Luke Muehlhauser recently joked that it seems like everyone has their own definition of effective altruism. And it is true, everyone has a spin or aspects of EA they want to emphasise or care about. For myself, I want EA to be as broad and approachable as possible. That said, a definition should not mislead people, there is steel in EA and it does demand a certain intellectual/lifestyle approach.

Anyway, it seemed like a valuable exercise, at the very least for clarifying my own values to think a bit and try and capture the core of what I believe is important about effective altruism in a minimal definition:

1. Give More. Most of us spend only a tiny amount of our time and income trying to make the world a better place. If we give a little more of both, making the effort to make consciously working towards a better world a significant part of our lives, we have an amazing opportunity to make a real difference.

2. Give Better. If we want to make a real difference, we should try to use evidence and reasoning so that we have the best chance of having a big positive impact. If we think hard about the impact of our time and money, and use evidence and careful analysis to update and test our beliefs, we can get better at investing it well. Deciding what to do and where to give to have the biggest impact is not easy. But we think the best answers come from being open to new evidence and part of a community of likeminded individuals asking the same questions.

. Is there anything that this misses which you think of as essential to effective altruism? It deliberately avoids anything that strays into negative affects - for example shades of utilitarianism, or specific causes/values / concepts. Possibly, the biggest weakness is that it says little about how evidence and reasoning lead you to update your beliefs. But the second section seems too long and wordy already, I would like to cut it down if possible. But I think it is a decent first draft anyway.