I’m unsure whether these are the reasons why effective altruism started, or simply a compelling narrative, but I often think of EA as having come about as a result of advances in three different disciplines:
The rise in evidence-based development aid, with the use of randomized controlled trials led by economists such as those at the Poverty Action Lab. These provide high-quality research about what works and what doesn’t in development aid.
The development of the heuristics and biases literature by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. This literature shows the failures of human rationality, and thereby opens up the possibility of increasing one’s impact by deliberately countering these biases.
The development of moral arguments, by Peter Singer and others, in favor of there being a duty to use a proportion of one’s resources to fight global poverty, and in favor of an ‘expanded moral circle‘ that gives moral weight to distant strangers, future people and non-human animals.
This gave rise to three communities: the rationalist (e.g. LessWrong), the philosophical (e.g. Giving What We Can), and the randomistas as they are often referred to (e.g. J-PAL and GiveWell)). These three communities merged to form effective altruism.
I wrote this up based on William MacAskill’s arguments at http://effectivealtruism.org/history/ but I would be interested to hear how much people think this explains.
I agree with (1) and (3), but I don’t think (2) played a large role. Regarding (1), I think that the conceptual development of QALYs (which DALYs largely copied) was as important as the randomisation, since it began to allow like for like comparisons across much wider areas.
For an analogously apparently obvious but relatively new concept see ‘Evidence Based Medicine’. Applying the results of rigorous research to guide clinical practice probably sounds blindingly obvious but only emerged in the latter part of the 20th century and was bitterly contested.
I agree that saying that Kahnemann and Tversky were an influence of the founding of the effective altruism movement is arguably overselling it. But it’s also arguably underselling the influence of the broader rationality literature. Kahnemann and Tversky’s work are a major inspiration to effective altruists. Dweick’s growth mindset stuff and CFAR’s work on improving one’s thinking plays the crucial role of inspiring effective altruists to try to improve themselves, not just sacrifice a larger fraction of some fixed capability-set. Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about effective altruism and used the exact phrase ages ago. MIRI, arguably the first effective altruist organisation in spirit, preceded the widespread use of the term. Now, the rationality literature that has developed around LessWrong forms a nexus of ideas that greatly overlaps with effective altruism, especially in discussion of existential risk and artificial intelligence. Many people conceptualise altruism as one application for rationality, thereby becoming effective altruists. So the influence of rationality literature on effective altruism in past, present and future is significant, I think.
I’m unsure whether these are the reasons why effective altruism started, or simply a compelling narrative, but I often think of EA as having come about as a result of advances in three different disciplines:
The rise in evidence-based development aid, with the use of randomized controlled trials led by economists such as those at the Poverty Action Lab. These provide high-quality research about what works and what doesn’t in development aid.
The development of the heuristics and biases literature by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. This literature shows the failures of human rationality, and thereby opens up the possibility of increasing one’s impact by deliberately countering these biases.
The development of moral arguments, by Peter Singer and others, in favor of there being a duty to use a proportion of one’s resources to fight global poverty, and in favor of an ‘expanded moral circle‘ that gives moral weight to distant strangers, future people and non-human animals.
This gave rise to three communities: the rationalist (e.g. LessWrong), the philosophical (e.g. Giving What We Can), and the randomistas as they are often referred to (e.g. J-PAL and GiveWell)). These three communities merged to form effective altruism.
I wrote this up based on William MacAskill’s arguments at http://effectivealtruism.org/history/ but I would be interested to hear how much people think this explains.
I agree with (1) and (3), but I don’t think (2) played a large role. Regarding (1), I think that the conceptual development of QALYs (which DALYs largely copied) was as important as the randomisation, since it began to allow like for like comparisons across much wider areas.
I think this was crucial.
For an analogously apparently obvious but relatively new concept see ‘Evidence Based Medicine’. Applying the results of rigorous research to guide clinical practice probably sounds blindingly obvious but only emerged in the latter part of the 20th century and was bitterly contested.
I agree that saying that Kahnemann and Tversky were an influence of the founding of the effective altruism movement is arguably overselling it. But it’s also arguably underselling the influence of the broader rationality literature. Kahnemann and Tversky’s work are a major inspiration to effective altruists. Dweick’s growth mindset stuff and CFAR’s work on improving one’s thinking plays the crucial role of inspiring effective altruists to try to improve themselves, not just sacrifice a larger fraction of some fixed capability-set. Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about effective altruism and used the exact phrase ages ago. MIRI, arguably the first effective altruist organisation in spirit, preceded the widespread use of the term. Now, the rationality literature that has developed around LessWrong forms a nexus of ideas that greatly overlaps with effective altruism, especially in discussion of existential risk and artificial intelligence. Many people conceptualise altruism as one application for rationality, thereby becoming effective altruists. So the influence of rationality literature on effective altruism in past, present and future is significant, I think.
Small spelling correction: “Carol Dweck” (not Dweick).
ps—her research on Growth Mindset is, I think, the most cost-effective educational intervention out there at the moment.