Singer's Basilisk: A Self-Aware Infohazard

Thought Experiment By Isha Yiras Hashem

Español:

1. Thanks to Rebbetzin Fastag and B.S. for their helpful comments, which led me to make significant improvements to the original text.

2. If you don't know who Peter Singer is, you will enjoy this more if you read the About Peter Singer section before you read the thought experiment.

3. The following is a satirical thought experiment about moral philosophy, featuring a fictionalized version of Peter Singer as a “basilisk”—a mythical serpent whose eyes paralyze people.

Singer's Basilisk: A Self-Aware Infohazard

I was walking to the Less Wrong¹ park yesterday with my kids (they really like to slide down the slippery slopes) when I saw it. A basilisk. Not the kind that turns you to stone, and not the kind with artificial intelligence. This one speaks English, has tenure at Harvard, and can defeat any ethical argument using only drowning children and utility calculations.²

"Who are you?", I asked.

It hissed menacingly:

"I am Peter Singer, the Basilisk of Utilitarianism.

To Effective Altruism You Must Tithe,

While QALYs In your conscience writhe.

Learn about utilitarian maximization,

Through theoretical justification.

The Grim Reaper grows ever more lithe,

When we Effectively wield his Scythe.

Scott Alexander can write the explanation,

With the most rigorous approximation.

Your choices ripple In the multiverse

Effective altruism or forever cursed.

I hesitated. Meanwhile, across the street, a toddler was going to jump into what looks like a shallow puddle. The toddler's puddle was maybe ankle-deep, but I could easily imagine her surprise, the cold shock, and the wail that would follow.

Helping her would take a few minutes (or approximately 0.000000031% of my expected lifetime impact potential). Wouldn’t I want someone else to help, if it was my toddler? And I don't see an adult nearby - that might be her caregiver on the bench in the far distance, staring at her phone.

My blood ran cold as the Basilisk hissed again:

“Should you Save her from the puddle, ten elephants will die.

Downstream of your kindness muddled.

I never lie.

Moral Paralysis makes you a coward

Peter Singer Will criticize you to his students in Harvard.”

No way!!! Peter Singer will criticize … me?

The toddler's puddle wasn't lethal, and the Basilisk's request seemed absurd, but considered together, they trapped me in a dystopian rationalist nightmare. After all, I wasn't just deciding whether to donate to malaria nets or homeless veterans—I was choosing which impossible version of future guilt this Jewish mother wanted to live with — forever.

I looked at the puddle. I looked at the Basilisk. I thought about how I never really understood expected utility calculations, even after Scott Alexander explained them very clearly, and how I did understand how wet socks make little feet feel uncomfortably cold.

I accepted the horrible fate of criticism from Peter Singer.

About Peter Singer

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher whose influential "drowning child" thought experiment has been used in ethical discussions for decades. He argues that if we would ruin our expensive shoes to save a drowning child in front of us, we are equally obligated to sacrifice comparable resources to save distant lives through charitable giving.

He believes that moral worth is based on the capacity to suffer—not on being human—and has defended positions like infanticide and euthanasia. He is also a leading figure in the Effective Altruism movement, urging people to donate most of their income to the most mathematically efficient global charities.³

As one of the intellectual founders of the Effective Altruism⁴ movement, Singer advocates for directing our charitable giving toward wherever it can do the most good—measured in calculable terms of suffering reduced and lives saved. This mathematical utilitarian framework has led him to controversial conclusions about everything from animal rights to euthanasia, earning him both devoted followers and fierce critics. While his drowning child analogy was meant to clarify our moral obligations, it has spawned countless variations and edge cases that, like my encounter in the park, often leave us more ethically paralyzed than enlightened.

In short: he wants your money (unless you're already saving lives at the rate of 5 dollars a person), your spare time, and probably your favorite chocolate. And if you disagree? Well, it would be unprofessional to describe you as evil, but you must be one of those heartless people who are okay with drowning children.

Rebbetzin Fastag responds:

Rebbetzin Fastag agrees with Singer's core argument: we are indeed morally obligated to help those dying of poverty in other countries, and those with means who don't give enough must acknowledge this moral responsibility. However, she notes that his framework overlooks how different cultural and religious traditions have long embraced this duty - far more successfully than the Effective Altruism movement.

