Effective altruism
reliable, independent, third-party sources. (September 2023) ) |
Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century
Effective altruists aim to emphasize impartiality and the global
The movement developed during the 2000s, and the name effective altruism was coined in 2011. Philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. What began as a set of evaluation techniques advocated by a diffuse coalition evolved into an identity.[5] With approximately 7,000 people active in the effective altruism community and strong ties to the elite schools in the United States and Britain, effective altruism has become associated with Silicon Valley and the technology industry, forming a tight subculture.[6]
The movement received mainstream attention and criticism with the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX as founder Sam Bankman-Fried was a major funder of effective altruism causes prior to late 2022. Some in the San Francisco Bay Area criticized what they described as a culture of sexual exploitation.
History
Beginning in the latter half of the 2000s, several communities centered around altruist, rationalist, and futurological concerns started to converge, such as:[7][8]
- The evidence-based charity community centered around GiveWell,[9] including Open Philanthropy, which originally came out of GiveWell Labs but then became independent.[10][11]
- The community around pledging and career selection for effective giving, centered around the : 16–19
- The
In 2011, Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours decided to incorporate into an
Notable philanthropists
An estimated $416 million was donated to effective charities identified by the movement in 2019,[17] representing a 37% annual growth rate since 2015.[18] Two of the largest donors in the effective altruism community, Dustin Moskovitz, who had become wealthy through co-founding Facebook, and his wife Cari Tuna, hope to donate most of their net worth of over $11 billion for effective altruist causes through the private foundation Good Ventures.[10] Others influenced by effective altruism include Sam Bankman-Fried,[19] as well as professional poker players Dan Smith[20] and Liv Boeree.[20] Jaan Tallinn, the Estonian billionaire founder of Skype, is known for donating to some effective altruist causes.[21] Sam Bankman-Fried launched a philanthropic organization called the FTX Foundation in February 2021,[22] and it made contributions to a number of effective altruist organizations, but it was shut down in November 2022 when FTX collapsed.[23]
Notable publications and media
A number of books and articles related to effective altruism have been published that have codified, criticized, and brought more attention to the movement. In 2015, philosopher
In 2018, American news website Vox launched its Future Perfect section, led by journalist Dylan Matthews, which publishes articles and podcasts on "finding the best ways to do good".[28][29]
In 2019, Oxford University Press published the volume Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, edited by Hilary Greaves and Theron Pummer.[30]
More recent books have emphasized concerns for future generations. In 2020, the Australian moral philosopher Toby Ord published The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity,[31] while MacAskill published What We Owe the Future in 2022.[32]
In 2023, Oxford University Press published the volume The Good it Promises, The Harm it Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism, edited by Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen.[33]
Philosophy
Effective altruists focus on the many philosophical questions related to the most effective ways to benefit others.[34][35] Such philosophical questions shift the starting point of reasoning from "what to do" to "why" and "how".[36] There is little consensus on the answers, and there are differences between effective altruists who believe that they should do the most good they possibly can with all of their resources[37] and those who only try do the most good they can within a defined budget.[35]: 15
According to MacAskill, the view of effective altruism as doing the most good one can within a defined budget can be compatible with a wide variety of views on
Other than Peter Singer and William MacAskill, philosophers associated with effective altruism include
The Centre for Effective Altruism lists the following four principles that unite effective altruism: prioritization, impartial altruism, open truthseeking, and a collaborative spirit.[42] To support people's ability to act altruistically on the basis of impartial reasoning, the effective altruism movement promotes values and actions such as a collaborative spirit, honesty, transparency, and publicly pledging to donate a certain percentage of income or other resources.[1]: 2
Impartiality
Effective altruism aims to emphasize impartial reasoning in that everyone's well-being counts equally.[43] Singer, in his 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality",[16] wrote:
It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards away from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away ... The moral point of view requires us to look beyond the interests of our own society.[44]: 231–232
Impartiality combined with seeking to do the most good leads to prioritizing benefits to those who are in a worse state, because anyone who happens to be worse off will benefit more from an improvement in their state, all other things being equal.[34][42]
Scope of moral consideration
One issue related to moral impartiality is the question of which beings are deserving of moral consideration. Some effective altruists consider the well-being of non-human animals in addition to humans, and advocate for animal welfare issues such as ending
Criticism of impartiality
The
