1
I'm not very good at feeling the size of large numbers. Once you start tossing around numbers larger than 1000 (or maybe even 100), the numbers just seem "big".
Consider Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If you told me that Sirius is as big as a million earths, I would feel like that's a lot of Earths. If, instead, you told me that you could fit a billion Earths inside Sirius… I would still just feel like that's a lot of Earths.
The feelings are almost identical. In context, my brain grudgingly admits that a billion is a lot larger than a million, and puts forth a token effort to feel like a billion-Earth-sized star is bigger than a million-Earth-sized star. But out of context — if I wasn't anchored at "a million" when I heard "a billion" — both these numbers just feel vaguely large.
I feel a little respect for the bigness of numbers, if you pick really really large numbers. If you say "one followed by a hundred zeroes", then this feels a lot bigger than a billion. But it certainly doesn't feel (in my gut) like it's 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 times bigger than a billion. Not in the way that four apples internally feels like twice as many as two apples. My brain can't even begin to wrap itself around this sort of magnitude differential.
This phenomena is related to scope insensitivity, and it's important to me because I live in a world where sometimes the things I care about are really really numerous.
For example, billions of people live in squalor, with hundreds of millions of them deprived of basic needs and/or dying from disease. And though most of them are out of my sight, I still care about them.
The loss of a human life with all is joys and all its sorrows is tragic no matter what the cause, and the tragedy is not reduced simply because I was far away, or because I did not know of it, or because I did not know how to help, or because I was not personally responsible.
Knowing this, I care about every single individual on this planet. The problem is, my brain is simply incapable of taking the amount of caring I feel for a single person and scaling it up by a billion times. I lack the internal capacity to feel that much. My care-o-meter simply doesn't go up that far.
And this is a problem.
2
It's a common trope that courage isn't about being fearless, it's about being afraid but doing the right thing anyway. In the same sense, caring about the world isn't about having a gut feeling that corresponds to the amount of suffering in the world, it's about doing the right thing anyway. Even without the feeling.
My internal care-o-meter was calibrated to deal with about a hundred and fifty people, and it simply can't express the amount of caring that I have for billions of sufferers. The internal care-o-meter just doesn't go up that high.
Humanity is playing for unimaginably high stakes. At the very least, there are billions of people suffering today. At the worst, there are quadrillions (or more) potential humans, transhumans, or posthumans whose existence depends upon what we do here and now. All the intricate civilizations that the future could hold, the experience and art and beauty that is possible in the future, depends upon the present.
When you're faced with stakes like these, your internal caring heuristics — calibrated on numbers like "ten" or "twenty" — completely fail to grasp the gravity of the situation.
当你面对这样的利害关系时，你内心的关怀启发式算法——基于“十”或“二十”等数字校准的——完全无法理解情况的严重性。
Saving a person's life feels great, and it would probably feel just about as good to save one life as it would feel to save the world. It surely wouldn't be many billion times more of a high to save the world, because your hardware can't express a feeling a billion times bigger than the feeling of saving a person's life. But even though the altruistic high from saving someone's life would be shockingly similar to the altruistic high from saving the world, always remember that behind those similar feelings there is a whole world of difference.
拯救一个人的生命感觉非常棒，拯救一个生命可能和拯救世界的感觉差不多。拯救世界的高潮当然不会比拯救一个人的生命高出几十亿倍，因为你的硬件无法表达比拯救生命的感觉高出几十亿倍的情绪。但即使拯救生命的利他高潮和拯救世界的利他高潮惊人地相似，请始终记住，在这些相似的感觉背后，存在着整个世界的差异。
Our internal care-feelings are woefully inadequate for deciding how to act in a world with big problems.
我们内心的关怀情感，对于决定如何在充满重大问题的世界中行动，是严重不足的。
3
There's a mental shift that happened to me when I first started internalizing scope insensitivity. It is a little difficult to articulate, so I'm going to start with a few stories.
在我开始逐渐理解范围不敏感性时，我经历了一次心理上的转变。这种转变有点难以用语言表达，所以我将先从几个故事开始说起。
Consider Alice, a software engineer at Amazon in Seattle. Once a month or so, those college students with show up on street corners with clipboards, looking ever more disillusioned as they struggle to convince people to donate to Doctors Without Borders. Usually, Alice avoids eye contact and goes about her day, but this month they finally manage to corner her. They explain Doctors Without Borders, and she actually has to admit that it sounds like a pretty good cause. She ends up handing them $20 through a combination of guilt, social pressure, and altruism, and then rushes back to work. (Next month, when they show up again, she avoids eye contact.)
