Effective altruism is the project of using evidence and reason to find out how to do the most good and to act on these findings.
Further reading
80,000 Hours (2021) Effective altruism: Ten global problems, 80,000 Hours.
Berkey, Brian (2021) The philosophical core of effective altruism, Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 52, pp. 92–113.
Greaves, Hilary & Theron Pummer (2019) Introduction, in Hilary Greaves & Theron Pummer (eds.) Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–9.
Harris, Keiran & Robert Wiblin (2021) Effective altruism in a nutshell, 80,000 Hours, October 18.
MacAskill, William & Theron Pummer (2020) Effective altruism, in Hugh LaFollette (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley.
Singer, Peter (2019) Foreword, in Hilary Greaves & Theron Pummer (eds.) Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. v–vi.
Related entries
criticism of effective altruism | definition of effective altruism | history of effective altruism | philosophy of effective altruism
I think this is slightly better than CEA’s statement
But I’d still want perhaps to moderate this a bit, if there’s a way of doing so while still being clear and concise
“to find out how to do the most good”
… We can only aim to figure out how to do the most good. We will never know with certainty.
“how to do the most good and to act on these findings”
… This seems better than CEA’s “as much as possible” which suggests that we must be completely self-sacrificing.
...But still ‘the most good’ seems a bar too high. Perhaps something like “as much good as possible, to the best of our knowledge, given the amount of our resources we are willing and able to contribute.” ?