William Schambra has criticized the impartial logic of effective altruism, arguing that benevolence arising from reciprocity and face-to-face interactions is stronger and more prevalent than charity based on impartial, detached altruism.[54] Such community-based charitable giving, he wrote, is foundational to civil society and, in turn, democracy.[54] Larissa MacFarquhar said that people have diverse moral emotions, and she suggested that some effective altruists are not unemotional and detached but feel as much empathy for distant strangers as for people nearby.[55] Ross Douthat of The New York Times criticized the movement's "'telescopic philanthropy' aimed at distant populations" and envisioned "effective altruists sitting around in a San Francisco skyscraper calculating how to relieve suffering halfway around the world while the city decays beneath them", while he also praised the movement for providing "useful rebukes to the solipsism and anti-human pessimism that haunts the developed world today".[56]
Cause prioritization
A key component of effective altruism is "cause prioritization". Cause prioritization is based on the principle of cause neutrality, the idea that resources should be distributed to causes based on what will do the most good, irrespective of the identity of the beneficiary and the way in which they are helped.[34] By contrast, many non-profits emphasize effectiveness and evidence with respect to a single cause such as education or climate change.[54]
One tool that EA-based organizations may use to prioritize cause areas is the importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework. Importance is the amount of value that would be created if a problem were solved, tractability is the fraction of a problem that would be solved if additional resources were devoted to it, and neglectedness is the quantity of resources already committed to a cause.[5]
The information required for cause prioritization may involve data analysis, comparing possible outcomes with what would have happened under other conditions (counterfactual reasoning), and identifying uncertainty.[34][57] The difficulty of these tasks has led to the creation of organizations that specialize in researching the relative prioritization of causes.[34]
Criticism of cause prioritization
This practice of "weighing causes and beneficiaries against one another" was criticized by Ken Berger and Robert Penna of Charity Navigator for being "moralistic, in the worst sense of the word" and "elitist".[58] William MacAskill responded to Berger and Penna, defending the rationale for comparing one beneficiary's interests against another and concluding that such comparison is difficult and sometimes impossible but often necessary.[59] MacAskill argued that the more pernicious form of elitism was that of donating to art galleries (and like institutions) instead of charity.[59] Ian David Moss suggested that the criticism of cause prioritization could be resolved by what he called "domain-specific effective altruism", which would encourage "that principles of effective altruism be followed within an area of philanthropic focus, such as a specific cause or geography" and could resolve the conflict between local and global perspectives for some donors.[60]
Cost-effectiveness
Some charities are considered to be far more effective than others, as charities may spend different amounts of money to achieve the same goal, and some charities may not achieve the goal at all.[61] Effective altruists seek to identify interventions that are highly cost-effective in expectation. Many interventions have uncertain benefits, and the expected value of one intervention can be higher than that of another if its benefits are larger, even if it has a smaller chance of succeeding.[27] One metric effective altruists use to choose between health interventions is the estimated number of quality-adjusted life years (QALY) added per dollar.[5]
Some effective altruist organizations prefer randomized controlled trials as a primary form of evidence,[27][62] as they are commonly considered the highest level of evidence in healthcare research.[63] Others have argued that requiring this stringent level of evidence unnecessarily narrows the focus to issues where the evidence can be developed.[64] Kelsey Piper argues that uncertainty is not a good reason for effective altruists to avoid acting on their best understanding of the world, because most interventions have mixed evidence regarding their effectiveness.[65]
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry and others have warned about the "measurement problem",[64][66] with issues such as medical research or government reform worked on "one grinding step at a time", and results being hard to measure with controlled experiments. Gobry also argues that such interventions risk being undervalued by the effective altruism movement.[66] As effective altruism emphasizes a data-centric approach, critics say principles which do not lend themselves to quantification—justice, fairness, equality—get left in the sidelines.[5][27]
Counterfactual reasoning
Counterfactual reasoning involves considering the possible outcomes of alternative choices. It has been employed by effective altruists in a number of contexts, including career choice. Many people assume that the best way to help others is through direct methods, such as working for a charity or providing social services.[67] However, since there is a high supply of candidates for such positions, it makes sense to compare the amount of good one candidate does to how much good the next-best candidate would do. According to this reasoning, the marginal impact of a career is likely to be smaller than the gross impact.[68]
Differences from utilitarianism
Although EA aims for
MacAskill has argued that one shouldn't be absolutely certain about which ethical view is correct, and that "when we are morally uncertain, we should act in a way that serves as a best compromise between different moral views".
