Many of the effective altruists Iâve known were first introduced to EA through some kind of interpersonal connectionâa friend got interested first, or they heard about it at a college event, or something along those lines.
Iâve introduced a few people to EA this way myself. But itâs a tricky thing to get rightâas we all know, many EA ideas can sound very strange at first, especially if the explanation is just a few words off.
So Iâm listing some of the best ways Iâve found to explain EA quickly, plus a few additional ideas. My goal is to explore many different frames for EA, so that we can find the best ways to explain it to many different types of people. The goal of any one of these frames is to open a short conversation, or create enough interest that someone will click on a link you send them later.
(Note: No frame is perfect for all conversations, and some may be terrible if used in the wrong circumstances. Be careful.)
After you read this, please add your favorite frame(s) in the comments! (If you have any.) Iâd love to use this page to start collecting lots of examples, so we can collectively figure out the best-sounding frames, even if weâre a long way from an RCT of EA frames.
List of Frames
Excited Altruism
Some people see charity largely as a way to avoid moral guilt. I think thatâs a fair interpretation, but when I give, most of what I feel is excitement! I may never get the chance to save a child from a burning building [source for the example], but I can still make a childâs life much better, and maybe even help to save a child who would otherwise have died a preventable death. Why not be excited about that? Iâm also excited to live in a time when weâve started to have really good evidence around how to help people on the other side of the world, so that I can be really efficient in the way that I give. When I give, I feel much the same as when I volunteerâglad that Iâve done something positive, and hopeful about the results. Hence, âexcited altruismâ.
The Feeling of Relief
âHas there ever been a time when you started to get sick, and you knew it was going to be bad? And you had a moment of âoh, no, please, anything but...â?
âWhen I think about the people who are helped by groups that fight malaria and parasitic worms, I think about those moments. âIâve had those âoh noâ moments a few times, but that usually meant a really bad fever or a case of strep throatâsomething that would go away in a few days when I took the right pills. And meanwhile, Iâd be more or less okayâI could call in sick to work, get homework from my professor, and catch up on life when I got better.
âBut if I lived in a village where malaria is very common, I might have a higher-than-50-percent chance of getting it during the rainy season. So when I woke up and felt sick, my âoh noâ moment might mean several weeks spent in bed. During this time, I wouldnât be fit to farm, and Iâd lose quite a bit of money as a resultâmeaning I might be skipping meals later. If it were a parasitic worm infection, the symptoms wouldnât be the same, but the general principle holds true; Iâd be in bad shape.
âWhen I give money to buy deworming pills or a malaria bednet, I imagine someone who would be having one of those âoh noâ moments instead being perfectly healthy and not having their life disrupted. I imagine how good Iâd feel if someone stopped one of my strep infections before it happened. It feels awesome, and that makes me excited to give someone a chance at one fewer âoh noâ moment.â
Global Inequality (Money)
(For use in conversations where people claim to favor local giving.)
âIâll grant that inequality causes problems in the United States. But U.S. inequality is minor compared to inequality on the planet Earth. âDid you know that Earth has a higher Gini coefficient than any single country? A lot of us are part of the global â1 percentâ, so to speak.
âThe average American CEO makes about 200 times as much as me. And I make about 200 times as much as some of the poorest people in the world.
âOne big project of effective altruism is to reduce global inequality. By letting more migrants into the U.S. (where theyâll send money back to their families), by cutting down on illicit cash flows (when rich people in poor countries donât pay taxes and hide money abroad), and also by literally asking rich people to give cash to poor people. That seems to work pretty well.â
Global Inequality (Attention)
(For use in conversations where people claim to favor local giving.)
âThere are a lot of Americans we tend to ignore. The homeless, American Indians, ex-felons⌠plus a lot of other groups. And thatâs terrible.
âBut I think that we ignore people in some other countries to an equal extent. That happens with charitable giving, too. For every dollar an American donates, we send about six cents to other countries.
âIntellectually, I understand the philosophical position behind giving locally. But on a personal level, I find it really hard to see nationality as a thing that should guide me, apart from any other factors. Maybe direct friendship, or shared membership in a small group, but not nationality.â
Doubling Income
âMajor social problems in the U.S. are generally harder to solve with money than major social problems in the developing world. Still, there are obviously ways you could spend money to change the life of a fellow American. And that would often by a kind, world-improving thing to do.
âBut money goes so much further abroad that it took me a long time to understand exactly how big the difference is.
