I’m part of the effective altruism (EA) movement. We’re people who share a few beliefs:
- Value the lives of all people equally, no matter what they look like or where they come from.
- When you do something for the sake of other people, try to do the most good you can.
- Use research and evidence to make decisions. Support causes and programs with a lot of good evidence behind them.
- When you have a choice, compare different options. Don’t just do something because it’s a good idea — make sure there’s no obvious better thing you could be doing instead.
In practice, we give a lot of money to charity. Usually charities that work in countries where people are very poor, like India, Ghana, or Kenya — not the United States or Britain or Japan. We think other people should also do this.
(I’ll skip the complications for now. I’ve been satisfied by the responses I’ve heard to my objections against EA, and I’ll assume that any reader of this piece is at least neutral toward the central ideas of the movement.)
Party Conversation
This is a collection of ways to explain EA, or argue that EA is a good idea, in 60 seconds or less. Many are based on real conversations I’ve had. Ideally, you could use them at a party. I plan to, when I move out of Verona to a city with more parties.