Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

Trevor Field

PlayPump,

As Trevor Field’s story illustrates, however, good intentions can all too easily lead to bad outcomes. The challenge for us is this: how

can we ensure that, when we try to help others, we do so as effectively as possible? How can we ensure that we avoid inadvertently causing harm and have the greatest positive impact we can?

I believe that by combining the heart and the head – by applying data and reason to altruistic acts – we can turn our good intenti...

Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster

a randomised controlled trial:

First, he looked at the efficacy of providing schools with additional textbooks.

flipcharts.

he found no discernible improvement from decreasing class sizes.

deworming.

But they do make children sick, and can be cured for pennies:

Deworm the World Initiative,

When it comes to helping others, being unreflective often means being ineffective.

One difference between investing in a company and donating to a charity is that the charity world often lacks appropriate feedback mechanisms.

In contrast with the PlayPump, the most effective programme turned out to be remarkably boring:

But by focusing on what was effective rather than what was emotionally appealing, they produced outstanding results, significantly improving the lives of millions.

Effective altruism

is about asking ‘How can I make the biggest difference I can?’ and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what’s true, and a commitment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what’s best for the world, and a commitment to do what’s best, whatever that turns out to be.

As I use the term, altruism simply means improving the lives of others. Many people believe that altruism should necessarily denote sacrifice, but if you can do good while maintaining a comfortable life for yourself, that’s a bonus, and I’m very happy to call that altruism.

the best charities are hundreds of times more effective at improving lives than merely ‘good’ charities.

In 2009 Toby and I co-founded Giving What We Can,

Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, quit their jobs to start GiveWell,

in 2011 I co-founded 80,000 Hours

What I hope to convey is not a series of facts, but a new way of thinking about helping others

effective altruism’s five key questions:

How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?

the guiding question of effective altruism: ‘How can I do the most good?’

how much power almost any member of an affluent country has.

If you earn above $52,000 (£34,000) per year, then, speaking globally, you are part of the 1%.

Figure 2: Global income distribution by percentile and income

bottom 20% of the world’s population: that’s 1.22 billion people who earn less than $1.50 per day,

Because we are comparatively so rich, the amount by which we can benefit others is vastly greater than the amount by which we can benefit ourselves. We can therefore do a huge amount of good at relatively little real cost.

What’s interesting about this graph is that a doubling of income will always increase reported subjective wellbeing by the same amount (note that the $ amounts double at each division).

there is good theoretical reason for thinking that the same amount of money can be of at least one hundred times as much benefit to the very poorest people in the world as it can be to typical citizens of the West.

It’s like a 99% off sale,

The 100x Multiplier.

the graph of gross domestic product per person, over the last 2000 years,

For almost all of human history – from the evolution of Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago until the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago – the average income across all countries was the equivalent of $2 per day or less. Even now, over half of the world still lives on $4 per day or less

Yet, through some outstanding stroke of luck, we in the developed world have found ourselves the inheritors of the most astonishing period of economic growth the planet has ever seen, while a significant proportion of people stay as poor as they have ever been.

Moreover, because of that economic progress, we live at a time in which we have the technology easily to gather information about people thousands of miles away, the ability to significantly influence their lives, and the scientific knowledge to work out what the most effective ways of helping are. For these reasons, few...

Sometimes we look at the size of the problems in the world and think, ‘Anything I do would be just a drop in the bucket. So why bother?’ But, in light of the research shown in these graphs, that reasoning doesn’t make any sense. It’s the size of the drop that matters, not the size of the bucket, and, if we choose, we can create an enormous splash. We’ve already seen that we have the opportunity to provide a benefit for others that is one hundred times greater than the benefit we could provide for ourselves. That we can’t sol...

Rwanda.

James Orbinski

Patients were taped with a 1, 2 or 3 on their foreheads:

tough choices: who did he save, and who did he leave to die?

Of all the ways in which we could make the world a better place, which will do the most good?

In order to make comparisons between actions, we need to ask: how many people benefit, and by how much? This is the first key question of effective altruism.

quality-adjusted life-year, or QALY (pronounced ‘kwalee’)

in principle the same methods that were used to create the QALY could be used to measure the costs and benefits of pretty much anything.