Lets talk about Effective Altruism
For the last couple of years I have been getting ever more into the philosophy and methodology of effective altruism (EA). Effective altruism, as the name suggests, is an attempt to do good for others in the most effective way. It is about applying some discipline, data and systematic thinking on how you can do good in the world.
For myself I like to think of it as an organized long term approach to an important part of life that is often approached piecemeal and scattershot. I feel like charity and altruistic efforts are often driven by whatever disaster happens to be on tv that week or whoever knocked on our door with a collection plate. Alongside improving the world in tiny but effective ways, I believe (and hope) that effective altruism can be part of a foundation of fulfillment and along with family, friends, work and hobbies making up a happy life.
Effective altruism is about answering one simple question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? Rather than just doing what feels right, we use evidence and careful analysis to find the very best causes to work on.
So how do you go about this? Instead of evaluating charities and causes by the most famous spokespersons or the percentage spent on overhead or fundraising EA is concerned with the effectiveness of donations or an organization's work. There are various ways of measuring this, but all of the research points at a very wide disparity in the amount of good done by people and organisations. In fact some efforts, while having the best of intentions, are downright harmful. So picking the right charity or institution to support might mean that your efforts are tens or hundreds of times more effective than otherwise.
One way of measuring the amount of good people do is called quality adjusted life years (qaly) by health economists. If some medical procedure provides a patient with (a self reported) 10% improvement in their life and they then go on to live ten more years after that we would say that the operation had a qualy of 1. What you then try to figure out is which initiatives give you the most bang for the buck so to speak or the most qalies per dollar donated.
Now this gets abstract and subjective pretty fast. Can you really compare different efforts in this way? Is self-reporting a good way to go? There are many valid questions and criticisms but it is still useful to have a quantitative way to measure and compare different initiatives, even if the ways of measuring are up to debate. Effective altruism is also open to reflection and revision, using the scientific method and data to figure out the most effective causes to support.
Off course value judgment and personal morals play an important part here. Which cause is most important to you? Is poverty more important than health or is education the most important thing? What about animal suffering and rights, do they figure in? What about future existential risk from diseases, warfare or ai? Does the welfare of unborn generations outweigh the demands of those currently living. However, having a framework to think about, evaluate, criticize and talk about those decisions seems to me to be very helpful.
Oftentimes this will lead to conclusions that seem counterintuitive or hard to swallow to a lot of people. For example, because your money will go way further in developing countries than it will locally EA would say that it is most effective to donate to causes abroad rather than locally based charities. You might think that volunteering at a charity is the best way to do good, but a lot of volunteer work is mismanaged, short lived, non-expertise work with a lot of overhead. You should consider your choices carefully if you want your volunteering to be impactful.
Then you might think that the best thing you could do to help others is to dedicate your career to it, by working for an ngo for example or becoming a doctor. Here EA suggests that you weigh your decisions heavily. The fact is you might end up working for an ineffective ngo and it is hard and time consuming to switch jobs. Your work as a doctor could have just as easily been performed by another doctor or you might not be very well suited for any work of this type at all.
One recommended course of action that perhaps is often overlooked is what within the EA world is called earning to give, going for a career in a high paying industry and being generous but disciplined in your giving. This line of thinking appeals to me. With our economy being like it is I feel like I will be more likely to make an impact this way as a software developer than I ever would have as a fundraiser, organizer or journalist (career paths I considered at one point or another). With the added selfish bonus that I get great personal satisfaction from programming, I find it challenging and intellectually stimulating and rewarding. But earning to give provides me with an way to still make a less self serving impact.
It is infuriating to me that for at least the last century it has been technically possible for every person on earth to live with their basic needs met (food, water, shelter, sanitation etc) but yet we are pretty far from that being fact. It is baffling that we have built a system that can send a man to the moon, split the atom and build the internet but we cant figure out how to get everyone clean drinking water or eradicate malaria. This may be a naive view but its something I feel quite strongly and I think it will be to our great and eternal shame how long we have allowed this to go on.
Guilt based on this is a big part of what drives me in my giving. For my adult life I have felt that most of my good fortune is undeserved. Or rather, to whatever extent it is based on my own hard work and merits it was still only enabled because I had the good luck of being a born a healthy, white, heterosexual male late in the late 20th century in a first world country with a near infinite amount of choices and possibilities and with a welfare system, family and friends that allowed me to make mistakes and to take my time to figure things out. I wish that everyone had the same possibilities that I so often take for granted.