âGiveDirectly lets me send money straight to someone in Kenya. If I give them about $700, they can use that money to double a familyâs income for the entire year. Can you imagine what the impact would be if you doubled someoneâs income in the U.S. for a year?
âBut that would be about 20 times as expensive in the U.S. And the impact would be similar either way. $700 transforms a poor Kenyanâs life in about the same way youâd expect $14,000 to transform a poor Americanâs life.â
Shared Humanity
âDoes the cold, calculating part of EA mean that I lose some of my empathy?
âWell, maybe. Itâs definitely hard for me to feel empathy for someone who survives on a couple of dollars a day. It would feel arrogant to claim that I âunderstandâ that person. Our lives are different in almost every way.
âBut even if Iâll never know what itâs like to eat the same thing for almost every meal, I think there are basic human pleasures that I share with pretty much every other human who ever lived.
âI know what itâs like to learn something new. I know what itâs like to see an old friend after a long separation. I know what itâs like to sit inside when the weather is bad and hear the raindrops on the roof and think âyep, Iâm glad Iâm not outside right nowâ. I know what itâs like to fall in love with someone and wake up smiling just because that person exists.
âSo when I need an emotional boost, I imagine the person Iâm helping. And the way that, even though we are just about as different as two humans can be, we still share those awesome things. And Iâm hopefully freeing that person up to not feel as much stress, and to have more time to feel the kinds of happiness I think we do share.â
I firmly refuse to feel guilty about my outrageous cosmic luck. I find it far more satisfying to pay it forward. See, luck, like pretty much everything else, can be bought with money [...] I was born by sheer chance into a country that has eradicated malaria already but I can buy a couple bednets towards the project of stamping it off this earth entirely [...] Almost every advantage I have, everyone ought to have, and giving them money is the closest I can come to putting a finger on the cosmic scales.
Revenge
âI have a hard time getting angry at people. I usually feel like peopleâs reasons for doing bad things made sense to them at the time, and whenever I get mad at them I remember times people were mad at me for doing bad things, and then I feel kind of sick.
âBut getting angry is really satisfying. So instead I get angry at problems. Iâm angry at meteors that have the sheer nerve to get within a billion miles of Earth. Iâm angry at mosquitoes, because theyâre always biting people. Iâm angry at the social systems, built on purpose or by accident, that ruin lives with no remorse, because they are abstract concepts that canât even feel remorse.
âEA is my way of saying âscrew you, problems!â You want to keep people in jail? Iâll bail them out. You want to make people sick? Iâll murder you. You want to threaten my planet? Iâll wipe the very possibility of you from existence. And Iâll do it with the cold, brutal efficiency of an executioner.â
Social Justice
âIâm generally a fan of the modern social justice movement. I think theyâve done more good than harm, and will end up doing much more good than harm in the long run.
âBut like any movement, they wind up focusing on some people more than others, to avoid being stretched really thin. I think EA does a good job of catching some of the groups SJ sometimes doesnât catch.
âA focus on local movements and protests means we donât always catch people who arenât from our country, and thatâs one of EAâs major focuses. And while SJ has a lot of vegetarians and vegans, I havenât seen a lot of animal-rights rhetoric; thatâs another major EA focus.
âWhen I think âall lives matterâ, Iâm not going for a counterpoint to âblack lives matterâ. Iâm going for âdonât forget the lives of people who live outside the classic U.S. race/âgender/âclass spectrum!â Even if âracismâ manifests very differently in India or Nigeria or Myanmar, poverty and the lack of education still cause very familiar problems there.â
Being Embarrassed in the Future
âPaul Graham wrote a great essay on âwhat we canât say nowâ. Itâs about how the world might change in the future.
âWe can look back at every other era and find problems with how they lived. Segregation, slavery, wars of conquest⌠thereâs always something.
âWhat will our great-grandchildren be embarrassed about when they look at the year 2016? Probably the ârights issuesâ weâre still struggling with. But I think theyâll also be confused and angry about how many people we left out to dry because they werenât in the same country, or because of generic arguments about how âaid doesnât helpâ or âstart helping in your own backyardâ.
âThis extends to some uncomfortable opinions, too. Like the idea that some causes, or specific charities, are simply a waste of time and money. I wonder if our descendants will look at the amount we give to museums or symphony orchestras, and just be completely confused as to why so many people were dying for lack of really cheap medicine in other parts of the world.
