by Ben Gose<\/p>\n
The Chronicle of Philanthropy<\/em>, November 3, 2013<\/p>\n Sam Bankman-Fried, who will graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the spring, recently aced an internship at a finance company, and he thinks he could make a nice salary putting his math skills to work on stock-trading strategies.<\/p>\n But Mr. Bankman-Fried is even more keen on making the world a better place, and he\u2019s passionate about animal rights. He has considered pursuing work at the Humane League, a charity that focuses on reducing cruelty to farm animals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mr. Bankman-Fried is also an active participant in the \u201ceffective altruism\u201d movement, an effort to apply data and reason rather than passion alone to determine the most effective way to give time and money.<\/p>\n Effective altruism is a small but fast-growing movement, and if it takes hold, it will probably pay big dividends for nonprofits that work in the developing world and could also benefit charities focused on animal rights and the future of humanity. But it could also hurt charities that can\u2019t show that they save or improve lives.<\/p>\n Rather than taking the smaller salary at the Humane League to improve the lot of animals, Mr. Bankman-Fried is seriously considering what effective altruists call \u201cearning to give\u201d: taking a six-figure salary at a finance company, living on a fraction of it, and sending the rest to the Humane League.<\/p>\n \u201cI would probably make enough money that the Humane League could hire many people and accomplish much more than it would if I went to work for them and started handing out leaflets,\u201d Mr. Bankman-Fried says.<\/p>\n The effective-altruism movement received a major boost in March, when a TED talk by the ethicist Peter Singer introduced the concept to the public. The talk has been viewed online more than 600,000 times.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s asking that ancient question that Socrates walked around asking: ‘How are we to live?\u2019\u201d says Mr. Singer, who gives about a third of his income each year to charities. \u201cOne answer is that we ought to live so as to do the most good with our lives as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n This past summer, weeklong conferences on effective altruism were held in Oakland, Calif., and in Wales. Fittingly, the Oakland gathering, which included presentations by Mr. Singer and others, was held in houses, and most of the participants crashed on couches to save money.<\/p>\n And the movement now has some philanthropic star power, with Cari Tuna and her husband, Dustin Moskovitz, the billionaire co-founder of Facebook, planning to use effective-altruism principles for a significant portion of their giving.<\/p>\n The movement began gelling several years ago when a group of young people\u2014primarily twenty-somethings with backgrounds in philosophy, math, and finance\u2014began to chat online about ways to do the most good for the most people. In practice, most effective altruists either seek to increase their earnings or rein in their spending so they can give more. They then try to make their donations as useful as possible by giving to what they consider the top groups dealing with the world\u2019s most pressing problems.<\/p>\n In 2009, Toby Ord and Will MacAskill, then graduate students in philosophy at Oxford University, started Giving What We Can, an international group whose members have pledged to give at least 10 percent of their income to anti-poverty charities. Mr. MacAskill later helped start 80,000 Hours, a group that offers career advice (the name plays off the number of hours worked in a typical career) to people who want to make the greatest positive impact on the world. The group often endorses the \u201cearning to give\u201d approach.<\/p>\n Mr. MacAskill, who coined the term \u201ceffective altruism\u201d two years ago, says the standard philanthropic advice to give according to your passions is misguided, since it may lead donors to charities that aren\u2019t making much of a difference or that aren\u2019t cost-effective. He argues that the best charities in some developing countries are saving lives for a few thousand dollars a year.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you give locally and think that\u2019s the best way of doing good, then you\u2019re saying that saving the life of someone close to you is worth 10 times as much as saving the life of someone in the developing world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Many members of the effective-altruism movement say their worldview shifted after they read Famine, Affluence, and Morality, a widely assigned essay by Mr. Singer, in high school or college.<\/p>\n In the 1972 essay, Mr. Singer, now a professor at Princeton University, writes about witnessing starving Bangladesh Liberation War refugees and argues that people in wealthy countries have a moral duty to give generously to reduce suffering in developing countries.<\/p>\n Forty-one years later, Mr. Singer is just as passionate about that idea. He has started his own charity, The Life You Can Save, based on his 2009 book of the same name. The group encourages people to make a public pledge to give a percentage of their income to organizations that help people living in extreme poverty.