What the program is about
Effective altruism (EA) is an ongoing project to find the best ways to do good, and put them into practice.
Our core goal with this program is to introduce you to some of the principles and thinking tools behind effective altruism. We hope that these tools can help you as you think through how you can best help the world.
We also want to share some of the arguments for working on specific problems, like global health or biosecurity. People involved in effective altruism tend to agree that, partly due to uncertainty about which cause is best, we should split our resources between problems. But they don’t agree on what that split should be. People in the effective altruism community actively discuss and disagree about which causes to prioritize and how, even though we’ve learned a lot over the last decade. We hope that you will take these ideas seriously and think for yourself about which ways to help are most effective.
Finally, we give you some time at the end of the program to begin to reflect on how you personally can help to solve these problems. We don’t expect you’ll have an answer by the end of the eight weeks, but we hope you’re better prepared to explore this further.
What the program involves
Each part of the program has a set of core posts and sometimes an exercise.
We think that the core posts take most people about 1-2 hours to get through, and the exercise another 30-60 minutes. We have matched the readings and exercises so that, in total, we think it will take around 2-2.5 hours per week to prepare for the weekly session.
The exercises help you put the concepts from the reading into practice.
Beyond the core posts, there are more materials each week in ‘More to Explore’ — these are all optional and explore the themes of the week in more depth and breadth.
Approximate reading times are given for each of the posts. Generally, we’d prefer you to take your time and think through the readings instead of rushing.
This curriculum was drawn up by staff from the Centre for Effective Altruism, incorporating feedback from others. Ultimately we had to make many judgement calls, and other people would have drawn up a different curriculum.
How we hope you’ll approach the program
Taking ideas seriously
Often, conversations about ideas are recreational: we enjoy batting around interesting thoughts and saying smart things, and then go back to doing whatever we were already doing in our lives. This is a fine thing to do — but at least sometimes, we think we should be asking ourselves questions like:
- “How could I tell if this idea was true?”
- “What evidence would it take to convince me that I was wrong about an idea?”
- “If it is true, what does that imply I should be doing differently in my life? What else does it imply I’m wrong about?”
- “How might this impact my plans for my career/life?”
And, zooming out:
- “Where are my blind spots?”
- “Which important questions should I be thinking about that I’m not?”
- “Do I really know if this idea/plan will help make things better or not?”
Answering these questions can help make our worldviews as accurate and full as possible and, by extension, help us make better decisions about things that we care about.
Disagreements are useful
When thoughtful people with access to the same information reach very different conclusions from each other, we should be curious about why and we should actively encourage people to voice and investigate where those disagreements are coming from. If, for example, a medical community is divided on whether Treatment A or B does a better job of curing some disease, they should want to get to the bottom of that disagreement, because the right answer matters — lives are at stake. If you start off disagreeing with someone then change your mind, that can be hard to admit, but we think that should be celebrated. Helping conversations become clearer by changing your mind in response to arguments you find compelling will help the community act to save lives more effectively Even if you don’t expect to end up agreeing with the other person, you’ll learn more if you acknowledge that you disagree and try to understand exactly how and why their views disagree with yours.
Be aware of our privilege and the seriousness of these issues
We shouldn’t lose sight of our privilege in being able to read and discuss these ideas, or that we are talking about real lives. We’re lucky to be in a position where we can have such a large impact, and this opportunity for impact is the consequence of a profoundly unequal world. Also, be conscious of the fact that people in this program come to these discussions with different ideas, backgrounds, and knowledge. Some of these topics can be uncomfortable to talk about — which is one of the reasons they’re so neglected, and so important to talk about — especially when we may have personal ties to some of these areas.
Explore further
This handbook aims to introduce people to effective altruism in a structured manner. There are far too many relevant topics, ideas, and research for all but a small fraction of them to fit into this very short program. If you are interested in these topics, you may find it very useful to dive into the linked websites, and the websites those sites link to, and so on.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Not to be a party pooper, but I don't even think altruism is something that exists. The idea is to give without an expectation of anything in return. That's a nice premise. However, it isn't actually possible. We all want something in return for our actions. In most cases, people are looking to provide themselves with a vehicle to experience positive emotions within themselves. People want to feel like they are good, when the truth is that none of us are. We all give lip service about kindness, care, and helping others, but usually don't recognize that our ability to provide these things is entirely dependent on sitting at the higher end of a global system which creates the very problems we are attempting to assist with. Nobody here reading this handbook would be reading it if they didn't expect some kind of return for their efforts, efforts which cost energy. Those attempting to be altruistic are, at the very least, getting memories in return for their efforts. The very idea of altruism is a suggestion that Equivalent Exchange can be broken through nothing but good will. This is a Law that cannot be broken. There's no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Even in the case where that lunch materializes from the mist, it still costs the physical space it takes up, it costs time and energy to interact with through the senses, it costs these to consume, and all of these have carry-on effects for all parties involved in the interaction. Perhaps true altruism is possible when an unfeeling, etheric robot, that operates independently of reality, is the one being altruistic. Even then, that etheric entity is probably gaining second or third order rewards for the actions it takes, in the form of memories instilled into other sentient beings, as well as through proliferating itself within existence.
I'm probably obfuscating the concept quite a lot, but I simply don't believe altruism is a real thing.
Regardless, I'm interested to see where pursuing this little venture goes. Onward and upward!
I was thinking about this a few days ago, about why i would rather work for a cause that helps than fill a shareholder's pocket. It felt to me that maybe I want my work to feel meaningful that has results larger than me, a form of ego that is stroked at the binary of good and evil. In the end, this is still the human experience, and I relate with OP. Parallely, I believe I'd rather channel my human flaws towards the better
I had similar conflicts on this topic, however some reading about the Buddhist views on altruism helped. A lot of your points resonate. I do think you can do good to feel better, and also just feel better about doing good which is ok and probably the place most of us want to be in.
I feel you- ideally we wouldnt need an organizazion seeking for altruistic actions at all.