tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/effective-altruism-16489/articlesEffective altruism – The Conversation2023-04-14T12:19:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1994712023-04-14T12:19:20Z2023-04-14T12:19:20Z‘Effective altruism’ has caught on with billionaire donors – but is the world’s most headline-making one on board?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518049/original/file-20230328-22-bvafc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C1017%2C682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks during a T-Mobile and SpaceX joint event on Aug. 25, 2022, in Texas. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/spacex-founder-elon-musk-speaks-during-a-t-mobile-and-news-photo/1242718935?adppopup=true">Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the ways tech billionaire Elon Musk attracts supporters is the vision he seems to have for the future: people driving fully autonomous electric vehicles, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/23/elon-musk-aiming-for-mars-so-humanity-is-not-a-single-planet-species.html">colonizing other planets</a> and even <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connect-brains-with-computers-1490642652">merging their brains with artificial intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>Part of such notions’ appeal may be the argument that they’re not just exciting, or profitable, but would benefit humanity as a whole. At times, Musk’s high-tech mission seems to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/business/effective-altruism-elon-musk.html">overlap with “longtermism</a>” and “effective altruism,” ideas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/opinion/the-case-for-longtermism.html">promoted by</a> Oxford philosopher <a href="https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/william-macaskill">William MacAskill</a> and several <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency">billionaire donors</a>, such as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, former reporter Cari Tuna. The effective altruism movement guides people toward <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-effective-altruism-a-philosopher-explains-197856">doing the most good</a> they can with their resources, and Musk has claimed that <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1554335028313718784?lang=en">MacAskill’s philosophy echoes his own</a>.</p>
<p>But what do these phrases really mean – and how does Musk’s record stack up?</p>
<h2>The greatest good</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">Effective altruism is strongly related</a> to <a href="https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/utilitarianism">the ethical theory of utilitarianism</a>, particularly the work of the Australian philosopher <a href="https://uchv.princeton.edu/people/peter-singer">Peter Singer</a>.</p>
<p>In simple terms, utilitarianism holds that the right action is whichever maximizes net happiness. Like any moral philosophy, there is a dizzying array of varieties, but utilitarians generally share a couple of important principles.</p>
<p>First is a theory about <a href="https://longtermrisk.org/hedonistic-vs-preference-utilitarianism/">which values to promote</a>. “Hedonistic utilitarians” seek to promote pleasure and reduce pain. “Preference utilitarians” seek to satisfy as many individual preferences, such as to be healthy or lead meaningful lives, as possible.</p>
<p>Second is impartiality: One person’s pleasure, pain or preferences are as important as anyone else’s. This is often summed up by the expression “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1973/04/05/animal-liberation/">each to count for one, and none for more than one</a>.” </p>
<p>Finally, utilitarianism ranks potential choices based on their outcomes, usually prioritizing whichever choice would lead to the greatest value – in other words, the greatest pleasure, the least amount of pain or the most preferences fulfilled.</p>
<p>In concrete terms, this means that utilitarians are likely to support policies like <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/vaccine-nationalism-covid-19-india.html">global vaccine distribution</a>, rather than hoarding doses for particular populations, in order to save more lives.</p>
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<span class="caption">Effective altruism philosopher William MacAskill gives a TED Talk in Vancouver in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/philosopher-will-macaskill-speaks-at-ted2018-the-age-of-news-photo/1301892651?adppopup=true">Lawrence Sumulong/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Utilitarianism 2.0?</h2>
<p><a href="https://blog.apaonline.org/2021/03/29/is-effective-altruism-inherently-utilitarian/">Utilitarianism shares a number of features</a> with effective altruism. When it comes to making ethical decisions, both movements posit that no one person’s pleasure or pain counts more than anyone else’s. </p>
<p>In addition, both utilitarianism and effective altruism are agnostic about how to achieve their goals: what matters is achieving the greatest value, not necessarily how we get there.</p>
<p>Third, utilitarians and effective altruists often have a very wide “<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M2gBGYWEQDnrPt6nb/moral-circles-degrees-dimensions-visuals">moral circle</a>”: in other words, the kinds of living beings that they think ethical people should be concerned about. Effective altruists are frequently vegetarians; <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iGpTbyXm3xtHQFhQ7/tyler-john-personhood-initiatives">many are also champions of animal rights</a>.</p>
<h2>Long-term view</h2>
<p>But what if people have ethical obligations not just toward sentient beings alive today – humans, animals, even aliens – but toward beings who will be born in a hundred, a thousand or even a billion years?</p>
<p>Longtermists, including many people involved in effective altruism, believe that those obligations matter just as much as our obligations to people living today. In this view, issues that pose an <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks">existential risk</a> to humanity, such as a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">giant asteroid</a> striking earth, are particularly important to solve, because they threaten <a href="https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Toby-Newberry_How-many-lives-does-the-future-hold.pdf">everyone who could ever live</a>. Longtermists aim to guide humanity past these threats to ensure that future people can exist and live good lives, even in a billion years’ time.</p>
<p>Why do they care? Like utilitarians, effective altruists want to maximize happiness in the universe. If humanity goes extinct, then all those potentially good lives can’t happen. They can’t suffer – but they can’t have good lives, either.</p>
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<span class="caption">Can Mars be part of the plan to save humanity?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/futuristic-concept-of-gale-crater-enclosed-royalty-free-illustration/145091712?phrase=mars%20colony&adppopup=true">Steven Hobbs/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Measuring Musk</h2>
<p>Musk has claimed that MacAskill’s effective altruism “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1554335028313718784">is a close match for my philosophy</a>.” But how close is it really? It’s hard to grade someone on their particular moral commitments, but the record seems choppy.</p>
<p>To start, the original motivation for the effective altruism movement was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">to help the global poor as much as possible</a>. </p>
<p>In 2021, the director of the United Nations World Food Program <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/26/economy/musk-world-hunger-wfp-intl/index.html">mentioned Musk’s wealth</a> in an interview, calling on him and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to donate US$6 billion. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/">Musk’s net worth</a> is currently estimated to be $180 billion.</p>
<p>The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter tweeted that <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-elon-musk-try-to-solve-the-problem-of-world-hunger-with-6-billion-5-questions-answered-171187">he would donate the money</a> if the U.N. could provide proof that that sum would <a href="https://www.abc10.com/article/news/verify/business-verify/elon-musk-indicated-2021-to-donate-6-billion-to-fighting-solving-world-hunger-if-un-met-conditions/536-cad0e59e-775d-4c3d-a309-b3ef93379a71">end world hunger</a>. The head of the World Food Program clarified that $6 billion would not solve the problem entirely, but save an estimated 42 million people from starvation, and provided the organization’s plan.</p>
<p>Musk did not, the public record suggests, donate to the World Food Program, but he did soon <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-gave-5-7-billion-to-charity-last-year-where-it-went-was-a-mystery-until-now/">give a similar amount</a> to his own foundation – a move some critics dismissed as a <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world-hunger-but-gave-it-to-his-own-foundation-instead/">tax dodge</a>, since a core principle of effective altruism is giving only to organizations whose <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/what_charity_navigator_gets_wrong_about_effective_altruism#">cost-effective impact</a> has been rigorously studied.</p>
<p>Making money is hardly a problem in effective altruists’ eyes. They famously have argued that instead of working for nonprofits on important social issues, it may be more impactful to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-charities-altruism/young-smart-and-want-to-save-lives-become-a-banker-says-philosopher-idUSKCN0Q10M220150727">become investment bankers</a> and use that wealth to advance social issues – an idea called “<a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/">earning to give</a>.” Nonetheless, Musk’s lack of transparency in that donation and his <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/could-elon-musk-have-solved-world-hunger-instead-buying-twitter-1700942">decision to then buy Twitter for seven times that amount</a> have generated controversy.</p>
<h2>Futuristic solutions</h2>
<p>Musk has claimed that some of the innovations he has invested in are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-08/tesla-full-self-driving-fsd-technology">moral imperatives</a>, such as autonomous driving technology, which could save lives on the road. In fact, he has suggested that negative media coverage of autonomous driving <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341306/elon-musk-negative-media-autonomous-vehicles-killing-people">is tantamount to killing people</a> by dissuading them from using self-driving cars.</p>
