Peter Singer has this thought experiment about morality:
A child is drowning and to save them you must get your clothes muddy.
He hold this analogs to not forgoing luxuries when the money could be put to some form of charity. To him, to be moral you can't choose an insignificant personal benefit over a significant chance to help.
A counter to this framing is "well someone else might help the child"
🧵
Singer's response is something like "well if someone is helping the child that isn't the situation I was talking about. It's come to you."
Let's suppose we have 3 bystanders to this poor kid and the water is ice cold.
One is elderly, a little frail, could probably help the kid, but the cost could be more than ruined clothes.
Another bystander is in their wedding dress.
Another bystander is an Olympic swimmer and in an insulated dive suit.
They all decline to help the kid. 2/
The first two declined because they assumed that the person best equipped to do the job would do it.
Are they making as grave of a moral error as the dive suit person?
(Ants would never have this kind of problem, just saying.)
Or to bring it back to something less goofy than a thought experiment are your feeble attempts to help with a small impact ... important?
3/
It seems to me that you're describing a situation where people predict that the olympic swimmer will help the child. Would anything change if everyone knew that the olympic swimmer is a selfish prick that will certainly not even try?