Cause priorities
The principles and goals of effective altruism are wide enough to support furthering any cause that allows people to do the most good, while taking into account cause neutrality.[36] Many people in the effective altruism movement have prioritized global health and development, animal welfare, and mitigating risks that threaten the future of humanity.[62][10]
Global health and development
The alleviation of
Animal welfare
Improving animal welfare has been a focus of many effective altruists.[76][77][78] Singer and Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) have argued that effective altruists should prioritize changes to factory farming over pet welfare.[24] 60 billion land animals are slaughtered and between 1 and 2.7 trillion individual fish are killed each year for human consumption.[79][80][81]
A number of non-profit organizations have been established that adopt an effective altruist approach toward animal welfare. ACE evaluates animal charities based on their cost-effectiveness and transparency, particularly those tackling factory farming.[13]: 139 [82][83] Other animal initiatives affiliated with effective altruism include Animal Ethics' and Wild Animal Initiative's work on wild animal suffering,[84][85] addressing farm animal suffering with cultured meat,[86][87] and expanding the circle of concern so that people care more about all kinds of animals.[88][89][90] Faunalytics focuses on animal welfare research.[91] The Sentience Institute is a think tank founded to expand the moral circle to other species.[92]
Long-term future and global catastrophic risks
The ethical stance of longtermism, emphasizing the importance of positively influencing the long-term future, developed closely in relation to effective altruism.[93][94] Longtermists have proposed that the welfare of future individuals is just as important as the welfare of currently existing individuals, as the prioritization of the former is coextensive with the wellness of the latter.[95] Toby Ord has stated that "the people of the future may be even more powerless to protect themselves from the risks we impose than the dispossessed of our own time".[96]: 8
Organizations that work actively on research and advocacy for improving the long-term future, and have connections with the effective altruism community, are the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Future of Life Institute.[97] In addition, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute is focused on the more narrow mission of managing advanced artificial intelligence.[98][99]
Approaches
Effective altruists pursue different approaches to doing good, such as donating to effective charitable organizations, using their career to make more money for donations or directly contributing their labor, and starting new non-profit or for-profit ventures.
Donation
Financial donation
Many effective altruists engage in charitable donation. Some believe it is a moral duty to alleviate suffering through donations if other possible uses of those funds do not offer comparable benefits to oneself.[44] Some lead a frugal lifestyle in order to donate more.[100]
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an organization whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their future income to the causes that they believe are the most effective. GWWC was founded in 2009 by Toby Ord, who lives on £18,000 ($27,000) per year and donates the balance of his income.[101] In 2020, Ord said that people had donated over $100 million to date through the GWWC pledge.[102]
Founders Pledge is a similar initiative, founded out of the non-profit Founders Forum for Good, whereby entrepreneurs make a legally binding commitment to donate a percentage of their personal proceeds to charity in the event that they sell their business.[103][104] As of April 2023, nearly 1,800 entrepreneurs had pledged over $9 billion and nearly $900 million had been donated.[105]
Organ donation
EA has been used to argue that humans should donate organs, whilst alive or after death, and some effective altruists do.[106]
Career choice
Effective altruists often consider using their career to do good,[107] both by direct service and indirectly through their consumption, investment, and donation decisions.[108] 80,000 Hours is an organization that conducts research and gives advice on which careers have the largest positive impact.[109][110]
Earning to give
Founding effective organizations
Some effective altruists start non-profit or for-profit organizations to implement
Incremental versus systemic change
While much of the initial focus of effective altruism was on direct strategies such as health interventions and cash transfers, more
Philosophers such as Susan Dwyer, Joshua Stein, and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò have criticized effective altruism for furthering the disproportionate influence of wealthy individuals in domains that should be the responsibility of democratic governments and organizations.[123][124]
Arguments have been made that movements focused on systemic or institutional change are compatible with effective altruism.[125][126][127] Philosopher Elizabeth Ashford posits that people are obligated to both donate to effective aid charities and to reform the structures that are responsible for poverty.[128] Open Philanthropy has given grants for progressive advocacy work in areas such as criminal justice,[10][129] economic stabilization,[10] and housing reform,[130][131] despite pegging the success of political reform as being "highly uncertain".[10]
Psychological research
Researchers in psychology and related fields have identified psychological barriers to effective altruism that can cause people to choose less effective options when they engage in altruistic activities such as charitable giving.[132][133][134][135]
Controversies
Sam Bankman-Fried
After the collapse of FTX in late 2022, the movement underwent additional public scrutiny.