<p>In this view, Tesla seems to be an innovative means to a utilitarian end. But there are dozens of other ways to save lives on the road that don’t require <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/gms-cruise-values-autonomous-vehicle-industry-at-8-trillion.html">expensive robot cars</a> that just happen to enrich Musk himself: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-03/why-us-traffic-safety-fell-so-far-behind-other-countries">improved public transit</a>, auto safety laws and more walkable cities, to name a few. His Boring Company’s attempts to build tunnels under Los Angeles, meanwhile, have been criticized as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/urban-tunnels-musk-s-boring-co-draw-industry-skepticism-n1269677">expensive and ineffecient</a>.</p>
<p>The most obvious argument for <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-secret-obsession-with-human-extinction-explains-everything-hes-doing">Musk’s supposed longtermism</a> is his rocket and spacecraft company SpaceX, which he has tied to securing the human race’s <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-space-sun-death-163900796.html">future against extinction</a>. </p>
<p>Yet some longtermists are concerned about the consequences of a corporate space race, too. Political scientist <a href="https://politicalscience.jhu.edu/directory/daniel-deudney/">Daniel Deudney</a>, for example, has <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/johns-hopkins-professor-warns-totalitarian-military-space-empire">argued</a> that the roughshod race to colonize space could have dire political consequences, including a form of interplanetary totalitarianism as militaries and corporations carve up the cosmos. Some effective altruists <a href="https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/space-governance/">are worried about these types of issues</a> as humans move toward the stars.</p>
<p>Is anyone, not just Musk, living up to effective altruism’s ideals today?</p>
<p>Answering this question requires thinking about three core questions: Are their initiatives trying to do the most good for everyone? Are they adopting the most effective means to help or simply the most exciting? And just as importantly: What kind of future do they envision? Anyone who cares about doing the most good they can should have an interest in creating the right kinds of future, rather than just getting us to any old future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas G. Evans receives funding from the Greenwall Foundation, National Science Foundation, Davis Educational Foundation, and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.</span></em></p>Effective altruism, often called ‘EA,’ is closely linked to utilitarian philosophy and calls for donors to carefully scrutinize whether their giving makes an impact.Nicholas G. Evans, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978562023-01-26T13:25:04Z2023-01-26T13:25:04ZWhat’s effective altruism? A philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505933/original/file-20230123-11-ashflr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4962%2C2507&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tech billionaire Dustin Mosovitz is one of the world's wealthiest effective altruists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/asana-co-founder-and-chief-executive-officer-dustin-news-photo/871747982">Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Effective altruism is an intellectual and charitable movement that <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism">aspires to find the best ways to help others</a>. People dedicated to it rely on evidence and rational arguments to identify what they can do to make the most progress toward solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as reducing <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development">malnutrition and malaria</a> while increasing access to health care. </p>
<p>A group of intellectuals, including the Oxford University philosophers <a href="https://www.williammacaskill.com/">William MacAskill</a> and <a href="http://www.tobyord.com/">Toby Ord</a>, <a href="https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/history">coined the term in 2011</a>. The movement was inspired in part by the philosopher <a href="http://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism">Peter Singer</a>, who has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052">argued for an obligation to help those in extreme poverty</a> since the 1970s.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.notion.so/Wiki-List-of-EA-related-organisations-ae330bb9deac4186b7528b84939d5448">Numerous effective altruist nonprofits</a> have sprung up over the past 12 years. They research and implement ways to help others that they think will make a big difference, such as by providing people in low-income countries with <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/best-charities/against-malaria-foundation/">malaria-fighting bed nets</a>, <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/best-charities/evidence-action/">safe water dispensers</a> and <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org.au/best-charities/fred-hollows-foundation/">low-cost cataract surgeries to restore eyesight</a>. </p>
<h2>Why effective altruism matters</h2>
<p>Effective altruism has gained traction and <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zA6AnNnYBwuokF8kB/is-effective-altruism-growing-an-update-on-the-stock-of#How_many_funds_are_committed_to_effective_altruism_">mobilized tens of billions of dollars</a>, in part because of its popularity among some extremely wealthy donors.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most affluent proponent is <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency">Dustin Moskovitz</a>, who co-founded Facebook and the Asana digital work management platform. Moskovitz makes charitable giving decisions with his <a href="https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=252">wife, Cari Tuna</a>. </p>
<p>Before the collapse of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-ftx-collapse-explained-rcna57582">FTX cryptocurrency exchange</a> that former billionaire <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-collapse-effective-altruism-donate-philanthropy-money-2022-12">Sam Bankman-Fried</a> founded, he reportedly committed more than US$160 million to charities that are popular with effective altruists.</p>
<p><a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/elon-musk-s-2021-5.7-billion-mystery-gift-went-to-his-foundation">Elon Musk</a> hasn’t been clear about his charitable giving preferences since he started to pour billions of dollars into his own foundation. But he has <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1554335028313718784">praised MacAskill’s most recent book</a>, “<a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/william-macaskill/what-we-owe-the-future/9781541618633/">What We Owe the Future</a>,” sparking conjecture about the Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s possible support for these giving practices.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/#how-many-funds-are-committed-to-effective-altruism">effective altruism movement also includes</a> many <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge">donors without billions to give away</a>.</p>
<p>Regardless of their wealth, all donors with this mindset can dedicate their own money or time to support their favorite causes.</p>
<p>One way they can try to do both at once is through what effective altruists call “<a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/">earning to give</a>”; they make as much money as they can and then donate most of it to charities they believe will do the most good per dollar spent.</p>
<p>Some effective altruist groups embrace a secular version of the religious tradition called <a href="https://www.ramseysolutions.com/budgeting/daves-advice-on-tithing-and-giving">tithing</a> – and <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge">give 10% of their income to high-impact charities</a>.</p>
<p>Others may devote their time to these causes by personally <a href="https://80000hours.org/career-guide/making-a-difference/">working, volunteering or advocating</a> for organizations they believe will do a great deal of good.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Effective altruists who focus on the biggest existential risks that threaten humanity’s survival are called ‘longtermists.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Near and far</h2>
<p>Effective altruists need to reach their own conclusions about a question they all must grapple with: Which causes do the most good?</p>
<p>When deciding whether to focus on an issue, they first <a href="https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/">consider three other questions</a>. First, how big is the problem? Second, how much funding is currently devoted to addressing it? Third, are there any known solutions or systems that can or do make a difference?</p>
<p>Effective altruists also tend to land in two different camps.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/value-of-longtermist-donations">Neartermists</a>” focus on problems facing the people and animals who are alive today. These effective altruists typically see problems related to extreme poverty as among the most significant issues that can be solved.</p>
<p>They are likely to support charities that have shown they can take just <a href="https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities">$7 and protect a child from malaria</a>, <a href="https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities">$1 to deliver essential vitamin A supplements</a> or <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/best-charities/seva/">$25 to cure someone of preventable blindness</a>. Another main priority for neartermists is improving the conditions of livestock and the <a href="https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/">vast numbers of animals suffering in factory farms</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23298870/effective-altruism-longtermism-will-macaskill-future">Longtermists</a> emphasize problems that people who will be alive in the future might face.</p>
<p><a href="https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/">Effective altruists in this camp</a> often highlight the importance of trying to reduce the probability of artificial intelligence killing everyone on Earth, nuclear war, pandemics, climate change and other <a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/existential-risks/">existential risks</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob Bauer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The term, coined in 2011, refers to people who seek to use their money and time to make as much progress as possible toward solving the world’s most pressing problems.Jacob Bauer, Lecturer of Philosophy, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1935382022-12-19T05:47:37Z2022-12-19T05:47:37ZLongtermism – why the million-year philosophy can’t be ignored<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501724/original/file-20221218-11-y41zmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C23%2C5220%2C3456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/xU5Mqq0Chck">Drew Beamer / Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2017, the Scottish philosopher William MacAskill <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qZyshHCNkjs3TvSem/longtermism">coined</a> the name “longtermism” to describe the idea “that positively affecting the long-run future is a key moral priority of our time”. The label took off among like-minded philosophers and members of the “effective altruism” movement, which sets out to use evidence and reason to determine how individuals can best help the world.</p>
