EA in a nutshell, in a nutshell

Here, I summarize 80k's 'Effective altruism in a nutshell':

'If you buy something for yourself, say a laptop, then you don't buy a random one or just the prettiest.

Rather, you do research: you cross-reference different sources, like recommendations from friends or people you respect or what reviewers say is the 'best deal.'

You also might not even be married to the idea of getting a laptop at all — if the underlying thing you actually want to do is your work, maybe you should get a desktop and just use your phone when on the move.

In the end, you want to get the outcome you really wanted, without spending too much time on research.

But when it comes to doing good, most people don't instinctively apply the same rigorous and practical mindset. People volunteer somewhere easy to get to, give money to whichever charity knocks on their door, or focus on an issue they were exposed to when young.

To people in EA, that is a big mistake.

Because, if you really care, you spend a good fraction of your life improving the world with the goal of helping others (or even base your whole career on it). So shouldn't you spend at least as much time and effort in finding out the best way to do that as you would buying a laptop?

You have more reason to think about whether your actions are really helping, than which laptop is best, because:

If a laptop is really bad, then it is driven out of the market by competition and regulation, because people can tell if laptops work or not. And so, most laptops work at least okay.

But there's no similar process that prevents people from adopting misguided ways of improving the world, so there is no real floor to how bad an opportunity to help can be—except when they do obvious and significant harm.

Many people who are trying to do good don't realize what they're doing isn't working, mostly because it's so hard to measure. You might think that if you do some research and choose a better charity to give to, it might achieve 50% more, or perhaps twice as much. The same way if you choose a great laptop it will be better than a bad laptop, but not radically different. But after spending a lot of time comparing ideas about how to improve the world, we actually think some approaches are 100-1000 times better than others.

Unlike with a laptop, there is effectively no ceiling for how good an opportunity to improve the world can be, as well as no floor on how useless or counterproductive it can be. So where you donate makes a much bigger difference.

And also unlike buying a laptop, figuring out the career that will allow you to do the most good is a personal decision, which depends on many things about you specifically. That makes it even more important to think carefully about your options, because you can't just take a generic recommendation.

Say you want to donate to a cancer research project.

The EA style of thinking would ask:

1. Are there other projects more likely to succeed, or more funding constrained? We can try to check by looking at the outcomes of the charity and what it actually spends its money on.
2. What are we really trying to achieve here? Are we giving to cancer research because what we really care about is extending lives? If so, could we instead fund something that extends lives for longer?
3. Are there diseases that have a larger burden on health, which aren't already saturated by funders pursuing all the good opportunities, and which might be more easily curable with the right research? (Unless you first chose especially well, the answer to that one is probably yes.)
4. Could you actually extend lives or reduce suffering more by focusing on something other than health? What focus actually helps you reduce suffering the most with your limited resources?

These are hard questions the EA community is trying to answer. Ultimately the question is: 'How can we do the most good?' Together, we've made substantial progress, finding especially promising opportunities to help others more or in a bigger way.

And if everyone who wanted to do good could switch into these kinds of opportunities, we could probably achieve many times as much as we do now.

Misconceptions

Let's dispel three common misconceptions about EA.

1. EA is just about fighting poverty using the results of randomised controlled trials

That's just one answer that some people have suggested to the question, 'How can we do the most good?'

But others think doing the most good needs figuring out ways to make the very long-term future go well, such as reducing global catastrophic risks from engineered pandemics or nuclear war.

A recent survey asked people in EA about their top priority:

• 22% said global poverty
• 16% said climate change
• 11% said risks from advanced AI.

So many views on which causes are most pressing are represented.

2. EA is mostly about donating

We focus on ways that you can use your career to do the most good—donating is just one option. That above survey also found 38% planned to have an impact by donations, with the rest planning to have an impact directly through their work, in research, government and business, among many paths.

3. EA is too apolitical and ignores bigger-picture changes.

That's neither true in theory or practice.

Trying to do the most good naturally often involves talking about politics and large-scale changes to society.

Many engage in politics and think a lot about policy, while others focus their efforts on other areas.

A key part of EA is 'cause neutrality,' i.e. being intellectually open to the possibility that any focus or approach might improve the world the most. If trying to improve the world in some systemic way does the most good, then we ought to do so, if it's also a good fit for our personal situations.

Humility

We try to use evidence and reason to guide our views, but we know that it's not an exact science.

We're always just trying to make our best guesses better — and a key part of EA is that we accept that we might be wrong about almost anything.

We focus on shaping the world in a way that will be good for future generations. But maybe we should be focusing only on people alive today or the suffering of animals in factory farms.

And we currently think that safely guiding the development of AI could represent a great opportunity to make the world better. But maybe the skeptics are right, and we're just wasting our time.

People in EA try to avoid dogmatism and enjoy actively debating. If you think someone's really misguided about something—and can convincingly back it up—you can expect a lot of people in EA to gladly change their mind. (Or at least, that's what we strive for — of course we're human and can get attached to our ideas.)

But we really just want to do what's best for the world, so if we're wrong about anything—even if it's the thing we've been dedicating our lives to — we should want to know.

Taking action

Finally, though EA is a lot about asking questions, we also need to do something with the answers we come up with. And so many people in EA focus on implementing best-guess solutions, while others continue the research.

Both threads are important and can be a valuable focus for donations, side projects, or—of course—your career.'