
The Way to Produce a Person - ekm2
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/opinion/brooks-the-way-to-produce-a-person.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=1&
======
jtbigwoo
I went to college with dozens of Jason Triggs (including myself). We'd talk
all the time about the money we'd make right out of college and how much good
we'd do. ("$36k to work at a soulless consulting company? That's amazing! I'm
living on less than 1k/month in college. I could save 5K and give 10k away and
not even notice!") We had plans to give 20, 30, or 50 percent of our income
away. Some of us even managed to do it for a couple years. The world gets to
you, though. Your coworkers that dress nicer and go to happy hour with the
boss get promoted. It gets tiresome to commute from a tiny apartment in New
Jersey. You buy a house or get married to somebody who doesn't make much
money. The stock market tanks and takes your savings with it. You figure out
that you hate consulting and end up teaching science in a junior high. After a
couple years, I'd bet that the average charitable contribution of my peer
group had gone down to 5% or less.

I wish Mr. Trigg luck, but we've already lived his story. He might get a few
good years in, but his life is unlikely to work out like he plans.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
It always seems like a bit of a cop out to get a high paying job so you can
donate to charity- at the risk of sounding cynical, it seems like a way for
people to try to have their cake and eat it too, i.e. I have a big income and
can feel special about that, but then I can feel doubly special because I am
so generous and giving it all away. I suppose it has some positive
externalities, but I don't think it really even comes close to the spirit of
charity.

~~~
deadairspace
have you considered the possibility that people don't do it primarily to feel
special? What do you think is the spirit of charity?

~~~
abraininavat
Don't bother. There's a significant segment of the population who can't escape
the egocentric mindset others grow out of. They can't (not won't, can't)
understand that others think and feel differently from them. They can't
imagine others wanting to fix an injustice which doesn't directly affect them.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
Wait- you inferred all this about me from a single comment? It's true that
some people have no ability for empathy, but I think leveling such a harsh
criticism at a random person based on a single comment is probably a little
over the top.

~~~
abraininavat
True. I was using you as a proxy for Brooks and his ilk, I suppose. Sorry
about that.

------
suprgeek
This has got to be one of the worst articles in a while to make the frontpage
of HN. There is an Editorial (!) explaining why we should NOT follow the
example of a person holding a legal well-paying job making a great effort to
donate most of his high income to charitable good causes.

The cynicism and moralizing is laid on thick - what a sad, messed up world
exists inside Mr. Brooks' head. I hope HN'ers are more optimistic than
listening to this claptrap and believing any of it.

~~~
npsimons
This may get me downvoted, but I'm getting a very strong sense that someone
(or a number of someones) with some, _ahem_ , strong right leanings have been
posting articles to HN within the last 24 hours. Not that there's anything
wrong with that, it's just that it's kind of embarrassing when Brooks is the
best you can do.

Brooks is well known for spouting things that seem almost like satire of
conservative viewpoints; it's more likely he dresses up his points in
"progressive" sounding terms in an attempt to get people to agree with him.

~~~
sopooneo
I don't know the man or his works, but on my first reading, I thought he
seemed like a misguided liberal.

------
notJim
Thank god, David Brooks is here to save us from the scourge of young people
giving their money to charity. Who else will stand in defense against these
blackgaurds?! If not for this article, the scourge would surely grow
ceaselessly, with each new graduate striving to give away more of his money
than the last until our economy and very way of life collapse! Truly, David
Brooks is a hero today.

~~~
sopooneo
I think today's idealist youth are a lot less joyful then yester-decade's. I
think this is troubling to those who came up in the sixties, and I can
understand why: we should not be martyrs to rationalism. But I also think that
pragmatism does more good for the world than joy, if you have to choose.

------
Mikeb85
He could make a much bigger difference if he simply saved a large portion of
his earnings over his career, invested them (if he's working for a hedge fund
he should be able to get a great return), and then invested that much larger
chunk into 3rd world entrepreneurs/businesses.

