Effective Altruism

Extracted Attributes

• Type

  Philosophical and social movement

• Key Values

  Prioritization, impartial altruism, open truthseeking, collaborative spirit, honesty, transparency

• Criticism 1

  Association with FTX bankruptcy and Sam Bankman-Fried

• Criticism 2

  Alleged culture of sexual misconduct

• Criticism 3

  Oversimplification of ethics, discounting intrinsic value of non-suffering entities (e.g., nature)

• Criticism 4

  Influence on 'Woke AI' and global AI governance, potentially hindering US AI competitiveness

• Name Coined

  2011

• Key Method 1

  Donating to carefully selected charities

• Key Method 2

  Choosing careers that maximize positive impact

• Funding Impact

  Several hundred million dollars donated

• Core Motivation

  Using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible

• Origin Location

  Oxford University, UK

• Emergence Period

  2000s

• Associated Sectors

  Academia (elite universities in US and UK), Technology industry (Silicon Valley)

• Key Cause Priority 1

  Global health and development

• Key Cause Priority 2

  Social and economic inequality

• Key Cause Priority 3

  Animal welfare (especially farmed-animal welfare)

• Key Cause Priority 4

  Long-term human survival (including AI safety, biosecurity)

Timeline

• The Effective Altruism movement developed and emerged. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2000-00-00

• The name 'Effective Altruism' was coined. (Source: Wikipedia, Forbes)

  2011-00-00

• The Centre for Effective Altruism was founded by Toby Ord and William MacAskill. (Source: Forbes)

  2011-00-00

• William MacAskill published the book 'What We Owe the Future'. (Source: Sierra Club)

  2022-00-00

• The bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and legal issues of founder Sam Bankman-Fried brought mainstream attention and criticism to Effective Altruism. (Source: Wikipedia, user summary)

  2022-00-00

Effective altruism

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. Effective altruists emphasize impartiality and the global equal consideration of interests when choosing beneficiaries. Popular cause priorities within effective altruism include global health and development, social and economic inequality, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future. Only a small portion of all charities are affiliated with effective altruism, except in niche areas such as farmed-animal welfare, AI safety, and biosecurity. 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. Effective altruism has ties to elite universities in the United States and United Kingdom, and became associated with Silicon Valley's technology industry. 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 misconduct.

Web Search Results

• Effective altruism - 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 [...] The Centre for Effective Altruism lists the following four principles that unite effective altruism: prioritization, impartial altruism, open truthseeking, and a collaborative spirit. 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.: 2 ### Impartiality [...] 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 morality and meta-ethics, as well as traditional religious teachings on altruism such as in Christianity. Effective altruism can also be in tension with religion where religion emphasizes spending resources on worship and evangelism instead of causes that do the most good.

• What's effective altruism? A philosopher explains - The Conversation

  Effective altruism is an intellectual and charitable movement that aspires to find the best ways to help others. People dedicated to it rely on evidence and rational arguments to identify what they can do to make the most progress toward solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as reducing malnutrition and malaria while increasing access to health care.

• What is Effective Altruism?

  Effective altruism is a philosophy and a community focused on answering the question, “How can we best use our resources to help others?” Said another way, effective altruism is about using evidence and careful reasoning to take actions that help others as much as possible. It’s partly a research field, which aims to identify the world’s most pressing problems and the best solutions to them, and it’s partly a practical community that aims to use those findings to do good. Learn more [...] HLS Effective Altruism HLS Effective Altruism A community of law students interested in using evidence and careful reasoning to take actions to confront the world’s most pressing problems, including extreme poverty and existential risks from emerging technologies. # What is Effective Altruism? [...] Resources for using your career to help solve the world’s most pressing problems Resources for identifying highly effective charities Related books HLS Effective Altruism is an officially recognized, student-run organization at Harvard Law School. The Harvard Law School name and/or shield are trademarks of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and are used by permission of Harvard University. All other content: HLS Effective Altruism 2022, CC BY-SA 4.0.

• What To Know About Effective Altruism—Championed By Musk ...

  ## Key Facts Effective altruism is a philosophy that, as described by the New Yorker, seeks to “ to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible,” and is implicitly critical of big charities that don’t have a measurable impact on problems. [...] Effective altruism, which started as a small movement at Oxford University over a decade ago, is an influential and controversial philosophy backed by billionaires—including Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, his wife Cari Tuna, Elon Musk —and notorious ex-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, and focuses on maximizing the impact of charitable giving. The Earth as seen from the moon by Apollo 11, July 1969. (Photo by Space Frontiers/Archive ... More Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) [...] The term effective altruism was coined in 2011 when a group of Oxford philosophers, including Toby Ord and William MacAskill, started The Centre For Effective Altruism—an umbrella company encompassing Giving What We Can, which helps people compare charities’ effectiveness, and 80,000 Hours, an organization co-founded founded by MacAskill to help people find impactful careers.

• Here's What's Wrong with Effective Altruism | Sierra Club

  Effective altruism is an ethical approach based on figuring out the best way to reduce suffering in the present and future. Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz is a proponent; Elon Musk has dabbled. Last year, Oxford philosopher William MacAskill published a book-length argument for effective altruism, What We Owe the Future, which immediately hit the New York Times best-seller list and was greeted by (mostly) glowing reviews. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt said the book made him weep. Bill [...] living world can be valuable. Effective altruism discounts the ethical dimensions of relationships, the rich braid of elements that make up a “good life,” and the moral worth of a species or a wetland. [...] The bad news is that effective altruism is flawed—and not just because its most prominent adherent is an alleged con man. Effective altruism doesn’t play well with most environmental ethics theories, in part because in the universe of effective altruism, only entities that can suffer matter. Trees, rivers, species—none of these are intrinsically valuable. Effective altruism distills all of ethics into an overriding variable: suffering. And that fatally oversimplifies the many ways in which the