1

The definition of effective altruism

William MacAskill

There are many problems in the world today. Over 750 million people live on less than $1.90 per day
(at purchasing power parity).1 Around 6 million children die each year of easily-preventable causes
such as malaria, diarrhea or pneumonia.2 Climate change is set to wreak environmental havoc and cost
the economy trillions of dollars.3 A third of women worldwide have suffered from sexual or other
physical violence in their lives.4 More than 3,000 nuclear warheads are in high-alert ready-to-launch
status around the globe.5 Bacteria are becoming antibiotic-resistant.6 Partisanship is increasing, and
democracy may be in decline.7

Given that the world has so many problems, and that these problems are so severe, surely we have a
responsibility to do something about them. But what? There are countless problems that we could be
addressing, and many different ways of addressing each of those problems. Moreover, our resources
are scarce, so as individuals and even as a globe we can’t solve all these problems at once. So we
must make decisions about how to allocate the resources we have. But on what basis should we make
such decisions?

The effective altruism movement has pioneered one approach. Those in this movement try to figure
out, of all the different uses of our resources, which uses will do the most good, impartially
considered. This movement is gathering considerable steam. There are now thousands of people
around the world who have chosen their careers, at least in part, on the basis of effective altruist ideas;
individuals have gone into scientific research, think tanks, party politics, social entrepreneurship,
finance (in order to do good through donating), and non-profit work.8 Every year, over a thousand
people in total gather at various Effective Altruism Global conferences, in locations as diverse as San
Francisco, London, Hong Kong, and Nairobi.9 Over 3,500 people have taken Giving What We Can’s
pledge to give at least 10% of their income for the rest of their lives to the organisations they believe
to be most cost-effective, together pledging over $1.5 billion of lifetime donations.10 Individuals
donate over $90 million per year to GiveWell’s top recommended charities,11 and GoodVentures, a
foundation with potential assets of $14 billion, is committed to effective altruist principles and is
distributing over $200 million each year in grants, advised by the Open Philanthropy Project.12

As a result of this, the effective altruism community has contributed to significant achievements in the
areas of global catastrophic risk reduction, farm animal welfare, and global health. In 2016 alone, the
effective altruism community was responsible for protecting 6.5 million children from malaria by
providing long-lasting insecticide treated bednets, sparing 360 million hens from living in caged

1
World Bank Group, Poverty and Shared Prosperity: Taking on Inequality 2016, Herndon: World Bank
Publications, 2016, ch. 2.
2
UNICEF, ‘Levels & Trends in Child Mortality’, September, 2015,
https://www.unicef.org/publications/index_101071.html.
3
John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, New York: W.W. Norton, 2012; William
Nordhaus, The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2015.
4
United Nations, The World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics, New York: United Nations, 2015
5
Kelsey Davenport, ‘Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance’, Arms Control Association, January 2018.
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat.
6
World Health Organization, ‘Antibiotic Resistance’, October 2016.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/antibiotic-resistance/en/.
7
Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2018.
8
For more information on effective altruism as applied to career choice, see www.80000hours.org.
9
See www.eaglobal.org.
10
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/.
11
‘GiveWell’s Impact’, GiveWell (March, 2018), https://www.givewell.org/about/impact.
12
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/.
 2

confinement, and providing significant impetus and support in the development of technical AI safety
as a mainstream area of machine learning research.13

This movement has inspired significant academic discussion. Books on the topic include The Most
Good You Can Do by Peter Singer and my own Doing Good Better;14 academic articles on effective
altruism, both supportive and critical, have appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Utilitas,
Journal of Applied Philosophy, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice and other publications.15 A
volume of Essays in Philosophy is dedicated to the topic and there is discussion of effective altruism
by academics in the Boston Review.16

However, if we are to have a meaningful academic debate about effective altruism, we need to agree
on what we’re talking about. This chapter aims to help with that aim, introducing the Centre for
Effective Altruism’s definition, explaining why the Centre has chosen the definition it has, and
providing a precise philosophical interpretation of that definition. I believe that this understanding of
effective altruism, which is widely endorsed by those within the effective altruism community, is
quite different from the understanding of effective altruism possessed by many in the general public
and by many critics of effective altruism. In this essay, I explain why I prefer the definition I give, and
then use the opportunity to correct some prevalent misunderstandings of effective altruism.

Before we begin, it’s important to note that, in defining ‘effective altruism’, we are not attempting to
describe a fundamental aspect of morality. In empirical research fields, we can distinguish between
science and engineering. Science is the attempt to discover general truths about the world we live in.
Engineering is the use of our scientific understanding to design and build structures or systems that
benefit society.

We can make the same distinction within moral philosophy. Typically, moral philosophy is concerned
with discovering general truths about the nature of morality — the equivalent of normative science.
But there is also scope for the equivalent of engineering within moral philosophy, for example by
creating new moral concepts whose use, if taken up broadly by society, would improve the world.

