There's something that I'd like you to see.
我想先讓大家看一段影片
(Video) Reporter: It's a story that's deeply unsettled millions in China: footage of a two-year-old girl hit by a van and left bleeding in the street by passersby, footage too graphic to be shown. The entire accident is caught on camera. The driver pauses after hitting the child, his back wheels seen resting on her for over a second. Within two minutes, three people pass two-year-old Wang Yue by. The first walks around the badly injured toddler completely. Others look at her before moving off.
(影片)記者:以下的故事 讓數百萬中國人深感不安: 鏡頭上是一名兩歲的小女孩 遭廂型車撞擊後 路人讓她獨自在街上流血 畫面太過震撼,不適合在此播放 整起事故被監視器拍了下來 駕駛在撞到小孩後停頓了一下 車子後輪壓在她身上不止一秒鐘 兩分鐘內有三個人 走過這位兩歲小女孩王悅身邊 第一位完全忽視並繞過 身受重傷的孩子 另外兩位離開前看了她一眼
Peter Singer: There were other people who walked past Wang Yue, and a second van ran over her legs before a street cleaner raised the alarm. She was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. She died.
彼得.辛格:隨後還有更多人 從王悅身旁走過 第二台廂型車壓過她的腳 後來才有一名清潔工發出警報 她被緊急送醫 但為時已晚,她過世了
I wonder how many of you, looking at that, said to yourselves just now, "I would not have done that. I would have stopped to help." Raise your hands if that thought occurred to you.
我想知道在座有多少人看到後 對自己說:「我不會這樣, 我會停下來救她。」 有這種想法的請舉手
As I thought, that's most of you. And I believe you. I'm sure you're right. But before you give yourself too much credit, look at this. UNICEF reports that in 2011, 6.9 million children under five died from preventable, poverty-related diseases. UNICEF thinks that that's good news because the figure has been steadily coming down from 12 million in 1990. That is good. But still, 6.9 million is 19,000 children dying every day. Does it really matter that we're not walking past them in the street? Does it really matter that they're far away? I don't think it does make a morally relevant difference. The fact that they're not right in front of us, the fact, of course, that they're of a different nationality or race, none of that seems morally relevant to me. What is really important is, can we reduce that death toll? Can we save some of those 19,000 children dying every day?
和我想的一樣,大部份的人都如此 我相信你,我確定你們是對的 但在各位感到驕傲前 請看這個 聯合國兒童基金會 (UNICEF) 報導 2011 年 有 690 萬名兒童在五歲前 死於可預防的、貧窮相關的疾病 UNICEF 認為這是好消息 因為數字逐漸降低 1990 年時是 1200 萬人 現在好多了 但仍有 690 萬名兒童 即每天有一萬九千名兒童死亡 他們是否在我們經過的路上 真的很重要嗎? 他們在很遠的地方 真的很重要嗎? 我不認為在道德上有什麼不同 事實是,他們不在我們面前 事實是,他們的國籍、種族不同 但在道德上,我不認為有什麼不同 真正重要的是 我們能不能降低死亡人數? 我們能不能拯救每天死亡的 一萬九千名兒童?
And the answer is, yes we can. Each of us spends money on things that we do not really need. You can think what your own habit is, whether it's a new car, a vacation or just something like buying bottled water when the water that comes out of the tap is perfectly safe to drink. You could take the money you're spending on those unnecessary things and give it to this organization, the Against Malaria Foundation, which would take the money you had given and use it to buy nets like this one to protect children like this one, and we know reliably that if we provide nets, they're used, and they reduce the number of children dying from malaria, just one of the many preventable diseases that are responsible for some of those 19,000 children dying every day.
答案是,我們當然可以! 我們每個人都有把錢花在 不太需要的東西上 你可以想想你的習慣 不管是一台新車、一段假期 或是去買瓶裝水來喝 但明明水龍頭的水 就可以生飲 你可以把 不必要的花費 捐給這個組織: 瘧疾防治基金會 (Against Malaria Foundation) 它會將你的捐款 用來買這樣的蚊帳 來保護這樣的孩子 我們確實知道,如果提供蚊帳 給他們使用,就能減少 兒童死於瘧疾的人數 而這只是造成每天 一萬九千名孩童死亡的 眾多可預防性疾病中的一種
Fortunately, more and more people are understanding this idea, and the result is a growing movement: effective altruism. It's important because it combines both the heart and the head. The heart, of course, you felt. You felt the empathy for that child. But it's really important to use the head as well to make sure that what you do is effective and well-directed, and not only that, but also I think reason helps us to understand that other people, wherever they are, are like us, that they can suffer as we can, that parents grieve for the deaths of their children, as we do, and that just as our lives and our well-being matter to us, it matters just as much to all of these people. So I think reason is not just some neutral tool to help you get whatever you want. It does help us to put perspective on our situation. And I think that's why many of the most significant people in effective altruism have been people who have had backgrounds in philosophy or economics or math. And that might seem surprising, because a lot of people think, "Philosophy is remote from the real world; economics, we're told, just makes us more selfish, and we know that math is for nerds." But in fact it does make a difference, and in fact there's one particular nerd who has been a particularly effective altruist because he got this.