The unfortunate truth is that most money that goes into charities that operate
in 3rd world countries gets spent on logistics, bureaucracy, and gets siphoned
off by corrupt governments or stolen by thieves. He'll save someone from
malaria one day, and they'll die from another cause later.

A much bigger impact would be to invest in those 3rd world countries
(conscientiously), and provide jobs and livelihoods for those people. Build
infrastructure, enable access to capital, machinery and technology, security,
etc... That will make a much larger difference than any amount of money poured
into charities and feel-good causes.

~~~
LeeHunter
"The unfortunate truth is that most money that goes into charities that
operate in 3rd world countries gets spent on logistics, bureaucracy, and gets
siphoned off by corrupt governments or stolen by thieves. He'll save someone
from malaria one day, and they'll die from another cause later."

Self-serving selfish unsupported claptrap.

I especially like the line "He'll save someone from malaria one day, and
they'll die from another cause later." Hard to argue with that point since
we'll all die from some cause later.

As if, for example, funding the inexpensive operations to relieve the
suffering of women with untreated obstetric fistulas
(<http://www.fistulafoundation.org/whatisfistula/faqs.html>) is just a waste
of time and money. Sheesh.

~~~
Mikeb85
How much time do you spend in 3rd world countries? My wife is from one, we
spend a month a year over there...

They were a recipient of the one laptop per child initiative - most of the
laptops were stolen and placed on the black market. Corruption runs so deep
that most foreign aid has been withdrawn, and foreign corporations refuse to
use local labour in local construction initiatives.

Giving away mosquito nets is a great initiative. Producing the sort of
infrastructure that allows people to buy them with their own money is better.

The Chinese have done more for the 3rd world (any my wife's country) than
every Western charity and government combined. You go to my wife's country -
all the local infrastructure is built by Chinese corporations, and most of the
cost is donated by the Chinese government. What little debt remains to China
is forgiven periodically (China just wrote-off 355 million in debt to this
country). If you eliminated corruption, it would be even more effective, these
Chinese corporations would be more willing to use local labour...

By the way, even the link you provided cites poverty and malnutrition as the
main cause of fistula. Do you want to treat diseases or prevent them as well
as raise the economic status of those in need?

~~~
LeeHunter
Anecdotes are not data.

~~~
Mikeb85
No, they're not. Alot of data is flawed though, based on assumptions that
usually aren't true... Go on the ground yourself and see what makes a
difference though. You can't sit on your computer in a 1st world country and
think you know what happens in the 3rd world...

~~~
LeeHunter
I spent a year living in a third world country but somehow it failed to make
me an expert on international aid and development.

------
crazygringo
I'm not going to get into the pros/cons of this viewpoint, but there was an
incredibly popular post called "What is the Monkeysphere?" a few years ago,
which was surprisingly deep, considering the site it's on. It describes
several of the things that Brooks is saying, and is worth reading:

<http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html>

~~~
Mikeb85
That's actually a very deep insightful article, if you look beyond the
profanity and monkey analogies...

~~~
marcosscriven
I couldn't stop laughing when I read this sentence: "Even Gandhi may have had
hotel rooms and dead hookers in his past."

------
tptacek
What a sad, demoralizing editorial. Was this really a notion David Brooks
needed to challenge?

------
networked
A recent Less Wrong post titled "Earning to Give vs. Altruistic Career Choice
Revisited" [1] is relevant here.

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_ca...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_career_choice/)

~~~
gohrt
That article makes some ... dubious... claims:

> The market mechanism — In the for-profit world, maximizing wealth is often
> correlated with maximizing positive social impact, and so can be used as a
> proxy goal for maximizing positive social impact.

------
Mikeb85
By the way, here's an article about the effect of corruption on foreign aid:
[https://www.devex.com/en/news/30-percent-of-aid-lost-to-
corr...](https://www.devex.com/en/news/30-percent-of-aid-lost-to-corruption-
ban-ki-moon/78643)

An interesting article about Chinese foreign aid to Africa:
[http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/05/new-report-
detai...](http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/05/new-report-details-
chinese-foreign-aid-in-africa.html)
[http://www.indiana.edu/~rccpb/pdf/Cheng%20RCCPB%2029%20Aid%2...](http://www.indiana.edu/~rccpb/pdf/Cheng%20RCCPB%2029%20Aid%20June%202012.pdf)

In my wife's country, you can see the effect of Chinese investment and aid
every single day, it's tangible, and affects people's lives. People are
employed because of Chinese investments, goods are transported on roads and
ferries built/donated by the Chinese, and promising students are given
scholarships to study in China.

