What "Saving Private Ryan" can teach us about EA

TL;DR

I argue that there is an interesting analogy between war and EA principles. Both can lead people to extreme thinking and actions. To guard against potential negative consequences of such extremes, we should recognise the value of common-sense morality, as illustrated in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”.

Disclaimers

• This piece aims to illustrate an analogy that I find useful for framing my thinking, hoping it can benefit others as well. However, the analogy is likely flawed from certain perspectives and should not be taken literally.
• I haven't delved deeply into academic literature on the subject. This is intended as a relatively personal essay, not a rigorous examination of the topic. I'd be interested in further exploration, if the framing presented here proves useful to people and could benefit from additional thought.
• While my core argument may sound like a critique, I believe most people in the EA movement already accept the case I make. Therefore, this piece is more of a reminder and a framework for thinking about EA than a critique.

Thank you to Felix Werdermann, Frank Theil, and Helene Kortschak for their review and feedback!

Introduction

I recently had the chance to rewatch "Saving Private Ryan," an exceptional movie that portrays the horrors of World War II and the emotional struggles of the soldiers who fought in it. The salience and importance of moral dilemmas in the plot struck me. As the soldiers went through their struggles, I realized that war can teach us something important about how people in the EA movement should relate to the world.

The moral dilemma in Saving Private Ryan

In "Saving Private Ryan," the U.S. military leaders learn that three out of four brothers of the Ryan family died during the Normandy invasion in 1944. The last remaining brother, James, is missing. A group of eight soldiers is sent on a special mission to find him and spare the Ryan family the loss of all its sons.

From a utilitarian perspective, the math doesn't seem to work out and the choice seems absurd – eight soldiers "wasted" on a highly speculative effort to find one person in the chaos of 1944. It could be justified by broader consequences to the Ryan family, but I think this is a hard case to make.

Still, there seems to be something important and morally right about the choice of the military leaders to prioritize the search for James Ryan. They are trying to uphold certain values and decency, even in this mess of a war they find themselves in. They might be doing this based on non-consequentialist considerations and ethics. However, their choice can also be justified on consequentialist grounds. The military leadership probably knows that the ramifications of abandoning certain values and principles might be disastrous in the long run. With their decision, they are protecting their own sanity and that of their entire military effort.

Similarities between war and an EA perspective on the world

Pondering this moral dilemma and the choice made by the military leadership, I found some interesting similarities between the way in which both war and EA principles prompt people to relate to the world. Three main aspects stood out to me.

Struggle for control

Firstly, adversarial relationships are an inherent feature of war. In a sense, such an adversarial relationship also lies at the heart of EA: a war with the conditions of the world we live in.

In a typical war, two or more conflicting parties fight over resources or other goods that they want to control. Conflicting parties usually disagree about how certain resources should be used and try to enhance their influence over them.

In a similar vein, EA is at its core a question of how to use resources. EA can be seen as conflicting with other parts of society about the allocation of resources. But more fundamentally, EA is struggling against the conditions of the world itself. The aim is to constantly improve the state of the world in the most effective way possible. To do so, we have to exert ever greater control over the world to make it more benevolent to all sentient beings living in it.^[1]

Triage and urgency

Secondly, war is an extraordinary situation for modern societies that requires drastic measures. It is a state of emergency that leads people to significantly change their priorities and make substantial sacrifices. It requires people to face moral dilemmas and make hard decisions, triaging and choosing the least of many different evils. It comes with a sense of urgency, as the enemy is not standing still and hesitancy can cause tremendous negative consequences.

The resemblance to EA should be obvious to anyone who has been involved in the EA movement. Holly Elmore’s post “We are in triage every second of every day” is a terrific illustration of this way of thinking. People are dying from preventable diseases daily, animals suffer unnecessarily in staggering numbers, and the time horizons for some catastrophic risks are very short. There is so much at stake that we need to make big sacrifices, think hard about the tradeoffs, and do so quickly.

Moral convictions

Thirdly, most parties in a war see themselves as on "the right side of history," fighting for a "just cause." They aim to defend certain principles or values that they deem important. Of course, war is also waged for very egoistic and self-satisfying reasons. But attitudes are usually strongly morally charged. Think about the recent wars in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. It will be hard to find someone on either side of these conflicts who does not think that they are on "the right side of history."

While the moral attitudes and frameworks of people within EA might be very different from those engaged in such wars, and EAs seem to be more open-minded, EA is undoubtedly a morally charged movement. At the core of it is the idea of making the world a better place, mostly by following different variants of consequentialism and utilitarianism. Improving ethical thinking and expanding the moral circle of societies are important cause areas for EAs.

The case for some common sense morality

If we accept these similarities between EA and war, we could say that "war-like" behavior is appropriate for EAs, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. This can be taken to the extremes. People might argue that in a war it can be justified to torture people to extract crucial information from them and that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been the morally right thing to do given the counterfactual scenarios.^[2]

These are questions that historians, philosophers, and others have grappled with for a long time. As such, the issue I address here is far from new. But I think it is important to remind ourselves of the limits to such a war mentality. Extreme situations can lead people to make horrible choices – examples of war crimes abound. It seems to me that the best antidote to this is an acknowledgment and focus on moral decency, even in extreme, war-like situations. This is what the military leaders in “Saving Private Ryan” did and I think we can learn from their story. 

Of course, there are very significant differences between war and EA and this piece is only meant to illustrate an analogy that should not be taken literally. However, I hope this framing provides a useful perspective.

Given the gravity of the situations we are dealing with and the theoretical lure of a war-like mindset, I think we need to repeatedly remind ourselves of the value of common-sense morality. We should care for our families and loved ones beyond what we would do for strangers. We should be loyal and not betray others. We should be kind and forgiving. We should build our character and virtues. We should uphold many of the values and principles that are commonly seen as good. Neglecting and forgetting basic common sense morality might lead us into directions that will ultimately do more harm than good.

1. ^{^}

   This aspiration is not exclusive to EA of course. It is baked into the fabric of most industrialized societies and the logic of science. As such, this factor is not sufficient for the case I make here and needs to be considered in tandem with the other factors described. There are also obvious differences between the struggle for control in war and by EA, the most important one being the absence of violence in the latter case. Still, the struggle for control seems to be at the core of both concepts.

2. ^{^}

   To be clear: I do not endorse these statements but highlight them as examples of conclusions that war-like thinking can lead to.