幸運的是,越來越多人 了解這個想法 結果形成了一個運動: 「有效的利他主義」 (effective altruism) 這件事很重要 因為它結合了心和腦 心,當然指的是你的感受 你同情那個孩子 但用腦也一樣重要 才能確保你做的事有效 而且方向正確 不僅如此,我認為理性也能幫我們 了解其他人,無論他們在哪裡 就像我們一樣,我們也可能 像他們那樣受苦 那些父母因為孩子過世而悲傷 就像我們一樣 生命和幸福,對我們來說很重要 對這些人來說也一樣重要 因此我認為理性 不只是個中立的工具 來幫助你達成目標 更能幫助我們設身處地 我想這也是為什麼 「有效的利他主義」 的許多指標性人物 有哲學、經濟、 或數學的背景 看來好像很奇怪 因為很多人認為 「哲學和現實世界很遙遠; 聽說經濟學只會讓我們變得自私 而唸數學的都是書呆子。」 但事實上,這些學科真的有影響 而且真的有一位書呆子 成了特別有效的利他主義者 因為他成立了這個
This is the website of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and if you look at the words on the top right-hand side, it says, "All lives have equal value." That's the understanding, the rational understanding of our situation in the world that has led to these people being the most effective altruists in history, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.
這是比爾與梅琳達.蓋茲基金會網站 (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) 你可以看到到右上角的字寫著: 「所有的生命價值相同。」 這份了解的心 以理性了解我們在世上處境的心 引領著以下這三位 成為史上最有效益的利他主義者: 比爾與梅琳達.蓋茲 以及華倫巴菲特 (Warren Buffett)
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
No one, not Andrew Carnegie, not John D. Rockefeller, has ever given as much to charity as each one of these three, and they have used their intelligence to make sure that it is highly effective. According to one estimate, the Gates Foundation has already saved 5.8 million lives and many millions more, people, getting diseases that would have made them very sick, even if eventually they survived. Over the coming years, undoubtably the Gates Foundation is going to give a lot more, is going to save a lot more lives. Well, you might say, that's fine if you're a billionaire, you can have that kind of impact. But if I'm not, what can I do? So I'm going to look at four questions that people ask that maybe stand in the way of them giving.
卡內基 (Andrew Carnegie) 和 洛克菲勒 (John D. Rockefeller) 捐給慈善機構的金額 也比不上這三位中的任何一位 他們用自己的智慧 確保高度的有效性 根據一項評估,蓋茲基金會 已經拯救了 580 萬條人命 並讓幾百萬人免於身患重病 這些疾病本來會讓他們得到重症 甚至死亡 未來幾年,毫無疑問 蓋茲基金會將會捐出更多錢 拯救更多生命 你可能會說 很好,因為你是億萬富翁 才會有那麼大的影響力 但我不是,我能做些什麼呢? 因此,我將討論會影響人們付出 的四個疑問
They worry how much of a difference they can make. But you don't have to be a billionaire. This is Toby Ord. He's a research fellow in philosophy at the University of Oxford. He became an effective altruist when he calculated that with the money that he was likely to earn throughout his career, an academic career, he could give enough to cure 80,000 people of blindness in developing countries and still have enough left for a perfectly adequate standard of living. So Toby founded an organization called Giving What We Can to spread this information, to unite people who want to share some of their income, and to ask people to pledge to give 10 percent of what they earn over their lifetime to fighting global poverty. Toby himself does better than that. He's pledged to live on 18,000 pounds a year -- that's less than 30,000 dollars -- and to give the rest to those organizations. And yes, Toby is married and he does have a mortgage.