Bankman-Fried's relationship with effective altruism has been called into question as a public relations strategy,[139][6] while the movement's embrace of him proved damaging to its reputation.[136][140][141][142] Some journalists asked whether the effective altruist movement was "complicit" in FTX's collapse, because it was convenient for leaders to overlook specific warnings about Bankman-Fried's behavior or questionable ethics at the trading firm Alameda.[143][144]
However, several leaders of the effective altruism movement, including
Misogyny
Critiques arose not only in relation to Bankman-Fried's role and his close association with William MacAskill, but also concerning issues of exclusion and
Other criticism of the movement
While originally the movement leaders were associated with frugal lifestyles, the arrival of big donors, including Bankman-Fried, led to more spending and opulence, which seemed incongruous to the movement's espoused values.[143] In 2022, Effective Ventures Foundation purchased the estate of Wytham Abbey for the purpose of running workshops.[5]
Other prominent people
Businessman Elon Musk spoke at an effective altruism conference in 2015.[136] He described MacAskill's 2022 book What We Owe the Future as "a close match for my philosophy", but has not officially joined the movement.[136] An article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy argued that the record of Musk's substantive alignment with effective altruism was "choppy",[151] and Bloomberg News noted that his 2021 charitable contributions showed "few obvious signs that effective altruism... impacted Musk’s giving."[152]
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has publicly stated he would like to bring the ideas of effective altruism to a broader audience.[5]
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has called effective altruism an "incredibly flawed movement" that shows "very weird emergent behavior".[153][further explanation needed] Effective altruist concerns about AI risk were present among the OpenAI board members who fired Altman in November 2023;[153][154] he has been reinstated as CEO and the Board membership has changed.[155][156]
See also
- Charity (practice) – Voluntary giving of help to those in need
- Charity evaluator– Analysis of effectiveness of non-profit organization projects
- Evidence-based policy – Approach to decision-making and policy based on empirical data and analysis
- Impact investing – Investing in enterprises aiming at creating social/environmental impact alongside profit
- Noblesse oblige – Concept that nobility confers social responsibilities
- Patronage – Support that one organization or individual bestows to another
- Prosocial behavior – Intent to benefit others
- Scientific Charity Movement – Defunct anti-poverty movement
- Speciesism – Discrimination against non-human creatures solely on the basis of their species membership
- Suffering risks – Risks of astronomical suffering
- The Giving Pledge – Charitable organization
- "The Gospel of Wealth" – Article written by Andrew Carnegie
Notes and references
- ^ from the original on August 7, 2019. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ The quoted definition is endorsed by a number of organizations at: "CEA's Guiding Principles". Centre For Effective Altruism. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
- ^ The term effective altruists is used to refer to people who embrace effective altruism in many published sources such as Oliver (2014), Singer (2015), and MacAskill (2017), though as Pummer & MacAskill (2020) noted, calling people "effective altruists" minimally means that they are engaged in the project of "using evidence and reason to try to find out how to do the most good, and on this basis trying to do the most good", not that they are perfectly effective nor even that they necessarily participate in the effective altruism community.
- OCLC 932001639.
- ^ ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
- ^ a b c d Tiku, Nitasha (November 17, 2022). "The do-gooder movement that shielded Sam Bankman-Fried from scrutiny". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
- ^ a b c d MacAskill, William (March 10, 2014). "The history of the term 'effective altruism'". Effective Altruism Forum. Archived from the original on February 20, 2020. Retrieved February 2, 2020.
- ^ a b Anthis, Jayce Reese (May 15, 2022). "Some Early History of Effective Altruism". Jacy Reese Anthis. Retrieved June 3, 2022.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 3, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f Matthews, Dylan (April 24, 2015). "You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do? Inside the Open Philanthropy Project". Vox. Archived from the original on August 24, 2017. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
- ^ Cha, Ariana Eunjung (December 26, 2014). "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
- ^ MacAskill, William (May 20, 2013). "Getting inspired by cost-effective giving". The Life You Can Save. Retrieved June 3, 2022.
- ^ OCLC 890614537.
- ISBN 978-1-4746-0877-0.
- ^ Ram, Aliya (December 4, 2015). "The power and efficacy of effective altruism". Financial Times. Archived from the original on August 6, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
- ^ a b On the influence of Singer's essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" see, for example: Snow 2015, Singer 2015, pp. 13–20, and Lichtenberg, Judith (November 30, 2015). "Peter Singer's extremely altruistic heirs: Forty years after it was written, 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' has spawned a radical new movement". The New Republic. Singer's arguments for impartiality were later repeated in other books by him (such as Singer 2009, Singer 2015).