考虑一下 Alice，她是亚马逊西雅图的一名软件工程师。大约每个月，总有一些大学生拿着记事本出现在街角，他们试图说服人们向无国界医生组织捐款，但看起来越来越失望。通常，Alice 会避免眼神接触，继续过自己的日子，但这个月他们终于成功缠住了她。他们解释了无国界医生组织，她不得不承认这听起来是个相当不错的善举。最终，出于内疚、社会压力和利他主义，她给了他们 20 美元，然后匆忙赶回工作。（下个月，当他们再次出现时，她依然避免眼神接触。）
Now consider Bob, who has been given the Ice Bucket Challenge by a friend on facebook. He feels too busy to do the ice bucket challenge, and instead just donates $100 to ALSA.
现在考虑一下鲍勃，他的朋友在 Facebook 上给他发起了冰桶挑战。他觉得太忙了，无法完成冰桶挑战，于是直接向 ALS 捐赠了 100 美元。
Now consider Christine, who is in the college sorority ΑΔΠ. ΑΔΠ is engaged in a competition with ΠΒΦ (another sorority) to see who can raise the most money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation in a week. Christine has a competitive spirit and gets engaged in fund-raising, and gives a few hundred dollars herself over the course of the week (especially at times when ΑΔΠ is especially behind).
现在考虑克里斯汀，她是大学姐妹会ΑΔΠ的成员。ΑΔΠ正在与ΠΒΦ（另一个姐妹会）进行竞争，看谁在一周内能为国家乳腺癌基金会筹集最多的资金。克里斯汀有竞争精神，参与了筹款活动，并在一周内自己捐赠了几百美元（尤其是在ΑΔΠ特别落后的时候）。
All three of these people are donating money to charitable organizations… and that's great. But notice that there's something similar in these three stories: these donations are largely motivated by a social context. Alice feels obligation and social pressure. Bob feels social pressure and maybe a bit of camaraderie. Christine feels camaraderie and competitiveness. These are all fine motivations, but notice that these motivations are related to the social setting, and only tangentially to the content of the charitable donation.
这三个人都在向慈善机构捐款……这很棒。但请注意，这三个故事中有相似之处：这些捐款很大程度上是由社会环境驱动的。Alice 感受到责任和社会压力。Bob 感受到社会压力，也许还有一点同袍情谊。Christine 感受到同袍情谊和竞争感。这些都是很好的动机，但请注意，这些动机与社会环境相关，而与慈善捐款的内容只有间接关系。
If you took any of Alice or Bob or Christine and asked them why they aren't donating all of their time and money to these causes that they apparently believe are worthwhile, they'd look at you funny and they'd probably think you were being rude (with good reason!). If you pressed, they might tell you that money is a little tight right now, or that they would donate more if they were a better person.
如果你问过 Alice、Bob 或 Christine 中的任何一个人，为什么他们没有把所有的时间和金钱捐给那些他们显然认为是有价值的事业，他们会奇怪地看着你，他们可能会认为你很无礼（而且有充分的理由！）。如果你继续追问，他们可能会告诉你，现在钱有点紧，或者如果他们是一个更好的人，他们会捐得更多。
But the question would still feel kind of wrong. Giving all your money away is just not what you do with money. We can all say out loud that people who give all their possessions away are really great, but behind closed doors we all know that such people are crazy. (Good crazy, perhaps, but crazy all the same.)
但这个问题仍然会感觉有点不对劲。把所有钱都捐出去并不是你该对待金钱的方式。我们都可以大声地说，把所有财产都捐掉的人真的很伟大，但在私下里我们都知道这样的人是疯子。（或许是好的疯子，但终究还是疯子。）
This is a mindset that I inhabited for a while. There's an alternative mindset that can hit you like a freight train when you start internalizing scope insensitivity.
这是一种我持续了一段时间的心态。当你开始内化范围不敏感性时，会有一种替代心态像货运列车一样突然冲击你。
4
Consider Daniel, a college student shortly after the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill. He encounters one of those college students with the clipboards on the street corners, soliciting donations to the World Wildlife Foundation. They're trying to save as many oiled birds as possible. Normally, Daniel would simply dismiss the charity as Not The Most Important Thing, or Not Worth His Time Right Now, or Somebody Else's Problem, but this time Daniel has been thinking about how his brain is bad at numbers and decides to do a quick sanity check.
