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Peter Singer: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Peter Singer, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• If you'd ruin your shoes to save a drowning child, Singer says distance is no excuse

  Philosopher Peter Singer asked readers to imagine walking past a shallow pond and seeing a child drowning: almost everyone agrees you must wade in and save them, even if it ruins e…

  — Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality

• Peter Singer argued a rat's suffering counts too, even if it isn't human

  In 1975, Peter Singer coined the term "speciesism" to describe treating an interest differently purely because of what species holds it. His argument was simple and unsettling: if …

  — Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

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