EA for the masses

EA is backed up by a very simple, very sound philosophy yet is an exciting and revolutionary new way of orientating our lives. So why is EA still unheard of to so many people globally? Recent successes (in very short spaces of time) with #MeToo, #NeverAgain #TimesUp and #BlackLivesMatter might leave us wondering what has prevented EA from achieving a similar or greater level of success. The answer, as I’m going to try to convince you, is that effective altruists have funnelled too much time and effort in trying to get people to donate to the most effective organisations, and not enough to more effective organisations. The current proportion of all donations to non-EA endorsed causes and charities is far greater than to EA endorsed causes—EA fails to recognise that a realistic model of “doing the most good for the greatest number of people” must include improving the effectiveness of non-EA endorsed giving as an integral part of its short-term work.

UPDATE: it was brought to my attention that there is an ongoing debate about what extent EA would even benefit from mass expansion (see this 80,000 hours article). I should add, then, that the following piece is mainly for those who already lean positively towards the goal of global EA expansion and want to explore the barriers and solutions to this goal.

Easing into the EA philosophy

EA has, in some sense, got off on the wrong foot. Once EA philosophy was established, it was pushed in a raw analytic form to the public. In Doing Good Better, MacAskill proposes an ethical test to his readers. Imagine you’re outside a burning house and you’re told that inside one room is a child and inside another is a painting by Picasso. You can save only one of them. Which one would you choose to do the most good? MacAskill argues that, if you save the Picasso, you could sell it, and use the money to buy anti-malaria nets in Africa, this way saving many more lives than the one kid in the burning house.

EA altruists have shot themselves in the foot by beginning at the most extreme end of potential decisions that an Effective Altruist could be in a position to make. While analyses like the above may or may not be correct, if it succeeds in alienating people from the cause then it has in at least some sense failed to serve a purpose. While such analyses are perfectly fine mostly as an academic exercise, it is negligent to think that this strategy can change the mentality of large demographics of people who do not live in the philosophy.

It is also not made clear enough that EA is not an all or nothing philosophy. An individual who donates a proportion of their wealth through EA endorsed channels as well as donating a proportion to charities that are chosen individualistically is still making a thoughtful and responsible contribution to the relief of suffering worldwide. There is nothing about donating to EA funds that means you must stop putting spare change into a charity pot at the supermarket. There is also nothing fundamental to EA that means you need to increase the amount of charitable giving you already do now, even though it is great to do this where possible. EA is just an understanding that the money we do give should be given in a way that reaches beyond our inner thoughts and feelings. In understanding this, people will be able to see the appeal of easing into an EA way of thinking. Effective altruism is at its core is a-individual, but not anti-individual.

Piggybacking on other movements

Virtually all altruistic movements acknowledge that every individual deserves fair treatment. A push towards EA needs to make use of the momentum and traction already gained by these movements, in applying values of equality and accountability to our mode of charitability and giving.

One such movement is Black Lives Matter. On July 13th 2013 three Black women helped give birth to a movement that is now one of the most widely known anti-racism movements globally. In the five short years since #BlackLivesMatter arrived on the scene — thanks to the creative genius of Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometti — the push for Black liberation from state-inflicted violence has evolved into one of the most influential social movements of the post-civil rights era.

The broader cultural impact of BLM as a movement, on top of its individual achievements, has been immeasurable. BLM will be remembered as the movement responsible for popularising what has now become an indispensable tool in 21st-century organizing efforts: the phenomenon that scholars refer to as “mediated mobilisation.” By using the tools of social media, BLM was the first U.S. social movement in history to successfully use the internet as a mass mobilisation device. BLM has in a short amount of time brought great changes to the physical and mental realities of people’s lives, even though there is still a long way to go in eradicating anti-black racism.

ActBlue, the leading site to process online donations for Democratic causes and campaigns, has experienced its busiest period since its founding in 2004, with racial justice causes and bail funds leading the way. The site’s four biggest days ever came consecutively in June as it processed more than $250 million to various progressive causes and candidates in two-plus weeks, according to a New York Times analysis of the site’s donation ticker. And on June 2, the collective action day that was known as Blackout Tuesday, ActBlue doubled what had been, before this month, its one-day record: raising $41 million in 24 hours.

Organisations like ActBlue and movements concerning racial injustice are rarely discussed in the context of EA, as the problems they attempt to solve are mostly not considered to be effectively solved. But whilst Effective Altruism and EA charities have had their successes, they have never come close to the degree of widespread support that BLM has achieved.