- ^ Todd, Benjamin (August 9, 2020). "How are resources in effective altruism allocated across issues?". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
- ^ Todd, Benjamin (July 28, 2021). "Is effective altruism growing? An update on the stock of funding vs. people". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
- ^ Zillman, Claire (July 29, 2021). "Sam Bankman-Fried and the conscience of a crypto billionaire". Fortune. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ The Washington Post Magazine. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ a b Matthews, Dylan (August 10, 2015). "I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried". Vox. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
- ^ FTX (February 8, 2021). "The FTX Foundation for Charitable Giving". ftx.medium.com. Archived from the original on February 8, 2021. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Howcroft, Elizabeth (April 6, 2023). "Collapse of FTX deprives academics of grants, stokes fears of forced repayment". Reuters. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b Kristof, Nicholas (April 4, 2015). "The Trader Who Donates Half His Pay". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 9, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2015.
- from the original on June 22, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2017.
- from the original on December 21, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2017.
- ^ a b c d e Thompson, Derek (June 15, 2015). "The Greatest Good". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on August 20, 2019. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
- Nieman Journalism Lab. Archivedfrom the original on February 1, 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (October 15, 2018). "Future Perfect, explained". Vox. Archived from the original on December 25, 2019. Retrieved December 8, 2018. Some topics that the Future Perfect series has covered include:
- Effective philanthropy: Matthews, Dylan (December 17, 2019). "These are the charities where your money will do the most good". Vox. Archived from the original on August 29, 2019. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
- High-impact career choice: Matthews, Dylan (November 28, 2018a). "How to pick a career that counts". Vox. Archived from the original on December 24, 2019. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
- Poverty reduction through women's empowerment: Illing, Sean (March 8, 2019). "Want less poverty in the world? Empower women". Vox. Archived from the original on December 9, 2018. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
- Improving children's learning efficiently through improving environmental health: Yglesias, Matthew (January 8, 2020). "Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits: $1,000 can raise a class's test scores by as much as cutting class size by a third". Vox. Archived from the original on February 1, 2020. Retrieved February 1, 2020.
- Animal welfare improvements: Piper, Kelsey (November 27, 2018a). "Where will your donations do the most for animals?". Vox. Archived from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
- Ways to reduce global catastrophic risks: Piper, Kelsey (November 19, 2018). "How technological progress is making it likelier than ever that humans will destroy ourselves". Vox. Archived from the original on December 9, 2018. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-19-884136-4.
- ^ Pummer, Theron (August 2, 2020). "The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
- ^ OCLC 1314633519.
- OCLC 1350838764.
- ^ S2CID 241220220.
- ^ OCLC 1101772304.
- ^ a b Crouch, Will (May 30, 2013). "What is effective altruism?". Practical Ethics Blog. University of Oxford. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
- ^ Singer (2015) expressed a clearly normative view: "Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can. Obeying the usual rules about not stealing, cheating, hurting, and killing is not enough, or at least not enough for those of us who have the great good fortune to live in material comfort, who can feed, house, and clothe ourselves and our families and still have money or time to spare. Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can." (p. vii)
- ^ Bajekal, Naina (August 22–29, 2022). "How to do the most good: a growing movement argues we should care about people thousands of miles away—and millions of years in the future". Time. Vol. 200, no. 7–8. pp. 69–75.
- ^ "Hilary Greaves". Faculty of Philosophy. University of Oxford. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
- ^ Wiblin, Robert; Harris, Keiran (July 26, 2018). "Prof Yew-Kwang Ng on ethics and how to create a much happier world". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
- ^ a b "What is effective altruism?". Centre for Effective Altruism. Archived from the original on November 29, 2023. Retrieved November 30, 2023. These four principles were first called "values" and were added to the cited web page sometime between July 27, 2022 and August 2, 2022.
- ^ Singer 2015, pp. 85–95; MacAskill 2019a, pp. 17–19; Pummer & MacAskill 2020.
- ^ OCLC 907446001.
- from the original on August 7, 2019. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- S2CID 158634567.
- OCLC 1101772304.
- ^ Zwolinski, Matt (August 24, 2015). "Why Wouldn't You Save a Drowning Child?". Foundation for Economic Education.
- ^ OCLC 61445790.
- ^ Mclauchlan, Danyl (April 8, 2019). "In search of a way to do good that amounts to more than feeling good". The Spinoff. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
- ^ Effective Altruism: A Better Way to Lead an Ethical Life. Intelligence Squared. November 30, 2015. Event occurs at 21:05. Retrieved January 23, 2022 – via YouTube.
