EA - The Lives We Can Save by Omnizoid

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Lives We Can Save, published by Omnizoid on September 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I work as a Resident Assistant at my college. Last year, only a few weeks into me starting, I was called at night to come help with a drunk student. I didn't actually help very much, and probably didn't have to be there. I didn't even have to write up the report at the end. At one point I went outside to let medical services into the building, but mostly I just stood in a hallway.The person in question was so drunk they couldn't move. They had puked in the bathroom and were lying in the hallway crying. They could barely talk. When Campus Safety arrived they kneeled down next to this person and helped them drink water, while asking the normal slew of questions about the person's evening.They asked this person, whose name I can't even remember, why they had been drinking so much. They said, in between hiccups and sobs, "friend doesn't want to be friend anymore."How do you describe that feeling? I don't think transcription can convey the misery and the drunkenness and the awful situation that had led to this awful situation. Someone drank so much that they could barely move, was lying curled in a hallway where all the other residents could and were watching, and was only able to muster out "friend doesn't want to be friend anymore" as they cried.Should I only care because I happened to be standing in that hallway on a late September evening? Had I remained in my room, laughing with my friends, would this person's struggle have been worth nothing?Max Alexander (this whole post is very worth reading)!It's sometimes hard to be motivated to help the world. The trip you forego, the fun you could have had with a friend, the nice things you could have bought are instead sent straight into the coffers of some charity that you've read about. It can feel sort of alienating when you think just of the number of people you have saved. Instead of thinking of numbers, think of stories. The people who make up the numbers - who make up the hundreds of thousands of lives saved by effective charities - are real, flesh-and-blood people, who matter just as much as you and I. We may not look into the gaunt faces of those who would have otherwise starved to death, we may not see their suffering with our eyes, but we know it is real. People are dying in ways that we can prevent. GiveWell top charities can save lives for only a few thousand dollars.It's hard to get your mind around that. I have a friend who has raised over 50,000 dollars for effective charities. 10 lives. 10 people. 10 people, many of them children, who will be able to live out a full life, rather than being snuffed out at a young age by a horrible painful disease. They will not have to lie in bed, with a fever of 105, slowly dying of malaria when they are five. They will have the chance to grow up.Who are these people? I do not know. But I can imagine their stories. I can imagine their stories because I can hear the stories of other people like this, people who are about to die. For example, on this Reddit thread, you can find the stories of lots of people who are about to die. Stories like these:Stage IV colon cancer here. Age 35. I'm a single mum to a 1-year-old and there is a 94% chance I'll be dead in 4 years. But there is still a wee bit of hope, so I try to hold onto that (hard to do most days). My days are filled with spending time with my baby and hoping that I live long enough that she'll remember me. She's pretty awesome and makes me laugh every day, so there is a lot of happiness in this life of mine.Reading these stories causes me to tear up. I think a lot of people have a similar response. They're so tragic - entire lives being snuffed out. The line "My days are filled with spending time with my baby and ho...