Down through the ages, many have called for more altruism. Effective altruism agrees with those calls, but adds a call for effectiveness: for saving the most lives and producing the most welfare with a given amount of resources.
There are many ways of doing good, and some are much more effective than others. The differences are far greater than most people realize. We asked lay people and experts to estimate the effectiveness of charities helping the poorest people in the world. Lay people thought that the most effective charities are 1.5x more effective than the average charity. But the expert estimate was 100x. So the most effective charities are vastly much more effective than other charities.
The same is true of other ways of doing good. Some people dedicate their professional careers to altruistic causes. They are faced with a bewildering array of jobs with all sorts of levels of effectiveness. Their impact will vary dramatically depending on how they choose. Again and again we see the same pattern.
The word “effectiveness” can feel cold and abstract. But instead of dwelling on the associations of words, we should look at the real-world consequences of actually being effective. There are lots of problems in the world: lots of suffering, lots of unnecessary deaths, and lots of unfulfilled potential. The more effective we are, the more progress we can make on those problems. That’s why effectiveness is so important. Effectiveness matters because it matters that the world is much worse than it could be.
So what, then, is in fact effective to do? What should we do if we want to help others the most we can?
There is no consensus about that among self-identified effective altruists. Some prioritize helping the poorest people in the world. Others focus on improving conditions for animals. And still others try to reduce the risk of human extinction, to ensure humanity’s long-term survival.
Many of the criticisms against effective altruism concern these choices.
Some criticize the effective altruist work on global poverty, saying that it’s too focused on targeted health interventions. Instead, they argue, our top priority should be institutional reform.
Others criticize the effective altruist efforts to reduce existential risk. They think that it’s premature to worry about risks from future technologies, and that we should prioritize more pressing concerns.
These objections are important, to be sure. But even if they would turn out to be right, they wouldn’t rebut the core idea of effective altruism—that it's important that our help to others is effective. There is a strong case for that core idea, and we must distinguish it from the specific strategies that self-identified effective altruists pursue.
So even if you think that the effective altruism movement’s strategies are flawed, you shouldn’t give up on effective altruism. Instead, you should find a better strategy: a way of helping others that saves more lives, that prevents more suffering, and that realizes more of our potential. That is, you should engage in effective altruism.