<p>This year, the notion has leapt from philosophical discussions to headlines. In August, MacAskill published a <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/What_We_Owe_The_Future/luNmEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">book</a> on his ideas, accompanied by a barrage of media coverage and endorsements from the likes of <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1554335028313718784">Elon Musk</a>. November saw more media attention as a company set up by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/books/review/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-crypto.html">Sam Bankman-Fried</a>, a prominent financial backer of the movement, collapsed in spectacular fashion. </p>
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<p>Critics say longtermism relies on <a href="https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/01/against-longtermism.html">making impossible predictions</a> about the future, gets caught up in speculation about <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/08/why-effective-altruists-fear-the-ai-apocalypse.html">robot apocalypses and asteroid strikes</a>, depends on wrongheaded moral views, and ultimately fails to give present needs the attention they deserve.</p>
<p>But it would be a mistake to simply dismiss longtermism. It raises thorny philosophical problems – and even if we disagree with some of the answers, we can’t ignore the questions.</p>
<h2>Why all the fuss?</h2>
<p>It’s hardly novel to note that modern society has a huge impact on the prospects of future generations. Environmentalists and peace activists have been making this point for a long time – and emphasising the importance of wielding our power responsibly.</p>
<p>In particular, “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/">intergenerational justice</a>” has become a familiar phrase, most often with reference to climate change.</p>
<p>Seen in this light, longtermism may look like simple common sense. So why the buzz and rapid uptake of this term? Does the novelty lie simply in bold speculation about the future of technology — such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/20/sam-bankman-fried-longtermism-effective-altruism-future-fund">biotechnology and artificial intelligence</a> – and its implications for humanity’s future?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-owe-future-generations-and-what-can-we-do-to-make-their-world-a-better-place-189591">What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?</a>
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<p>For example, MacAskill acknowledges we are not doing enough about the threat of climate change, but points out other potential future sources of human misery or extinction that could be even worse. What about a tyrannical regime enabled by AI from which there is no escape? Or an engineered biological pathogen that wipes out the human species?</p>
<p>These are conceivable scenarios, but there is a real danger in getting carried away with sci-fi thrills. To the extent that longtermism chases headlines through rash predictions about unfamiliar future threats, the movement is wide open for criticism.</p>
<p>Moreover, the predictions that really matter are about whether and how we can <em>change</em> the probability of any given future threat. What sort of actions would best protect humankind? </p>
<p>Longtermism, like effective altruism more broadly, has been <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse">criticised</a> for a bias towards philanthropic direct action – targeted, outcome-oriented projects – to save humanity from specific ills. It is quite plausible that less direct strategies, such as building solidarity and strengthening shared institutions, would be better ways to equip the world to respond to future challenges, however surprising they turn out to be. </p>
<h2>Optimising the future</h2>
<p>There are in any case interesting and probing insights to be found in longtermism. Its novelty arguably lies not in the way it might guide our particular choices, but in how it provokes us to reckon with the reasoning <em>behind</em> our choices.</p>
<p>A core principle of effective altruism is that, regardless of how large an effort we make towards promoting the “general good” — or benefiting others from an impartial point of view — we should try to optimise: we should try to do as much good as possible with our effort. By this test, most of us may be less altruistic than we thought.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photo of a snow-covered mountain peak among hills." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501739/original/file-20221219-20-1qooyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Always optimise: the idea you should do the maximum good possible with your efforts is a key tenet of effective altruism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/P8LFkBnTGVY">Sanjay Koranga / Unsplash</a></span>
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<p>For example, say you volunteer for a local charity supporting homeless people, and you think you are doing this for the “general good”. If you would better achieve that end, however, by joining a different campaign, you are either making a strategic mistake or else your motivations are more nuanced. <em>For better or worse</em>, perhaps you are less impartial, and more committed to special relationships with particular local people, than you thought.</p>
<p>In this context, impartiality means regarding all people’s wellbeing as equally worthy of promotion. Effective altruism was initially preoccupied with what this demands in the spatial sense: equal concern for people’s wellbeing wherever they are in the world. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cold-logic-of-doing-good-62863">The cold logic of doing good</a>
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<p>Longtermism extends this thinking to what impartiality demands in the temporal sense: equal concern for people’s wellbeing wherever they are <em>in time</em>. If we care about the wellbeing of unborn people in the distant future, we can’t outright dismiss potential far-off threats to humanity – especially since there may be truly staggering numbers of future people. </p>
<h2>How should we think about future generations and risky ethical choices?</h2>
<p>An explicit focus on the wellbeing of future people unearths difficult questions that tend to get glossed over in traditional discussions of altruism and intergenerational justice.</p>
<p>For instance: is a world history containing more lives of positive wellbeing, all else being equal, better? If the answer is yes, it clearly raises the stakes of preventing human extinction. </p>
<p>A number of philosophers <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-new-moral-mathematics/">insist the answer is no</a> – more positive lives is not better. Some suggest that, once we realise this, we see that longtermism is overblown or else uninteresting.</p>
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<p>But the implications of this moral stance are less simple and intuitive than its proponents might wish. And premature human extinction is not the only concern of longtermism.</p>
<p>Speculation about the future also provokes reflection on how an altruist should respond to uncertainty.</p>
<p>For instance, is doing something with a 1% chance of helping a trillion people in the future better than doing something that is certain to help a billion people today? (The “expectation value” of the number of people helped by the speculative action is 1% of a trillion, or 10 billion – so it might outweigh the billion people to be helped today.) </p>
<p>For many people, this may seem like gambling with people’s lives – and not a great idea. But what about gambles with more favourable odds, and which involve only contemporaneous people? </p>
<p>There are important philosophical questions here about apt risk aversion when lives are at stake. And, going back a step, there are philosophical questions about the authority of any prediction: how certain can we be about whether a possible catastrophe will eventuate, given various actions we might take?</p>
<h2>Making philosophy everybody’s business</h2>
<p>As we have seen, longtermist reasoning can lead to counter-intuitive places. Some critics respond by eschewing rational choice and “optimisation” altogether. But where would that leave us? </p>
<p>The wiser response is to reflect on the combination of moral and empirical assumptions underpinning how we see a given choice. And to consider how changes to these assumptions would change the optimal choice.</p>
<p>Philosophers are used to dealing in extreme hypothetical scenarios. Our reactions to these can illuminate commitments that are ordinarily obscured. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-with-peter-singer-on-effective-altruism-40964">Speaking with: Peter Singer on effective altruism</a>
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<p>The longtermism movement makes this kind of philosophical reflection everybody’s business, by tabling extreme future threats as real possibilities. </p>
<p>But there remains a big jump between what is <em>possible</em> (and provokes clearer thinking) and what is in the end <em>pertinent</em> to our actual choices. Even whether we should further investigate any such jump is a complex, partly empirical question. </p>
