Does the effectiveness of various forms of altruism actually form a total order? I've yet to see any kind of rigorous argument in favour, yet seems like a fundamental requirement if one is going to expend such incredible resources into attempts to maximise this value.
The reason I ask is that, when I first discovered Effective Altruism, finding the premise to be deeply compelling, I ended up staying up all night watching videos trying to reconcile / assimilate it into my world view. In one video, various trolley problem scenarios were enumerated, and the EA guests were advocating sparing a lamborghini to the detriment of a child's life so that the car could be sold off and the money donated to saving multiple children in the developing world. Furthermore, there was some suggestion of a threshold where the altruism of sparing X domesticated animals was 'higher' than sparing Y humans, which definitely felt like it fell into [citation needed] territory.
The reason I ask is that, when I first discovered Effective Altruism, finding the premise to be deeply compelling, I ended up staying up all night watching videos trying to reconcile / assimilate it into my world view. In one video, various trolley problem scenarios were enumerated, and the EA guests were advocating sparing a lamborghini to the detriment of a child's life so that the car could be sold off and the money donated to saving multiple children in the developing world. Furthermore, there was some suggestion of a threshold where the altruism of sparing X domesticated animals was 'higher' than sparing Y humans, which definitely felt like it fell into [citation needed] territory.