Since EA is not cause-specific, it cannot expect that any particular events, like the death of George Floyd, can catalyse its growth. It is intrinsically a ‘slow-burning’ movement and so must be acknowledged as such. But while EA does not lend itself to such fast successes, its strength lies in the fact that it embodies what lies at the heart of every charitable cause that exists – that every person is equally worthy of a life free from suffering. This characteristic needs to be used for EA gain. For example, in the context of the BLM movement, EA can ‘piggyback’ on existing work. BLM certainly establishes that Black American and Black British lives matter but seems to neglect, for example, that Black Middle Eastern lives matter, and that Black African lives matter. The economic inequality for which sub-Saharan Africa bears some of the greatest costs is at least in part a racist issue (for example as fallout from colonisation, but I will not try to argue this here). And it is still true that in sub-Saharan Africa, children and adults suffer or die from very preventable and painful reasons, such as malaria, trachoma and malnutrition. To leave the suffering of these people out of the equation is to chop off several limbs of what the movement could be, as well as being an instance of a double standard.

The shift to a new way of donating and ultimately living must come in stages after this. By initially ‘piggybacking’ on other movements in this manner, EA has a chance to appeal on an individualistic level where it intrinsically lacks this ability. It is necessary for EA leaders and supporters to communicate with community organisers and the people amongst particular movements to show them that as a starting point, they have a duty to encourage the most good for the most people within that particular movement. Whilst all EA charities may end up resembling something close to what we see now in the future, the problem is the EA has jumped the gun. The piggybacking strategy is designed to plant the seed in people’s minds that as rational beings, as well as empathetic beings, they have a duty of care far beyond those whose struggles happen to fall into their immediate empathetic and emotional states.

BLM is just one example of an existing, cause-specific movement that EA needs to move towards a philosophy of collaboration with if it is to gain traction any time soon. We must make it clear that effective altruists do not want people to stop caring about the causes that are dear to them. In fact, we want them to start caring more. We want them to think more carefully about why they care for the things they care about, and to apply that feeling across the continents and borders.

Cause-by-cause evaluation

The first step in taking EA back to the drawing board is to set up charity evaluation by sector or cause. There are many charity evaluators out there, but it is often difficult to find the most effective charities to donate to within a particular cause. By ‘cause’ we could mean a number of things. One ‘cause’ could refer to the form of suffering that the aid is alleviating, for example, a particular illness or a particular form of poverty. Another sense of ‘cause’ that is used is for a particular movement, such as the anti-apartheid or BLM movement. Lastly, people think of a cause in the sense of a particular war, conflict or environmental issue, for example, the Yemen civil war or the 2019 Australian bushfires. This is a non-exhaustive list, but the important point is that there are several ways people understand and connect to charitable causes, and we must consider as many of them as possible to gauge a realistic starting point for the EA movement.

Charity evaluators should have a section by section approach to these different ways of looking at causes. In loosening the definition of ‘cause’ to make EA more amenable to social and political movements, additional research may need to be done to assess the cost-effectiveness of funding these movements. But in the meantime, the evaluation of many charities has already been done, and for these charities, all that is needed is a fresh way of presenting existing research to the public. This method of getting the general public more informed with regards to charitable donation is surprisingly overlooked.

Diversifying EA

EA has been, in public perception, a project reserved for wealthy white males with a side-interest in ethics as a philosophical exercise. Effective altruists need to take more realistic steps towards its widespread success, rather than getting caught up in extreme utilitarian debates that mean nothing to anyone outside of this bubble. A huge barrier to the progression of EA is its tendency as a movement that predominantly caters to white male nerds with a major in computer science. In a memorable account for Vox, journalist Dylan Matthews recounted his experience of the 2015 EA Global conference held at Google’s Quad Campus in Mountain view. Matthews – an effective altruist himself – described the movement as “at the moment, very white, very male, and dominated by tech industry workers.” Sure, many EA groups are working to make the movement less homogeneous, but it takes time.

My intent is not to sell short the importance of the work of EA in identifying and supporting the most pressing and effectively solved problems the world faces. But EA must acknowledge that this research is generally only of importance to people who are already convinced of the EA philosophy. But of course, for EA to spread its wings and eventually achieve its end goals on a global scale, it is necessary for the current bubble to expand. Moral-theoretic arguments alone have failed and will continue to fail to widen the circle if EA is not reinforced with an appreciation of the realities of modern-day giving. To gain any traction beyond the current white, male bubble, its supporters must go back to the drawing board. Emotional connections do exist and no one is morally wrong for the attachments that they develop. It is from this starting point that EA should dig its roots.

As a comparatively young movement, EA is still finding its feet. Once the movement considers and responds to such suggestions for improvement, its momentum can and will make a huge positive impact in the world.