Dave Cortright 🔸

Karma: 714

I have been a serious philanthropist since 2004 and part of the EA community since 2017. I am audaciously optimistic we can ameliorating the global mental health crisis. I used my coaching and facilitatation skills to help grow EA capacity. I support environmental and animal welfare organizations. I am on the advisory council of Vegan Outreach and the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Board.

I am a certified professional coach, with additional experience in crisis counseling and peer mentoring. I shifted to mental health and well-being after 25 years as a designer, manager, and director at Silicon Valley tech companies. I am passionate about helping others, and by guiding them to find their true calling, I amplify my impact on improving the world.

Dave Cortright 🔸 28 Nov 2025 21:31 UTC
1 point
1 ∶ 2
on: 3 doubts about veganism
Is Barack Obama black? Technically, no; he is bi-racial. But he identifies as black, and most people—when asked—would say he is black (Wikipedia concurs).
I think veganism should be treated the same way. You don’t have to be 100% perfect for you or others to consider you vegan.
Being pedantic about definitions does not help reduce suffering, IMO.

Dave Cortright 🔸 25 Nov 2025 16:21 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Donation Election Discussion Thread
They all touch on mental health interventions in some way.

Dave Cortright 🔸 18 Oct 2025 19:05 UTC
5 points
5 ∶ 0
on: What If EA Actually Picked One Goal?
Maybe your belief is that if enough people “at the top” of EA agree to this, they can influence a majority of the EA community to follow. My sense is that EAs are more independent freethinkers than most other groups, so I don’t think this scenario is likely.
Given that, what you’re proposing is essentially relabeling the current set of “EAs who care about animal welfare” to “EA”. A few EAs who aren’t already in this camp might follow you over, but on the whole I strongly suspect this would alienate everyone else who doesn’t sign up for this worldview, and it would just fracture the community.

Dave Cortright 🔸 16 Oct 2025 18:00 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Thoughts on greatnonprofits.org?
I’m a fan of “wisdom of crowds”. But I suspect—at least for the top-rated ones—there has been coordinated ballot box stuffing by staff and supporters. And like many user reviews online, it tends toward bimodal of “great” or “awful”. Most people don’t make the effort to write “it was ok” reviews.
I feel there’s too much noise and not enough signal to make it a worthwhile source.

Dave Cortright 🔸 16 Sep 2025 15:41 UTC
0 points
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on: DaveC’s Shortform
EoL Competition, EOL in the software world means “End of Life”. I’d recommend choosing a different acronym. LongTermism could be abbreviated LT, so EoLT or Thoughts on Longtermism, TLT. (LTE is already taken 😇)

Dave Cortright 🔸 8 Sep 2025 19:32 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: How big a deal is donating 10% of your income really? A perspective
For me, the foundational question is “How much is enough?” How much do I need to live a reasonably healthy, happy life? Kahneman & Deaton (2010) found this to be $75,000, which would be about $100k in 2025. I use this as my baseline (adjusted for the cost of living in my area). Maybe this will help others contextualize.

Dave Cortright 🔸 26 Aug 2025 15:38 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 11
on: You’re Enough
I encourage everyone to lower their achievement bar all the way down to “minimize harm”. There is no rational reason to beat yourself up for not reaching some arbitrary goalpost, even if it is one that you set for yourself and was arguably achievable. Life happens, and new circumstances and data can easily shift things.
For example, if you were hit by a bus and in the ICU recovering, no one would expect you to be productive. Why is it any different for milder versions? Have the flu or a cold? Didn’t sleep well last night? Completely exhausted and burnt out?
“Should” is the most insidious word we use. “I should be able to achieve more or give more or be better”. Love and accept yourself where you are. Then, if you want to make step towards improvement, do so. But keep them small and don’t compare against others or hypotheticals. The only comparison that matters is against yourself.

Dave Cortright 🔸 11 Aug 2025 15:17 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Indrek Kivirik’s comment on: Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking
I agree it is a factor, but it is naïve to think that is the only explanation.

Dave Cortright 🔸 7 Aug 2025 9:36 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 3
on: Alcohol is so bad for society that you should probably stop drinking
Alcohol is indeed a Class 1 carcinogen. As the WHO says bluntly, “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.”
But it is also one of the nine factors in Blue Zones—longevity outlier populations.
So, how to explain the contraction? The power of community and relationships:
The positive effects of consistent, strong, and healthy relationships are so much more powerful than other factors, they become essentially rounding errors in the equation.
I overall agree that alcohol is a net negative to society. But if it is ingested in moderation as part of social bonding rituals like evening meals together or spiritual services, the positive effects of these rituals on our health—especially bolstering our amazing immune systems that constantly repair mild to moderate damage in our bodies—more than make up for the negatives of the alcohol.

Dave Cortright 🔸 1 Aug 2025 16:00 UTC
1 point
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on: On the Moral Patiency of Non-Sentient Beings (Part 2)
In the infinite game there is no win condition
The winning condition is that the game is still ongoing. As long as the infinite game is in progress, it is in the winning state.

