February 18th 2025
In this event report, our newsletter editor Frances Lloyd summarises the talk by Dr Simon Jenkins looking at the best ways to make a positive impact.
Simon is Associate Professor for Values, Law and Ethics at Warwick University. He teaches ethics and law to medical students and other medical professionals. Effective Altruism (EA) is a social movement, a set of ideas on how to best improve the world and make it a better place. It combines the head and the heart.
Simon talked about Peter Singer’s essay Famine, Affluence and Morality in which Singer argues that if we accept any principle of impartiality, universalizability, equality, or whatever, we can’t discriminate against anyone merely because they are far away from us or we are far away from them. Obviously we should help others but it shouldn’t only be those near to us. Decisions we make about who to help comes down to Would I versus Should I.
Effective Altruism is a network of people collectively working towards a better world. It unites people with a desire to be more effective on how we do good.
The key principles of effective altruism:
- People can do more to help others (and it would be good if they did!)
It is no longer acceptable to hoard wealth. Simon asked us to consider a scenario when during a pandemic, the number of life-saving pills is restricted and not everyone can be saved. Who would we save and what is our rationale for that decision?
- People can help people more effectively
An example Simon gave us was related to fighting blindness. Within a restricted budget would people in the U.S. choose to fund a guide dog for a person there or eye surgery in Africa – the latter resulting in far more people being helped? If we choose to help a lot more people but in a far-off country people in the U.S. may then say “shouldn’t we help people here by giving them a guide dog? Surely it’s crass not to do so.” But we don’t have the resources to help everyone.
We should consider carefully the cost effectiveness of the amount we give.
How can we be more effective in our altruism?
Give to more effective charities. Effective altruists conduct research into charities and publish the results (and their methods) so you can see which charities give you most bang for your buck. Effective altruistic organisations that evaluate charities include Give Well, The Life You Can Save and Giving What You Can. How do they measure cost effectiveness? By using measures from the field of health economics to take into account a) how much better lives will be once the charity has done its thing (quality of life) and b) how much longer lives will be (quantity of lives improved or saved) and c) how much it costs the charity to do its thing. They work with the organisations in the long-term.
How can you be more effective?
- Use your career. People work for around 80,000 hours in their lifetime. What is a good career? Working for a (good) charity/EA organisation, research, policy, advocacy (of EA itself). Or a career that makes a lot of money so you have more to give.
- Lifestyle – for example, diet, consumption choices, voting choices
- Advocacy and activism. Be open about what you do.
- Give to more effective charities – those evaluated by Give Well, The Life You Can Save, and Giving What You Can, etc.
- Causes should be prioritised based on impartial assessments of the impact they have.
Effective altruism cause areas are global health, non-human animals and the long-term future
- Non-human animals – The Humane League, Animal Equality, the Good Food Institute.
- Global health – treating preventable diseases in poverty-stricken countries. Against Malaria Foundation, Evidence Action (deworm the world initiative), Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.
- The long-term future – Longview Philanthropy, MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute), Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
Take home messages
We can be better at improving the world, both in terms of how much we do and how we do it. Effective altruism is for everyone.
Further reading
Doing Good Better – William Macaskill
The Most Good You Can Do – Peter Singer
Web resources
www.effectivealtruism.org
www.thelifeyoucansave.org
www.givingwhatwecan.org
www.animalcharityevaluators.org