Defining ‘effective altruism’ is a matter of engineering rather than of describing some fundamental
aspect of morality. In this vein, I suggest two principal desiderata for the definition. The first is to
match the actual practice of those who are currently described as engaging in effective altruism, and
the understanding of effective altruism that the leaders of the community have. The second is to
ensure that the concept has as much public value as possible. This means, for example, we want the
concept to be broad enough to be endorsable by or useful to many different moral views, but still
determinate enough to enable users of the concept to do more to improve the world than they
otherwise would have done. This, of course, is a tricky balancing act.

13
‘GiveWell’s Impact’; Lewis Bollard, ‘Initial Grants to Support Corporate Cage-Free Reforms’, Open
Philanthropy Project (March 31, 2016), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/initial-grants-support-corporate-
cage-free-reforms; Daniel Dewey, ‘Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence’, Open Philanthropy
Project (September 30, 2015), https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/potential-risks-
advanced-artificial-intelligence.
14
Peter Singer, The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015; Will MacAskill, Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can
Help You Make a Difference, New York: Penguin Random House, 2015.
15
For example: Brian Berkey, ‘The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism’, Utilitas, vol. 30 (2018, pp. 143-
171; Theron Pummer, ‘Whether and Where to Give’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 44 (2016), pp. 77-95;
Iason Gabriel, ‘Effective Altruism and Its Critics’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 34 (2017), pp. 457-473;
William MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, Career Choice, and Making a Difference’, Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice, vol. 17 (2014), pp. 269-83; Jeff McMahan, ‘Philosophical Critiques of Effective Altruism’, The
Philosophers’ Magazine, vol. 73 (2016), pp. 92-99.
16
Essays in Philosophy, vol. 18 (2017); Peter Singer, ‘The Logic of Effective Altruism’, Boston Review (July 1,
2015) and replies, https://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism.
 3

I. Previous definitions of effective altruism

The term ‘effective altruism’ was coined through the founding of the Centre for Effective Altruism, in
a democratic process among 17 people involved in the organization, on the 3rd December 2011.17
However, no official definition of the term was introduced. Over the years, effective altruism has been
defined in a number of distinct ways by different people. Here are some examples:

(1) To us, “effective altruism” means trying to do as much good as possible with each dollar and
each hour that we have.18

(2) Effective altruism is about asking, “How can I make the biggest difference I can?” and using
evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer.19

(3) Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can…
Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare
resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most
good we can.20

(4) Effective altruism is a research field which uses high-quality evidence and careful reasoning
to work out how to help others as much as possible. It is also a community of people taking
these answers seriously, focusing their efforts on the most promising solutions to the world’s
most pressing problems.21

(5) Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and reason to
determine the most effective ways to benefit others.22

We can see some commonalities among these definitions.23 All invoke the idea of maximisation, and
all are about the achievement of some value, whether that’s the value of increasing wellbeing, or
simply of achieving the good in general. However, there are differences, too. Definitions (1)-(3) talk
about ‘doing good’ whereas definitions (4) and (5) talk about ‘helping others’ and ‘benefitting others’.
Unlike the others, definition (3) makes effective altruism a normative claim, rather than a non-
normative project, such as an activity or research field or movement. Definitions (2), (4) and (5)
invoke the idea of using evidence and careful reasoning, whereas definitions (1) and (3) do not.

The Centre for Effective Altruism’s definition takes a stand on each of these issues, defining effective
altruism as follows:
Effective altruism is about using evidence and reason to figure out how to
benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.24

17
These people were: Will MacAskill (then ‘Crouch’), Toby Ord, Nick Beckstead, Michelle Hutchinson, Holly
Morgan, Mark Lee, Tom Ash, Matt Wage, Ben Todd, Tom Rowlands, Niel Bowerman, Robbie Shade, Matt
Gibb, Richard Batty, Sally Murray, Rob Gledhill, and Andreas Mogensen.
18
Holden Karnofsky, ‘Effective Altruism’, The GiveWell Blog, August 13, 2013,
https://blog.givewell.org/2013/08/13/effective-altruism/.
19
MacAskill, Doing Good Better, pp. 14-15.
20
Singer, ‘The Logic of Effective Altruism’.
21
‘Introduction to Effective Altruism’, accessed June 22, 2016,
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism/.
22
‘Effective Altruism’, Wikipedia. Accessed May 25, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism.
23
I’ll treat each of these as definitions, although only the fourth had the right grammatical form to be one. All
these statements are intended to be read by a general audience, so I don’t place much weight on specific word
choice like ‘is about’ or ‘is based on’.
24
This definition is accompanied by a set of guiding principles, that are intended to form a broad code of
conduct for those in the effective altruism community. These principles are: commitment to others, scientific
 4

I led on the creation of this definition, with input from a wide number of advisors in the effective
altruism community, and significant help from Julia Wise and Rob Bensinger. It, and a set of guiding
values that sit alongside it, has been formally endorsed by the large majority of leaders in the effective
altruism community.25 There is no ‘official’ definition of effective altruism, but the Centre’s
definition is closer to being one than any other. However, this statement of effective altruism was
intended for a general rather than a philosophical audience, so some precision was lost for the sake of
accessibility. For that reason, I’d like to provide and then unpack a more precise formulation here.
My definition is as follows.

