Effective Altruism

Blog Topic: Effective Altruism is Very Online

Tone of voice: contrarian, spicy, witty

Intended Audience: software engineers

Effective Altruism is the Myspace of Morality

Introduction

If you’re not familiar with the term, effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that encourages people to use reason and evidence to do the most good they can. In other words, it’s the very definition of being online. And like everything else that’s online, effective altruism is full of drama, takes itself way too seriously, and is desperately in need of a redesign.

Body

1. It’s all about the numbers.

The central tenet of effective altruism is that we should use reason and evidence to do the most good we can. In practice, this means basing our actions on cost-benefit analyses and quantifiable data rather than our intuitions or emotions. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable approach. After all, if we want to make the world a better place, shouldn’t we be as rational and logical as possible?

The problem is that this quantitative approach often leads to cold, heartless decisions. For example, a recent study found that Giving What We Can, one of the largest effective altruism organizations, recommends giving to global health causes almost exclusively. This might make sense from a purely mathematical standpoint—global health interventions are often very cost-effective—but it completely ignores other important aspects of morality, such as justice and fairness.

2. It’s elitist AF.

Another big problem with effective altruism is that it’s incredibly elitist. The reasoning goes something like this: if we want to do the most good, we should focus on causes that will have the biggest impact. And since only a small number of people have the skills and resources to make a truly significant difference, effective altruists tend to focus on “high-impact” causes like global health and poverty alleviation.

But this approach ignores the fact that many people care just as much about issues like animal welfare or environmental protection—causes that are often dismissed as “low-impact” by effective altruists. Furthermore, it perpetuates the harmful idea that some lives matter more than others; after all, why should we care about animals when there are human beings who are starving to death?

3. It’s really boring.

One of the worst things about effective altruism is how dreadfully boring it is. I mean, let’s be honest: who wants to spend their time reading dry reports about cost-benefit analyses when they could be out there actually doing something? If we want to make the world a better place, surely there are more interesting and engaging ways to do it than poring over Excel spreadsheets!

Conclusion

Effective altruism has some admirable goals—but it falls short in several key ways. First and foremost, its single-minded focus on numbers often leads to coldhearted decision-making; secondly, it’s excessively elitist; and thirdly, it’s just plain boring. If we want to make the world a better place, we need a new approach—one that takes into account all aspects of morality, not just those that can be measured in dollars and cents.

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