他們擔心能造成多大差別 其實你不必是億萬富翁 這位是托比.歐德 (Toby Ord) 在牛津大學擔任哲學研究員 他之所以成為有效的利他主義者 是因為他計算了一生的總收入 他從事學術工作 他有能力付出 讓八萬名開發中國家 的盲人重見光明 而且還足以維持 良好的生活品質 因此托比成立了一個組織 叫「盡已所能」 (Giving What We can) 來傳播這個訊息 召集想捐出部分所得的民眾 並請大家承諾捐出 10% 的終生所得 來打擊全球的貧窮 托比自己做得更多 他每年只留下一萬八千英鎊 少於三萬美元 把其餘的所得都捐給這些組織 沒錯,托比已婚、也有貸款
This is a couple at a later stage of life, Charlie Bresler and Diana Schott, who, when they were young, when they met, were activists against the Vietnam War, fought for social justice, and then moved into careers, as most people do, didn't really do anything very active about those values, although they didn't abandon them. And then, as they got to the age at which many people start to think of retirement, they returned to them, and they've decided to cut back on their spending, to live modestly, and to give both money and time to helping to fight global poverty.
這一對則較為年長 查理.布萊斯勒 (Charlie Bresler) 和黛安娜.喬特 (Diana Schott) 他們在年輕時相遇 當時都是越戰的反戰人士 為社會正義而戰 之後和大部分人一樣開始工作 他們沒做什麼太激進的事 但也從未背棄這些價值 然後他們到了大部分人 開始想要退休的年紀 他們回到這些價值 決定減少消費 簡樸生活,把金錢和時間運用在 幫助對抗全球的貧窮
Now, mentioning time might lead you to think, "Well, should I abandon my career and put all of my time into saving some of these 19,000 lives that are lost every day?" One person who's thought quite a bit about this issue of how you can have a career that will have the biggest impact for good in the world is Will Crouch. He's a graduate student in philosophy, and he's set up a website called 80,000 Hours, the number of hours he estimates most people spend on their career, to advise people on how to have the best, most effective career. But you might be surprised to know that one of the careers that he encourages people to consider, if they have the right abilities and character, is to go into banking or finance. Why? Because if you earn a lot of money, you can give away a lot of money, and if you're successful in that career, you could give enough to an aid organization so that it could employ, let's say, five aid workers in developing countries, and each one of them would probably do about as much good as you would have done. So you can quintuple the impact by leading that kind of career. Here's one young man who's taken this advice. His name is Matt Weiger. He was a student at Princeton in philosophy and math, actually won the prize for the best undergraduate philosophy thesis last year when he graduated. But he's gone into finance in New York. He's already earning enough so that he's giving a six-figure sum to effective charities and still leaving himself with enough to live on. Matt has also helped me to set up an organization that I'm working with that has the name taken from the title of a book I wrote, "The Life You Can Save," which is trying to change our culture so that more people think that if we're going to live an ethical life, it's not enough just to follow the thou-shalt-nots and not cheat, steal, maim, kill, but that if we have enough, we have to share some of that with people who have so little. And the organization draws together people of different generations, like Holly Morgan, who's an undergraduate, who's pledged to give 10 percent of the little amount that she has, and on the right, Ada Wan, who has worked directly for the poor, but has now gone to Yale to do an MBA to have more to give.