<p>Humanity already faces many threats that we understand quite well, like climate change and massive loss of biodiversity. And, in responding to those threats, time is not on our side.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Steele will be a visiting scholar at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford, in 2023.</span></em></p>Longtermism may be derided for focusing on implausible sci-fi scenarios of space colonisation and robot apocalypse, but it raises philosophical questions that are hard to dismiss.Katie Steele, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1946152022-11-16T13:27:50Z2022-11-16T13:27:50ZFTX bankruptcy is bad news for the charities that crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried generously supported<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495432/original/file-20221115-25-iu086m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=116%2C125%2C5721%2C3431&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has lost the fortune he aimed to give away. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sam-bankman-fried-speaks-onstage-during-the-first-annual-news-photo/1241501470?adppopup=true">Craig Barritt/Getty Images for CARE For Special Children</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>FTX, an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/15/1136641651/ftx-bankruptcy-sam-bankman-fried-ftt-crypto-cryptocurrency-binance">exchange for trading cryptocurrencies</a>, quickly became bankrupt and defunct in November 2022. Its founder, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23458837/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-sbf-downfall-explained">Sam Bankman-Fried</a>, is broke, and the 30-year-old former billionaire <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/186175/criminal-charges-against-sbf-on-the-table-after-ftxs-epic-collapse">could be</a> in serious <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/could-sam-bankman-fried-prison-171405966.html">legal trouble</a> for his alleged financial improprieties. The Conversation asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Rap6TboAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Brian Mittendorf</a>, an accounting scholar at The Ohio State University, to explain the significance of FTX’s implosion for philanthropy and the nonprofits Bankman-Fried supported.</em></p>
<h2>What was the connection between FTX and philanthropy?</h2>
<p>Though FTX was a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/technology/ftx-binance-crypto-explained.html">cryptocurrency exchange</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/15/ftx-cryptocurrency-sam-bankman-fried">Bankman-Fried</a> viewed it as something more: a <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/11/15/what-is-effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-wealth-career/">vehicle to change the world</a> through giving. <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sam-bankman-frieds-philanthropic-fund-halts-donations-amid-ftx-collapse-and-questions-about-legitimacy-11668192531">Bankman-Fried often noted that his goal</a> for his business was to make money in order to donate it to support a variety of social causes like <a href="https://ftxfoundation.org/global-health-welfare/">global health</a> and <a href="https://puck.news/the-s-b-f-pandemic/">investigative journalism</a>. Bankman-Fried was also a major donor to politicians in the Democratic Party, while FTX co-founder <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/15/23459268/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-bankruptcy-crypto-lobbying-washington">Ryan Salame gave millions to Republicans</a>.</p>
<p>Bankman-Fried was an acolyte of Scottish philosopher <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">William MacAskill</a> and the <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/11/15/what-is-effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-wealth-career/">effective altruism</a> movement, which emphasizes causes that its supporters believe can do the most good. Many effective altruists “<a href="https://fortune.com/2022/11/15/what-is-effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-wealth-career/">earn to give</a>,” trying to make as much money as they can in order to maximize their charitable impact. In recent years, a growing number of effective altruists have also championed “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism">longtermism</a>” – the view that giving to causes that donors believe will greatly benefit future generations is a higher priority than meeting current needs.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://ftx.com/giving">lines between FTX</a>, the <a href="https://ftxfoundation.org/about/">FTX Foundation</a> – Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic collective – and a longtermist offshoot of that foundation called the <a href="https://ftxfoundation.org/future-fund/">FTX Future Fund</a> were blurry. The promises for big giving, however, were clear, with <a href="https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=445">Bankman-Fried pledging</a> to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-03/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-s-crypto-billionaire-who-wants-to-give-his-fortune-away?leadSource=uverify%20wall">donate the bulk of his fortune to assorted causes</a>.</p>
<h2>What’s the most immediate fallout of FTX’s demise for charities?</h2>
<p>Soon after FTX collapsed, the <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/10/ftxs-effective-altruism-future-fund-team-resigns">FTX Future Fund’s entire staff resigned</a>. </p>
<p>The team cited concerns about the <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/11/11/team-behind-sam-bankman-fried-charity-ftx-future-fund-have-quit-over-possible-deception-or-dishonesty/">legitimacy and integrity</a> of FTX’s operations. By quitting as a group, the staffers signaled that the fund had halted disbursements, while also attempting to distance the broader effective altruism movement from its most famous adherent. </p>
<p>Though Bankman-Fried and his FTX-affiliated philanthropic endeavors were only getting started toward meeting their lofty ambitions, many charities and other organizations had already received funding, and many had <a href="https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/bankman-fried-family-donates-5-million-to-propublica">obtained further promises for future funding</a>. Those commitments now seem unlikely to ever be disbursed. Many <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ftx-bankruptcy-also-endangers-founders-philanthropic-gifts/2022/11/14/1f8f43d0-63ea-11ed-b08c-3ce222607059_story.html">recipients, including ProPublica</a> – a nonprofit investigative media outlet – are no longer counting on receiving those funds.</p>
<p>All signs point to much of that promised giving being <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2022/11/14/sam-bankman-fried-promised-millions-to-nonprofits-research-groups-thats-not-going-too-well-now/">unlikely to materialize</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">FTX logo and mobile app ads seen November 10, 2022, one day before the cryptocurrency exchange initiated Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-the-ftx-logo-and-mobile-app-news-photo/1440504670?adppopup=true">Leon Neal/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Can charities be forced to relinquish any donations tied to FTX that they have received?</h2>
<p>What might happen to the money that had already been disbursed is less clear.</p>
<p>The possibility of it being “clawed back” from the causes that received funds from FTX affiliates or Bankman-Fried himself is <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/o8B9kCkwteSqZg9zc/thoughts-on-legal-concerns-surrounding-the-ftx-situation">real but less likely</a>. Funds given in the 90 days prior to bankruptcy are the <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/crypto-company-s-collapse-strands-scientists">most likely</a> to be vulnerable to claims in bankruptcy, but other gifts could be at risk too, if the activities of Bankman-Fried or FTX are <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/should-charities-be-protected-from-the-claws-of-fraudulent-transfer-laws/">found to be fraudulent</a>. Even in that case, however, charitable gifts are given <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/senate-bill/1244">extra protection</a>, limiting the likelihood of such a “claw back.”</p>
<h2>What will the FTX fallout mean for cryptocurrency donations?</h2>
<p>Charities have become more <a href="https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2022/08/31/how-crypto-is-changing-philanthropy">adept at receiving cryptocurrency donations</a> over the years, primarily due to a <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/will-2022-be-a-boom-year-for-cryptocurrency-philanthropy-102241">multiyear boom</a> in crypto markets and <a href="https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/what-you-can-donate/donating-bitcoin-to-charity.html">tax considerations</a> that can make it advantageous for crypto investors to <a href="https://theconversation.com/charities-take-digital-money-now-and-the-risks-that-go-with-it-103983">give away some of their large, untaxed gains</a>. </p>
<p>In 2022, that boom gave way to a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/investing/bitcoin-crypto-ftx-gold/index.html">crypto bust</a>, <a href="https://www.wfae.org/2022-11-14/how-ftxs-fallout-impacts-the-world-of-cryptocurrency">which has only gotten worse</a> in the aftermath of FTX’s collapse. I believe it will reduce the flow of crypto to charities to a trickle – at least for now.</p>
<p>The FTX collapse also highlights the inherent risks charities face when they hold onto crypto assets and engage with these largely unregulated markets. The <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/silicon-valley-community-foundation-awarded-2.2-billion-in-2021">Silicon Valley Community Foundation</a>, a charity which pools resources for the benefit of northern California, has seen fluctuations in values of its crypto holdings to the tune of <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Silicon-Valley-foundation-s-crypto-assets-14029709.php">billions of dollars</a>. Other charities have shown themselves eager to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/04/05/how-crypto-is-changing-philanthropy/">join the craze</a> as well. The FTX fiasco may prompt charities to think twice before seeking crypto gifts or holding onto cryptocurrencies instead of liquidating them as soon as possible.</p>
<h2>What does this whole episode say about philanthropy?</h2>
<p>Though the failures at FTX may not indicate similar failures are imminent, either in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/cryptocom-ceo-says-will-prove-naysayers-wrong-amid-ftx-contagion-fears.html">crypto markets</a> or in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/business/ftx-effective-altruism.html">effective altruism</a> efforts, they do highlight some of the risks. </p>
<p>FTX operated in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/14/crypto-exchange-ftx-regulation-bankman-fried-00066815">lightly regulated</a> environment, and Bankman-Fried’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-03/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-s-crypto-billionaire-who-wants-to-give-his-fortune-away">brand of effective altruism</a> was praised for being both visionary and disruptive. Together, these features highlighted an ethos of philanthropic giving that, by <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/11/11/sam-bankman-fried-altruism-failed">favoring big bets</a> and bold goals, adopted the big-tech mantra of <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/move-fast-break-things-facebook-motto/">moving fast and breaking things</a>.</p>
