[yboris]

Could you share where Nick says this? His dissertation is here: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40469/PDF/1...

On the Overwhelming Importance Of Shaping the Far Future

If you are right, I am confident that, at best, there's a small comment about how it might be the case that in some situations, particular people could do more good with resources, and not (as you put it!) that "wealthy people in developed countries deserved aid more than poor people"

[tptacek]

This is a weird hand to go all-in on, since you can just CMD-F the dissertation to find this:

By ordinary standardsat least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standardssaving and improving lives in rich countries is about equally as important as saving and improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal

[yboris]

All this assumes that "saving and improving lives" costs the same. Because this is very not true, your summary: "that wealthy people in developed countries deserved aid more than poor people in developing countries" fees like an inaccurate summary of Nick's views.

[tptacek]

I really don't care how you want to slice and dice this excerpt. Whatever the fairest summary of it you can come up with is, just pretend that's what I was referring to, and I think my point will still hold.

[yboris]

Could you clarify your point then? What were you trying to say?