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

by William MacAskill

Suppose, for example, that I see a woman collapse on the ground. She’s had a heart attack. There’s no one else around, so I run up to her and start performing CPR. Suppose I’ve never performed CPR before, but I manage to restart the woman’s heart. She recovers, but as a result of the poor quality CPR, is left with a disability. Even so it’s clear that I have done a great thing. Now suppose there had been a paramedic around when the woman collapsed. This paramedic would have surely restarted her heart without causing injury, but, while I was running toward the woman, I pushed the paramedic out of the way and started performing CPR myself. In this case, I still saved her life, but if I hadn’t, the paramedic would have been able to do the same thing without causing damage. In this case, how should I feel about my actions? Am I a hero? After all, I ‘saved a life’! Of course I’m not a hero. The good I do is not a matter of the direct benefits I cause. Rather, it is the difference I make. Even though I technically saved this woman’s life, I actually did harm overall. Looking at what would have happened otherwise is a fundamental piece of scientific reasoning, referred to as ‘assessing the counterfactual’. But the mistake of neglecting the counterfactual is rife within the world of altruism, and this mistake can have terrible consequences.