It is always appreciated when someone realizes that EA's main problem with respect to utilitarianism is that with little more than ten thousand adherents, there is little that can be done regarding the complex and ambitious goals set out in the Forum.

One suggestion for proselytism would be to secure the support of a highly influential public figure. I've mentioned the extraordinary success of the Tolstoyan movement in its time. Its doctrine of peace and love inspired many to give away their possessions to charity. Its success stemmed from the fact that, between 1890 and 1910, Tolstoy was the most famous living writer in the world. In 1910, his long and beautiful life came to an end, and the movement dissolved.

Today, there are several internationally renowned writers, enjoying both popular and critical acclaim, who have demonstrated a strong interest in moral, humanitarian, and even outright altruistic issues in their works. If one of them were to actively advocate for the ideal of effective altruism, it would be an enormous help.

Prioritizing humans over non-humans is yet another ethical dilemma, among many others. If you cure one AIDS patient, you might be condemning five malaria patients to death.

I sometimes feel like I'm not virtuous enough

Virtue is something that has to do with emotions and beliefs. In everyday life, many people go to therapy to help them feel better and be consistent with their beliefs. That is, we act in accordance with our nature, recognizing our aspirations, our weaknesses, and our needs.

If our belief is altruism, we should act similarly, developing strategies to improve our behavior in the direction of altruistic action. Ideally, altruistic action would provide us with immediate emotional rewards (which would have a "zero economic cost"), but this doesn't seem very attainable in daily life.

It occurs to me, based on some historical precedents, that altruism can be necessarily associated with behaviors of "moral excellence," which are those that make an individual worthy of the utmost trust. A human environment of maximum trust can be emotionally attractive as a personal aspiration for many individuals... even if this requires making certain unavoidable sacrifices.

Expanding the moral circle is only possible by developing empathetic awareness in the broadest possible social sphere, and the problem with prioritizing animal welfare over human welfare is that it could jeopardize this process of awareness. Many people may interpret an interest in animal welfare as a manifestation of misanthropy: humanity is hateful, that's why I love non-human animals.

The expansion of the moral circle is a consequence of a process of moral evolution. Fostering this process of moral evolution should be the priority.

Altruism is merely the economic manifestation of moral improvement, which actually takes place at a deeper level of the individual's psychology, the source of behavior. Moral improvement implies, above all, controlling aggression and expanding empathy and benevolence.

If this moral improvement manifests in one million more individuals, it will almost certainly turn them all into vegans and opponents of animal mistreatment... although they may not make any financial donations to anti-animal cruelty organizations because they will consider the fight against human suffering to be a priority. However, they will indirectly contribute much more to animal welfare than five or ten thousand animal welfare activists (and financial contributors) whose capacity to drive moral evolution will be much lower, if only because numerically they will be much fewer.

Of course, this viewpoint will only be shared by those who believe we can actively promote moral evolution. In this forum, the discussion tends to focus on maximizing the benefits of existing altruistic action (a consequence of previous moral evolution) rather than developing strategies to increase the number of individuals motivated to act altruistically (promoting moral evolution).

Excellent essay. It's unusual to find a psychological interpretation of altruistic behavior in this forum dedicated to altruism. Altruism is a pattern of behavior conditioned by individual motivation.

Since the EA community is aligned with utilitarianism, it is clear that the fundamental question would be how to increase the number of altruistic agents.

There seem to be situations or conditions in which people are more likely to behave altruistically. 

and

Role modeling is a form of social pressure that may help to develop altruists. People are more likely to volunteer (for instance, to join a blood drive) if they see volunteering modeled for them

An important motivator for altruistic acts are self-generated internal rewards (...) For example, people feel satisfied by meeting goals (...) You can take satisfaction at becoming the sort of person you admire (...) You can empathically adopt some of the relief felt by those you help.

To build the virtue of altruism, altruism needs to be part of your character. Your character is composed of the sorts of choices you habitually make.

My objection to your general approach is that you ignore what appears to be a process of moral evolution that has led to an increase in the number of individuals interested in altruistic behavior. The very existence of the EA community seems to be evidence that this evolution is taking place: it would be the first social movement based strictly and rationally on the development of a prosocial behavioral trait. This does not happen by free will (in reality, nothing happens in human beings by free will) but as a consequence of cultural conditioning that is taking place in today's world.

Thus, simply listing individual approaches that promote altruistic behavior is impractical, among other things because it ignores the social nature of human existence. If, for example, you believe in a lifestyle based on family happiness, you are unlikely to practice much altruism, since your family will always be your priority. Conversely, organizing a lifestyle based on altruistic behavior (something for which there are certain historical precedents) could greatly increase the number of motivations for altruistic behavior.

