The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is

Changing Ideas About Living Ethically

Peter Singer

Effective Altruism

“a philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason to determining the most effective ways to improve the world.”

“Effective Altruism,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism, viewed April 6 , 2015.

What counts as improving the world?Some characteristic EA values• Take a universal perspective.• Wellbeing matters, so suffering & premature death are bad.• Animal suffering counts. (How much?)• Other principles (justice, equality, fairness) and moral rules

matter in so far as they lead to better consequences – EAs differ on whether they matter intrinsically.

• We should seek to maximize expected value (possibly, subject to moral rules that are absolute side-constraints).

Cf Holden Karnofsky, “Deep value judgments & worldview characteristics,” http://blog.givewell.org/2013/04/04/deep-value-judgments-and-worldview-characteristics/

Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition (1907) p.382.

On Taking a Universal Perspective…

“…the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realised in the one case than in the other.”

Toby Ord

Founder, Giving What We Can

Pledged to live on £18,000 pa ($28,000)

Research Fellow, Philosophy, Oxford

Married, with a mortgage

Will MacAskill

Assisted Toby Ord in establishing GWWC

Founder, 80,000 hoursJunior Research Fellow

in Philosophy, Cambridge

Author of forthcoming Doing Good Better

Matt Wage

Studied math & philosophy at Princeton.

Now in finance in NYCOne year after

graduating, is able to donate > $100,000

Helped to set up The Life You Can Save

Giving Half

Julia Wise and her partner Jeff Kaufman gave 1/3 of their income even when earning less than $40,000 a year.Now that they are earning more, they give half.www.givinggladly.com

Choosing a Cause(Cause Prioritization)

How RPA pictures the field of philanthropy

“But what is the most urgent issue? There’s obviously no objective answer to that question.”

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Finding Your Focus in Philanthropy, p.3.

RPA offers, among several examples:1. Ted Turner’s 1998 $1bil to UN to scale up proven health programs against killer diseases that largerly kill children in developing countries.

Cost per life saved may be as low as $80.

2. Lucile Packard’s 1986 gift of $40 million + ongoing support to establish a children’s hospital in Palo Alto.

In 2007 the hospital spent $1 - 2 million to separate a pair of conjoined twins from Costa Rica; further support came from the charity Mending Kids International.

Treating Trachoma

Preventing or curing blindness@ $25-$100 per case of blindnessprevented or cured.

Why not do both?

“Singer’s view is that we should minimize suffering… but what about improving all areas of human experience? Playing off one area that needs more money vs another is a false choice. Both arts and treatment of human illnesses are worthy of support.”

[Evan, commenting on Nicholas Kristof, “The Trader Who Donates Half His Pay,” New York Times, April 4, 2015.]

EffectivenessWhy it matters, and how to measure it

Motivation

What leads people to become effective altruists?

From Richard Keshen, Reasonable Self-Esteem.

A Reasonable Person cannot have self-esteem while ignoring the interests of others whose well-being she recognizes as equally significant.

Henry Spira

“I guess basically one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. One likes to look back and think that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others… It’s not a sense of duty, but rather this is what I want to do. I feel best when I’m doing it well.”

Elie Hassenfeld & Holden Karnofsky

We're both highly motivated by the desire to make the world a better place. We find it exciting and energizing - and intellectually interesting - to be in a position where we're trying to do as much good as possible.