Download or read book When Altruism Isn t Enough written by Sally L. Satel and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Altruism Isn't Enough explores the key ethical, theoretical, and practical concerns of a government-regulated donor compensation program.
Download or read book The Organ Donor Experience written by Katrina Bramstedt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-11-16 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite starting slowly with some academic jargon about altruism and people's motivations to donate organs, the book quickly takes a right turn and gets interesting. The authors sprinkle little informative tidbits along the way-Asian-Americans constituted only 3.4% of U.S. donors-and bring their points alive through little vignettes when examining the origins of altruism. The authors would make brilliant sales reps: they put forth a convincing argument about what a great humanitarian effort living donation is then patiently explain the evaluation process to reassure readers of the minimal costs. The few downsides are reviewed and discussed-for example, how to deal with family members who do not support the decision to donate or the devastation donors might experience when a recipient dies. Resources, bibliography, and index occupy a full 36 pages, yet for the most part this book escapes the drudgery of a research-laden study and instead reads as a fascinating story about a very human issue. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Doing Good Better written by William MacAskill and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately, we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, even our best intentions often lead to ineffective—and sometimes downright harmful—outcomes. How can we do better? While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it’s not enough to simply do good; we must do good better. At the core of this philosophy are five key questions that help guide our altruistic decisions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing I can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? By applying these questions to real-life scenarios, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about doing good are misguided. For instance, he argues one can potentially save more lives by becoming a plastic surgeon rather than a heart surgeon; measuring overhead costs is an inaccurate gauge of a charity’s effectiveness; and, it generally doesn’t make sense for individuals to donate to disaster relief. MacAskill urges us to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. When we do this—when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors—we find that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.
Download or read book The Most Good You Can Do written by Peter Singer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument for putting sentiment aside and maximizing the practical impact of our donated dollars: “Powerful, provocative” (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times). Peter Singer’s books and ideas have been disturbing our complacency ever since the appearance of Animal Liberation. Now he directs our attention to a challenging new movement in which his own ideas have played a crucial role: effective altruism. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profoundly unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the “most good you can do.” Such a life requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas, and shows how, paradoxically, living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment than living for oneself. Doing the Most Good develops the challenges Singer has made, in the New York Times and Washington Post, to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good. Effective altruists are extending our knowledge of the possibilities of living less selfishly, and of allowing reason, rather than emotion, to determine how we live. Doing the Most Good offers new hope for our ability to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Download or read book The Life You Can Save written by Peter Singer and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.
Download or read book Last Best Gifts written by Kieran Healy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual—often anonymous—may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers. Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent—contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor’s altruism or the size of a financial incentive.
Download or read book The Scout Mindset written by Julia Galef and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...an engaging and enlightening account from which we all can benefit."—The Wall Street Journal A better way to combat knee-jerk biases and make smarter decisions, from Julia Galef, the acclaimed expert on rational decision-making. When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe—and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a "scout" mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world—which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.
Download or read book What s Wrong with Morality written by Charles Daniel Batson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most works on moral psychology consider morality an unalloyed good. Drawing primarily on social-psychological theory and research, this book looks at morality as a problem. The problem is that we often fail live up to our own moral standards. Why?
Download or read book Does Altruism Exist written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.
Download or read book The Price of Altruism George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness written by Oren Harman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-06-20 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.
Download or read book Pathological Altruism written by Barbara Oakley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The benefits of altruism and empathy are obvious. These qualities are so highly regarded and embedded in both secular and religious societies that it seems almost heretical to suggest they can cause harm. Like most good things, however, altruism can be distorted or taken to an unhealthy extreme. Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy. Pathologies of empathy, for example, may trigger depression as well as the burnout seen in healthcare professionals. The selflessness of patients with eating abnormalities forms an important aspect of those disorders. Hyperempathy - an excess of concern for what others think and how they feel - helps explain popular but poorly defined concepts such as codependency. In fact, pathological altruism, in the form of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, may underpin some personality disorders. Pathologies of altruism and empathy not only underlie health issues, but also a disparate slew of humankind's most troubled features, including genocide, suicide bombing, self-righteous political partisanship, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. Pathological Altruism is a groundbreaking new book - the first to explore the negative aspects of altruism and empathy, seemingly uniformly positive traits. The contributing authors provide a scientific, social, and cultural foundation for the subject of pathological altruism, creating a new field of inquiry. Each author's approach points to one disturbing truth: what we value so much, the altruistic "good" side of human nature, can also have a dark side that we ignore at our peril.
Download or read book Organ Donation written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-08-24 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rates of organ donation lag far behind the increasing need. At the start of 2006, more than 90,000 people were waiting to receive a solid organ (kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, heart, or intestine). Organ Donation examines a wide range of proposals to increase organ donation, including policies that presume consent for donation as well as the use of financial incentives such as direct payments, coverage of funeral expenses, and charitable contributions. This book urges federal agencies, nonprofit groups, and others to boost opportunities for people to record their decisions to donate, strengthen efforts to educate the public about the benefits of organ donation, and continue to improve donation systems. Organ Donation also supports initiatives to increase donations from people whose deaths are the result of irreversible cardiac failure. This book emphasizes that all members of society have a stake in an adequate supply of organs for patients in need, because each individual is a potential recipient as well as a potential donor.
Download or read book Against Empathy written by Paul Bloom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Download or read book The Evolution of Cooperation written by Robert Axelrod and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A famed political scientist's classic argument for a more cooperative world We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod seeks to answer this question. In 1980, he organized the famed Computer Prisoners Dilemma Tournament, which sought to find the optimal strategy for survival in a particular game. Over and over, the simplest strategy, a cooperative program called Tit for Tat, shut out the competition. In other words, cooperation, not unfettered competition, turns out to be our best chance for survival. A vital book for leaders and decision makers, The Evolution of Cooperation reveals how cooperative principles help us think better about everything from military strategy, to political elections, to family dynamics.
Download or read book One Nation Under Therapy written by Christina Hoff Sommers and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on scientific evidence and common sense, the authors reveal how "therapism" and the trauma industry pervade society. They demonstrate that "talking about" problems is no substitute for confronting them.
Download or read book Human Compatible written by Stuart Jonathan Russell and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable people to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines.
Download or read book Spare Parts written by Renee C. Fox and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