考虑一下丹尼尔，他在深水地平线 BP 油泄漏事件后不久还是个大学生。他在街角遇到了一个拿着记事本的大学生，正在为世界野生动物基金会募捐。他们试图救助尽可能多的被油污沾染的鸟。通常情况下，丹尼尔会认为这项慈善事业不是最重要的，或者不值得他花时间，或者只是别人的问题，但这次丹尼尔一直在思考自己的大脑在数字方面存在缺陷，于是决定快速进行一番理智的检查。
He pictures himself walking along the beach after the oil spill, and encountering a group of people cleaning birds as fast as they can. They simply don't have the resources to clean all the available birds. A pathetic young bird flops towards his feet, slick with oil, eyes barely able to open. He kneels down to pick it up and help it onto the table. One of the bird-cleaners informs him that they won't have time to get to that bird themselves, but he could pull on some gloves and could probably save the bird with three minutes of washing.
他想象自己在石油泄漏后沿着海滩行走，遇到了一群人正拼命地清洗鸟类。他们根本没有足够的资源来清洗所有可用的鸟类。一只可怜的小鸟油污满身，眼睛几乎睁不开，扑向他脚下。他跪下来捡起它，并把它放到桌子上。其中一名鸟类清洁者告诉他，他们自己没有时间去救那只鸟，但他可以戴上手套，或许用三分钟的清洗就能救活那只鸟。
Daniel decides that he would spend three minutes of his time to save the bird, and that he would also be happy to pay at least $3 to have someone else spend a few minutes cleaning the bird. He introspects and finds that this is not just because he imagined a bird right in front of him: he feels that it is worth at least three minutes of his time (or $3) to save an oiled bird in some vague platonic sense.
丹尼尔决定他会花三分钟时间来救助这只鸟，并且他也愿意至少支付 3 美元请别人花几分钟时间来清理这只鸟。他进行自我反思，发现这不仅仅是因为他想象中有一只鸟就在他面前：他觉得从某种模糊的柏拉图意义上来说，救助一只被油污沾染的鸟至少值得他花三分钟时间（或 3 美元）。
And, because he's been thinking about scope insensitivity, he expects his brain to misreport how much he actually cares about large numbers of birds: the internal feeling of caring can't be expected to line up with the actual importance of the situation. So instead of just asking his gut how much he cares about de-oiling lots of birds, he shuts up and multiplies.
而且，因为他一直在思考范围不敏感性，他预期自己的大脑会错误报告他对大量鸟类实际关心的程度：内心的关心感受无法预期与情况的实际重要性相符。因此，他不是简单地询问自己的直觉他对处理大量鸟类去油有多关心，而是选择闭嘴并计算。
Thousands and thousands of birds were oiled by the BP spill alone. After shutting up and multiplying, Daniel realizes (with growing horror) that the amount he acutally cares about oiled birds is lower bounded by two months of hard work and/or fifty thousand dollars. And that's not even counting wildlife threatened by other oil spills.
仅 BP 漏油事件就导致成千上万的鸟类受到油污污染。在沉默中繁衍后，丹尼尔意识到（并越来越恐惧地发现），他实际关心受油污污染的鸟类的程度，其下限是两个月的努力和/或五万美元。这还不算上其他漏油事件威胁到的野生动物。
And if he cares that much about de-oiling birds, then how much does he actually care about factory farming, nevermind hunger, or poverty, or sickness? How much does he actually care about wars that ravage nations? About neglected, deprived children? About the future of humanity? He actually cares about these things to the tune of much more money than he has, and much more time than he has.
如果他那么在乎给鸟类去油，那他对工厂化养殖到底有多在乎？更别提饥饿、贫困或疾病了？他对那些摧毁国家的战争、被忽视和剥夺权利的儿童、人类的未来到底有多在乎？他其实在乎这些事情的程度，远超他拥有的金钱和时间。
For the first time, Daniel sees a glimpse of of how much he actually cares, and how poor a state the world is in.
第一次，丹尼尔看到了他实际上有多在乎，以及世界处于多么糟糕的状态。
This has the strange effect that Daniel's reasoning goes full-circle, and he realizes that he actually can't care about oiled birds to the tune of 3 minutes or $3: not because the birds aren't worth the time and money (and, in fact, he thinks that the economy produces things priced at $3 which are worth less than the bird's survival), but because he can't spend his time or money on saving the birds. The opportunity cost suddenly seems far too high: there is too much else to do! People are sick and starving and dying! The very future of our civilization is at stake!
