The Problem with Effective Altruism - Persuasion Community

The Problem with Effective Altruism - by Yascha Mounk 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 
 

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 A partial defense.

 Yascha Mounk Sep 19, 2024 13 1 1 Share (Photo via Getty Images.) When I was a visiting fellow at Oxford two years ago, I heard a story about effective altruism I keep going back to whenever somebody mentions Sam Bankman-Fried (one of the philosophy’s early champions) or colonizing Mars (one of its advocates’ principal obsessions).

 According to the story, a classmate lent one of the most vocal advocates for effective altruism her toaster while they were both graduate students at Oxford. She reminded him to return it a week later, and a month later, and three months later, to no avail. Finally, invited to his apartment for a social gathering, she spotted the toaster on the kitchen counter, covered in mold.

 “Why on earth didn’t you return the toaster to me?” she asked, in frustration.

 “I ran the numbers,” he responded. “If I want to do good for the world, my time is better spent working on my thesis.”

 “Couldn’t you at least have cleaned the damn thing?”

 “From a moral point of view, I’m pretty sure the answer is no.”

 I have no idea whether the story is true. Being just a little too perfect, I suspect that it is probably exaggerated, and possibly completely made up. But I share it here because the attitude it encapsulates goes to the core of how the movement of effective altruism went wrong—and why the original intuition that gave rise to it might just be worth rehabilitating.

 Let me explain.

 The Compelling Intuition Behind Effective Altruism 

 Effective altruism, at its core, is a simple idea. Many people are motivated to do good for the world: they volunteer and donate and engage in other activities that are meant to be genuinely altruistic.

 But upon closer inspection, it turns out that many of these activities have little impact or are altogether pointless. People volunteer at organizations that fail to advance the causes to which they are supposedly devoted. They donate to their local cat shelter even though there are already enough organizations caring for stray pets in their affluent neighborhood. They buy their alma mater a fancy new gym even though the campus already has state-of-the-art facilities.

 This is all the more galling because the same amount of money could make a vastly bigger difference if directed to more productive purposes. In America or Germany or Chile or South Korea, even a citizen with a perfectly ordinary job could, if they regularly donate a modest share of their income to a charity which provides people i

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