THE VIDEO SHELF · ethics of giving
Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil
Philosopher Jeffrey Kaplan summarizes Peter Singer's 1972 essay 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality', arguing that failing to give to save lives is morally comparable to letting a child drown. It is a short lecture on the argument's structure.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as the best short exposition of Singer's argument for a duty to give.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Jeffrey Kaplan
- Topic
- ethics of giving
- Format
- lecture
- Level
- intro
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2023–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
> If I gave $500 to kids cancer research every year for 5 years, and then I don't give this year, do I have blood on my hands every time a kid dies of cancer from now on? And if you didn't ever donate, you …
nextaccountic on Hacker News · 2026-07
In Grok Build Is OSS> I don't see why you should feel guilt. You should feel guilty because you can do something about other people's suffering, instead of being a greedy hoarder who has far more than he could possibly use in multiple lifetimes while other people starve and …
guerrilla on Hacker News · 2025-03
In Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.