<p>In my view, FTX’s epic failure highlights the value of being <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/10/ftx-collapse-sparks-alarm-from-us-lawmakers/">transparent and accountable</a>, both in business endeavors and giving. Minding the nitty-gritty details, heeding regulatory obligations and <a href="https://theconversation.com/donor-beware-pause-before-you-give-to-any-cause-188117">giving to established organizations</a> may seem humdrum, but it’s worth the trouble and is surely more “effective” than the alternative in the long run.</p>
<p>As details about FTX’s demise came to light, a very different new and highly visible megadonor briefly made one of her intermittent appearances in the news. <a href="https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/of-and-by-104c6ff53ff0">MacKenzie Scott</a>, a novelist and the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, announced on Nov. 14, 2022, that she had <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/business/mackenzie-scott-donations">given nearly US$2 billion</a> in the previous seven months to charities that work directly on acute community needs, like many local chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the National Urban League.</p>
<p>Although Scott isn’t operating a traditional foundation and she has bucked many philanthropic conventions with her <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mackenzie-scotts-12-billion-in-gifts-to-charity-reflect-an-uncommon-trust-in-the-groups-she-supports-173496">emphasis on social justice</a>, her approach and record stand in stark contrast to Bankman-Fried’s.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Mittendorf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The founder of the now-defunct exchange for trading cryptocurrencies believed in ‘earning to give.’Brian Mittendorf, Fisher Designated Professor of Accounting, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895912022-09-18T20:15:12Z2022-09-18T20:15:12ZWhat do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483125/original/file-20220907-20-kl1u00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C5725%2C3802&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/iRAvvyWZfZY">Markus Spiske via Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Your great grandchildren <a href="https://whatweowethefuture.com/">are powerless</a> in today’s society. As Oxford philosopher William MacAskill says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market, And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the things we do now influence them: for better or worse. We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back. So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: What We Owe the Future – William MacAskill (OneWorld)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>This is the key question in <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/what-we-owe-the-future-9780861542505/">What We Owe the Future</a>. It argues for what MacAskill calls longtermism: “the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.” He describes it as an extension of civil rights and women’s suffrage; as humanity marches on, we strive to consider a wider circle of people when making decisions about how to structure our societies.</p>
<p>MacAskill makes a compelling case that we should consider how to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of <em>their</em> children. In short, MacAskill argues that “future people count, there could be a lot of them, and we can make their lives go better.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-feel-my-heart-breaking-today-a-climate-scientists-path-through-grief-towards-hope-188589">Friday essay: 'I feel my heart breaking today' – a climate scientist's path through grief towards hope</a>
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<h2>Future people count</h2>
<p>It’s hard to feel for future people. We are bad enough at feeling for our future selves. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-simpsons-are-needed-more-than-ever-in-the-age-of-donald-trump-99330">The Simpsons</a> puts it: “That’s a problem for future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy.”</p>
<p>We all know we <em>should</em> protect our health for our own future. In a similar vein, MacAskill argues that we all “know” future people count.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Concern for future generations is common sense across diverse intellectual traditions […] When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don’t say, “Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now?” </p>
<p>Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today. We build museums and parks and bridges that we hope will last for generations; we invest in schools and longterm scientific projects; we preserve paintings, traditions, languages; we protect beautiful places.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>There could be a lot of future people</h2>
<p>Future people count, and MacAskill counts those people. The sheer number of future people might make their wellbeing a key moral priority. According to MacAskill and others, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/longtermism">humanity’s future could be vast</a>: much, much more than the 8 billion alive today.</p>
<p>While it’s hard to feel the gravitas, our actions may affect a dizzying number of people. Even if we last just 1 million years, as long as the average mammal – and even if the global population fell to 1 billion people – then there would be 9.1 trillion people in the future.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LEENEFaVUzU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The future of humanity could be unimaginably large, so those people deserve some moral weight.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We might struggle to care, because these numbers can be hard to <em>feel</em>. Our emotions don’t track well against large numbers. If I said a nuclear war would kill 500 million people, you might see that as a “huge problem”. If I instead said that the number is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0">actually closer to 5 billion</a>, it still feels like a “huge problem”. It does not emotionally <em>feel</em> 10 times worse. If we risk the trillions of people who could live in the future, that could be 1,000 times worse – but it doesn’t <em>feel</em> 1,000 times worse.</p>
<p>MacAskill does not argue we should give those people 1,000 times more concern than people alive today. Likewise, MacAskill does not say we should morally weight a person living a million years from now exactly the same as someone alive 10 or 100 years from now. Those distinctions won’t change what we can feasibly achieve now, given how hard change can be. </p>
<p>Instead, he shows if we care about future people at all, even those 100 years hence, we should simply be doing <em>more</em>. Fortunately, there are concrete things humanity can do.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-climate-change-bill-is-set-to-become-law-but-3-important-measures-are-missing-190102">Labor's climate change bill is set to become law – but 3 important measures are missing</a>
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<h2>We can make the lives of future people better</h2>
<p>Another reason we <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597818302930">struggle to be motivated</a> by big problems is that they feel insurmountable. This is a particular concern with future generations. Does anything I do make a difference, or is it a drop in the bucket? How do we know what to do when the <a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/cluelessness/">long-run effects are so uncertain</a>?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="book cover of What We Owe the Future" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483645/original/file-20220909-23-lt88ri.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1168&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Even present-day problems can feel hard to tackle. At least for those problems we can get fast, reliable feedback on progress. Even with that advantage, we struggle. For the second year in a row, we <a href="https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/chapters/executive-summary">did not make progress</a> toward our sustainable development goals, like reducing war, poverty, and increasing growth. Globally, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better">4.3% of children still</a> die before the age of five. COVID-19 has killed about <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-economist-single-entity?country=%7EOWID_WRL">23 million people</a>. Can we – and should we – justify focusing on future generations when we face these problems now?</p>
<p>MacAskill argues we can. Because the number of people is so large, he also argues we should. He identifies some areas where we could do things that protect the future while also helping people who are alive now. Many solutions are win-win.</p>
<p>For example, the current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. Yet, despite the recent pandemic, many governments have done little to set up more robust systems that could <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22983046/congress-covid-pandemic-prevention">prevent the next pandemic.</a> MacAskill outlines ways in which those future pandemics could be worse.</p>
<p>Most worrying are the threats from engineered pathogens, which </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] could be much more destructive than natural pathogens because they can be modified to have dangerous new properties. Could someone design a pathogen with maximum destructive power—something with the lethality of Ebola and the contagiousness of measles? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He gives examples, like militaries and terrorist groups, that have tried to engineer pathogens in the past.</p>
<p>The risk of an engineered <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-virus-families-that-could-cause-the-next-pandemic-according-to-the-experts-189622">pandemic</a> wiping us all out in the next 100 years is between 0.1% and 3%, according to estimates laid out in the book. </p>
<p>That might sound low, but MacAskill argues we would not step on a plane if you were told “it ‘only’ had a one-in-a-thousand chance of crashing and killing everyone on board”. These threaten not only future generations, but people reading this – and everyone they know.</p>
<p>MacAskill outlines ways in which we might be able to prevent engineered pandemics, like researching better personal protective equipment, cheaper and faster diagnostics, better infrastructure, or better governance of synthetic biology. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future. </p>