Now this is not to say that we are bad and the Chinese are great, but rather
to compare the impact of charity vs. investment.

Investment leads to self-sufficiency, charity leads to dependence. Investment
leads to a permanent influx of wealth, charity is temporary. Allowing people
to earn a living, be self-sufficient, properly nourished and healthy is the
end goal - this can only be achieved through investment and economic means,
charity cannot accomplish this.

Anyhow, I do think the young man described is doing a great thing, however
there's a reason the hedge fund pays him so much. His algorithms and know-how
will make them alot of money. Alot more than they pay him. Which in turn is
more than he'll give away.

------
6d0debc071
> Instead of seeing yourself as one person deeply embedded in a particular
> community, you may end up coolly looking across humanity as a detached god.

If you're worried about that, you might be better off being concerned about
the increasing fragmentation of culture. As I recall, studies show that my
generation knows dramatically less about those in their immediate
neighbourhoods and are more likely to rate themselves as happy with those
neighbourhoods. Or, to put it another way: We don't know those around us, and
we don't _care_ to know them or be known by them.

> You might end up enlarging the faculties we use to perceive the far —
> rationality — and eclipsing the faculties we use to interact with those
> closest around — affection, the capacity for vulnerability and dependence.

Well, doing something that saps the energy out of you may not leave you with
much capacity to get along with others. But the anti-rationality bend to the
article seems rather unwarranted. It's not like the idea that smart people are
less capable of love is well supported.

> But a human life is not just a means to produce outcomes, it is an end in
> itself. When we evaluate our friends, we don’t just measure the consequences
> of their lives. We measure who they intrinsically are. We don’t merely want
> to know if they have done good. We want to know if they are good.

The two are tried together. You can't see someone's soul. Do we care about
what someone is inside because we consider them an ends in themselves, or do
we care about what someone is because that's strongly indicative of outcomes?
I would tend to suspect that if our guesses of what someone is didn't
correlate with outcomes the relevant happy feelings of being around good
people wouldn't last very long.

------
quanticle

            If you choose a profession that doesn't arouse your everyday passion for
    	the sake of serving instead some abstract faraway good, you might end up as a
    	person who values the far over the near. You might become one of those people
    	who loves humanity in general but not the particular humans immediately
    	around. You might end up enlarging the faculties we use to perceive the far
    	-- rationality -- and eclipsing the faculties we use to interact with
    	those closest around -- affection, the capacity for vulnerability and
    	dependence. Instead of seeing yourself as one person deeply embedded in a
    	particular community, you may end up coolly looking across humanity as a
    	detached god.
    

Brooks sees this as a disdvantage, but I do not. Frankly, given the levels of
irrational thought and behavior we see in the world today, we should be doing
everything we can to _increase_ the amount of rationality and far-oriented
thinking in the world. I would posit that a world in which people were more
like Jason Trigg would be a far better world, on every measurable metric, than
the present that David Brooks endeavors to defend. I mean, Trigg, at least,
has a goal and a plan to achieve it. The goal is the old utilitarian one of
achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. The means is to earn lots
of money and spend it on that goal.

    
    
            Third, and most important, I would worry about turning yourself into a means
    	rather than an end. If you go to Wall Street mostly to make money for charity,
    	you may turn yourself into a machine for the redistribution of wealth. You may
    	turn yourself into a fiscal policy.
    

And what's wrong with that? The problem with fiscal policy is not the goal of
fiscal policy. It is the coercive means used to achieve it. There is no
coercion here. No one is forcing Jason Trigg to give away his wealth. He is
doing it of his own volition. Were he older and richer, he'd be lauded as
another Carnegie, or another Gates.

