Comments
"Because of Toby’s pledge to give everything he earned above $18,000 per year"
Typo. Should read $28,000.
"Because of Toby’s pledge to give everything he earned above $18,000 per year"
Typo. Should read $28,000.
This is awesome, Ryan! Well done on working so hard to pull it together, and on actually pulling it off.
The first four chapters of the French translation are here. The rest is in the works.
I love the choice of content and organization. I'm impressed you were able to keep it fairly short.
Initially I was daunted by the size of the handbook (135 pages is a lot for something I expected to be an introduction), but actually it's not that big - the font is huge. It may be worth it to reduce the font size so that it doesn't seem as big.
The handbook uses ICCIDD for the organization that's now called IGN.
Well done! Any plans for a print edition? I'd love to be able to hand it out at meetups.
Michael page has offered to print some: http://www.effective-altruism.com/ea/i4/ea_handbook_hard_copies_for_local_hubs/
Author's note: a 2025 edition of the EA handbook may be found here.
A lot of people want to do good but lack a clear idea of where to learn more about how to do it effectively. Thanks to the growing effective altruism movement, lots of essays have been written around the topic of charity effectiveness over the last five years. And many of the key insights are gathered together in the Effective Altruism Handbook, which has become available today.
The Effective Altruism Handbook includes an introduction by William MacAskill and Peter Singer followed by five sections. The first section motivates the rest of the book, giving an overview of why people care about effectiveness. The second through fourth sections address tricky decisions involved in helping others: evaluating charities, choosing a career and prioritizing causes. In the final section, the leaders of seven organizations describe why they're doing what they're doing, and describe the kinds of activities they consider especially helpful.
A lot of conversations have gone into picking out the materials for this compilation, so I hope you enjoy reading it!
The Effective Altruism Handbook can be freely downloaded here.
Thanks to all of the authors in this compilation for writing their essays in the first place, as well as for making them available for the Handbook. Thanks to Alex Vermeer from MIRI for helping massively by offering his experience and assistance with working in LaTeX to produce this kind of book. Thanks also to Bastian Stern, the Centre for Effective Altruism, Peter Orr (for proofreading), and Lauryn Vaughan for cover design. Also, thanks kindly to Agata Sagan who is helping by making a Polish translation! It is always good to see useful ideas spread to a more linguistically diverse audience.
Lastly, here’s the full table of contents:
I. WHAT IS EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM?
II. CHARITY EVALUATION
III. CAREER CHOICE
IV. CAUSE SELECTION
V. ORGANIZATIONS
Excellent work! I've just finished it and posted it on GoodReads.
Thanks, that's helpful! Have you any suggestions for improving the book?
Honestly, no. It covers the high points of the movement with excellent pacing. The essays are concise, readable, and interesting. There's no superfluous content. It's great all around.
Thanks very much!
Also, props for compiling it in LaTeX. The typesetting is beautiful. :)
Thanks! Credit to Alex Vermeer from MIRI for giving me some basic scripts to help me get started :)