Executive summary: Effective altruism (EA) advocates using evidence and data to maximize positive impact when helping others, with its core principles being both modest and vital—focusing on effectiveness in charitable giving and career choices can save many more lives than conventional approaches.
Key points:
The most effective charities can be thousands of times more impactful than average ones—for example, saving a life for a few thousand dollars or preventing years of animal suffering for cents.
EA has achieved concrete results: saving ~50,000 lives annually, providing clean water to 5M people, and preventing hundreds of millions of animals from factory farming.
Common criticisms (e.g., local vs. global giving, human vs. animal welfare, systemic change) often misunderstand EA’s basic premise or overstate its requirements—EA doesn’t require utilitarianism or giving away all wealth.
EA recommends ~10% charitable giving as a baseline and emphasizes evidence-based interventions with proven effectiveness through rigorous research and randomized controlled trials.
While some EAs support additional ideas like longtermism or earning-to-give, these are not core requirements—the fundamental principle is simply to help others more effectively.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Effective altruism (EA) advocates using evidence and data to maximize positive impact when helping others, with its core principles being both modest and vital—focusing on effectiveness in charitable giving and career choices can save many more lives than conventional approaches.
Key points:
The most effective charities can be thousands of times more impactful than average ones—for example, saving a life for a few thousand dollars or preventing years of animal suffering for cents.
EA has achieved concrete results: saving ~50,000 lives annually, providing clean water to 5M people, and preventing hundreds of millions of animals from factory farming.
Common criticisms (e.g., local vs. global giving, human vs. animal welfare, systemic change) often misunderstand EA’s basic premise or overstate its requirements—EA doesn’t require utilitarianism or giving away all wealth.
EA recommends ~10% charitable giving as a baseline and emphasizes evidence-based interventions with proven effectiveness through rigorous research and randomized controlled trials.
While some EAs support additional ideas like longtermism or earning-to-give, these are not core requirements—the fundamental principle is simply to help others more effectively.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.