From the Archives asked
answered Oct 20, 2022
This is kind of a random question but I've recently become aware of the Effective Altruism community and feel like part of my interests stem from a lot of the things that I've heard you mention over the last few years (through both your words and actions).
For starters, Audere's mission seems like something that fits really closely with some of the most impactful areas that the EA community seems to support. Additionally, your podcast had episodes about your and Tanya's financial contributions over the years.
I'm doing an introductory course with the EA community as I'm interested in being a part of it personally but also I feel like I potentially want my business to focus on the organizations that are supporting impact causes that EA is focused on. Anyhow, I'm just in a learning mode right now and couldn't help but wonder if you are a part of this community, another that's somewhat similar or you just do your own thing and there are coincidentally some similarities to them?
Philip's answer
Great to hear from you! One of the EA founders, William MacAskill, has been making the rounds recently because of his new book, which posits how we should behave if future humans mattered as much as current humans do. This, coupled with the strong possibility that there will be far more future humans than current ones, leads to some very interesting moral considerations.
I've heard a lot from the EA community in the past few years, because it appeals a lot to folks in tech. I think some of the appeal is due to its attempts to quantify good (i.e. it appeals to people to whom spreadsheets also appeal). Part of it is because it's an ultra "humanist" approach (if that's even the right term) — basically a bit techno-optimist, a bit "we can do it," etc. There are many things about EA that appeal to me. For instance, their encouragement that people "work to give" (if that's even the right term); their community of "80,000 hours" is a great example of this. I think they also support GiveWell or one of the other charity-rating organizations.
One other thing that appeal to me about EA is their attempt to rank the most important things to give to. This, however, is also my main difficulty with EA: which is that the error bars on those ratings are huge. For instance, while it's true that searching for Earth-ending asteroids may well be the most important thing we could be doing, it's very difficult to estimate how much effort should be spent on that vs, say, clean drinking water. I guess these difficulties are fundamental to anyone's giving, so in a sense I'm not saying anything new; I guess I see some of the dangers in my attraction to EA, that it'll help me somehow be sure that what I'm giving to is absolutely the most important causes for the world.
Ultimately, though, I'm a fan of all the energy they've drawn into the philanthropy space, and their disciplined approach to it. I think their encouragement of people to continue working in their areas of talent in order to give is great. In a way, I think many of their teachings replace some of the things I lost when I went from being a Christian to being atheist — this idea that we should dedicate ourselves to others, and that in the end, it pays to do good.
What do you think of EA? You might enjoy some of MacAskill's interviews recently. I remember one episode of the Sam Harris show which interviewed him, for example. And Sam Harris tends to be a deep thinker, so the conversation is good.