<p>The same win-wins might apply to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-clean-energy-grid-means-10-000km-of-new-transmission-lines-they-can-only-be-built-with-community-backing-187438">decarbonisation</a>, safe development of <a href="https://theconversation.com/irony-machine-why-are-ai-researchers-teaching-computers-to-recognise-irony-185904">artificial intelligence</a>, reducing risks from <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-vladimir-putins-nuclear-threats-a-bluff-in-a-word-probably-187689">nuclear war</a>, and other threats to humanity.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-a-limited-nuclear-war-would-starve-millions-of-people-new-study-reveals-188602">Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Things you can do to protect future generations</h2>
<p>Some “longtermist” issues, like climate change, are already firmly in the public consciousness. As a result, some may find MacAskill’s book “common sense”. Others may find the speculation about the far future pretty wild (like <a href="https://www.cold-takes.com/all-possible-views-about-humanitys-future-are-wild/">all possible views</a> of the longterm future).</p>
<p>MacAskill strikes an accessible balance between anchoring the arguments to concrete examples, while making modest extrapolations into the future. He helps us see how “common sense” principles can lead to novel or neglected conclusions. </p>
<p>For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation). It makes humanity look like an “imprudent teenager”, with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even if you think [the risk of extinction] is only a one-in-a-thousand, the risk to humanity this century is still ten times higher than the risk of your dying this year in a car crash. If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds around blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sam Harris talks to William MacAskill about longtermism and effective altruism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. But MacAskill makes a compelling case for longtermism through clear stories and good metaphors. He answers many questions I had about safeguarding the future. Will the future be good or bad? Would it really matter if humanity ended? And, importantly, is there anything I can actually do?</p>
<p>The short answer is yes, there is. Things you might already do help, like minimising your carbon footprint – but MacAskill argues “other things you can do are radically more impactful”. For example, <a href="https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/eat-lancet-commission-summary-report/">reducing your meat consumption</a> would address climate change, but <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/cause-areas/long-term-future/climate-change#3-what-are-the-most-effective-charities-and-funds-working-on-climate-change">donating money</a> to the world’s most effective climate charities might be far more effective. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beyond donations, three other personal decisions seem particularly high impact to me: political activism, spreading good ideas, and having children […] But by far the most important decision you will make, in terms of your lifetime impact, is your choice of career.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>MacAskill points to a range of resources – many of which he founded – that guide people in these areas. For those who might have flexibility in their career, MacAskill founded <a href="https://80000hours.org/">80,000 Hours</a>, which helps people find impactful, satisfying careers. For those trying to donate more impactfully, he founded <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/">Giving What We Can.</a> And, for spreading good ideas, he started a social movement called <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/">Effective Altruism</a>.</p>
<p>Longtermism is one of those good ideas. It helps us better place our present in humanity’s bigger story. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren. MasAskill clearly shows that we owe it to them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Noetel receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Sport Australia. He is a Director of Effective Altruism Australia.</span></em></p>Your great grandchildren are powerless in today’s society, but the things we do now influence them, for better or worse. What happens when we consider them while we make decisions today?Michael Noetel, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788712022-03-17T12:11:06Z2022-03-17T12:11:06ZUkraine is benefiting from generous donations – and many other global causes need help, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452303/original/file-20220315-19-2x3kfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=129%2C43%2C5622%2C3147&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Yemeni mother holds the tiny foot of her malnourished child in 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/yemeni-mother-holds-the-foot-of-her-malnourished-child-news-photo/1349023003">Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-orders-military-operations-ukraine-demands-kyiv-forces-surrender-2022-02-24/">Ukraine’s resistance to Russia</a> has captivated the world, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220306-ukraine-dominates-social-media-info-war-with-russia">dominating social media</a> and <a href="https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2022/journalism-recommendations-for-your-weekend/">the news</a> since the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion. With this attention has come a massive <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/03/donate-ukraine-money-crypto/">outpouring of financial support</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-responsibly-donate-to-ukrainian-causes-178391">Ordinary people</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-aid-to-ukraine-13-6-billion-approved-following-russian-bombardment-marks-sharp-increase-179172">governments</a>, <a href="https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/how-companies-are-helping-ukraine-charity-donations.html">corporations</a> and <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/leonardo-dicaprio-donates-10-million-to-ukraine-his-grandmothers-country-2810454">celebrities</a> have pledged billions to support Ukraine and have dispatched everything from missiles to cryptocurrency. Stories of sacrifice inspire courage, and photos of vulnerable victims, such as the pregnant woman on a stretcher after a bombing, have ignited rage and pain. When reports surfaced that the <a href="https://apnews.com/c0f2f859296f9f02be24fc9edfca1085">woman and her baby had both died</a>, the collective sorrow only deepened.</p>
<p>The urge to express solidarity by <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-responsibly-donate-to-ukrainian-causes-178391">making your own donation</a> is only natural. </p>
<p>But there are many other tragedies today. Having researched <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Nx0z6-0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">food insecurity around the world</a>, I believe that the Ukraine crisis evokes a basic question about giving globally: What’s the best way to choose a foreign cause? </p>
<h2>Other tragedies abound</h2>
<p>To be sure, quantifying the pain of loss is impossible. Yet the waves of generosity toward Ukraine do offer an opportunity to examine what drives charitable giving. </p>
<p>While Ukraine’s situation is tragic, so are conditions in countries where wars have ground on for years, such as in <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1098272">Yemen</a>, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> and <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1104742">Ethiopia</a>. And the economic and social disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/13-10-2020-impact-of-covid-19-on-people%27s-livelihoods-their-health-and-our-food-systems">put tens of millions of people at risk</a> of falling into extreme poverty. </p>
<p>The conflict in Yemen alone, now entering its seventh year, has caused the deaths of <a href="https://www.undp.org/publications/assessing-impact-war-yemen-pathways-recovery">more than 377,000 people</a>, yet this global humanitarian crisis has <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/yemen-war-united-states-704187/">garnered little U.S. media coverage</a>. And a <a href="https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/yemen-emergency">severe famine there is affecting up to 19 million people</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of Afghan women and children" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452305/original/file-20220315-17-h3vsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Displaced Afghan women and children in Herat province on Feb. 20, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/afghan-internally-displaced-women-sit-in-front-of-their-news-photo/1238649817">Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>It’s hard to draw comparisons</h2>
<p>People want to make a difference, but they do not necessarily give to causes that could have the biggest impact. In fact, donors <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/behavioral_economics_and_donor_nudges_impulse_or_deliberation">rarely can explain what makes them choose a cause</a>.</p>
<p>Research indicates that numbers are often less compelling than powerful stories. Studies have found that people tend to be more likely to respond to pleas to help a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022299422219">single, identifiable beneficiary</a> rather than a large-scale problem, such as hunger afflicting a whole country.</p>
<p>When media coverage of one issue rises, the more narratives and stories about that subject you will see and hear. People often end up donating to what is on their minds, as opposed to what might, in fact, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22973133/ukraine-russia-airbnb-booking-donate-effective-altruism">represent the greatest need</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a gym converted into a refugee shelter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452306/original/file-20220315-17-8a4zzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ukrainian refugees rest in a gym converted into a shelter on March 15, 2022, in Krakow, Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-who-fled-the-war-in-ukraine-rest-inside-a-sports-news-photo/1385443149">Omar Marques/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who is welcomed?</h2>
<p>Likewise, many accounts of the plight of the more than <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine">3 million Ukrainian refugees</a> are harrowing. Yet so far, the evidence suggests that depending on what refugees look like and where they are from, the degree to which they are welcomed and supported by governments and the public as a whole will differ.</p>
<p>The Ukrainians fanning across Europe are being <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukrainian-refugees-are-welcomed-with-open-arms-not-so-with-people-fleeing-other-war-torn-countries-178491">welcomed warmly and virtually without questions</a>. In the United Kingdom, the government is offering residents <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/597996-uk-government-to-pay-residents-350-pounds-a-month-to-house-ukrainian">350 pounds a month to house them</a>.</p>
