A very short story about a very effective altruist

Peter was out with his wife on a walk in the beautiful desert. As they were approaching the crest of a hill, a snake sprung out from behind a rock, biting both Peter and his wife.

“Egads!” Peter’s wife exclaimed, “That’s a black rattle strangler! The most poisonous snake in the whole hemisphere!”

“Worry not.” Peter said with gusto. “I knew the black rattle stranglers are endemic to these parts so I packed antidote.”

The colour began to return to Peter’s wife’s face. “Thank goodness you thought ahead! We could have been toast. The venom only takes 20 minutes to stop someone’s heart, and we are at least an hour from the nearest road.”

“Hold on a moment, my dear wife.” Peter paused, looking out at the horizon. A moment passed, then another. Then, to himself, “I need to decide who gets it.”

Colour left Peter’s wife’s face again.

“You see, my sweet. I only packed one antidote.”

“Only one?”

“Yes, as you know, my dear wife, I am an effective altruist. I believe one must live their life in a way that leads to the greatest amount of happiness and least amount of suffering from the most amount of people.”

“Of course, you never cease to remind me or our friends.”

“As I live by this enlightened morality, I calculated with some certainty that probability of one of us getting bitten was naught point naught five. Which means the probability of both of us being bitten…” Peter looked expectantly at his wife. After a few moments, he tutted, “naught point naught naught two five.

“Each antidote is, after exchange rates, exactly three hundred sixty four point seven five dollars. I naturally assumed a baseline value of a dollar given to an effective charity at naught point naught one life years at sixty seven utiles per year. Therefore, when deciding how many antidotes to buy, I multiplied the probability of both of us bitten with the cost of the antidote, leading to an expected value of each dollar spent on antidote at …”

Peter’s wife, with wild eyes, interjected “Please, time is short. This means we only have one?”

“Yes. And I need to determine whether saving you or I would lead to the best possible future consequences.”

“Oh Peter, I love you so much. I could not bear to live without you. Even now the thought of having to go back to an empty home makes my life not worth living.”

Peter scoffed, “That is a terrible way to decide. We must instead use reason and logic.” Peter trailed off. They stood silent together in the hot desert air. The dry wind blew grit into Peter’s wife’s tears as she waited for Peter to say something.

“So there it is,” Peter said definitively. “I have done the math.”

“Please Peter, just take the antidote. I could not watch you die. I love you too much for that.”

“As I said, that is a terrible and unreasonable way of making this decision. Per my calculations, who gets the antidote could have profound impact on the total welfare of the universe. In fact, the differential is likely infinite.”

“Please Peter, please. Spare me of the agony of waiting for the venom to kill you.”

Impatient, Peter started “To repeat myself, the difference is potentially infinite. Despite my attempts to convert you, you are not an effective altruist. You do not live your life in such a way that aims to maximise pain and minimise pleasure. As we are nearly the same age, that alone would tip the balance in my favour, all things being equal. Due to the great sacrifices to the greater good that I will surely make over the course of my life, a world without you in it will be better than a world without me in it, as only one of us will make the sacrifices necessary to ensure maximum pleasure and minimal suffering.

“Hush, don’t cry, my wife. Listen to my reasoning and you will be convinced. Granted, the many sacrifices I will make to charity compared to you is not a huge difference. We are talking only a few thousand total welfare units, all things being equal. But, as you will see, when we consider other factors, the gap widens considerably.

“Unlike you, I am an active campaigner for effective altruism online, posting regularly on effective altruism subreddits and facebook groups about the moral imperative for others to join the cause of effective altruism. For that reason, not only is the difference in our moral worth the additional welfare I will bring about through my future sacrifices to charity but…” Peter looked at his wife to make sure she also saw the brilliance of what he was about to say “also the welfare brought about by the people I convert to effective altruism! But not only that, but also the people they will almost certainly convert to effective altruism! And so on forever! So my life has the potential to lead to infinitely more welfare than would otherwise occur.

“Therefore, while saving you would only produce one person’s life worth of good, saving me would produce my life’s worth of good, as well the good of my acolytes and their acolytes. In fact, because of the potential of my teachings to cascade to the end of time, I calculate an approximately, hmm, sixty two point five percent chance that my overall contribution to the welfare of the universe will be infinite, all things being equal. Any questions?”

Peter’s wife had many questions, but she decided to keep them to herself.

Peter, holding the antidote in his hand, trembling with admiration of his own selflessness, exclaimed “Right, then. The numbers don’t lie.” Peter then saved his own life.

As Peter stood over the corpse of his wife, his heart was filled with sadness about the loss of welfare potential. If she had lived longer, she would have been able to experience much more happiness than sadness, meaning that a moderate, but respectable, source of good had been taken from the world.

Peter began calculating how much dwelling on this tragic loss of future welfare would influence his own future welfare. This led Peter to the realization that his wife’s death was only one of many times today such welfare potential would be lost. This only made Peter feel worse. Once he realised this bad feeling was even further eroding his own future welfare potential, Peter shook the dirt off his trousers and began walking back to the road on his own.

He left his wife where she lay with the plan to alert the police of her death after he got home. It would only cause more suffering if he was forced to wait in the hot sun for the police to arrive.