<\/p>\n The movement\u2019s rising profile, however, has also led to some criticism.<\/p>\n After The Washington Post published an article about a hedge-fund trader who plans to give the majority of his earnings to the Against Malaria Foundation, David Brooks, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, wrote an article warning other young people against following the man\u2019s lead. Mr. Brooks argued that taking a job just for the money\u2014even when most of the money is going to a good cause\u2014can be corrosive to the soul.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d think you would be more likely to cultivate a deep soul if you put yourself in the middle of the things that engaged you most seriously,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIf your profoundest interest is dying children in Africa or Bangladesh, it\u2019s probably best to go to Africa or Bangladesh, not to Wall Street.\u201d<\/p>\n But advocates of the movement say they\u2019re passionate about the very idea of aligning their lives to achieve the most good\u2014whether that means piling up dollars to give away, working on research to uncover top charities, or proselytizing about effective altruism.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people involved in the effective-altruism movement wouldn\u2019t describe it as passionless, purely mental exercise,\u201d says Nick Beckstead, a research fellow at Oxford University\u2019s Future of Humanity Institute, which assesses long-term risks to human civilization. \u201cInstead they would say, ‘My passion is trying to figure out rationally and carefully how to accomplish the greatest good with my life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The most important part of the movement, many effective altruists say, is encouraging people to forgo emotional or sentimental giving and instead do hard-nosed calculations about their charitable giving.<\/p>\n \u201cThe person who gives 2 percent of income and gives to the most cost-efficient charities is doing far more good than the person who gives 10 percent of their income to an average charity,\u201d Mr. MacAskill says.<\/p>\n The biggest focus areas for effective altruists are global health and poverty, but many also support animal welfare, in part because of Mr. Singer\u2019s dedication to that cause. People interested in the \u201cfar future,\u201d such as Mr. Beckstead, are also drawn to the movement.<\/p>\n Luke Muehlhauser, executive director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which focuses on the long-term risks of artificial intelligence, says donations that seek to preserve humanity will help far more people than gifts focused on the here and now.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re trying not to do just some good but the most good you can, given your limited resources, the best thing to do is to make sure that the far future is really good instead of bad or nonexistent,\u201d Mr. Muehlhauser says.<\/p>\n The movement so far has appealed mostly to young people. The group 80,000 Hours now has more than 1,000 members, and Mr. MacAskill estimates their average age is late 20s to early 30s. The average age of the more than 300 people who have made pledges on the Giving What We Can site is only slightly older, he says. Rutgers, Harvard University, and Princeton University all have student groups focused on effective altruism.<\/p>\n Ben Kuhn, a junior at Harvard with an interest in computer science, is considering pursuing the relatively high salaries in that field as part of an \u201cearning to give\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who start young have an advantage,\u201d Mr. Kuhn says. \u201cYou never have to adjust your standard of living downward.\u201d<\/p>\n The big question now is whether effective altruism can appeal to a broader audience, including older generations, who control most of the country\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many people are eager to do good in the world,\u201d says Eitan Fischer, a recent Yale University graduate who founded Effective Animal Activism, focused on identifying the best animal charities. \u201cThis movement ought to appeal very widely, if it\u2019s done with the right messaging.\u201d<\/p>\n The Life You Can Save, the charity Mr. Singer founded, is now seeking sponsors for what it calls \u201cgiving games,\u201d in which the organizer would meet with a group of people\u2014perhaps high-school students in a classroom or adults in a restaurant\u2014and hand them real dollars to give away. The organizer would then engage the group in a lively debate about what types of charities are most deserving of the money, says Charlie Bresler, head of The Life You Can Save.<\/p>\n Mr. Bresler quit a lucrative corporate job\u2014as president of the Men\u2019s Wearhouse retail chain\u2014to lead the charity after coming across Mr. Singer\u2019s writings and reaching out to him.<\/p>\n The goal of the giving games, Mr. Bresler says, is to spread the idea that Americans have an obligation to fight global poverty. Doing no harm in the world, he says, isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re beginning a long process of cultural change,\u201d he says. \u201cWe really are in our infancy.\u201d<\/p>\nDoing the Most Good<\/h2>\n
Originated in a Chat<\/h2>\n
Dissenting Opinion<\/h2>\n
Calculated Decisions<\/h2>\n
Starting Young<\/h2>\n
Wider Appeal<\/h2>\n