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How can we use our resources to do as much good as possible? Effective altruism is about using reason and research to approach an answer to that question and then acting.
Effective altruism is a set of ideas, a field of research, and a growing global movement of organizations and individuals focused on maximizing their positive impact.
One person can save many lives
Did you know that a Swedish median income of SEK 35,600 means that you belong to the world’s richest four percent ? It is 11 times more than the global median income. Meanwhile, over 700 million people live in extreme poverty – on less than 23 SEK a day – and every year ten million people die from diseases that are cheap to treat and prevent.
The relative wealth that comes from being born in a wealthy country means that many people can make a significant difference by donating a portion of their income to effective charities.
GiveWell evaluates the impact of efforts in global health.
They estimate that it is possible to save a life for 3,000-5,000 US dollars. This means that by donating ten percent of a Swedish median salary during your working life, you can save approximately 20-30 lives.
If you were to save as many people by running into burning buildings, you’d probably feel like a hero. In today’s world, you can have the same impact through a regular job.
By using your career to work directly on important issues, you can make an even bigger difference.
With a Swedish median salary, you belong to the world's richest 4% and can save 20-30 lives by donating ten percent of your income during your working life.
The importance of choosing solutions strategically
Imagine someone approaches you on the street asking you to invest 500 SEK in their business. Most of us wouldn’t agree immediately. First, we would ask for more information about the company’s operations, employees, and future prospects. We’d probably also want to take some time to think it over and compare the opportunity with other potential investments.
Why effective resource allocation is crucial for impactful change
We believe that charities, individuals, and other entities working towards a better world have good intentions. However, good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.
If we are not careful about how we use our resources, there is a greater risk of allocating them to initiatives that sound good but have little, no, or even negative effects.
This is important because, unfortunately, many attempts to improve the world don’t work. An example is the TV show and social initiative “Scared Straight,” aimed at reducing youth crime in the USA.
The idea was for youths who had committed minor offenses to visit prisons and meet convicted criminals, with the hope that this would deter them from future offending. However, the initiative seems to have made the youths more likely to break the law, with every dollar spent on Scared Straight causing over $200 in societal costs.
Given that our resources are limited, we need to prioritize, and making well-informed decisions about where to direct them increases our chances of choosing interventions that have the greatest effect.
An essay by Oxford researcher Toby Ord illustrates why this is crucial. The chart below shows the impact of spending $1,000 on five different HIV/AIDS interventions, measured in DALYs (disability-adjusted life years), a health metric developed by the WHO.
Your impact can be 100 times greater if you make a strategic choice of problem to address.
Surgical treatment has such a minimal effect compared to other interventions that it doesn’t even appear on the chart. Educating high-risk groups is estimated to be 1,400 times more effective. Naturally, these kinds of analyses are challenging, and the figures may not be precisely accurate.
However, they still represent differences in scale and illustrate a crucial point: some interventions provide significantly more improvement per dollar than others. In extreme cases like this, it means that donating one dollar to the most effective intervention can make as much difference as donating $1,400 to the least effective one.
There are many ways to do good, but some are more effective than others. You won’t be able to save lives by using your time and money in just any way, but you can make a significant difference if you choose the interventions that have the greatest impact.
Your impact can be 100 times greater if you make a strategic choice of problem.
Choose problems where you can make the biggest impact at the margin
The world is improving in many ways, but there’s still a lot left to do. Around 700 million people live in extreme poverty. We face climate change, epidemics, and animal cruelty. Many people choose problems to address based on gut feelings or personal experiences, which is understandable.
For many, the desire to improve the world was sparked by encountering injustice and suffering — perhaps a family member fell ill, a friend faced discrimination, or media images stirred their engagement.
However, while an initial emotional response is natural, it often pays to think again when translating this motivation into action. Your impact can be up to a hundred times greater if you make a strategic choice of problem.
So, how do you choose which problems to tackle when so many seem urgent? Researchers in effective altruism have developed a framework to help evaluate this question. According to this framework, we should consider the following three criteria:
Some problems affect only a handful of people, while others impact billions. The larger the problem, the more good we can do by solving it. Before you choose a problem, ask yourself how many people would benefit if progress were made in this area. Are we talking about ten individuals? A thousand? A million? Solving ten percent of a large problem is better than solving ten percent of a small one.
The more resources and effort already devoted to a problem, the harder it is for you to make a significant contribution. This is due to the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns. If you’re picking apples from a tree, you start with the lowest-hanging fruit that’s easiest to reach. Once those are gone, gathering an equivalent amount requires more effort. Hence the expression “low-hanging fruit”. Similar mechanisms apply when it comes to improving the world. The more work others are putting in, the harder it is to contribute something new. If a problem is neglected, the marginal return on additional resources is expected to be greater.
Just because a problem is large and neglected doesn’t necessarily mean you should work on it. You also need to consider whether there are promising solutions that you can direct your efforts towards. It’s pointless to allocate resources to interventions that don’t work. We assess solvability by asking, “What proportion of the problem do we expect to solve if we double our efforts?”. The larger the portion we can address with additional resources, the more solvable it is. This doesn’t mean you should only choose “easy” problems where there are already proven interventions. It might be worthwhile to tackle difficult challenges if they are neglected and very large in scale. But if you’re choosing between two problems that are roughly equal in size and neglect, you’re expected to make the biggest marginal difference by selecting the one that offers the best opportunities for progress.
Priority areas
Using this framework, effective altruism has identified certain problem areas that seem particularly promising to focus on. These include reducing existential risks from artificial intelligence, biological disasters and extreme climate change.
Many effective altruists also work on health and extreme poverty in low-income countries and on reducing animal suffering in industrial food production.
In a perfect world, more people would work in all these important areas. However, as individuals, we have limited time, energy, and resources, and need to decide where we can be most effective. This should not be interpreted as suggesting that all the world’s resources should be allocated to these mentioned problems. The question is where you, as an individual, given how resources are currently distributed, can make the biggest difference at the margin.
Key Values in Effective Altruism
The key values of Effective Altruism are deeply rooted in a commitment to significantly improving the well-being of others, guided by a rigorous, scientific mindset that emphasizes evidence-based decision-making. EA adherents prioritize openness and flexibility, willing to adapt their focus and methods based on the strongest arguments and evidence available, without pre-committing to any specific cause. Integrity is central, ensuring honesty and trustworthiness in actions that reflect on the broader EA community, striving to maintain a collaborative and welcoming environment. This ethos supports diverse approaches and perspectives, fostering a community where varied ideas are assessed on their merits, promoting cooperation among individuals with different backgrounds and viewpoints.