‘Psychology of Effective Altruism’ course syllabus
In case anyone’s interested, here’s a link to the syllabus for a course titled ‘The Psychology of Effective Altruism’ that I’ve taught 3 times at University of New Mexico (in 2018, 2019, and 2020): https://geoffrey-miller-y5jr.squarespace.com/s/syllabus-EA-2020-spring-final.docx
I’d posted an earlier version of this syllabus to EA Forum in 2018 (see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GhHirpH9uzxKCr3Lx/new-effective-altruism-course-syllabus )
Feel free to borrow any of this material if you teach a course on EA, X risk, longtermism, moral psychology, etc.
This is an advanced undergraduate seminar with about 20-25 students, mostly psychology majors. It was designed to be suitable for diverse students at a large state university. Whereas some other EA courses have focused mostly on technical moral philosophy, this is pitched more towards the psychology of EA—both why it’s appealing, and why it’s difficult.
The course’s main topics are EA principles, cause prioritization, utilitarian ethics, moral psychology, charity evaluation, global poverty and health, existential risks, AI safety, moral & cognitive enhancement, near-term technologies (robots, EMs, VR), animal sentience & welfare, and career choices.
I’m currently updating this course to teach it again in spring 2023, so would welcome anybody else’s syllabi that might be helpful, and any other suggestions of good readings, videos, exercises, etc. (I’ve already looked at the helpful course materials mentioned on this Open Philanthropy site: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/open-philanthropy-course-development-grants/ )
-- Geoffrey
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Here’s a list of EA syllabi I compiled years ago and update regularly.
Hi Pablo, could you update my syllabus on your list to this one? Thanks!
Sure—done. (I kept a link to the old course, since I thought it would also be of interest.)
Thanks! That’s very helpful.
Interpersonal relationships when trying to live a EA/utilitarian lifestyle seems like a potentially important omitted topic based on your second to last paragraph.
Yes, that would be interesting to cover. Have you seen anything interesting written about this issue?
Could the syllabus be uploaded as an appendix to this post?
Otherwise you could make it a pdf/google doc to solve any rendering issues and ensure that people can read it on mobile devices.
Good idea. Will work on uploading the pdf to my site.