提到時間可能會讓你想說: 「我該丟下我的工作,將全部時間 奉獻在拯救每天消逝的 一萬九千條人命上嗎?」 威爾.克洛其 (Will Crouch) 思考了這個議題 你要怎麼擁有一份職業 能夠帶給全世界最好的影響 他是哲學系畢業的學生 他設立了一個網站「八萬小時」 這個數字是他計算出 人們花在自己職業生涯的時間 以建議人們如何選擇最好的、 最有效率的工作 但你可能會很驚訝 他建議大家可以考慮的工作之一 如果能力和個性都適合的話 就是進銀行業或金融業 為什麼?因為如果你賺夠多錢 你就可以捐出這些錢 如果你在工作上很成功 你可以捐錢給公益團體 讓團體能在發展中國家 雇用五位援助工作者 他們每位都可能 像你做得一樣好 因此你可以藉由從事這類工作 來發揮五倍的影響力 有位年輕人接受了他的建議 他名叫麥特.韋格 (Matt Weiger) 是普林斯頓大學 哲學系和數學系的學生 他去年畢業時 得到了最佳大學生哲學論文獎 但他到紐約去從事金融業 他已經賺到夠多的錢 所以他的捐款已達十萬美金以上 而且仍有足夠的生活費 麥特也幫我成立了一個組織 是用我寫的一本書的書名 「你能拯救的生命」 (The Life You Can Save) 做為此組織的名稱 主要在試著改變我們的文化 讓更多人思考 如果想過有道德的人生 不能只記得 不欺騙、不偷竊、不傷人、不殺人 如果我們擁有的已經足夠 就應該要分享一些 給那些只有很少的人 組織將不同世代的人們 團結起來 像是大學生荷莉.摩根 (Holly Morgan) 承諾捐出 10% 她為數不多的存款 右邊的這位是汪艾達 (Ada Wan) 她曾直接為窮人服務 但為了能奉獻更多 現在到耶魯唸 MBA
Many people will think, though, that charities aren't really all that effective. So let's talk about effectiveness. Toby Ord is very concerned about this, and he's calculated that some charities are hundreds or even thousands of times more effective than others, so it's very important to find the effective ones. Take, for example, providing a guide dog for a blind person. That's a good thing to do, right? Well, right, it is a good thing to do, but you have to think what else you could do with the resources. It costs about 40,000 dollars to train a guide dog and train the recipient so that the guide dog can be an effective help to a blind person. It costs somewhere between 20 and 50 dollars to cure a blind person in a developing country if they have trachoma. So you do the sums, and you get something like that. You could provide one guide dog for one blind American, or you could cure between 400 and 2,000 people of blindness. I think it's clear what's the better thing to do. But if you want to look for effective charities, this is a good website to go to. GiveWell exists to really assess the impact of charities, not just whether they're well-run, and it's screened hundreds of charities and currently is recommending only three, of which the Against Malaria Foundation is number one. So it's very tough. If you want to look for other recommendations, thelifeyoucansave.com and Giving What We Can both have a somewhat broader list, but you can find effective organizations, and not just in the area of saving lives from the poor. I'm pleased to say that there is now also a website looking at effective animal organizations. That's another cause that I've been concerned about all my life, the immense amount of suffering that humans inflict on literally tens of billions of animals every year. So if you want to look for effective organizations to reduce that suffering, you can go to Effective Animal Activism. And some effective altruists think it's very important to make sure that our species survives at all. So they're looking at ways to reduce the risk of extinction. Here's one risk of extinction that we all became aware of recently, when an asteroid passed close to our planet. Possibly research could help us not only to predict the path of asteroids that might collide with us, but actually to deflect them. So some people think that would be a good thing to give to. There's many possibilities.
許多人可能會想 慈善團體不是真的都有效 所以我們就來談談「有效」 托比很關心這件事 他計算出某些慈善團體 和其他單位相比 有效幾百、甚至幾千倍 因此,找到有效的慈善團體很重要 舉例說,提供導盲犬給盲人 是件好事,對吧? 是的,那是件好事 但你要思考,有了這些資源 你還能做什麼? 要花四萬美元訓練 一隻導盲犬與一位盲人 才能讓導盲犬有效幫助盲人 但僅需約二十到五十美元 就能治癒一位開發中國家 因砂眼而視障的盲人 因此計算之後,你就會發現 你可以提供一隻導盲犬 給一位美國的盲人 也可以讓四百到 兩千位盲人重見光明 要怎麼做比較好,顯而易見 如果你想尋找有效的慈善團體 這是個很好的網站 「行善」 (GiveWell) 主要在確實評估慈善團體的影響 不只是評估營運是否良好 更由數百個慈善團體中篩選 目前只推薦三個 「瘧疾防治基金會」名列第一 這很不容易 如果想找其他被推薦的團體 還可造訪「你能拯救的生命」 及「盡已所能」網站 都有更多的名單 但你可以找到的有效組織 不限於拯救窮人生命的而已 我很高興的宣布,現在有個網站 可以找到有效的動物組織 這也是我這畢生持續關心的 另一個對象,即是因人類而遭受 巨大痛苦的 每年數百億隻動物 因此若你想找到一個有效的組織 來減輕這種痛苦 可以造訪「有效的動物行動主義」 (Effective Animal Activism) 一些有效的利他主義者認為 確保人類生存是很重要的事 所以他們正在尋找方法 來降低人類滅絕的危險 最近我們都意識到,滅絕危機之一 是小行星接近地球 也許研究能幫我們,不只是預測 可能撞擊的小行星路徑 更能讓小行星轉向 有人認為這是值得付出的好事 還有很多的可能性
My final question is, some people will think it's a burden to give. I don't really believe it is. I've enjoyed giving all of my life since I was a graduate student. It's been something fulfilling to me. Charlie Bresler said to me that he's not an altruist. He thinks that the life he's saving is his own. And Holly Morgan told me that she used to battle depression until she got involved with effective altruism, and now is one of the happiest people she knows. I think one of the reasons for this is that being an effective altruist helps to overcome what I call the Sisyphus problem. Here's Sisyphus as portrayed by Titian, condemned by the gods to push a huge boulder up to the top of the hill. Just as he gets there, the effort becomes too much, the boulder escapes, rolls all the way down the hill, he has to trudge back down to push it up again, and the same thing happens again and again for all eternity. Does that remind you of a consumer lifestyle, where you work hard to get money, you spend that money on consumer goods which you hope you'll enjoy using? But then the money's gone, you have to work hard to get more, spend more, and to maintain the same level of happiness, it's kind of a hedonic treadmill. You never get off, and you never really feel satisfied. Becoming an effective altruist gives you that meaning and fulfillment. It enables you to have a solid basis for self-esteem on which you can feel your life was really worth living.