<p>And yet in those same places, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/1083423348/europe-welcomes-ukrainian-refugees-but-others-less-so">refugees from the Middle East and Africa</a> have rarely experienced such generosity.</p>
<p>Ukrainians “are intelligent, they are educated people,” Bulgarian Prime Minister <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-refugees-diversity-230b0cc790820b9bf8883f918fc8e313">Kiril Petkov told journalists</a> in early March. “This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.” </p>
<p>Several news outlets such as <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/26/cbs-news-charlie-dagata-apologizes-for-saying-ukraine-more-civilized-than-iraq-afghanistan/">CBS News</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AlJazeera/status/1497986094289367044">Al Jazeera English</a> have issued apologies after their correspondents made insensitive comments implying that Ukrainian refugees were more civilized or acceptable than those fleeing other homelands.</p>
<p>This dichotomy begs questions: Which lives are seen as most valuable? And are people of color valued as much as white people? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Somalians line up to get food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452310/original/file-20220315-21-16098kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People await food and health services at a camp for internally displaced persons in Baidoa, Somalia, in February 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-wait-for-food-distributions-and-health-services-at-a-news-photo/1238695578">Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Giving to prevent war</h2>
<p>One compelling reason to consider donating to reduce <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/responding-stark-rise-food-insecurity-across-poorest-countries">food insecurity</a> in low-income countries is that it can lower the chances that a conflict will occur.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-peace-prize-spotlights-the-links-between-hunger-and-conflict-147889">Food insecurity perpetuates conflict</a> by driving people away from their homes, land and jobs – while fueling grievances. Working to eradicate hunger can reduce a source of conflict. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2014/04/engaging-and-educating-women-and-girls-prevention-violent-conflict-and-violent">Educating women and girls</a> can assist in the prevention of violent conflict and violent extremism. Societies with more gender equality, with higher female representation in government and in educational attainment, are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022343305050688">associated with lower levels of intrastate armed conflict</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, inequality in general can stoke discontent and <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/02/World-Social-Report2020-FullReport.pdf">even lead to violent conflict</a>. Underscoring all of this is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-key-points-in-the-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-178195">climate crisis</a>, which if not proactively addressed will increase resource scarcity, hunger and inequity – and those developments, in turn, will increase the chances of violent conflict.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>As long as donations support reputable causes, where the funds will be used for their intended purpose, I believe all giving is good.</p>
<p>There will always be competing causes, and limited resources to address every injustice. Yet it is worth considering how to strike a balance between immediate and long-term giving goals based on personal values and priorities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Eise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Far more people are dying of hunger around the world than in Europe’s new war.Jessica Eise, Assistant Professor of Social and Environmental Challenges, The University of Texas at San AntonioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1763472022-03-16T16:34:27Z2022-03-16T16:34:27ZHow AI helped deliver cash aid to many of the poorest people in Togo<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451998/original/file-20220314-131648-9brlb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=198%2C68%2C4825%2C3015&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous in Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mobile-phone-lome-togo-news-photo/170481943">Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Governments and humanitarian groups can use machine learning algorithms and mobile phone data to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04484-9">get aid to those who need it most</a> during a humanitarian crisis, we found in new research.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of West Africa, highlighting Togo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446801/original/file-20220216-24-1v07seb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Togo is a small West African nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/world-data-locator-map-togo-news-photo/641462678">Encyclopaedia Britannica/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4420">simple idea</a> behind this approach, as we explained in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04484-9">Nature on March 16, 2022</a>, is that wealthy people use phones differently from poor people. Their phone calls and text messages follow different patterns, and they use different data plans, for example. Machine learning algorithms – which are fancy tools for pattern recognition – can be trained to recognize those differences and infer whether a given mobile subscriber is wealthy or poor.</p>
<p>As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in early 2020, <a href="https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/">our</a> <a href="https://www.poverty-action.org/">research</a> <a href="https://cega.berkeley.edu/">team</a> helped Togo’s <a href="https://numerique.gouv.tg/">Ministry of Digital Economy</a> and <a href="https://www.givedirectly.org/">GiveDirectly</a>, a nonprofit that sends cash to people living in poverty, turn this insight into a new type of aid program. </p>
<p>First, we collected recent, reliable and representative data. Working on the ground with partners in Togo, we conducted 15,000 phone surveys to collect information on the living conditions of each household. After matching the survey responses to data from the mobile phone companies, we trained the machine learning algorithms to recognize the patterns of phone use that were characteristics of people living on less than $1.25 per day.</p>
<p>The next challenge was figuring out whether a system based on machine learning and phone data would be effective at getting money to the poorest people in the country. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04484-9">Our evaluation</a> indicated that this new approach worked better than other options Togo’s government was considering.</p>
<p>For instance, focusing entirely on the poorest cantons – which are analagous to U.S. counties – would have delivered benefits to only 33% of the people living on less than US$1.25 a day. By contrast, the machine learning approach targeted 47% of that population.</p>
<p>We then partnered with Togo’s government, GiveDirectly and community leaders to design and pilot a cash transfer program based on this technology. In November 2020, the first beneficiaries were <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-56580833">enrolled and paid</a>. To date, the program has provided nearly $10 million to roughly 137,000 of the country’s poorest citizens. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Our work shows that data collected by mobile phone companies – when analyzed with machine learning technology – can help <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/02/15/966848542/the-pandemic-pushed-this-farmer-into-deep-poverty-then-something-amazing-happene">direct aid</a> to those with the greatest need.</p>
<p>Even before the pandemic, over half of the <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=TG">West African nation’s</a> 8.6 million people lived below the international poverty line. As COVID-19 slowed economic activity further, our surveys indicated that 54% of all Togolese were forced to miss meals each week.</p>
<p>The situation in Togo was not unique. The downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty-turning-corner-pandemic-2021">pushed millions of people into extreme poverty</a>. In response, governments and charities launched several thousand new aid programs, providing benefits to <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33635">over 1.5 billion people and families</a> around the world. </p>
<p>But in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, governments struggle to figure out who needs help most urgently. Under ideal circumstances, those decisions would be based on comprehensive household surveys. But there was no way to gather this information in the middle of a pandemic.</p>
<p>Our work helps demonstrate how new sources of big data – such as information gleaned from satellites and mobile phone networks – can make it possible to target aid amid crisis conditions when more traditional sources of data are unavailable. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We’re conducting follow-up research to assess how cash transfers affected recipients. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjw025">Previous</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w26600">findings</a> indicate that cash transfers can help increase food security and improve psychological well-being in normal times. We are assessing whether that aid has similar results during a crisis.</p>
<p>It’s also essential to find ways to enroll and pay people without phones. In Togo, roughly 85% of households had at least one phone, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.00175">phones are frequently shared</a> within families and communities. However, it is not clear how many people who needed humanitarian assistance in Togo didn’t get it because of their lack of access to a mobile device.</p>
<p>In the future, systems that combine new methods that leverage machine learning and big data with traditional approaches based on surveys are bound to improve the targeting of humanitarian aid.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176347/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Aiken collaborated closely with the teams at GiveDirectly and the government of Togo described in the article. She consulted for GiveDirectly from June to August 2021. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Blumenstock receives funding from Google.org, data.org, the Center for Effective Global Action, the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and the NSF under award IIS – 1942702.