这产生了一种奇怪的效果，丹尼尔的认识形成了一个完整的循环，他意识到他实际上无法关心被油污的鸟，无论是 3 分钟还是 3 美元：不是因为鸟不值得时间和金钱（而且事实上，他认为经济生产的 3 美元的东西比鸟的生存价值低），而是因为他无法将时间和金钱用于拯救鸟。机会成本突然显得太高了：有太多其他事情要做了！人们生病、挨饿和死亡！我们文明的未来正受到威胁！
Daniel doesn't wind up giving $50k to the WWF, and he also doesn't donate to ALSA or NBCF. But if you ask Daniel why he's not donating all his money, he won't look at you funny or think you're rude. He's left the place where you don't care far behind, and has realized that his mind was lying to him the whole time about the gravity of the real problems.
丹尼尔最终没有给 WWF 捐赠 5 万美元，他也没有向 ALS 或 NBCF 捐款。但如果你问丹尼尔为什么他不捐出所有钱，他不会觉得你奇怪或认为你无礼。他已经远远离开了那个你不关心的地方，并且意识到他的内心一直都在欺骗他，关于现实问题的严重性。
Now he realizes that he can't possibly do enough. After adjusting for his scope insensitivity (and the fact that his brain lies about the size of large numbers), even the "less important" causes like the WWF suddenly seem worthy of dedicating a life to. Wildlife destruction and ALS and breast cancer are suddenly all problems that he would move mountains to solve — except he's finally understood that there are just too many mountains, and ALS isn't the bottleneck, and AHHH HOW DID ALL THESE MOUNTAINS GET HERE?
现在他意识到自己不可能做得足够多。在调整了他对范围的无感（以及他的大脑对大数字撒谎的事实）之后，即使是“不那么重要”的原因，比如 WWF，突然看起来也值得为之奉献一生。野生动物破坏、ALS 和乳腺癌突然都成了他会为了解决而移山填海的问题——但他终于明白了，山实在太多了，ALS 并不是瓶颈，天啊，这些山是怎么全部冒出来的？
In the original mindstate, the reason he didn't drop everything to work on ALS was because it just didn't seem… pressing enough. Or tractable enough. Or important enough. Kind of. These are sort of the reason, but the real reason is more that the concept of "dropping everything to address ALS" never even crossed his mind as a real possibility. The idea was too much of a break from the standard narrative. It wasn't his problem.
在最初的心态中，他没有放下一切去工作以应对渐冻症的原因，是因为那似乎并不……紧迫。或者不够容易解决。或者不够重要。某种程度上。这些算是原因，但真正的原因是，"放下一切去应对渐冻症"这个概念甚至从未进入过他的脑海，作为一个真正的可能性。这个想法与常规叙事太过脱节。这不是他的问题。
In the new mindstate, everything is his problem. The only reason he's not dropping everything to work on ALS is because there are far too many things to do first.
在新的心态下，一切都是他的问题。他之所以没有放下一切去工作以应对肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS），是因为有太多的事情需要先处理。
Alice and Bob and Christine usually aren't spending time solving all the world's problems because they forget to see them. If you remind them — put them in a social context where they remember how much they care (hopefully without guilt or pressure) — then they'll likely donate a little money.
Alice、Bob 和 Christine 通常不会花时间去解决全世界的问题，因为他们会忘记这些问题。如果你提醒他们——将他们置于一个能让他们记得自己多么关心这些问题的社会环境中（希望不会带来罪恶感或压力）——那么他们很可能会捐一点钱。
By contrast, Daniel and others who have undergone the mental shift aren't spending time solving all the world's problems because there are just too many problems. (Daniel hopefully goes on to discover movements like effective altruism and starts contributing towards fixing the world's most pressing problems.)
相比之下，丹尼尔和其他经历了思想转变的人并没有花时间去解决世界上所有的问题，因为问题实在太多了。（丹尼尔希望继续发现像有效利他主义这样的运动，并开始为解决世界上最紧迫的问题做出贡献。）
5
I'm not trying to preach here about how to be a good person. You don't need to share my viewpoint to be a good person (obviously).
我在这里并非想宣扬如何成为一个好人。你不必认同我的观点才能成为一个好人（显然）。
Rather, I'm trying to point at a shift in perspective. Many of us go through life understanding that we should care about people suffering far away from us, but failing to. I think that this attitude is tied, at least in part, to the fact that most of us implicitly trust our internal care-o-meters.
相反，我试图指出一种观念的转变。我们中的许多人虽然明白应该关心远在我们之外的人的苦难，却往往做不到。我认为，这种态度至少部分源于我们大多数人都隐性地信任我们内心的“关怀计量器”。
The "care feeling" isn't usually strong enough to compel us to frantically save everyone dying. So while we acknowledge that it would be virtuous to do more for the world, we think that we can't, because we weren't gifted with that virtuous extra-caring that prominent altruists must have.