Effective altruism is:

(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize the good
with a given unit of resources, tentatively understanding ‘the good’ in impartial
welfarist terms, and
(ii) the use of the findings from (i) to try to improve the world.

(i) refers to effective altruism as an intellectual project (or ‘research field’); (ii) refers to effective
altruism as a practical project (or ‘social movement’).

The definition is:

● Non-normative. Effective altruism consists of two projects, rather than a set of normative
claims.
● Maximising. The point of these projects is to do as much good as possible with the resources
that are dedicated towards it.
● Science-aligned. The best means to figuring out how to do the most good is the scientific
method, broadly construed to include reliance on careful rigorous argument and theoretical
models as well as data.
● Tentatively impartial and welfarist. As a tentative hypothesis or a first approximation, doing
good is about promoting wellbeing, with everyone’s wellbeing counting equally. More
precisely: for any two worlds A and B with all and only the same individuals, of finite
number, if there is a one to one mapping of individuals from A to B such that every individual
in A has the same wellbeing as their counterpart in B, then A and B are equally good.26

I’ll explain why these choices were made, in turn.

Two of the choices are uncontroversial. First, every proposed definition of effective altruism is
maximising, and this idea is baked into almost every explanation of effective altruist ideas, including
the title of Peter Singer’s book The Most Good You Can Do. However, there is an important
clarification to be made here. One can try to increase the amount of good one does in two ways: by
increasing the amount of resources that one dedicates to doing good; and by trying to increase the
effectiveness of the resources that one has dedicated to doing good. On the definition I suggest,
effective altruism is about maximising only in the latter sense. On other definitions this has not been
clear; I explain the reasons for this choice in the next section.

mindset, openness, integrity, and collaborative spirit. See ‘CEA’s Guiding Principles’, Centre for Effective
Altruism, https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/ceas-guiding-principles/.
25
This includes the following organisations: .impact, 80,000 Hours, Animal Charity Evaluators, Charity
Science, Effective Altruism Foundation, Foundational Research Institute, Future of Life Institute, Raising for
Effective Giving and The Life You Can Save. And it includes the following individuals (though not their
respective organisations): Elie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, Holden Karnofsky of the Open Philanthropy Project,
Toby Ord of the Future of Humanity Institute, Peter Singer of Princeton University and the University of
Melbourne, and Nate Soares of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
26
Note that, read literally, the use of ‘benefit others’ in CEA’s definition would rule out some welfarist views,
such as the view on which one can do good by creating good lives but that this does not involve benefiting those
who would otherwise not exist. In this case, philosophical precision was sacrificed for readability.
 5

Second, the idea that effective altruism involves relying on the scientific method, broadly construed,
is also clearly a core part of the concept. All the major research organisations within effective altruism
involve relying on data or scientific research where it is possible to do so, as well as on theoretical
models and on clear and rigorous argument.

Again, however, a clarification is warranted. Sometimes critics interpret effective altruism’s

endorsement of the scientific method to mean that we rely solely on randomized controlled trials
(RCTs). This, if true, would of course be naïve. But we should understand the ‘scientific method’
much more broadly than that. There are some issues that, for practical reasons, we cannot assess
directly on the basis of an RCT, such as what the probability of human extinction is over the next two
centuries. There are also a wide variety of ways of gaining empirical evidence other than RCTs, such
as regressions, quasi-experiments, surveys, and simple fact-finding. And there are many issues for
which experimental evidence in general is not relevant, such as in ethics, epistemology, and decision
theory.

The two more controversial aspects of the definition are that it is non-normative, and that it is
tentatively impartial and welfarist. I’ll now discuss these in turn.

II. Effective altruism as a project, rather than a normative claim

The definition of effective altruism I’ve given presents effective altruism as consisting of two
projects: an intellectual project, of trying to figure out how to use resources in whatever way will do
the most good with a given unit of resources; and a practical project, of putting the results from the
intellectual project into practice and trying to use some of one’s resources to improve the world.

There are two ways in which the definition of effective altruism could have made normative claims.
First, it could have made claims about how much one is required to sacrifice: for example, it could
have stated that everyone is required to use as much of their resources as possible in whatever way
will do the most good; or it could have stated some more limited obligation to sacrifice, such as that
everyone is required to use at least 10% of their time or money in whatever way will do the most
good.

There were three reasons why we didn’t include an obligation to sacrifice in the definition. First, it
was very unpopular among leaders of the effective altruism community: in a survey of such leaders in
2015, 80% of respondents stated that they thought the definition should not include a sacrifice
component and only 12.5% thought it should contain a sacrifice component. Second, within the
effective altruism community more broadly only some members believe that one has an obligation to
engage in effective altruism; others believe that engaging in effective altruism is part of a meaningful
life for them, but that there is no obligation to do so. A 2017 survey of 1843 members of the effective
altruism community included the question, ‘Do you think of Effective Altruism more as an
“opportunity” or an “obligation”?’ In response, 56.5% chose ‘moral duty’ or ‘obligation’, and 37.7%
chose ‘opportunity’ (there was no option in that year to choose ‘both’).27 In the previous effective
altruism survey, in 2015, 42% of respondents chose ‘both’ in response to the same question, 34%
chose ‘opportunity’ and 21% chose ‘obligation’.28

