„In einer Welt, die überflutet wird von belanglosen Informationen, ist Klarheit Macht.“ 

- Yuval Noah Harari


What Vitalik writes sounds nice but is, sadly, unfeasible. I wrote something about this a few years ago:

Suffering with random strangers seems virtuous but is a really bad idea from a civilizational perspective.

First of all, the amount of suffering happening in the world is unbearable. Someone who did care about everyone else like they care about their own children would essentially be a negative utility monster, continuously experiencing massive distress. The way normal people naturally cope with this is that their concern for a person is inversely proportional to the social distance between themselves and the person.

Secondly, most people are both not smart enough and too irrational to be able to handle the emotional stress such unbounded compassion would cause.[1] They would be constantly outraged and make the world a worse place for themselves and everyone else. As communism amply proves, even many smart people miserably fail to implement their noble goals and end up maximizing suffering rather than reducing it.

A better strategy than telling people to care about strangers is to take actions to reduce the suffering in the world.[2] And not feeling bad about it all the time. The german philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that "Mitleid" means "mit-leiden". And nobody is helped if you suffer, because others suffer. Instead focusing on positive energy and change. I know many latinamericans living in terrible situations and they are still happier than most of the westerns i know. Hapinnes is mostly and inside job.


[1] I think there is a spiritual, deep and good way to feel with the whole world without becoming crazy, but most people aren't able to do it.
[2] See my article on negative altruism.

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