Tradition

Effective altruism

Overview

Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest good. Proponents describe the movement as "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 goal of maximising positive impact. The movement has spurred the creation of research centers, advisory organizations, and charities, which collectively have donated several hundred million dollars.

A defining feature of effective altruism is impartiality, specifically 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 or flourishing 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. Effective altruism is most popular within the Anglosphere, with concentrations at elite universities in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as in and around the technology industry in the San Francisco Bay Area. 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Partnerships, clubs, corporations, guilds, families are such stable unions, with their definite spheres of action. Buying and selling, teaching and learning, producing and consuming, are recurrent activities whose legitimate methods get prescribed. These specific provinces and methods of action are defined in Civil Rights.
John Dewey, Ethics
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These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic…
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
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And here we see that goodness is asserted of such conduct under each of these three aspects. Other things equal, well-adjusted, self-conserving acts we call good; other things equal, we call good the acts that are well adjusted for bringing up progeny capable of complete living; and other things equal, we ascribe goodness to acts which further the complete living of others.
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics
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Effective altruism

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