The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism

When I asked Singer why the late two-thousands were a time of great ferment for applied consequentialism, he cited the Internet: “People will say, ‘I’ve had these ideas since I was a teen-ager, and I thought it was just me,’ and then they got online and found that there were others.”

"The movement, known as E.A. to its practitioners, who themselves are known as E.A.s, takes as its premise that people ought to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible. Among other back-of-the-envelope estimates, E.A.s believe that a life in the developing world can be saved for about four thousand dollars. Effe... See more