âBasically, Iâm assuming my descendants will be smarter than I am, and I try to donate in part so that my giving will make sense to them.â
Talking About Effective Altruism At Parties
(Cross-posted from my blog, with a few edits.)
Many of the effective altruists Iâve known were first introduced to EA through some kind of interpersonal connectionâa friend got interested first, or they heard about it at a college event, or something along those lines.
Iâve introduced a few people to EA this way myself. But itâs a tricky thing to get rightâas we all know, many EA ideas can sound very strange at first, especially if the explanation is just a few words off.
So Iâm listing some of the best ways Iâve found to explain EA quickly, plus a few additional ideas. My goal is to explore many different frames for EA, so that we can find the best ways to explain it to many different types of people. The goal of any one of these frames is to open a short conversation, or create enough interest that someone will click on a link you send them later.
(Note: No frame is perfect for all conversations, and some may be terrible if used in the wrong circumstances. Be careful.)
After you read this, please add your favorite frame(s) in the comments! (If you have any.) Iâd love to use this page to start collecting lots of examples, so we can collectively figure out the best-sounding frames, even if weâre a long way from an RCT of EA frames.
List of Frames
Excited Altruism
Some people see charity largely as a way to avoid moral guilt. I think thatâs a fair interpretation, but when I give, most of what I feel is excitement! I may never get the chance to save a child from a burning building [source for the example], but I can still make a childâs life much better, and maybe even help to save a child who would otherwise have died a preventable death. Why not be excited about that? Iâm also excited to live in a time when weâve started to have really good evidence around how to help people on the other side of the world, so that I can be really efficient in the way that I give. When I give, I feel much the same as when I volunteerâglad that Iâve done something positive, and hopeful about the results. Hence, âexcited altruismâ.
The Feeling of Relief
âHas there ever been a time when you started to get sick, and you knew it was going to be bad? And you had a moment of âoh, no, please, anything but...â?
âWhen I think about the people who are helped by groups that fight malaria and parasitic worms, I think about those moments. âIâve had those âoh noâ moments a few times, but that usually meant a really bad fever or a case of strep throatâsomething that would go away in a few days when I took the right pills. And meanwhile, Iâd be more or less okayâI could call in sick to work, get homework from my professor, and catch up on life when I got better.
âBut if I lived in a village where malaria is very common, I might have a higher-than-50-percent chance of getting it during the rainy season. So when I woke up and felt sick, my âoh noâ moment might mean several weeks spent in bed. During this time, I wouldnât be fit to farm, and Iâd lose quite a bit of money as a resultâmeaning I might be skipping meals later. If it were a parasitic worm infection, the symptoms wouldnât be the same, but the general principle holds true; Iâd be in bad shape.
âWhen I give money to buy deworming pills or a malaria bednet, I imagine someone who would be having one of those âoh noâ moments instead being perfectly healthy and not having their life disrupted. I imagine how good Iâd feel if someone stopped one of my strep infections before it happened. It feels awesome, and that makes me excited to give someone a chance at one fewer âoh noâ moment.â
Global Inequality (Money)
(For use in conversations where people claim to favor local giving.)
âIâll grant that inequality causes problems in the United States. But U.S. inequality is minor compared to inequality on the planet Earth. âDid you know that Earth has a higher Gini coefficient than any single country? A lot of us are part of the global â1 percentâ, so to speak.
âThe average American CEO makes about 200 times as much as me. And I make about 200 times as much as some of the poorest people in the world.
âOne big project of effective altruism is to reduce global inequality. By letting more migrants into the U.S. (where theyâll send money back to their families), by cutting down on illicit cash flows (when rich people in poor countries donât pay taxes and hide money abroad), and also by literally asking rich people to give cash to poor people. That seems to work pretty well.â
Global Inequality (Attention)
(For use in conversations where people claim to favor local giving.)
âThere are a lot of Americans we tend to ignore. The homeless, American Indians, ex-felons⌠plus a lot of other groups. And thatâs terrible.
âBut I think that we ignore people in some other countries to an equal extent. That happens with charitable giving, too. For every dollar an American donates, we send about six cents to other countries.
âIntellectually, I understand the philosophical position behind giving locally. But on a personal level, I find it really hard to see nationality as a thing that should guide me, apart from any other factors. Maybe direct friendship, or shared membership in a small group, but not nationality.â
Doubling Income
âMajor social problems in the U.S. are generally harder to solve with money than major social problems in the developing world. Still, there are obviously ways you could spend money to change the life of a fellow American. And that would often by a kind, world-improving thing to do.