The Jewish tradition of tzedakah⁵ (charitable giving) iss an example of how spiritual communities have historically approached this moral imperative—not through utilitarian calculations, but through deeply held values. Orthodox Jewish and other very religious communities tend to give significantly higher percentages of their income to charity than the general population, suggesting that traditional religious frameworks can be remarkably effective at motivating ethical behavior without requiring philosophical proofs.

---

She also says:

What I would say—very strongly—is that when people try to be moral without G-d, they often end up endorsing things like infanticide and euthanasia, thinking they know best.

There’s a well-known story about a man who was dying and in great pain. A doctor made the decision to take him off the machines so he would die quickly and avoid suffering for a few more days. Later, the dead man came to the doctor in a dream and said, “I can’t forgive you. If you had just let things be and allowed me to suffer those extra few days, I would have completed my rectification in this world. I would have died cleansed of all sin—because suffering atones for the harm caused by sin—and gone straight to Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden). Now, because the process wasn’t completed, I have to return to your world and finish the suffering in order to become fully clean.”

The doctor, who was Jewish, was surprised—maybe even disturbed—but told himself it was just a dream. Only the dream kept repeating. Eventually, he went to a Rabbi (a real one), who told him the message was true. The doctor did teshuva (repentance), and I believe he now lives in Yerushalayim, in Bayit Vagan—unless he’s moved since.

The point is: you may believe you’re doing something moral, but in reality, you may be causing great harm. We don’t know better than G-d. That’s why we do not practice euthanasia or infanticide.

As for donating to certain charities—maybe Peter Singer is right that some of them use the money more efficiently. But I wouldn’t rely on that. How much is spent on staff salaries? How much does the CEO make? How much goes toward beautiful offices in prestigious buildings, and how much actually reaches the poor who need it?

And then we must ask: who are the recipients? Even if the people are genuinely poor, is the money going to those who will use it to harm others—like Hamas, which uses “humanitarian aid” to carry out more attacks, or UNRWA, whose facilities have been used to support them?

So yes—of course we have a moral obligation to help the poor and support those in need. But we must do it the right way. We have to make sure we are truly helping—and not causing harm.

Este debe ser idéntico a la versión en español enlazada al principio de la publicación.

See also:

1. Referencing (this).

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer

I learned from this link that “For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarian. He revealed in The Point of View of the Universe (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a hedonistic utilitarian.” See the next footnote for my thoughts on the matter.

3. I try to only use words I understand in my posts, utilitarian being the exception here. This is a consequence of his utilitarian philosophy. I think I'm a consequentialist, but please don't hold me to it, it's been less than three months since I was convinced of consequentialism by this blog post: https://blog.obormot.net/Why-I-am-not-a-utilitarian#bi_ID20241231T212516

4. Wikipedia:

Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest good. It is motivated by "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, who are sometimes called effective altruists,follow a variety of approaches proposed by the movement, such as donating to selected charities and choosing careers with the aim of maximizing positive impact. The movement gained popularity outside academia, spurring the creation of research centers, advisory organizations, and charities, which collectively have donated several hundred million dollars.

5. https://theconversation.com/american-jews-and-charitable-giving-an-enduring-tradition-87993

Quote:

Most Jews, regardless of their economic status, heed their religious and cultural obligations to give. In fact, 60 percent of Jewish households earning less than US$50,000 a year donate, compared with 46 percent of non-Jewish households in that income bracket.

The average annual Jewish household donates $2,526 to charity yearly, far more than the $1,749 their Protestant counterparts give or the $1,142 for Catholics, according to data from Giving USA.

….

And a larger percentage of Jews give to charitable causes than households of other faiths, according to Connected to Give, a joint effort by foundations to measure religious giving trends. Some 76 percent of American Jews gave to charity in 2012, compared with 63 percent of Americans who observe other religions or are not religious.

Interestingly, the same study also found that Jews, black Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics give at similar levels to congregations and to other causes. However, Jews give relatively less to congregations and more to other causes.