27
Ellen McGeoch and Peter Hurford, ‘EA Survey 2017 Series: Distribution and Analysis Methodology’,
Effective Altruism Forum (August 29, 2017), http://effective-
altruism.com/ea/1e0/effective_altruism_survey_2017_distribution_and/. Note that the sample was non-random:
everyone who wanted to answer the survey was able to, and it was advertised as widely as possible within the
community. As a result, all statistics drawn from this survey should be taken as suggestive but not definitive.
28
Chris Cundy, ‘The 2015 Survey of Effective Altruists: Results and Analysis’, Effective Altruism Forum (July
29, 2015), http://effective-altruism.com/ea/zw/the_2015_survey_of_effective_altruists_results/.
 6

Third, it makes the concept far more ecumenical. Because effective altruism is not a normative claim,
it’s consistent with any moral view. But the project is still of interest to those with many different
moral views: most plausible moral views would allow that there is a pro tanto reason to promote the
good, and that wellbeing is of some value, and therefore that the question of how one can do the most
to promote welfarist value with a given unit of resources needs to be resolved as one aspect of
answering the question of how to live a morally good life. In contrast, any sort of claim about our
obligations to maximise the good will be much more controversial, particularly if we try to make a
general statement covering people of very different income levels and personal situations. The public
value of the concept of effective altruism therefore seems greater if it does not include a sacrifice
component: it allows a wider range of people to engage in effective altruism, preventing the concept
from being off-putting to those who don’t believe that there are strong obligations of beneficence, in
general or in their particular case. This is backed up by the anecdotal experience of those involved in
Giving What We Can: those in the organization initially tried out both ‘obligation’ and ‘opportunity’
framings to encourage people to take the 10% pledge, finding that the ‘opportunity’ framing was
much more efficacious. This fact could also explain why Giving What We Can caused such a rise in
the number of people taking Peter Singer’s views on our obligations of beneficence very seriously,
despite these ideas being around for decades prior.

Finally, it focuses attention on the most distinctive aspect of effective altruism: the open question of
how we can use resources to improve the world as much as possible. This question is much more
neglected and arguably more important than the question of how much and in what form altruism is
required of one.29 For this reason, most people within the effective altruism community are much
more concerned with getting on with the project of figuring out how we can do more good rather than
asking to what extent, or in what way, we are required to do the most good.

The second way in which we could have made the definition normative is by appeal to conditional
obligations. For example, the definition could have included the idea that if one is trying to use
resources to do good, one ought to choose whatever action will maximize the good, subject to not
violating any side-constraints.30

I think that the case for being non-normative in this sense is not as strong as the case against including
a sacrifice component, but we kept the definition entirely non-normative for much the same reasons
that we did not want to include a sacrifice component. First, most EA leaders were against it: in the
2015 survey, 70% of respondents stated that they thought the definition should be non-normative and
only 20% thought it should be normative.

Second, again, is ecumenicism. There are reasonable views on which, because it’s permissible
whether to use one’s resources to do good, it’s also permissible to aim to do some good, but less good
than one could have done. Moreover, even if we think that sometimes conditional obligations of this
form hold, there are also difficult questions about the scope of such obligations. We would not want to
commit to there being a conditional obligation to maximize the good in cases where doing so would
violate someone’s rights, but what about in conditions where it would violate the actor’s integrity? Or
in cases where one has already spent most of one’s resources altruistically, but now wants to spend
some of one’s money on charities that are less effective but dear to one’s heart? Any view on this
topic will be highly controversial.31

29
For an argument that it is more important, see [Toby’s paper, this volume]
30
The idea of conditional obligations is explored by Theron Pummer, ‘Whether and Where to Give’, Philosophy
& Public Affairs, vol. 44 (2016), pp. 77-95, though the claim he defends is significantly weaker than this.
31
See, for example, Theron Pummer, ‘Whether and Where to Give’, Joe Horton, "The All or Nothing
Problem." The Journal of Philosophy 114.2 (2017): 94-104, Thomas Sinclair, “Are we conditionally obligated
to be effective altruists?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, forthcoming. Jeff McMahan, ‘Doing Good and Doing
the Best’, in Paul Woodruff (ed.), The Ethics of Philanthropy: Philosophers’ Perspectives on Philanthropy,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 78-102.
 7

We could dilute the normative claim by phrasing it merely in terms of reasons, for example, stating
merely that one has some reason to do as much good as possible. But if so, then effective altruism
would be a very weak claim, and not a very interesting one. The distinctive aspect of effective
altruism is the choice to focus on asking how we can use some of our resources to do as much good as
possible, and the conclusions we come to about how to do as much good as possible, not the very thin
claim that one has some reason to do as much good as possible.

