ant wrote:Do you think there's a moral obligation to save lives that could be saved if we redirected resources that go to stuff like extracurricular scientific ventures?
What's the phrase.., "expanding our moral circle" ?
Is it expanding it too much by doing what I suggested?
This is a great question because it's tough to answer. Most times, these sorts of idealized moral questions don't really match up to reality. What we need are specific instances. But I'm sure we can both think of a few to use. NASA money VS money to starving African children, for example.
First off, I don't know where the moral obligation rests. It's not so simple as redirecting money to save lives.
One reason is that the money we put into NASA might ultimately be the deciding factor in the survival of the human species. We don't know if that's true or not, so we can't bank on it. But it's a real possibility. This is true of many scientific ventures that seem to be miscellany. Who knows, the money we put into nanotechnology research may save more lives than an equal amount of money given to African children. There's no way to know this.
Another reason is due to what are called "moral hazards". The wisdom can be seen in other areas of life, such as gardening. When you fertilize your garden with Miracle Gro, or other synthetic fertilizers, you're making the plant grow hyper-fast. So fast that it leaves it vulnerable. The cell walls are weaker, the stems are weaker, etc. The plant flourishes, but is not hardy; the whole plant ends up far more susceptible to disease and pests. We also see this in welfare. When you give money to poor people who don't work, you incentivize not working. After a while, you're left with welfare queens who are leeches to society. Regarding African children, what would be the moral culpability if we gave them aid to feed everyone for a few decades, then had catastrophe at home. After the catastrophe, we can't aid them anymore and the food aid suddenly stops. With all the extra mouths to feed, starvation becomes orders of magnitude larger than it was before, and more people die. This is a moral hazard, where we think we're doing good but the unintended consequence is actually worse than the original problem.
So, I don't know where the obligation rests. To know this, we'd need to be much smarter than we are. But what I do know is that it's not as simple as saving lives=good.