我的最後一個問題是 有些人認為付出是一種負擔 我不這麼認為 我很享受付出我的一切 從我在唸研究所時就是如此 這讓我感到滿足 查理.布萊斯勒曾當訴我 他不是利他主義者 他認為他拯救的,是自己的生命 荷莉.摩根則告訴我 她一直在對抗憂鬱症 直到她參與了有效的利他主義 現在她成了最快樂的人之一 我想其中一項因素是 有效的利他主義有助於克服 「薛西弗斯 (Sisyphean) 問題」 這是提香 (Titian) 所畫的 薛西弗斯畫像 他被神懲罰 要將巨石推到山頂 當他推到頂端,因為太用力了 石頭又一路滾到山下 他得再走回山下,重新再推 同樣的事重覆發生 直到永恆 這是否讓你想到 消費者的生活方式 你努力賺錢 再把錢花在消費品上 希望由使用消費品得到享受 但錢花掉了 你又得再努力工作、賺錢、花錢 以維持同樣程度的快樂 這有點像是快樂跑步機 你永遠下不來,也永遠不滿足 成為一位有效的利他主義者 會帶給你意義與滿足 讓你的自尊有穩固的基礎 你會覺得自己活得很值得
I'm going to conclude by telling you about an email that I received while I was writing this talk just a month or so ago. It's from a man named Chris Croy, who I'd never heard of. This is a picture of him showing him recovering from surgery. Why was he recovering from surgery?
最後我要和你分享 最近我收到的一封電子郵件 大約一個月前,我正在寫這篇講稿 信是由一位陌生人克里斯.克洛伊 (Chris Croy) 寫來的 這是他從手術中恢復的照片 為什麼他要動手術?
The email began, "Last Tuesday, I anonymously donated my right kidney to a stranger. That started a kidney chain which enabled four people to receive kidneys."
信件如下:「上週二 我匿名捐了右腎給一位陌生人, 引發了捐腎的連鎖效應, 有四個人獲得腎臟。」
There's about 100 people each year in the U.S. and more in other countries who do that. I was pleased to read it. Chris went on to say that he'd been influenced by my writings in what he did. Well, I have to admit, I'm also somewhat embarrassed by that, because I still have two kidneys. But Chris went on to say that he didn't think that what he'd done was all that amazing, because he calculated that the number of life-years that he had added to people, the extension of life, was about the same that you could achieve if you gave 5,000 dollars to the Against Malaria Foundation. And that did make me feel a little bit better, because I have given more than 5,000 dollars to the Against Malaria Foundation and to various other effective charities.
全美國每年有一百人捐腎 其他國家更多 我很高興的讀著。克里斯接著說 我的文章影響了他做這件事 嗯,我得承認 這件事讓我有點不好意思 因為我還是有兩顆腎臟 但是克里斯接著說,他從沒想過 他做的事有多了不起 因為他計算了 他幫助別人延長的生命 大概就等於 捐五千美元給瘧疾防治基金會 這讓我感覺更好一點 因為我已經捐了超過五千美元 給瘧疾防治基金會 及其他有效的慈善團體
So if you're feeling bad because you still have two kidneys as well, there's a way for you to get off the hook.
因此,如果你的心情不好 那是因為你還有兩顆腎臟 有一種方法可以為你脫身
Thank you.
謝謝
(Applause)
(掌聲)