The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism

In his 2019 paper, Will MacAskill unpacks effective altruism's definition. 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. The first part of the definition (i) refers to effective altruism as an intellectual project (or ‘research field’); and the second part (ii) refers to effective altruism as a practical project (or ‘social movement’). The effective altruism community (the 'social movement') is a collection of people and organisations who use their resources (e.g. money, time, social capital) on the project of trying to effectively improve the world.

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