    
    
            Making yourself is different than producing a product or an external outcome,
    	requiring different logic and different means. I'd think you would be more
    	likely to cultivate a deep soul if you put yourself in the middle of the
    	things that engaged you most seriously. If your profoundest interest is dying
    	children in Africa or Bangladesh, it's probably best to go to Africa or
    	Bangladesh, not to Wall Street.
    

That's not true at all. Sure, if you have skills that are needed in Africa or
Bangladesh, it's best to go there. But not everyone has such skills. If we all
pitched in like Jason Trigg and managed to get a cheap malaria vaccine
crafted, say, 3 years from now, we'll have done far more good than if we'd all
gone to Bangladesh or Africa volunteering to hand out bed nets. It comes down
to the old question: are you worried about _doing_ good or _feeling_ good? If
you're worried about doing good, you coldly analyze all the alternatives, and
pick the one with the highest impact, even if it has zero visibility
whatsoever. If you're worried about feeling good, you do what David Brooks
advocates. You go down to Africa, Asia, or where-ever and get warm fuzzies by
hoisting the white man's burden.

Rationality is not a sin. Calculation is not a sin. Money is not inherently
sinful. All of these things are means, and have the capability to do both
great good or great harm, depending on the end to which they're applied. Jason
Trigg understands this. David Brooks does not. And that's why I, personally,
respect Jason Trigg a lot more than David Brooks.

~~~
freshhawk
You make some good points but I think you missed a point of the section
containing the middle quote. Jason Trigg is, like all of us, subject to the
biases and irrational behaviour that occurs in our brains. The best way to
erode the drive to help other people in the way that Jason Trigg has set out
to do is to spend all your time around people who feel differently and in a
system that rewards the opposite. We are social animals, you can't insulate
yourself from the social norms you immerse yourself in.

Nevermind the fact that this whole pseudo-utilitarian premise is just a nice
way to ignore the harm your day to day activities may have on those you are
donating your money to because any harm is spread out among the entire
industry and has so many levels of abstraction that a utilitarian analysis is
impossible. The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his
donations outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or
the industry as a whole to those same areas.

I find the general premise of "work like a sociopath to make so much money you
can do good with the money", whatever their forms, to be a textbook example of
_feeling_ good rather than _doing_ good. You couldn't design a better system
if you tried, all harm is abstracted away and very diffuse while the good
feelings are attributable directly to yourself.

~~~
abraininavat
_Nevermind the fact that this whole pseudo-utilitarian premise is just a nice
way to ignore the harm_

I'm curious why you claim that. It seems to me the goal is to _redress_ the
harm, not ignore it. You can't claim to know Jason Trigg's true internal
motives, can you?

 _The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his donations
outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or the
industry as a whole to those same areas._

Nor can you claim that this assumption is false, given that you suggest a
utilitarian analysis is impossible.

 _I find the general premise of "work like a sociopath to make so much money
you can do good with the money", whatever their forms, to be a textbook
example of feeling good rather than doing good._

By what logic? Do you claim that good isn't being done? You're of course right
that harm is being indirectly done, but you have stated that there's no way to
show whether more good or more harm is being done. So what exactly is the
source of your cynicism?

~~~
md224
>> _The whole premise rests on the assumption that the benefit of his
donations outweigh his share of any (likely indirect) harm done by his firm or
the industry as a whole to those same areas._

> Nor can you claim that this assumption is false, given that you suggest a
> utilitarian analysis is impossible.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle>

If the net harm of participating in a certain system for the sake of
philanthropy is unknown but potentially significant, I think we ought to be a
little careful about it.

Beyond that, even if one cannot prove that working at a hedge fund helps to
propagate a system that may be resulting in the very same poverty that one's
charitable contributions are meant to mitigate (and I'm not saying this is
necessarily the case), we should try to be aware of the potential indirect
outcomes of our actions, rather than assuming there is no downside whatsoever.