This feeling of guilt, coupled with a desperate sense of helplessness of what to do about it has slowly made me more cynical, apathetic and ironically detached than I should ever liked to have become. It is my hope that an EA way of thinking can help me make an impact and feel better about the insignificant part I play in this world. Seen this way my altruism is really quite selfish.
I came to effective altruism through the work of Peter Singer. In my philosophy days, his essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality had a great effect on me and on my thinking. Articulating some of the thoughts mentioned above.
After mulling it over, global poverty and health seem to me the most important causes. Within those areas I have gone with the recommendations of GiveWell and others and am currently supporting the Against Malaria Foundation and Give Directly. Both organizations are evidence based, open about how they use their resources, have a proven track record and are working in an underserved area.
There are a lot of problems in measuring the cost per life saved, but for GiveWell's top charities the median estimate of their top charities' cost-effectiveness ranged from ~$900 to ~$7,000 per equivalent life saved. This means that if you reach a pretty average North-European salary of 30.000 euro per year and donate 10% of your wages you will be saving "a life" for every year of your career for a total of 30-40 lifes saved over the course of your career. That sounds like a worthy accomplishment, one that could go alongside your career itself, your family, friends and hobbies as #lifegoals.
I'm currently ramping up my monthly donations. Early next year I hope to be able to take the Giving What We Can pledge:
I recognise that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that for the rest of my life or until the day I retire, I shall give at least ten percent of what I earn to whichever organisations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely.
-The Pledge to Give - Giving What We Can.
Writing all of the above with the intention of publishing has been pretty difficult for me. I think this is because I was brought up in the Christian tradition that charity is best done low key and anonymously. Also for me personally, whenever I talk about this stuff I also feel that I'm muddying the waters of my motivation. Am I doing good because I want to do good or because I want to scream about it in order to show everyone what a good person I am?
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
The reason I am writing about this at all is to spread the word as I feel like EA could be an important part of more peoples lives and that this way of thinking might appeal to the people around me like it it did to me. I also want to keep refining my view on these matters, to have critical conversations about them and am prepared to be wrong and change my mind. I also feel like the moral argument for most people in the the developed world doing more is pretty strong and that we should discuss this more openly.
Extending the range of people, animals and organisms who we deem worthy of moral consideration and moving things from being merely morally commendable to being our moral duty is to me one of the greatest ways we make progress as a race. This is why I want to try to talk about EA to everyone who'll listen. What would a world where the social pressures of donating effectively have become the modern equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses look like? A world where giving, charity and altruism is a form of conspicuous consumption?
Also as the utilitarian underpinnings of the whole movement would point out outcomes are what matters, intentions not so much. Coming from someone who's spent way too much time second guessing peoples motivations or intentions (including my own), I can tell you that it doesn't really make you happy. With that in mind I know it is easy to read this post as the preachings of a holier-than-thou do goody, all liberal guilt and virtue signaling. But I do hope you will give effective altruism and myself the benefit of the doubt. Hit me up if you want to talk about it, I'd love to hear your thoughts, positive or otherwise.
Doing Good Better by William MacAskill is a great introduction to many of the ideas I briefly touch upon above. MacAskill is also involved with 80.000 Hours that provides career advice for people who want to have a social impact and do good. Giving What We Can and Give Well provide detailed evaluation of charities and information about different causes.
There are EA meetup groups in a number of cities and countries around the world. I've certainly learned a lot and meet a lot of good people at the Amsterdam one over the last couple of months. I recommend trying them out.
Off course this philosophy is not without its critics either. I already mentioned the fact that for all the talk of science and rigour in picking your cause you ultimately are making a personal value judgement in many cases. The homogenity of the EA community is also a concern, the scene is not very diverse across gender, class, race or other dimensions. Another worry of mine is whether effective altruism just props up an inherently broken system (capitalism) and is just an attempt for its winners to feel good about themselves. Some other good arguments against EA are raised in this article.
Ultimately though I feel that the arguments in EA's favour outweight the criticism. It has been a good antidote to a crippling apathy in my life and I look forward to seeing how the community evolves and how I can play a part within in it. I hope it inspires more people in the same direction.
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