people see this video. Have you considered translating it into other languages?

Pangolinasaur

I have actually used this argument in my history and systems class several times

Kayleigh Watters

What about it? Are you expecting the 4th revolution to eliminate the value of having more humans work problems? I mean, the AIs don't write themselves (yet). So more people building AIs is akin to more people studying cancer. Heck, the AIs will be helping us study cancer. The long term solution to cancer is almost certainly going to involve AIs. But it's also going to involve a lot of researchers. We still need humans who have education + time + money to do that type of research.

Gaëtan Perrault

> "The more people that can offord it, the more likely it is that a drug will be developed that prevents you from dying but what you need to be taking the rest of your life to not get sick again. Because that is more profitable." Kind of. All of the treatment plans lose their patent protections after 10-20 years. Even in "Kapitalism" closed solutions don't stay closed forever. So you're right that the first generation of rich people will do better, but eventually the tech spreads out. We can see this with countries that "modernize" in a single generation rather than a whole lifetime.

Gaëtan Perrault

Agree mostly... However when trying to impose solutions from the outside, it's important to help in useful ways, and that includes making sure the locals don't sabotage your works. Thirty years ago there was a big push in africa for drinking wells. It worked for almost three decades, and then all the ground water had been used up. (So back to the starting point, only now with a larger population.) Elsewhere in a village was given a system that turned morning mist into clean water. It worked for about 10 years, then failed because the villagers regarded routine maintenance as beneath them, and because it was free. Turns out charging an arm and a leg can be more 'charitable' in the long run than giving things away for free.

ANTIcarrot

Great video. However, some countries are perfectly happy just staying the way they are - and if you look at data on their happiness, it certainly seems like to force our idea of innovation on them would likely decrease their overall well-being. Not saying they are content in poverty, but rather content without technological advancements and healthcare. Maybe increasing our lifespan even more isn't such a great goal. Love the videos, happy to contribute.

Jonah Larsen

1. This has certainly brought my opinion and liklihood of helping out developing countries up much further than it was before. 2. I am a member of popular anti-socialist propaganda, and I didn't notice any of it in this video, or at least wasn't turned off by it. Great video either way.

Jonah Larsen

Great video but it is based on kapitalism. That is a good driver but it also has perverse stimuli. Like in the cancer treatment example. The more people that can offord it, the more likely it is that a drug will be developed that prevents you from dying but what you need to be taking the rest of your life to not get sick again. Because that is more profitable. It also means that the gap between rich and poor widens.

Fons Knaapen

Love the positive spin you guys took on this one. Thank you your efforts are well appreciated

Xavier

Great message!!!!

Zane

@Orphansmith: I agree with you and I sincerely hope that will turn out to be the case before self-annihilation. However I am not that positive that this is a self-evident outcome. My reasoning behind this, is that in the past our species has shown to be incapable of solving certain environmental problems at an early stage, because we sometimes neglect long-time effects in dynamic systems in favor of short-time gains; especially in cases where bad effects are delayed and/or occurring on an exponential scale.

Pat Mächler

Easy 1) An increase in demand also increases a demand to a solution for those issues. As well as alternative solutions to an issue that do not cause the same problems. This argument assumes that there is only ever one solution to every problem, when in truth a single issue can be solved in multiple ways. For instance, you might assume automobile emissions would increase if more people used automobiles, however, other countries may have better public transportation infrastructure, or better planned cities, or a million other ways that don't involve using automobiles. 2) Economic incentive is a large part of why you don't you open conflict in the traditional sense. We may dislike the social policies of other countries, but the strength of trade keeps back a lot of nations from going to war openly. I don't think we have much to worry about from a large-scale open conflict like World War II, instead you may see a rise in proxy wars and smaller, subtler conflict. Still far from ideal, but also far from fearing that an increase in technology will lead to an increase in the kind of violence and scale of previous conflicts.

Orphansmith

I'm so glad I supported this project.

Coby Tang

Here's a good charity that dovetails with the video - <a href="https://www.givedirectly.org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.givedirectly.org/</a>

Paul Hines

I like the video, thank you! but what about AI and the 4th industrial revolution?

Mario Mele

I agree to the video, but it misses two important aspect from my POV: 1) The increased demand also creates new issues, especially because the resource supply is still limited, although we have found many creative ways to increase them. But this is not an endless chain per se. Since the industrialization the human species has managed to increase the imbalance in natural systems a lot; and this is already backfiring from a conflict POV. 2) The increase in technology also has it's bad sides if people decide again to fight for resources. However this time the risks might be much higher due to increase in technological capabilities. We already might have been at the brink of self-annihilating our species (think of the Cuba crisis & program like the Dead Hand) and it's not unlikely that we may find ourselves again in similar bad situations. This again is a good argument, why it should be in our interest to avoid resource fights in the first place. The question is only at which point most of us will realize that.

Pat Mächler

Excellent video! Glad to see my donation went into making something this great!

Philip Costopoulos

I love the video. My question is, in what ways can I, today, contribute to “the global pie”? I think that’s it’s a really interesting topic that we should all be knowledgeable about.

Tobias Busick-Warner

There are two main issues with this video: 1. The only people who will watch it will be those who don't need convincing. 2. The popular US culture will see your video as left wing socialist propaganda - even though it encourages capitalist innovation. For me though - AWESOME depiction of what I call common sense :)

Christopher Burke

Thanks to my being taken advantage of often in the past, I now only ever perform an "altruistic act" if I can figure out a selfish motive to go along with it (even if it's just earning the gratitude of the people I help), so this is right up my alley!