~~~
andylei
there is a known (great) benefit of donations towards preventing malaria. a
~$2,500 donation prevents about one death.

there is a unknown (probably small, maybe great) harm in being a small part of
the high frequency industry.

seems like a no brainer to me

~~~
Chris2048
If 'great' in the first case isn't equal to 'great' in the second, then isn't
this an appeal to ignorance?

------
TomAnthony
Whether or not Gandhi actually said it, this reminds me of:

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

The author's argument is that doing so might damage or worsen you, but surely
it is still a net positive? Furthermore, the "rubbing off on those around you"
might work in the other direction too.

------
kcorbitt
I'm interested in how technology can bridge the gap between the developed-
world latent willingness to give and developing-world needs.

There are a lot of people out there who are looking for a more meaningful
purpose in life. The problem with traditional charities is that the giver
feels the downside, through a lighter checkbook, but can't really see the
specific upside their donations perform, even in the case of a charity that
allocates its resources efficiently.

One way to mitigate this is through transparency in giving. We're more likely
to give to a specific disaster relief fund than a general "humanity in Africa"
fund, even when both may do just as much good, because we see where the money
is going. Watsi expands on this model by bringing transparency in giving down
to the level of the individual.

Without internet penetration in the developing world, Watsi's approach
wouldn't be logistically possible. As that penetration expands, it will be
easier to connect to people in need on a personal rather than an abstract
level. I hope that makes us, on average, more charitable givers. :)

EDIT: This was in response to, and as a partial refutation of, the following
quote from the article: "If your profoundest interest is dying children in
Africa or Bangladesh, it’s probably best to go to Africa or Bangladesh, not to
Wall Street." There are many, many people with an interest in global humanity
who can't realistically drop everything and change continents.

------
etjossem

        "But a human life is not just a means to produce outcomes, it is an end in itself. When we evaluate our friends, we don’t just measure the consequences of their lives. We measure who they intrinsically are. We don’t merely want to know if they have done good. We want to know if they are good."
        
    

There's no shortage of people who would describe themselves as good (and whose
friends would agree). By and large, citizens of the developed world share the
same emotional reaction when they hear about children in Zambia dying of
malaria. But very few of us sit down, rationally consider what we have to
offer, and then put in the hours to do something about it.

We each have our own most efficient skill for volunteer work. If Jason Trigg
had gone to nursing school instead of MIT, he might choose to spend most of
his time at a local free clinic - or he might get flown overseas for years on
donor money. In the absence of any special training, his most efficient skill
might be the ability to walk from village to village and physically deliver
bed nets, and he might make this a long-term occupation.

I'm confident Trigg would do any of these things. But right now, his most
efficient skill happens to be his aptitude at writing high frequency trading
algorithms. He uses that skill to bankroll efforts to fight preventable
illnesses around the world. He has chosen to spend the majority of his hours
doing so, and relatively few on satisfying his own needs. It's an advanced
level of volunteerism, and anyone else who follows in his footsteps has my
admiration.

------
waster
Reading about Jason Trigg reminds me of Carlo Lorenzo Garcia of Living
Philanthropic (<http://livingphilanthropic.tumblr.com>), who spent a year
giving to a charity a day. He didn't have much to give, but he blogged about
it and had quite an impact, inspiring others to give as well.

The way I see it, Brooks is an op-ed writer, and it's his job to come op with
something to write. Criticizing something that most people would view as
inherently good is a sure way to gain a lot of attention for your op-ed piece.
Maybe he truly feels that way (negatively) about Trigg's actions; but IMHO it
doesn't matter; he's a writer looking for an audience, and either way, he got
it.

------
lesinski
Does anyone know if there's science to back this up?

 _The brain is a malleable organ. Every time you do an activity, or have a
thought, you are changing a piece of yourself into something slightly
different than it was before. Every hour you spend with others, you become
more like the people around you. Gradually, you become a different person...
You will become more hedge fund, less malaria._

I've read studies that show the more you expose yourself to a song or a
person, the more you'll like it/him, even if you started off hating it/him.
But that doesn't mean you become more _like_ the person.

------
noloqy
Perhaps a comment on the original article rather than this response article,
but by "beating Wall Street", you're not just beating Goldman et al., you're
(for a large part) beating the pension funds that hard working citizens put
their savings in. Sure, you have the right to play Robin Hood, but the author
has to realize it is not just mindless corporations he is taking money from.