III. Effective altruism as tentatively impartial and welfarist

The second controversial part of the definition is that it is tentatively impartial and welfarist. It is
tricky to delineate which axiological views should be counted as within the remit of effective
altruism, and which should be counted as outside of effective altruism. On one end of the spectrum,
we could define effective altruism as the attempt to do the most good, according to whatever view of
the good the individual in question adheres to. On the other end of the spectrum, we could define
effective altruism as the attempt to do the most good on one very particular understanding of the
good, such as total hedonistic utilitarianism. Either choice faces severe problems. If we allow any
view of the good to count, then white supremacists could count as practicing effective altruism, which
is a conclusion that we clearly do not want. If we restrict ourselves to one particular view of the good,
then we lose any claim to ecumenicism, and we also misrepresent the effective altruism community
itself, which has vibrant disagreement over many areas of axiology.

Alternatively, one could attempt to restrict effective altruism to cover only ‘reasonable’ views of the
good. But then, first, we face the difficulty of explaining what counts as ‘reasonable’. And, second,
we also misrepresent the practices of the effective altruism community, which is distinctive insofar as
it is currently so focused on wellbeing, and insofar as all the analyses from the leading effective
altruist research organisations count each individual’s interests equally. What’s more, I think that it is
unlikely in the forseeable future that the community will have people or projects focusing, for
example, on art or biodiversity as ends in themselves. Similarly, it is unlikely that those in the
community would focus on rectifying injustice in cases where they believed that there were other
available actions which, though they would leave the injustice remaining, would do more good
overall.

My preferred solution is tentative impartial welfarism, defined above. This excludes non-welfarist
views on which, for example, biodiversity or art has intrinsic value, and excludes partialist views on
which, for example, the wellbeing of one’s co-nationals count for more than those of foreigners. But it
includes utilitarianism, prioritarianism, sufficientarianism, egalitarianism, different views of
population ethics, and different views of how to weight the wellbeing of different creatures.

This welfarism is ‘tentative’, however, insofar as it is taken to be merely a working assumption. The
ultimate aim of the effective altruist project is to do as much good as possible; the current focus on
wellbeing rests on the idea that, given the current state of the world and our incredible opportunity to
benefit others, the best ways of promoting welfarist value are broadly the same as the best ways of
promoting the good. If that view changed and those in the effective altruism community were
convinced that the best way to do good might well involve promoting non-welfarist goods, then we
would revise the definition to simply talk about ‘doing good’ rather than ‘benefiting others’.

I believe that this understanding is supported by the views of EA leaders. In the 2015 survey of EA
leaders referred to earlier, 52.5% of respondents were in favour of the definition including welfarism
and impartiality, with 25% against. So the inclusion of impartial welfarism has broad support, but not
as convincing support as other aspects of the definition.

What’s more, this restriction does little to reduce effective altruism’s ecumenicism: wellbeing is part
of the good on most or all plausible moral views. Effective altruism is not claiming to be a complete
account of the moral life. But, for any view that takes us to have reasons to promote the good, and that
 8

says wellbeing is part of the good, the project of working out how we can best promote wellbeing will
be important and relevant.

Having explained what effective altruism is, let’s now turn to what effective altruism is not, and
address some common misconceptions.

IV. Misunderstandings of effective altruism

Misconception #1: Effective altruism is just utilitarianism

Effective altruism is often considered to simply be a rebranding of utilitarianism, or to merely refer to

applied utilitarianism. John Gray, for example, refers to ‘utilitarian effective altruists’, and in his
critique does not distinguish between effective altruism and utilitarianism.32 Giles Fraser claims that
the ‘big idea’ of effective altruism is ‘to encourage a broadly utilitarian/rationalist approach to doing
good.’33

It is true that effective altruism has some similarities with utilitarianism: it is maximising, it is
primarily focused on improving wellbeing, many members of the community make significant
sacrifices in order to do more good, and many members of the community self-describe as
utilitarians.34

But this is very different from effective altruism being the same as utilitarianism. Unlike
utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that one must always sacrifice one’s own interests if
one can benefit others to a greater extent.35 Indeed, on the above definition effective altruism makes
no claims about what obligations of benevolence one has.

Unlike utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that one ought always to do the good, no
matter what the means;36 indeed, as suggested in the guiding principles, there is a strong community
norm against ‘ends justify the means’ reasoning. This is emphasised strongly, for example, in an
80,000 Hours blog post by myself and Ben Todd.37

Finally, unlike utilitarianism, effective altruism does not claim that the good equals the sum total of
wellbeing. As noted above, it is compatible with egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and, because it does