- ^ Jern, Alan (October 13, 2020). "Effective altruism is logical, but too unnatural to catch on". Psyche.co. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
- ^ a b MacAskill 2019a, pp. 15–20, especially section 4.1, "Misconception #1: Effective altruism is just utilitarianism"; Pummer & MacAskill 2020.
- ^ a b c Schambra, William A. (May 22, 2014). "Opinion: The coming showdown between philanthrolocalism and effective altruism". Philanthropy Daily. Archived from the original on February 5, 2020. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
- ^ MacFarquhar, Larissa (July 1, 2015). "Forum Response: Response to Effective Altruism". Boston Review.
- ^ Douthat, Ross (November 18, 2022). "Opinion | The Case for a Less-Effective Altruism". The New York Times. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
- from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
- ^ Berger, Ken; Penna, Robert (November 25, 2013). "The Elitist Philanthropy of So-Called Effective Altruism". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
- ^ a b MacAskill, William (December 3, 2013). "What Charity Navigator Gets Wrong About Effective Altruism". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Archived from the original on December 3, 2021. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
- ^ Moss, Ian David (Spring 2017). "In Defense of Pet Causes". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
- ^ Thompson, Derek (June 15, 2015). "The Most Efficient Way to Save a Life". The Atlantic. Retrieved April 20, 2023.
- ^ from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ISBN 1864960485. Archivedfrom the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
- ^ a b Rubenstein, Jennifer (December 14, 2016). "The Lessons of Effective Altruism". Ethics & International Affairs. Archived from the original on August 27, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
- ^ a b Piper, Kelsey (July 19, 2022). "The return of the "worm wars"". Vox. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
- ^ a b Gobry, Pascal-Emmanuel (March 16, 2015). "Can Effective Altruism really change the world?". The Week. Archived from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
- ^ Rosato, Donna; Wong, Grace (November 2011). "Best jobs for saving the world". CNN. Archived from the original on March 3, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2013.
- ^ Todd, Benjamin. "Which Ethical Careers Make a Difference?: The Replaceability Issue in the Ethics of Career Choice". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Sandbu, Martin (December 29, 2023). "Effective altruism was the favoured creed of Sam Bankman-Fried. Can it survive his fall?". Financial Times.
- ^ Konduri, Vimal. "GiveWell Co-Founder Explains Effective Altruism Frameworks". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on March 13, 2017. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
- ^ Wolfe, Alexandra (November 24, 2011). "Hedge Fund Analytics for Nonprofits". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg LP. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ "Doing good by doing well". The Economist. Archived from the original on December 27, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2017.
- Huffington Post. Archivedfrom the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
- OCLC 232980306.
- ^ Zhang, Linch (March 17, 2017). "How To Do Good: A Conversation With The World's Leading Ethicist". Huffington Post. Archived from the original on March 24, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
- ^ Gunther, Marc (November 26, 2021). "Why the future of animal welfare lies beyond the West". Vox. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ Klein, Ezra (December 6, 2019). "Peter Singer on the lives you can save". Vox. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (April 12, 2021). "The wild frontier of animal welfare". Vox. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- from the original on August 1, 2017. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
- ^ Global Warming Climate Change and Farm Animal Welfare (PDF). Compassion in World Farming. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 27, 2016. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
- ^ Mood, Alison (2010). Worse things happen at sea: the welfare of wild-caught fish (PDF). fishcount.org.uk. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 19, 2017. Retrieved June 14, 2017.
- ^ Piper 2018a.
- ^ Engber, Daniel (August 18, 2016). "How the Chicken Became the Unlikely Focus of the Animal Rights Movement". Slate Magazine. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (April 12, 2021). "The wild frontier of animal welfare". Vox. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
- ^ ""Effective Altruism for Animals" Panel, Animal Studies". New York University Animal Studies Initiative. NYU. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ "How one founder aims to bring researchers and food producers together around cultured meat". TechCrunch. August 23, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ "Is Anyone Right About the Future of Cultivated Meat? Does It Matter?". Green Queen. November 9, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ a b Torrella, Kenny (March 2, 2021). "The next frontier for animal welfare: Fish". Vox. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
- ^ Lombrozo, Tania (November 15, 2016). "Expanding The Circle Of Moral Concern". NPR. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ Samuel, Sigal (April 4, 2019). "Should animals, plants, and robots have the same rights as you?". Vox. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ Piper, Kelsey (October 31, 2018). "Vegan diets are hard to sell. Animal activists might do better focused on corporate decisions, not people's plates". Vox. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
- ^ Sigal, Samuel (April 4, 2019). "Moral circle expansion: should animals, plants, and robots have the same rights as humans?". Vox. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
- ^ MacAskill, William (August 7, 2022). "What is longtermism?". BBC. Retrieved September 15, 2022.