~~~
arghbleargh
This is a point worth considering that the other comments seem to ignore. If
you embezzle a million dollars from a charity and give half of it back, that
doesn't make you an altruistic person. (Saying that just as a thought
experiment, not saying that's what's hapenning here.)

For the justification to hold up, you probably need to believe some mixture of
the following:

\- high frequency trading adds value to society comparable to the amount of
money you make

\- more money should be transferred from the first world to the third world
than people are currently voluntarily willing to give

------
pnathan
This is really quite offensive.

One thing that I hear from foreign aid groups is requests for money. And some
hardworking person is giving most of his money to them. Well and good. I hope
he can choose groups that are corruption-resistant.

And this cad from the NYT claims its better to go be another aid worker and
beg money than to execute what you know and leverage the power of money gained
from that?

Absolute claptrap.

~~~
md224
Here's a thought experiment: Think of a large organization that you find
rather immoral or generally harmful. It could be a corporation, it could be a
government. Now imagine that all the employees of this organization contribute
a sizable portion of their resulting income to charity. Would you feel that
the employees are, overall, acting morally?

~~~
pnathan
I'm not convinced that morality can be added/substracted ala forum karma, so I
question the presupposition of your question. :-/

I would say, however, that a company which damaged other people's livelihoods,
but on their own time worked to ensure that the displaced people had other
ways to live was acting reasonable right.

\---

Many things we do fall in a moral grey area. Suppose my genetic computation
software that I've released as open source is used to optimize logistics for
(say), a concentration camp in North Korea. Boy, that makes me feel a bit ill.
On the other hand, I did not exercise the choice to choose to specifically
give away my software to that particular group. But it could, theoretically,
be used for that: it's a github download away. Here's another one; suppose the
company I work for sells devices (let's say these devices are internet
routers) to Foxconn, who uses it in a plant where they work people for
excruciatingly long hours. Well.... Is selling routers harmful? No. But is
supporting the exploiting of the working people harmful? Yes. Can I personally
refuse to work on the router? Sure. But that's a generic tech. Can I
personally refuse to work on the sale? I think that's within reason, but as an
engineer, I doubt I'll have that luxury.

In other words, for a lot of mundane businesses, I think it's very grey.

------
tankbot
Ugh, the horse he seems to be beating: "Don't try to do something good,
because it might not work!"

Depressing read.

------
nostromo
Best part:

> A human life is not just a means to produce outcomes, it is an end in
> itself.

~~~
lolcraft
Not really. It's just goofy old Kant. Not the goofiest thing he wrote -- that
would be his three principles of morality, or his rampant misogyny -- but
still, pretty silly.

If a human life is an end in itself, then euthanasia is the worst crime.
Killing in self-defense, something to be condemned. Contraception becomes
immoral. Sex for pleasure, and homosexuality, sinful. Bear in mind that those
are not moral dictates I just pulled out of my ass, for maximum effect.
_That's what Kant believed in._

Well, to be fair, the Chinaman (I prefer the term Confucianist) of Königsberg
also believed in the death penalty. So much for human life as the end of
morality.

------
thoughtcriminal
As I read the article the saying "lift where you stand" came to mind.

Some people believe that in order to change the world they need to be a
genius... to find peace they need to become a Buddhist monk... to save a
starving African child they should live in to Africa to do it. I think that we
can do all those things as we are now. We can affect positive change when we
"lift where we stand." That's what that kid is doing.

------
abraininavat
This is a thinly veiled censure of the kid for being too weak. In Brooks'
opinion it is apparently a weakness to sacrifice one's self for the sake of
others.

A huge portion of the US would agree, which seems extremely confusing to me
given that this is tends to be the same segment that is highly Christian.
Their Bible must have been different from the one I had growing up.

