The controversial philosopher discusses societal taboos, Thanksgiving turkeys and whether anyone is doing enough to make the world a better place.
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From the New York Times, this is the interview.
I'm David Marchese.
Maybe it sounds corny, but in my own little way, I really do try to make the world a better place.
I think about the ethics of what I eat, I donate to charity, I give time and energy to helping those less fortunate in my community.
And according to Peter Singer, those efforts pretty much add up to bupkus.
Singer is arguably the world's most influential living philosopher.
His work grows out of utilitarianism, the view that a good action is one that within reason maximizes the well being of the greatest number of lives possible.
He spent decades trying to get people to take a more critical look at their own ethics and what well meaning, comfortable people can actually do to make the world a better place.
His landmark 1975 book, Animal Liberation helped popularize vegan and vegetarian eating habits.
His new book, Consider the Turkey builds on those ideas as a polemic against a Thanksgiving meal.
And his writing on what the wealthy owe the poor, which is a lot more than they're giving, was an important building block for the data driven philanthropic movement known as effective altruism, which has gotten a lot of attention recently because of some of its high profile adherents in Silicon Valley, including the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman Friedman.
But Singer, who is 78, is as controversial as he is influential.
Some of his ideas, like that parents should be allowed to pursue euthanasia for severely disabled infants, have led people to call him dangerous and worse.
Some of his ideas make me personally uneasy too.
But my discomfort and the way his work forces me to reconsider my own ethical intuitions and assumptions is precisely why I wanted to talk with him.