32
John Gray, ‘How & How not to Be Good’, The New York Review of Books (May 21, 2015),
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/05/21/how-and-how-not-to-be-good/.
33
Giles Fraser, ‘It’s Called Effective Altruism—But is it Really the Best Way to Do Good?’, The Guardian
(November 23, 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/money/belief/2017/nov/23/its-called-effective-altruism-
but-is-it-really-the-best-way-to-do-good; Marko Bakić, ‘How Is Effective Altruism Related to Utilitarianism?’,
Quora (December 30, 2015) (“EA is a particular flavor of utilitarianism”), https://www.quora.com/How-is-
effective-altruism-related-to-utilitarianism; Iason Gabriel, ‘The Logic of Effective Altruism’, Boston Review
(July 6, 2015), https://bostonreview.net/forum/logic-effective-altruism/iason-gabriel-response-effective-
altruism; Catherin Tumber, ‘The Logic of Effective Altruism’, Boston Review (July 1, 2015),
https://bostonreview.net/forum/logic-effective-altruism/catherine-tumber-response-effective-altruism.
34
In the 2017 effective altruism survey, 52.8% of respondents chose ‘utilitarianism’ in response to the question
‘What moral philosophy, if any, do you lean towards?’ In addition, 12.6% chose ‘consequentialism (NOT
utilitarianism)’, 5.2% chose ‘virtue ethics’, 3.9% chose ‘deontology’, and 25.5% chose ‘no opinion, or not
familiar with these terms.’ As a caveat, however, it’s not clear how well the respondents understood these terms.
For example, in conversation I learned that one respondent thought that utilitarianism refers to any moral theory
that can be represented by a utility function.
35
On the demandingness objection to utilitarianism, see ‘The Demandingness of Morality: Toward a Reflective
Equilibrium’ by Brian Berkey. Philosophical Studies 173 (11):3015-3035 (2016).
36
On utilitarianism and constraints, see Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
37
Benjamin Todd and Will MacAskill, ‘Is it Ever Okay to Take a Harmful Job in Order to Do More Good? An
In-depth Analysis’, 80,000 Hours (August, 2017), https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/.
 9

not claim that wellbeing is the only thing of value, with views on which non-welfarist goods are of
value.38

In general, very many plausible moral views entail that there is a pro tanto reason to promote the
good, and that improving wellbeing is of moral value.39 If a moral view endorses those two ideas, then
effective altruism is part of the morally good life.

Misconception #2: Effective altruism is just about fighting poverty

The vast majority of the focus on effective altruism in the media, and in critical discussions, has been
on the part of effective altruism that is about fighting poverty. For example, Judith Lichtenberg begins
her article with the question, “How much money, time, and effort should you be giving to relieve dire
poverty?”40 Jennifer Rubenstein describes effective altruism as “a social movement focused on
alleviating poverty,” and Iason Gabriel describes effective altruism as encouraging “individuals to do
as much good as possible, typically by contributing money to the best-performing aid and
development organisations.”41

It is, of course, true that fighting poverty is one core focus of those in the effective altruism
community. In the 2017 EA survey, 41% of respondents identified extreme poverty as their top
priority cause area, and some effective altruist organisations such as GiveWell are exclusively focused
on poverty alleviation, 42 just as some other organisations within effective altruism are focused
exclusively on animal welfare43 or existential risks.44

But two core parts of effective altruism are cause-neutrality and means-neutrality: being open in
principle to focusing on any problem (such as global health, or climate change, or factory farming)
and being open in principle to using any (non side-constraint violating) means to addressing that
problem. In every case, the criterion is just what activity will do the most good. Cause and means
neutrality follows straightforwardly from the assumptions of maximization and impartial welfarism.
If, by focusing on one cause rather than another, or by choosing one means rather than another, one
can do more to promote wellbeing (without violating any side-constraints) then someone who is
committed to effective altruism will do so.

And, in practice, members of the effective altruism community support many other causes, including
animal suffering reduction, criminal justice reform, and existential risk mitigation. In the 2017 EA
survey, in addition to the 41% of respondents who identified extreme poverty as their top priority
cause area, 19% of respondents chose cause prioritization as the top priority, 16% chose AI, 14%
chose environmentalism, 12% chose promoting rationality, 10% chose non-AI existential risk, and
10% chose animal welfare. These results were broadly similar to the 2015 and 2014 surveys: poverty
is the most common focus area for individuals in the effective altruism community, but is not the
focus for the majority of individuals in the community.

This is mirrored when we look at the distribution of grants by the Open Philanthropy Project. In 2017,
they spent:
● $118 million (42%) on global health and development
38
See Derek Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority’, Ratio, vol. 10 (1997), pp. 202-221; Larry Temkin, Inequality, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993; Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
39
Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998, ch. 2; David Ross, The Right and
the Good, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930, ch. 2.
40
Judith Lichtenberg, ‘Peter Singer’s Extremely Altruistic Heirs’, The New Republic (November 30, 2015),
https://newrepublic.com/article/124690/peter-singers-extremely-altruistic-heirs.
41
Iason Gabriel, ‘Effective Altruism and Its Critics’, Journal Applied Philosophy, vol. 34 (2017), pp. 457-473.
42
McGeoch and Hurford, ‘EA Survey 2017 Series’.
43
For example, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE).
44
For example, the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI).
 10

● $43 million (15%) on potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence

● $36 million (13%) on scientific research (which cuts across other causes)
● $28 million (10%) on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness
● $27 million (10%) on farm animal welfare
● $10 million (4%) on criminal justice reform
● $9 million (3%) on other global catastrophic risks
● $10 million (4%) on other cause areas, including land use reform, macroeconomic policy,
immigration policy, promotion of effective altruism and improving decision-making

The amount of money received by the Effective Altruism Funds — where individual donors can give
to a fund managed by an expert for regranting within a particular cause area — tells a similar story. In
2017 it received:
● $982,000 (48%) for the global health and development fund
● $409,000 (20%) for the animal welfare fund
● $363,000 (18%) for the long-term future fund
● $290,000 (14%) for the effective altruism community fund

So, in contrast to the equation of effective altruism with poverty reduction only, a more accurate
description would be that the effective altruism community currently focuses on extreme poverty,
factory farming, and existential risk, with a small number of other areas of focus.