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 15, 2022.
- (PDF) from the original on June 11, 2017. Retrieved June 15, 2017.
- OCLC 1143365836. Archived(PDF) from the original on April 6, 2020. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
- ^ Guan, Melody (April 19, 2015). "The New Social Movement of our Generation: Effective Altruism". Harvard Political Review. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Piper, Kelsey (December 21, 2018). "The case for taking AI seriously as a threat to humanity". Vox. Archived from the original on January 13, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2019.
- ^ Basulto, Dominic (July 7, 2015). "The very best ideas for preventing artificial intelligence from wrecking the planet". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Burton, Paul (October 13, 2015). "Family Gives Away Half Their Income To Help Others". WBZ-TV. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Geoghegan, Tom (December 13, 2010). "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity". BBC News. Archived from the original on May 13, 2013. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (November 30, 2020). "Toby Ord explains his pledge to give 10% of his pay to charity". Vox. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ MacAskill, William (November 26, 2015). "One of the most exciting new effective altruist organisations: An interview with David Goldberg of the Founders Pledge". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on September 21, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Butcher, Mike (June 10, 2015). "UK Tech Founders Take The Founders Pledge To 2%, Committing $28m+ To Good Causes". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
- ^ "Home". Founders Pledge. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
- PMID 29369383.
- ^ Oliver, Huw (October 6, 2014). "'Effective altruists' are a new type of nice person". Vice. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Matthews 2018a.
- ^ "Want To Make An Impact With Your Work? Try Some Advice From 80,000 Hours". TechCrunch. August 4, 2015. Archived from the original on November 9, 2015. Retrieved October 31, 2015.
- ^ Kristof, Nicholas (April 4, 2015). "The Trader Who Donates Half His Pay". The New York Times. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
- ^ "Evidence Action's Deworm the World Initiative – August 2022 version". GiveWell. August 2022. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (November 18, 2021). "Is therapy the best way to make the world happier?". Vox. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
- ^ "Mayor Bowser Announces Partnership to Provide Free Access to the Canopie Maternal Mental Health Program | mayormb". mayor.dc.gov. September 15, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
- ^ Meyer, Robinson (December 1, 2020). "The Best Way to Donate to Fight Climate Change (Probably)". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
- ^ Samuel, Sigal (December 2, 2019). "Want to fight climate change effectively? Here's where to donate your money". Vox. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
- ^ Matthews, Dylan (January 14, 2022). "Nearly half the world's kids are exposed to dangerous levels of lead". Vox. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ^ Weathers, Scott (February 29, 2016). "Can 'effective altruism' change the world? It already has". Transformation. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- ^ Snow, Mathew (August 25, 2015). "Against Charity". Jacobin. Archived from the original on August 28, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2016.
- ^ a b Srinivasan, Amia (September 24, 2015). "Stop the Robot Apocalypse". London Review of Books. 37 (18). Retrieved September 20, 2022.
- ^ Lichtenberg 2015.
- ^ Earle, Sam; Read, Rupert (April 5, 2016). "Why 'Effective Altruism' is ineffective: the case of refugees". The Ecologist. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
- ^ Dwyer, Susan (January 23, 2015). "Altruism can be all too effective". Al Jazeera America. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
- ^ Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi O.; Stein, Joshua (November 16, 2022). "Is the effective altruism movement in trouble?". The Guardian. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
- .
- (PDF) from the original on September 13, 2017. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
- S2CID 150872907.
- OCLC 1025376469.
- ^ Schoffstall, Joe (August 2, 2021). "Mark Zuckerberg cash discreetly leaked into far-left prosecutor races". Fox News. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
- ^ Bronstein, Zelda (September–October 2018). "California's 'Yimbys': The Growth Machine's Shock Troops". Dollars & Sense. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
- ^ Redmond, Tim (May 26, 2021). "The big Yimby money behind housing deregulation bills". 48hills.org. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
- OCLC 449889661.
- S2CID 222318993.
- PMID 33962844.
- S2CID 238582556.
- ^ a b c d e Kulish, Nicholas (October 18, 2022). "How a Scottish Moral Philosopher Got Elon Musk's Number". The New York Times. Retrieved November 24, 2023.
