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Gary P. Steuer argues that the arts are at risk from the utilitarian ends that effective altruists aim to achieve; they aim to feed the human body sans soul.

"In an interview in the Financial Times, Bill Gates equated donating to a museum with blinding people. Seriously. He was referencing the ethicist Peter Singer, whose work has fostered the “effective altruism” movement: Gates asked why anyone would donate money to build a new museum wing rather than to prevent illnesses that can lead to blindness. “The moral equivalent is, we’re going to take 1 percent of the people who visit this [museum] and blind them,” he said. “Are they willing, because it has the new wing, to take that risk? Hmm, maybe this blinding thing is slightly barbaric.”

"Effective altruism is absolutely rooted in a laudable commitment to making a maximum impact on the world’s most pressing problems, and Americans have generally not paid enough attention to the crushing human catastrophes in the Third World — public health, poverty, refugees. However, if taken to extremes, effective altruism has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the arts."--Gary P. Steuer, The Washington Post


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