Misconception #3: Effective altruism is entirely about donations or earning to give

Most media attention focuses on the part of effective altruism that focuses on effective altruism as
applied to donations, and a significant proportion has focused on the idea of ‘earning to give’ — that
people should deliberately pursue a lucrative career in order to be able to donate a large proportion of
those earnings to effective charities.45

This is also true for the criticism of effective altruism. Iason Gabriel described effective altruism as ‘a
philosophy and social movement that aims to revolutionise the way we do philanthropy’, and focuses
his discussion on effective altruism and charity.46 Similarly, Jennifer Rubenstein’s review of Doing
Good Better and The Most Good You Can Do focuses on the charitable side of the effective altruism
movement.47

There’s no doubt that philanthropy is a major focus of the effective altruism community, and 80,000
Hours recognise that they promoted earning to give too heavily in their early marketing materials,48
and so it’s entirely reasonable for an article to focus on that aspect. But it means that a casual observer
could think that this is all that the effective altruism focuses on, even though it is not the only focus.

The organisation 80,000 Hours is entirely focused on helping individuals to use their career as
effectively as possible. And they recommend that only about 15% of altruistic graduates who would

45
For examples, see Lisa Herzog, ‘Can “Effective Altruism” Really Change the World?’, openDemocracy
(February 22, 2016), https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/lisa-herzog/can-effective-altruism-really-
change-world%20%20; Jennifer Rubenstein, ‘The Logic of Effective Altruism’, Boston Review (July 1, 2015),
https://bostonreview.net/forum/logic-effective-altruism/jennifer-rubenstein-response-effective-altruism; Sam
Earle and Rupert Read, ‘Why “Effective Altruism” Is Ineffective: the Case of Refugees’, Ecologist (April 5,
2016), https://theecologist.org/2016/apr/05/why-effective-altruism-ineffective-case-refugees. My own article
arguing in favour of this position is ‘Replaceability, Career Choice, and Making a Difference’.
46
Gabriel, ‘Effective Altruism and Its Critics’.
47
Jennifer Rubenstein, ‘The Lessons of Effective Altruism’, vol. 30 (2016), pp. 511-526.
48
‘Our Mistakes’, 80,000 Hours, https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/evaluations/mistakes/.
 11

be happy in a wide variety of career paths should earn to give in the long term.49 Similarly, in large
part because of the success of the EA movement at raising philanthropic money, the primary focus of
the Centre for Effective Altruism is to encourage people to move into working in particularly
important causes, rather than funding those causes.50 And in the 2015 EA survey, survey-takers were
asked, ‘What broad career path are you planning to follow?’ Though earning to give was the most
common response, receiving 36% of responses, 13% selected ‘non-profit’ work, 25% selected
‘research’, and 26% selected ‘none of these’. It seems that most members of the effective altruism
community, therefore, do not plan to use donations as their main path to impact.

Misconception #4: Effective altruism ignores systemic change

Of all the criticisms of effective altruism, the most common is that effective altruism ignores systemic
change. For example, Brian Leiter comments that: “I am a bit skeptical of undertakings like [effective
altruism], for the simple reason that most human misery has systemic causes, which charity never
addresses, but which political change can address; ergo, all money and effort should go towards
systemic and political reform.”51 This objection is also discussed by Amia Snirivasan,52 Iason
Gabriel,53 and Jennifer Rubenstein.54

But effective altruism is clearly open to systemic change in both principle and practice.55 We can
distinguish a broader and a narrower sense of ‘systemic change’. In the broader sense, a systemic
change is any change that involves a one-off investment in order to reap a long-lasting benefit. In the
narrower sense, ‘systemic change’ refers to long-lasting political change. Either way, the allegation is
often that those in the effective altruism community have been biased by a desire for quantification
away from difficult-to-assess measures such as political change.56

It’s clear that effective altruism is open to systemic change in principle: effective altruism is
committed to cause-neutrality and means neutrality, so if improving the world in some systemic way
is the course of action that will do the most good (in expectation, without violating any side-
constraints), then it’s the best course of action by effective altruism’s lights. More importantly,
however, effective altruists often advocate for systemic change in practice, even in the narrower
sense. An incomplete list of examples is as follows.57

• International labour mobility has been a focus area of members of the effective altruism
community for some time. Openborders.info, run by a member of the effective altruism
community, collates research on and promotes the option of dramatic increases in migration