In any case, as utilitarians, what matters are the results: does a purely individualistic view of altruistic motivation seem promising from the point of view of increasing altruistic action? It doesn't seem so.

The empirical evidence suggests that altruism correlates with human flourishing on several dimensions. 

So a lifestyle based on altruism is not far-fetched. 

Modeling altruism as something that is self-rewarding can encourage altruism in others (especially people who have been discouraged by a joylessly puritanical idea of altruism)

Here's the mistake: why have puritan (or "renunciant") movements existed historically if they are so discouraging? What is the concept of "joy" for each individual in their personal and social circumstances?

The answer is that they ("puritans") have always been discouraging for the majority of people living a conventional lifestyle. But our current lifestyle (in the "enlightened West"... so to speak) is already discouraging for the conventional lifestyle in Afghanistan, for example.

A "puritan" lifestyle can, however, be very attractive to a significant minority. And how do cultural changes occur, if not from within minorities?

The idea of ​​developing a lifestyle based on altruism is, moreover, compatible with the hope that individual motivations for altruistic behavior will develop. From a cost-benefit perspective, debating the issue and undertaking initiatives related to the possibility of developing a "Puritan community" centered on altruistic action is enormously profitable (it costs nothing).

In the last five years, the signatories of the GWWC Pledge have grown from five thousand to ten thousand. At this rate, it will take a century to change the world (of course, no one knows if there will be an exponential increase in the short term). In contrast, we have precedents of social movements based on benevolence and altruism that experienced almost explosive growth. Of course, they also quickly died out, and of course, they were not equivalent to social movements based on rational and enlightened principles. Perhaps the time has finally come to take the remaining steps.

Any inquiry into altruistic motivation is enlightening not only about this phenomenon of human behavior, but also about the human condition itself, in which antisocial and prosocial behaviors coexist in a conflict that has marked the evolution of the civilizational phenomenon itself.

Thanks for your view.

One possible solution is to consider that the human potential to develop both technology (the capacity to intervene in any material environment) and altruistic motivation is practically unlimited, meaning it would only be a matter of time before no area of ​​action remains untouched by human intervention aimed at reducing suffering.

If we act from this premise, our priority must always be the development of altruistic motivation, something that requires cultural changes that can begin now.

I don't think there's much data yet on how a person motivated to act altruistically can have their material sacrifices and lifestyle changes (frugality, dedication, commitment) compensated with non-material emotional benefits. But there have been quite a few comments on the book "Strangers Drowning" in this forum.

There are some historical examples of altruistic behavior (famous cases like Tolstoy and Gandhi) that show that, in the right context, many people find in frugality and in accounting for charitable works a certain psychological satisfaction comparable to that which others find in the so-called "virtue of thrift" and in the enjoyment of their possessions. It might be worthwhile to explore these kinds of social contexts and emotional rewards. There are many paths to happiness.

The problem arises when utilitarianism isn't utilitarian enough. Ethics based on principles and a cultural conception of "virtue," which in its effects doesn't necessarily contradict utilitarianism, can promote cultural change by increasing altruistic action and transforming the behavior of large numbers of people. (Obviously, I'm not referring to a conventional ethics of principles and virtue, but to a conception of human relations based on benevolence, which is only impossible if we do nothing to try to achieve it.)

Promoting the well-being of shrimp and long-term projects for a future humanity ten thousand years from now might have its logic from a utilitarian point of view... but it's unlikely that these are altruistic projects capable of promoting cultural change. And if there's no cultural change in the sense of laying the foundations for a humanity that makes altruistic action its main economic activity... very little good will be done in consequentialist terms. The consequentialist may then experience their own case of self-indulgence.

 prioritizing expressive concerns and emotional comfort over genuine concern for how people’s lives are concretely affected

I remember enjoying reading the book "After Lives" byJohn Casey, about different conceptions of the afterlife. Obviously, the only possibility of living eternally would be some kind of "biological uploading" carried out across time by a future altruistic civilization, something that seems highly improbable to us today (but which would trump Pascal's wager, by the way).

In any case, these fantasies are above all revealing of the culture of each era. Why did the Egyptians believe in the afterlife and not the Babylonians? Many consider that this belief in divine benevolence implied a certain progression in earthly benevolence.

You understand that "academic knowledge" encompasses basically all of science, right? 

Obviously, I was not referring to the empirical sciences, but, as is clear from the context, to the social sciences, which have a certain capacity to influence moral culture.

You have the impression that the work of academic professionals is rigorously focused on the truth. I think that there are some self-evident truths about social progress that are not currently being addressed in academia. 

I don't think that EA is a complete ideology today, but its foundation is based on a great novelty: conceiving social change from a trait of human behavior (altruism).