- ^ Osipovich, Alexander (April 16, 2021). "This Vegan Billionaire Disrupted the Crypto Markets. Stocks May Be Next". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 4, 2021.
- ^ Schleifer, Theodore (March 20, 2021). "How a crypto billionaire decided to become one of Biden's biggest donors". Vox.
- ^ Hiltzik, Michael (November 21, 2022). "Column: How Sam Bankman-Fried exploited the 'effective altruism' fad to get rich and con the world". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 23, 2022.
- ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
- ^ Lowrey, Annie (November 17, 2022). "Effective Altruism Committed the Sin It Was Supposed to Correct". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
- ^ Hannah, Jonathan (November 18, 2022). "Sam Bankman-Fried's downfall is more than a black eye for Effective Altruism". Philanthropy Daily.
- ^ a b Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (December 1, 2022). "Sam Bankman-Fried, Effective Altruism and the Question of Complicity". The New Yorker.
- ^ Levitz, Eric (November 16, 2022). "Is Effective Altruism to Blame for Sam Bankman-Fried?". New York.
- ^ Samuel, Sigal (November 16, 2022). "Effective altruism gave rise to Sam Bankman-Fried. Now it's facing a moral reckoning". Vox. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
- ^ MacAskill, William [@willmacaskill] (November 11, 2022). "A clear-thinking EA should strongly oppose "ends justify the means" reasoning. I hope to write more soon about this. In the meantime, here are some links to writings produced over the years" (Tweet). Archived from the original on November 24, 2022. Retrieved December 2, 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ a b c d e Alter, Charlotte (February 3, 2023). "Effective Altruism Has a Hostile Culture for Women, Critics Say". Time. Archived from the original on February 3, 2023. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
- ^ Alter, Charlotte (March 15, 2023). "Exclusive: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed". Time. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
- ^ Piper, Kelsey (February 15, 2023). "Why effective altruism is facing allegations around sexual misconduct". Vox. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
- ^ Huet, Ellen (March 7, 2023). "Effective altruism's problems go beyond Sam Bankman-Fried". Bloomberg News. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
- ^ Evans, Nicholas G. (April 21, 2023). "Is Elon Musk on Board With 'Effective Altruism?". The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Retrieved March 31, 2024.
- ^ Alexander, Sophie (December 12, 2022). "Musk's $5.7 Billion Mystery Gift Went to His Own Charity". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved March 31, 2024.
- ^ a b McMillan, Robert; Seetharaman, Deepa (November 22, 2023). "How Effective Altruism Split Silicon Valley—and Fueled the Blowup at OpenAI". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ Rai, Saritha; Huet, Ellen (November 22, 2023). "What's Effective Altruism? What Does It Mean for AI?" – via Bloomberg.
- ^ Wiggers, Kyle (March 8, 2024). "OpenAI announces new board members, reinstates CEO Sam Altman". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
Further reading
- Bajekal, Naina (August 22–29, 2022). "How to do the most good: a growing movement argues we should care about people thousands of miles away—and millions of years in the future". Time. Vol. 200, no. 7–8. pp. 69–75.
- Crary, Alice (Summer 2021). "Against effective altruism". Radical Philosophy (210). Retrieved January 20, 2023.
- Earle, Samantha; Read, Rupert (March 2016). "Effective altruism: Is it effective? Should it be more affective?". .
- Gabriel, Iason (August 2016). "Effective altruism and its critics". from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
- OCLC 1101772304.
- Lechterman, Theodore M. (January 2020). "The effective altruist's political problem". Polity. 52 (1): 88–115. S2CID 212887647.
- MacAskill, William (June 2019c). "Aid scepticism and effective altruism". Journal of Practical Ethics. 7 (1): 49–60.
- (PDF) from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
- OCLC 1133275390.
- Singer, Peter; Saunders-Hastings, Emma; Deaton, Angus; Gabriel, Iason; Janah, Leila; Acemoglu, Daron; Brest, Paul; MacFarquhar, Larissa; Tumber, Catherine; Reich, Rob (July 1, 2015). "Forum: The logic of effective altruism". Boston Review. Archived from the original on February 5, 2020. Retrieved February 5, 2020. An article based on the preface and first chapter of Singer's book The Most Good You Can Do was published in the Boston Review on July 1, 2015, with a forum of responses by other writers and a final response by Singer.
- Zuolo, Federico (July 2019). "Beyond moral efficiency: effective altruism and theorizing about effectiveness". from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
External links
- EffectiveAltruism.org, an online introduction and resource compilation on effective altruism