49
William MacAskill, ‘80,000 Hours Thinks that Only a Small Proportion of People Should Earn to Give Long
Term’, 80,000 Hours (July 6, 2015), https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-
proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/.
50
Larissa Hesketh-Rowe, ‘CEA’s 2017 Review and 2018 Plans’, Centre for Effective Altruism (December 18,
2017), https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/blog/cea-s-2017-review-and-2018-plans/.
51
Brian Leiter, ‘Effective Altruist Philosophers’, Leiter Reports (June 22, 2015),
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/effective-altruist-philosophers.html.
52
‘Stop the Robot Apocalypse’, London Review of Books, vol. 37 (September 24, 2015), pp. 3-6,
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse.
53
‘Effective Altruism and Its Critics’.
54
Rubenstein, ‘The Lessons of Effective Altruism’. Other instances of this criticism include Herzog, ‘Can
“Effective Altruism” Really Change the World?’; Mathew Snow, ‘Against Charity’, Jacobin (August 25, 2015),
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/peter-singer-charity-effective-altruism/; Earle and Read, ‘Why “Effective
Altruism” Is Ineffective’. [See also Gabriel and McElwee, this volume]
55
For further discussion of this issue, see Berkey, ‘The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism’.
56
Emily Clough, ‘Effective Altruism’s Political Blind Spot’, Boston Review (July 14, 2015),
https://bostonreview.net/world/emily-clough-effective-altruism-ngos.
57
For further discussion, see Robert Wiblin, ‘Effective Altruists Love Systemic Change’, 80,000 Hours (July 8,
2015), https://80000hours.org/2015/07/effective-altruists-love-systemic-change/.
 12

from poor to rich countries. Open Philanthropy has made grants in this area, including to the
Center for Global Development, the US Association for International Migration, and
ImmigrationWorks. The reason for this focus is that one of the structural reasons why people
in poor countries are poor is that they are unable to move to countries where they could be
more productive. In effect, they are being incarcerated in the country into which they were
born by the joint migration restrictions of all other countries. For this reason, there are
economic arguments that the benefits to people in poverty from greater freedom of movement
across borders would be enormous.58
• The Center for Election Science promotes alternative voting systems, in particular approval
voting; it’s run by a member of the effective altruism community, and received a grant from
the Open Philanthropy Project at my recommendation.59
• The Centre for Effective Altruism has provided advice for the World Bank, the WHO, the
Department for International Development, and Number 10 Downing Street.
• 80,000 Hours’ list of recommended careers includes party politics, policy-oriented civil
service and think-tanks, and has an employee entirely dedicated to advising people who wish
to work in policy and government in the area of technological risk.
• The animal welfare wing of the effective altruism community, including Mercy for Animals
and The Humane League, has had astonishing success by lobbying large retailers and fast
food chains to get them to pledge to no longer use eggs from caged hens in their supply chain.
• Organisations such as the Future of Humanity Institute and the Centre for the Study of
Existential Risk are actively working on policy around developments of new technology, and
advising organisations such as the US government, UK government and the UN.
• The Open Philanthropy Project has made numerous grants within the areas of land use
reform, criminal justice reform, improving political decision-making, and macroeconomic
policy.60

Once we consider the broader sense of systemic change, then an even larger proportion of effort from
the effective altruism community is focused on systemic change. For example, all work addressing
existential risks is in this category, as is the focus on scientific research and on improving science
(such as through encouraging preregistration of trials).

Of course, it’s perfectly plausible that there are ‘systemic’ interventions that those in the effective
altruism community are neglecting. Perhaps campaigning to create an international law banning the
purchase of natural resources from dictatorships is an even more effective activity than any of the
current activities of effective altruists.61 But this is an in-house dispute, rather than a criticism of
effective altruism per se. One could argue that it’s in the nature of the way of thinking of those in the
effective altruism community that this idea is neglected. But there are ready alternative explanations:
the chance of such a campaign being successful is astronomically low and, even if it were successful,
even in the best case scenarios the legal change would occur decades hence, when the problem of
extreme poverty will probably be far smaller than it is today.62 Given this, and given the commitments
to systemic change listed above, it’s hard to see why we should think of this as a criticism of effective
altruism per se, rather than simply a disagreement about the best ways of promoting wellbeing.

58
Bryan Caplan and Vipul Naik, ‘A Radical Case for Open Borders’, in Benjamin Powell (ed.), The Economics
of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015, ch. 8.
59
See this introduction to voting theory by a board member of the Center for Election Science: Jameson Quinn,
‘A Voting Theory Primer for Rationalists’, Less Wrong (April 12, 2018).
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D6trAzh6DApKPhbv4/a-voting-theory-primer-for-rationalists.
60
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants.
61
[see Gabriel and McElwee in this volume]
62
Poverty has decreased dramatically over the past two centuries, and we should expect this trend to continue.
See Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, ‘Global Extreme Poverty’, Our World in Data,
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty.
 13

Conclusion

In this chapter I’ve unpacked the Centre for Effective Altruism’s definition of effective altruism, and
explained some of the reasons why we chose that definition. I’ve then responded to some common
misunderstandings of effective altruism. In doing so, I hope that I have helped to add clarity to future
debates around effective altruism, allowing us to see which objections, if successful, would show that
effective altruism has little or no place in our moral lives, and which are really just in-house debates
about how to do the most good.