"关怀之情"通常不足以促使我们疯狂地拯救所有垂死之人。因此，尽管我们承认为世界做更多是高尚的，但我们认为我们做不到，因为我们没有像杰出的利他主义者那样被赋予那种高尚的额外关怀。
But this is an error — prominent altruists aren't the people who have a larger care-o-meter, they're the people who have learned not to trust their care-o-meters.
但这是一种错误——杰出的利他主义者并非是那些拥有更高“关怀计量器”的人，而是那些学会了不再信任他们“关怀计量器”的人。
Our care-o-meters are broken. They don't work on large numbers. Nobody has one capable of faithfully representing the scope of the world's problems. But the fact that you can't feel the caring doesn't mean that you can't do the caring.
我们的关怀计量器已经损坏了。它们无法处理大数字。没有人拥有能够忠实反映世界问题范围的关怀计量器。但你无法感受到关怀并不意味着你不能进行关怀。
You don't get to feel the appropriate amount of "care", in your body. Sorry — the world's problems are just too large, and your body is not built to respond appropriately to problems of this magnitude. But if you choose to do so, you can still act like the world's problems are as big as they are. You can stop trusting the internal feelings to guide your actions and switch over to manual control.
你无法在身体中感受到适当的“关怀”。抱歉——世界的问题实在太大了，你的身体无法适当地应对如此规模的问题。但如果你选择这样做，你仍然可以像世界的问题那么大一样行动。你可以停止信任内部感觉来指导你的行为，并切换到手动控制。
6
This, of course, leads us to the question of "what the hell do you then?"
这当然让我们想到了“你到底他妈的能做什么？”这个问题
And I don't really know yet. (Though I'll plug the Giving What We Can pledge, GiveWell, MIRI, and The Future of Humanity Institute as a good start).
我还不太清楚。（不过我会推荐 Giving What We Can 承诺、GiveWell、MIRI 和 The Future of Humanity Institute 作为一个好的开始）。
I think that at least part of it comes from a certain sort of desperate perspective. It's not enough to think you should change the world — you also need the sort of desperation that comes from realizing that you would dedicate your entire life to solving the world's 100th biggest problem if you could, but you can't, because there are 99 bigger problems you have to address first.
我认为至少部分原因来自于某种绝望的视角。仅仅认为应该改变世界是不够的——你还需要那种当你意识到，如果你能够的话，你会奉献你的一生去解决世界上第 100 大问题，但你却不能，因为还有 99 个更紧迫的问题需要先解决时的绝望感。
I'm not trying to guilt you into giving more money away — becoming a philanthropist is really really hard. (If you're already a philanthropist, then you have my acclaim and my affection.) First it requires you to have money, which is uncommon, and then it requires you to throw that money at distant invisible problems, which is not an easy sell to a human brain. Akrasia is a formidable enemy. And most importantly, guilt doesn't seem like a good long-term motivator: if you want to join the ranks of people saving the world, I would rather you join them proudly. There are many trials and tribulations ahead, and we'd do better to face them with our heads held high.
我并不是想用愧疚让你捐出更多钱——成为慈善家真的非常非常困难。（如果你已经是慈善家了，那么我为你感到钦佩和喜爱。）首先，它要求你必须有钱，而这并不常见，然后它又要求你把钱投向遥远而看不见的问题，这对人类的大脑来说并不是一件容易的事。意志薄弱是一个强大的敌人。最重要的是，愧疚似乎不是一个好的长期动力：如果你想要加入拯救世界的人的行列，我宁愿你自豪地加入他们。前路还有许多艰难险阻，我们最好昂首面对。
7
Courage isn't about being fearless, it's about being able to do the right thing even if you're afraid.
And similarly, addressing the major problems of our time isn't about feeling a strong compulsion to do so. It's about doing it anyway, even when internal compulsion utterly fails to capture the scope of the problems we face.
It's easy to look at especially virtuous people — Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela — and conclude that they must have cared more than we do. But I don't think that's the case.
Nobody gets to comprehend the scope of these problems. The closest we can get is doing the multiplication: finding something we care about, putting a number on it, and multiplying. And then trusting the numbers more than we trust our feelings.
Because our feelings lie to us.
When you do the multiplication, you realize that addressing global poverty and building a brighter future deserve more resources than currently exist. There is not enough money, time, or effort in the world to do what we need to do.
There is only you, and me, and everyone else who is trying anyway.
8
You can't actually feel the weight of the world. The human mind is not capable of that feat.
But sometimes, you can catch a glimpse.