Effective Altruism
Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that encourages people to donate their time and money to the most effective causes in the world.
There are many ways to get involved with effective altruism. The easiest way to start is by reading about effective altruism and attending local events.
For people new to effective altruism, worth checking out the following reads:
- 80000hours.org
- effectivealtruism.org
- openphilanthropy.org/research
- givewell.org
- forum.effectivealtruism.org
- Project Ideas FTX Future Fund would love to fund (awesome list!!)
Our top 3 lessons on how not to waste your career on things that don’t change the world
As an intro to existential risks, I put together existentialrisk.info
Books
- 80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good
- Precipice by Toby Ord “makes the case that protecting humanity’s future is the central challenge of our time”
- Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back
- Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues (Engaging Philosophy)
Donating
To support a range of smaller initiatives in different cause areas such as existential risk reduction or effective altruism broadly, I can recommend the donation funds run by the effective altruism foundation with analysts evaluating the most impactful efforts to donate to, or their partner funds such as the climate fund.
A great and easy to use platform to donate is every.org Can recommend joining an EA conference and your local community to share and discuss ideas.
My case for donating to small, new efforts
I think the average donor has very little impact to donate to big established efforts (in traditional philantrophy for example greenpeace, or efforts such as against malaria in effective altruism). Think the biggest impact comes from the equivalent of angel investing but for funding novel philantropic initiaitives that could potentially be extremely impactful in relevant cause areas. On reflection for myself, donating in the first few months of the projects existence to projects such as Ocean Cleanup, NewScience or Taimaka was probably much more impactful than donating to big established efforts, as well as recommending novel potentially impactful initiatives to other donors and foundations for funding. Ones a billionaire or big foundation is funding a project it probably doesnt require your donations anymore.
In the book Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues (Engaging Philosophy), Mark Budolfson and Dean Spears make this case elogquently in their paper “The Hidden Zero Problem: Effective Altruism and Barriers to Marginal Impact”, can highly recommend reading the book.
I do think that efforts such as the EA funds or ACX Grants are a decent passive way to have a similar impact, as they support these small novel projects.
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A list of organization I find worth supporting:
Meta: Evaluation, Effective Altruism Movement
- EA Infrastructure Fund
- Founders Pledge
- 80.000 Hours
- Animal Charity Evaluators
- Generation Pledge
- Centre For Effective Altruism
- Effective Altruism Foundation
- Rethink Charity
- Rethink Priorities
- Legal Priorities Project
Long-Term: X-Risk, Ai Risk, Nuclear Etc.
- EA Fund Long-Term Future
- Nuclear Threat Initiative
- Future Of Life Institute
- Centre For Human Compatible Ai
- Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative
- Machine Intelligence Research Institute
- Centre For Health Security
- Founderspledge Patient Philanthropy
Global Health And Development
- EA Fund Global Health And Dev
- Malaria Consortium
- Against Malaria Foundation
- Givewell
- Givewell Max Impact Fund
- Strong Minds
- Evidence Action
- Kickstart.org - donating irrigation tools to grow harvest for poorest farmers
Science, Tools
- [Founders Pledge Science & Tech Fund]
- New Science
- Maps Mental Health
- Qualia Research
- Mars Society
- Wikipedia
- Our World In Data
Climate
Great Videos
Existential Risk: Managing Extreme Technological Risk
Prospecting for gold | Owen Cotton-Barratt | EAGxOxford 2016
Great Videos About Specific Initiatives
The Nuclear Threat Initiative
Clean Air Task Force
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Organizations i supported (with a range of very different amounts)
2022
- Long-Term Future Fund: Donate to people or projects that aim to improve the long-term future, such as by reducing risks from artificial intelligence and engineered pandemics.
- The Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund aims to increase the impact of projects that use the principles of effective altruism, by increasing their access to talent, capital, and knowledge.
- Nuclear Threat Initiative
- protect reproductive rights
- Clean air task force
- Founders Pledge (Climate Change Fund)
- ACX Grants
- ~120 Projects i supported through gitcoin (from open source to longevity), matched with approx. ~$25k+
- Kickstart
- MIRI
- Nuclear Threat Initiative
- Clean Air Task Force
2021: see all and donate easily through every.org or endaoment: for direct crypto donations
- The Against Malaria Foundation
- The Knowledge Society
- Evidence Action Evidence Action
- Carbon180:
- Khan Academy
- Black Girls CODE:
- Cool Earth:
- Science and Tech Future
- Sightsavers
- Taimaka Project
- 80,000 hours
- founders pledge
- animal charity evaluators
- maps mental health
- wikipedia
- generation pledge
- terra praxis
- strong minds
- rethink charity
- mars society
- malaria consortium
- clean air task force
- centre for effective altruism
- founders pledge science & tech
- legal priorities project
- nuclear threat initiative
- strong minds
- centre for health security
- effective altruism foundation
- our world in data
- future of life institute
- founderspledge patient philanthropy
- centre for human compatible ai
- rethink priorities
- machine intelligence research inst
- global health and dev fund
- climate change fund
- berkeley x risk
- qualia research
- qualiaresearchinstitute.org
- fdp
- https://newscience.org/
- https://vitadao.com/
- * ~70 Projects i supported through gitcoin (from open source to longevity), matched with approx. ~$12k+
2020
- 80,000 Hours
- CEA
- Partei für Gesundheitsforschung
- EA Fund Global Poverty
- EA Fund Long-term future
- EA Fund EA Infrastructure
- SENS
- Our World in Data
- MAPS
- StrongMinds
- Berkeley X Risk, SENS, CEA, …
- * ~10 Projects i supported through gitcoin (from open source to longevity), matched with approx. ~$1k+
2018-2019
- EA Fund Global Poverty
- EA Fund Long-term future
- EA Fund EA Infrastructure
- EA Fund Animal Suffering
- SENS
2017 and before
- ocean cleanup
- nabu