Three Habits of Highly Effective Altruists
An appeal to common sense
At the end of a year of two high-profile shit shows for Effective Altruism, Freddie deBoer argues that the movement is nothing but a weird culture formed around a common-sense ideology: “that which is commendable isn’t particular to EA and that which is particular to EA isn’t commendable.”
In the past, I too have expressed skepticism that you need all the weirdness to get the good parts of EA. More recently, I’ve come around to the view that you really do need capital-letter Effective Altruism (i.e., the movement) to produce more effective altruists (i.e., the people)—a point Scott Alexander makes in his response to deBoer: “EA is as a social technology for getting you to do the thing that everyone says they want to do in principle.”
But this one is for the normies and the skeptics. It’s my summary of the low-hanging fruit of Effective Altruism—three common-sense ideas most of us really can easily implement in our lives, without engaging fringe-ier views on shrimp welfare or killer robots or even just earning to give. In fact, the three ideas below are essentially cause-neutral—though I will link to several EA-affiliated organizations as examples.
1. Some Ways of Doing Good Are Better Than Others
You could call this the first law of Effective Altruism: It only takes a moment to understand, and the implications are impossible to unsee. When evidence suggests that you can save a life for less than $5,000, it’s hard to justify donating a new building to your alma mater. When even those earning a modest U.S. salary are in the top one or five percent of global earners, it’s hard to justify hoarding your money.
Personally, I still donate to several causes I don’t believe are superlatively effective, just because I care about them; I’m not a diehard consequentialist. But these organizations receive a minority of my giving, and I avoid donating to places I think don’t really need my money.
2. The Most Needy Are Not Always the Most Near
If you expand your circle of moral concern just a bit, worlds of giving opportunities open up. These opportunities have a much stronger basis of evidence behind them, and can have incredible returns on donation.
(Some Effective Altruists also expand their circle of concern to include animals and the long-term future—hence the movement’s many haters. This feels like a crazy leap, but the logic is actually pretty straightforward: It’s sooo cheap to improve chickens’ lives, and the future could be sooo big, that even a little consideration for them can go a long way. This is true even if you value those lives at a tiny fraction of the value of living, breathing humans. Personally, I just stick with GiveWell's top charities.)
I’ll note also, as an appeal to bog standard progressivism, that most “near-termist” EA efforts are targeted toward low-income countries in the Global South—which is to say toward egalitarian and antiracist ends. Progress here is not only more tractable than for a lot domestic activism—it’s also much less politically fraught and emotionally draining. (No one gets canceled for putting up malaria bed nets!)
If you’re uncomfortable with the whiff of paternalism, I’d recommend donating to GiveDirectly, which makes direct cash transfers to those in need. Available evidence suggests that this intervention is also quite effective.
3. A Little Structure Goes a Long Way
I know I’m not alone in the shame and frustration I feel at the level of homelessness in the United States. While I recognize on an intellectual level that the world’s poorest people do not live in this country, this is cold comfort from the evidence of poverty before my eyes.
About five years ago, I began to apply a bit of EA-style thinking to this problem. Although I would on occasion give money to people on subways and street corners, this approach was starting to bring its own kind of discomfort: My generosity depended heavily on arbitrary factors like what mood I was in, how much cash I had on-hand, and whether I was running late. In a word, it was random.
As an alternative to this situation, I set up a modest recurring donation to NYC’s Coalition for the Homeless and, when I moved to Connecticut in 2021, set up a second one to a similar local organization. (The next time I live in a new city, I will do the same.) This approach feels better because even though I think about giving less, in practice I almost certainly end up giving more over time. Recurring donations are also by and large better for charitable organizations, as they provide more predictable revenue and flexibility. Set it and forget it!
To be clear, domestic homelessness is not a cause area typically associated with Effective Altruism—but the idea that giving should be intentional very much is. In a sense, that’s the whole project. Of course this principle applies to individual donations and philanthropic efforts; it also applies to broader EA infrastructure like 80,000 Hours (career focus) and Giving What We Can (a pledge to donate 10% of your income to effective charities). These social structures create incentives and motivation to funnel resources into more effective philanthropy.
In posting about altruism, I always worry that this project is inherently preachy and alienating. I also think these ideas are utterly sensible, defensible, and humane. This giving season, I hope you’ll keep them in the back of your head, and I hope you will take them to heart.