âBut money goes so much further abroad that it took me a long time to understand exactly how big the difference is.
âGiveDirectly lets me send money straight to someone in Kenya. If I give them about $700, they can use that money to double a familyâs income for the entire year. Can you imagine what the impact would be if you doubled someoneâs income in the U.S. for a year?
âBut that would be about 20 times as expensive in the U.S. And the impact would be similar either way. $700 transforms a poor Kenyanâs life in about the same way youâd expect $14,000 to transform a poor Americanâs life.â
Shared Humanity
âDoes the cold, calculating part of EA mean that I lose some of my empathy?
âWell, maybe. Itâs definitely hard for me to feel empathy for someone who survives on a couple of dollars a day. It would feel arrogant to claim that I âunderstandâ that person. Our lives are different in almost every way.
âBut even if Iâll never know what itâs like to eat the same thing for almost every meal, I think there are basic human pleasures that I share with pretty much every other human who ever lived.
âI know what itâs like to learn something new. I know what itâs like to see an old friend after a long separation. I know what itâs like to sit inside when the weather is bad and hear the raindrops on the roof and think âyep, Iâm glad Iâm not outside right nowâ. I know what itâs like to fall in love with someone and wake up smiling just because that person exists.
âSo when I need an emotional boost, I imagine the person Iâm helping. And the way that, even though we are just about as different as two humans can be, we still share those awesome things. And Iâm hopefully freeing that person up to not feel as much stress, and to have more time to feel the kinds of happiness I think we do share.â
Ridiculously Lucky
I keep my version of this frame on the page where I track my giving. I might also whip out my phone and quote my idol, The Unit of Caring:
Revenge
âI have a hard time getting angry at people. I usually feel like peopleâs reasons for doing bad things made sense to them at the time, and whenever I get mad at them I remember times people were mad at me for doing bad things, and then I feel kind of sick.
âBut getting angry is really satisfying. So instead I get angry at problems. Iâm angry at meteors that have the sheer nerve to get within a billion miles of Earth. Iâm angry at mosquitoes, because theyâre always biting people. Iâm angry at the social systems, built on purpose or by accident, that ruin lives with no remorse, because they are abstract concepts that canât even feel remorse.
âEA is my way of saying âscrew you, problems!â You want to keep people in jail? Iâll bail them out. You want to make people sick? Iâll murder you. You want to threaten my planet? Iâll wipe the very possibility of you from existence. And Iâll do it with the cold, brutal efficiency of an executioner.â
Social Justice
âIâm generally a fan of the modern social justice movement. I think theyâve done more good than harm, and will end up doing much more good than harm in the long run.
âBut like any movement, they wind up focusing on some people more than others, to avoid being stretched really thin. I think EA does a good job of catching some of the groups SJ sometimes doesnât catch.
âA focus on local movements and protests means we donât always catch people who arenât from our country, and thatâs one of EAâs major focuses. And while SJ has a lot of vegetarians and vegans, I havenât seen a lot of animal-rights rhetoric; thatâs another major EA focus.
âWhen I think âall lives matterâ, Iâm not going for a counterpoint to âblack lives matterâ. Iâm going for âdonât forget the lives of people who live outside the classic U.S. race/âgender/âclass spectrum!â Even if âracismâ manifests very differently in India or Nigeria or Myanmar, poverty and the lack of education still cause very familiar problems there.â
Being Embarrassed in the Future
âPaul Graham wrote a great essay on âwhat we canât say nowâ. Itâs about how the world might change in the future.
âWe can look back at every other era and find problems with how they lived. Segregation, slavery, wars of conquest⌠thereâs always something.
âWhat will our great-grandchildren be embarrassed about when they look at the year 2016? Probably the ârights issuesâ weâre still struggling with. But I think theyâll also be confused and angry about how many people we left out to dry because they werenât in the same country, or because of generic arguments about how âaid doesnât helpâ or âstart helping in your own backyardâ.
âThis extends to some uncomfortable opinions, too. Like the idea that some causes, or specific charities, are simply a waste of time and money. I wonder if our descendants will look at the amount we give to museums or symphony orchestras, and just be completely confused as to why so many people were dying for lack of really cheap medicine in other parts of the world.
âBasically, Iâm assuming my descendants will be smarter than I am, and I try to donate in part so that my giving will make sense to them.â