August ’25 EA Newsletter Poll: I’d be doing less good if I hadn’t heard of EA.
This poll will be linked in the August edition of the Effective Altruism Newsletter.
Last month I included a poll in the newsletter which required a bit of pre-reading. This one’s a little more personal, and hopefully accessible.
As well as your vote, if you ‘agree’, I’d love to see examples of how EA has helped you have more impact.
There aren’t many clarifications I need to make with this poll. The only one I can think of is: for you determinists out there, imagine that there are infinite[1] actually-existing possible worlds, and in this question I’m asking you to compare the world you’re in with a nearby possible world where the only difference is you never heard of EA (or EA doesn’t exist, whichever world is closer).
- ^
This opens up some infinite ethics problems. I can’t stop you from discussing those.
I think I was pretty close to getting stuck in a semi-random corporate career path. I was always sympathetic to EA like ideas. But I think seeing EA’s actually ‘do the thing’ made me think I could and should do the thing too. I remember some feeling of “Well, I think that’s 100% the correct approach, and I guess if these people are doing it I have no excuse but to do it too”
It’s hard to know what I would have discovered if there wasn’t an ‘effective altruism’ movement, but before being involved in EA, I was:
- Kind of grossed out by the idea of comparing charities.
- Very innumerate in my reasoning.
- Very influenced by my surroundings on the question of how to do good.
I like to think that doing good would still have been important to me, but I think I’d be much worse, and much less strategic at it. My donations alone almost guarantee that I’m doing more good than I would have been otherwise.
While I had a drive toward altruism, I think my efforts and donations would be directed to causes that were more random / more shaped by social environment and less by what might be best for the beneficiaries.
Subjectively, I think I have done a lot more good because of EA, but have doubts around the potential negative sign of AI safety work (have we contributed to AI hype? Delayed beneficial AI? Else?) and cluelessness. On cluelessness, my alternative was a very causally-minimal life close to ~never leaving the house. I still don’t leave the house, but lots of what I send out of the house over the internet is more effectual than it would be.
I feel unsure I’d be trying hard to do good at all, let alone actually doing things I think have a lot of ex ante value. I wasn’t on track when I heard of EA to dedicate much of my resources to positive impact. But hard to be certain ofc! + not sure doing good now, since what I work on has a lot of uncertainty on the impacts (& even sign).
(trying to hit like 80% agree but seem to be missing it)
There is a strong chance that the sum total of what I do due to EA will end up having no impact (due to short AGI timelines) or being net-negative (due to flow-through effects). However, EA has also convinced me that all but a few altruistic endeavors are strongly likely to be beneficial for the world. My donations of a few K a year (and occasional volunteering) for these endeavors would have been extremely unlikely had I not engaged deeply with EA.
The counterfactual seems pretty bleak. Before getting convinced overnight of EA’s importance by stumbling onto the pdf of Suffering-focused Ethics, I was convinced that it was impossible to be positive for the world, and I felt diseased by guilt (the latter turned out to be useful fuel to get into doing good, so I don’t regret it).
While I believe that I would still be working in non-profits and NGOs, EA has encouraged me to donate more, choose my donations more effectively, and has improved my work significantly, all of which have contributed to the amount of good I enact on the world.
The principles have given me a great framework to think about things, and a community to motivate me to keep being rigorous about it!
However, I’ve become a lot more worried about relying on consequentialist calculations and I’ve ended up being a bit more virtues ethics-y as a result. I am not sure I’m not good for the world—it’s possible if I tried to have less impact I would have more confidence I’m not net negative? The perils of working in AI!
Growing up as a poor immigrant in the US, I know I don’t need much to live a good life. Now, as an upper middle class young millennial, I’m building a family with community and good values, not an expensive lifestyle, so that we can do the most good for the world with our privilege.
Started donating consistently instead of sporadically, and with a focus on cost effectiveness.
Started volunteering.
Still, it might had happened without, I already had some of the ideas.
I’d always say this—EA found me and I’m glad it did! This movement and global community has uplifted my perception. I’ve realised there’s an infinite possibility that can be unlocked with the right kind of altruism.
I think the EA community has significantly encouraged me to do significantly more good, if only because I became vegetarian and signed the 10% pledge.
my decisions to give 10% of my salary to effective causes, and my decision to work in AI were both strongly influenced by EA
I’ve taken the 10% pledge and now donate to high-impact charities. My experiences at EAGs have also inspired me to regularly share career opportunities with others and make connections when I think it could benefit someone’s career path.
Whilst EA has clearly helped me do a lot of good, I was already trying to optimise to do as much good as I could before EA, and was already thinking about XRisk. I think there is a pretty decent chance I’d be working on AI Safety anyway, even without EA
I’m quite sure I’d be doing less good. Getting involved in EA helped me assess my career for impact and ultimately get on a path to explore my options and get training and experience to start and lead a charity. I also think that Hive wouldn’t have existed as soon as it ended up being started by me (2022) or existed in this form (impact-focused, effective community). I spoke to quite a few people when I came up with the idea and very few people thought it should be done, it’s unlikely that any of those people would take on this idea. Now many people acknowledge the farmed animal community wouldn’t have such a digital home if not for Hive and it would need to be created asap. A lot of counterfactuals!
My donations to effective charities are by far the most impactful thing I’ve ever done in my life, and that could not have happened without EA.
My cause prioritization would be much worse and I would be much less morally ambitious. I also received tremendous support in my career from other people in the EA community, which made an extremely large impact on my own career opportunities and my ability to do good.
Agreed: my career, donations (including pledge) & network would unlikely have similar impact.
While I find a lot of inspiration and new thoughts, I think I was always doing good and I have not changed what I do much. I very much hope to change that, however, by seeking work that uses my skill set for EA instead of the rather less important stuff I do for a living.
EA made me think long and hard about career choices and eventually led me on a path to higher impact 👍
Was doing zero charity before reading Doing Good Better in 2016 (?)
Ended up teaching strategy at a leading Russian school for NGOs, doing a major project in public health and just supporting NGOs in every country I end up living in.
The only thing I think EA has actually done counterfactually for me is encourage me to cut out eggs from my diet. I’m pretty confident that everything else I could have gotten from non-EA sources; a class my freshman year taught by somebody who afaik isn’t an EA but had independently come to agree with a lot of the principles was pretty impactful on my life since it led to me changing my major.
Edit: Oh and I’ve won small-ish amounts of money in random Metaculus contests, which I probably heard about through EA?
I think the much necessary and needed clarity would have eluded me
I feel like I’m more focused and committed to doing good because of the effective altruism reading and participation that I’ve been privy to
I’m willing to bet there is a correlation between people voting positively with those directly connected to the community be it work, conferences or living in a hub city.
Hearing about effective altruism eventually led to me taking the 10% pledge. I would never have donated this amount (or had the focus on effectiveness) had I not heard about EA.
Very difficult to imagine the opposite since I learned about EA before I had chosen a particular career path and not sure what I’d be doing otherwise! Always gave to charity, but it’s true that most of it would be directed towards religious organizations with dubious financials than transparent, audited charities.
I wouldn’t have taken the 10% pledge. I’d probably also not be vegetarian!
It’s because of EA that I’m pursuing a career in disease prevention
💙
Learning about EA has made me think more about my donations, make more of them, and feel more confident in my choices. Thanks for that!