Dave Cortright 🔸 25 Jul 2025 16:34 UTC
3 points
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on: From Google to co-founding a global health charity: Mid-career transitions with Martyn James
I recommend updating the title to something like “From Google to global health NGO”.
At first glance, I thought this said “Google is founding a new global health charity.”

Dave Cortright 🔸 25 Jul 2025 16:31 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Debate: Are enough EAs earning to give?
To scale solutions, we need more money than people, since money can not only deploy solutions but also hire more people

Dave Cortright 🔸 25 Jul 2025 15:35 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Why?’s comment on: Grappling with an Uncomfortable Trade-off: Human Lives vs. Animal Suffering
Well, it’s unfortunate, but the fundamental goal of Effective Altruism is rational investment, and that means, among other things, not investing based on emotions.
This is wrong; it’s a black-or-white logical fallacy. Emotions are an important channel of data. Not factoring them into calculations leads to false conclusions. Check out bilateral amygdala damage or frontotemporal dementia.
EA discourages emotion-only or emotion-overweighted decision-making. However, if emotion were not a part of EA, we would simply give every dollar to bednets in Africa and ignore every other cause.
Maybe I’m misreading your argument, but you seem to say there are legitimate cases to be made for 100% investment in humans, at the expense of complete obliteration of the remainder of the animal kingdom. The whole ecosystem we rely on for survival would collapse.

I might agree with you that the planet would be better off long term if we devoted 100% to animals and, conversely, obliterated all the people. There are (at least) two things wrong with this other extreme scenario, though:
1. It values human flourishing at zero, which is antithetical to EA
2. We might be the only higher consciousness in the Galaxy, or even the Universe, with a non-zero risk of ours being the only one that arises. It would be a massive loss to have the next googol years play out unaware.

Dave Cortright 🔸 24 Jul 2025 15:56 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: tootlife’s comment on: Grappling with an Uncomfortable Trade-off: Human Lives vs. Animal Suffering
Telling people what they should do is antithetical to respect and agency and human flourishing. Making moral arguments is one thing, but authoritarianism crosses the line. IMHO.

Dave Cortright 🔸 24 Jul 2025 4:08 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 1
on: Grappling with an Uncomfortable Trade-off: Human Lives vs. Animal Suffering
The “highest-lowest” game mechanic is a valuable lens when thinking about balancing investments. It’s pretty clear the extremes are wrong (100% people, 0% animals, or the inverse). That means there is some middle ground that makes sense.
I trust the wisdom of the crowd. Some are drawn to human welfare, others to animal welfare. Some to both. The more we educate everyone on the issues and give them the agency to make their own decisions on where to invest resources, the more likely we are to come to a reasonable balance point.

Dave Cortright 🔸 21 Jul 2025 14:13 UTC
1 point
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on: 10 years of Earning to Give
‘what does the community incentivise?’ vs ‘what does the community say?’
Reminds me of the quote from the Netflix Culture document:
The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.

Dave Cortright 🔸 1 Jul 2025 23:13 UTC
1 point
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on: Debate: Depopulation Matters

Dave Cortright 🔸 27 Jun 2025 18:27 UTC
2 points
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on: Systems Change 101
Thanks for putting this together! A few other considerations I didn’t see in the article (correct me if I missed it):
Any organization [or system] is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets.
—Arthur W. Jones, organizational design expert
So if you want different results, you must change the system. Expecting players to “be better” is not a viable path to lasting change.
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
—Clay Shirky
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair
The fortunate man is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he deserves it and—above all—that he deserves it in comparison with others. Good fortune thus wants to be legitimate fortune. [a.k.a. system justification theory]
—Max Weber
Veil of Ignorance (a.k.a. Original Position) — a philosophical concept by John Rawls, which suggests that individuals should design the principles of society without knowing their own personal circumstances, such as their gender, race, or social status. This thought experiment aims to promote fairness and impartiality in decision-making, encouraging the creation of just and equitable societal structures.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. [a.k.a. Social dominance orientation]
—Frank Wilhoit (composer from Ohio)

Dave Cortright 🔸 8 Jun 2025 16:25 UTC
3 points
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on: The Seven Laws of Declinism
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
It’s easy to focus on or overweigh the negative things in the world. It could be argued that our bias towards “loss aversion” primes humans to be this way. So, effort and training are required to look at data in an unbiased way. Just because we see more reports of something doesn’t mean those things are increasing. It could be a reporting bias.

If I could add one requirement to the education system, it would be critical thinking skills—especially the ability to learn and spot logical fallacies. I think this is a foundational reason why democracies are slipping back towards fascism.

Dave Cortright 🔸 6 Jun 2025 14:33 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Brad West🔸’s comment on: Good.store is ”profit for good“ by Hank & John Green (vlog brothers)
The only part of the Beast empire that is 100% charitable is his Beast Philanthropy channel. I do recommend people subscribe and watch those videos. He started with local food banks and has quickly moved to (what looks to me like) fairly effective humanitarian aid in LMICs. Some of his main channel videos cover his humanitarian efforts. But I think they are essentially marketing for his Philanthropy.

I subscribe to Hank & John’s newsletter and replied with the info on the P4G conference. Probably was read by an intern, but at least someone in the org is aware.