How much of my time should I allocate to altruistic endeavour?
How should I use the time I’ve allocated to altruistic endeavour?
Effective altruism clearly has a lot to say about (2). It could also say some things about (1), but I don’t think it is obliged to. These look like questions that can be addressed (fairly) independently of one another.
An aside: a weakness of the unqualified phrase “do the most good” is that it blurs these two questions. If you characterise the effective altruist as someone who wants to “do the most good”, it’s easy to give the impression that they are committed to maximising both the effectiveness of their altruistic endeavour and the amount of time they allocate to altruistic endeavour.
I’m quite keen on Rob’s proposed characterisation of an effective altruist, which remains fairly quiet on (1):
Someone who believes that to be a good altruist, you should use evidence and reason to do the most good with your altruistic actions, and puts at least some time or money behind the things they therefore believe will do the most good.
This strikes me as a substantive and inclusive idea. Complementary communities or sub-groups could form around the idea of giving 10%, giving 50%, etc, and effective altruists might be encouraged—but not obliged—to join them.
Much of the discussion in this thread has focussed on the question of which characterisation of effective altruism would have the greater impact potential in the long-run. In particular, whether a more demanding characterisation, likely to limit appeal, might nonetheless have a greater overall impact. I don’t have much to add to what’s been said, except to flag that an inclusive characterisation is likely to bring more diversity to the community—a quality it’s somewhat lacking at present.
I think there are two questions here:
How much of my time should I allocate to altruistic endeavour?
How should I use the time I’ve allocated to altruistic endeavour?
Effective altruism clearly has a lot to say about (2). It could also say some things about (1), but I don’t think it is obliged to. These look like questions that can be addressed (fairly) independently of one another.
An aside: a weakness of the unqualified phrase “do the most good” is that it blurs these two questions. If you characterise the effective altruist as someone who wants to “do the most good”, it’s easy to give the impression that they are committed to maximising both the effectiveness of their altruistic endeavour and the amount of time they allocate to altruistic endeavour.
I’m quite keen on Rob’s proposed characterisation of an effective altruist, which remains fairly quiet on (1):
This strikes me as a substantive and inclusive idea. Complementary communities or sub-groups could form around the idea of giving 10%, giving 50%, etc, and effective altruists might be encouraged—but not obliged—to join them.
Much of the discussion in this thread has focussed on the question of which characterisation of effective altruism would have the greater impact potential in the long-run. In particular, whether a more demanding characterisation, likely to limit appeal, might nonetheless have a greater overall impact. I don’t have much to add to what’s been said, except to flag that an inclusive characterisation is likely to bring more diversity to the community—a quality it’s somewhat lacking at present.