</span></em></p>To date, the program has provided nearly $10 million to roughly 137,000 of the country’s poorest citizens.Emily Aiken, Doctoral Student of Information, University of California, BerkeleyJoshua Blumenstock, Associate Professor of Information; Co-Director of the Center for Effective Global Action, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1788392022-03-10T10:43:58Z2022-03-10T10:43:58ZWill booking an Airbnb help Ukraine? Why people make counterproductive decisions about charity<p>As the war in Ukraine continues, many people are wondering what they can do to make a difference. Some are <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/people-are-creatively-using-sites-like-etsy-and-airbnb-to-get-money-directly-to-ukrainians">booking accommodation in Ukraine</a> on Airbnb as a means to transfer money and goodwill. Others are donating household goods to refugee camps. Some are even volunteering to fight. </p>
<p><a href="https://skift.com/2022/03/07/ukraine-bookers-on-airbnb-get-duped-despite-heartfelt-support/">Each</a> of these <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-crisis-why-you-should-donate-money-rather-than-supplies-178245">actions</a>, while well-intentioned, has been criticised as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/27/russia-offered-bounty-to-kill-uk-soldiers">potentially counterproductive</a>.</p>
<p>Acts designed to signal condemnation of Russia’s invasion, such as <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/03/russia-related-products-should-boycott/">boycotting Russian products</a> and cancelling <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/russian-piano-prodigy-struck-from-montreal-concerts-amid-backlash-1.5811068">Russian performers</a>, are especially at risk of doing more harm than good. Bans and boycotts are powerful weapons, but before deploying them, it is vital to ensure that we have the right target (confidants of Vladimir Putin, for example). </p>
<p>Behavioural science tells us that, when confronted with a crisis, even experienced decision-makers can fall for an “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487006001048">action bias</a>” because doing <em>something</em> feels better than doing nothing. A useful example can be found in a football match. In penalty shootouts, professional goalkeepers tend to dive, even though evidence shows they would prevent more goals if they stayed in the centre of the goal.</p>
<p>When compared with what is at stake in Ukraine, losing a football match seems trivial, but for the goalkeeper, the decision to dive (or not) has enormous consequences. The fact that goalkeepers -– even with the incentive and information to come to the right decision –- are biased towards counterproductive action suggests that a similar effect can ensnare any of us. </p>
<h2>Thoughtless altruism</h2>
<p>Another concept that explains why people take counterproductive actions is “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00355-021-01352-9#notes">responsibility utility</a>”. This describes the pleasure that derives from being responsible for a virtuous action – the warm glow we feel for having done the “right thing”, or the bragging rights that come of promoting a good cause. Those bragging rights are especially powerful drivers of behaviour in an age of social media.</p>
<p>If an arts organisation has scheduled a Russian performer, responsibility utility recommends dropping them from the programme. The act of dropping the performer is a salient (though crude) signal that the organisation condemns an immoral attack. A worrisome implication is that <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/russian-piano-prodigy-struck-from-montreal-concerts-amid-backlash-1.5811068#:%7E:text=Russian%20pianist%20Alexander%20Malofeev%2C%20seen%20here%20in%20an,and%20it%20hopes%20to%20try%20a%20fourth%20time.">ordinary Russian people</a> will be punished. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-crisis-why-you-should-donate-money-rather-than-supplies-178245">Ukraine crisis: why you should donate money rather than supplies</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/movies/film-boycott-russia-ukraine.html">Boycotts that hit Putin’s internal critics</a> push an especially useful ally out of the anti-Putin camp, and they bolster Putin’s claim that the west has an anti-Russian agenda. Misdirected bans and boycotts will weaken Russian civil society, strengthen Putin’s power in Russia and damage the very institutions that will be so vital to stability after the Putin regime.</p>
<p>Another example of how responsibility utility can lead us astray comes from research on charitable giving. Logically, we might expect that people would donate more to help a group of eight people in a humanitarian disaster than to help just one of those eight people. Yet the results of experiments reliably show that people <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15534510.2016.1216891">offer higher amounts</a> if asked for a donation to help a single, identifiable victim than to save that person and a group of others as well. </p>
<p>One explanation for this anomaly is that, when there is just one person’s problem to be solved, we can feel proud that our donation went a long way towards <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597814001022">making a difference</a>. When the recipient is a group, responsibility for having fixed the problem is diffused and even a large donation can feel like a drop in the ocean. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young girl making the shape of a heart with her hands, one painted blue and one painted yellow like the Ukraine flag" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451038/original/file-20220309-2144-12g2axb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research shows that people are likely to give more when they see their donation going to an individual rather than a group.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/love-ukraine-concept-hands-heart-form-2020536500">Dobra Kobra / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making better decisions</h2>
<p>When you are considering acting in response to the Ukrainian crisis, it can be helpful to identify responsibility utility in your own motives. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00355-021-01352-9">Our research suggests</a> a way to do this is to ask the following questions: “What feels like the right thing to do?” and “What are the likely outcomes of that action for those I want to help?” </p>
<p>If you cannot clearly articulate the benefits of the action to those you want to help, this could be a sign that your altruism is being driven by responsibility utility. Also, simply asking the question might bring up alternative actions that would achieve greater benefits. For instance, if the goal is to help people who have been left homeless in Ukraine, a little research online will quickly reveal that <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-crisis-why-you-should-donate-money-rather-than-supplies-178245">donating goods is not as helpful</a> as donating cash. If you want to give financial support, then consideration as to who will benefit most from your money will probably shift your priorities away from those who <a href="https://skift.com/2022/03/07/ukraine-bookers-on-airbnb-get-duped-despite-heartfelt-support/">own properties on Airbnb</a>. </p>
<p>When it comes to the emotive issue of Ukraine, there is an urge to be true to our hearts. But when the stakes are so high and the consequences of our actions can scale up to have great influence, it behoves us to stop and think before we act.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-responsibly-donate-to-ukrainian-causes-178391">How to responsibly donate to Ukrainian causes</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Comerford receives funding from the Scottish Chief Scientist's Office for research on breastfeeding. </span></em></p>Many well-intentioned people are supporting counterproductive efforts to help Ukraine. Behavioural science can explain why.David Comerford, Senior Lecturer of Economics and Behavioural Science, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/879842017-11-29T02:27:45Z2017-11-29T02:27:45ZAn ethical guide to responsible giving<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196763/original/file-20171128-28888-1b7k6wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chancelor Bennett, better known as Chance The Rapper, is donating millions of dollars through his SocialWorks charity to shore up Chicago’s public schools</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Illinois-Governor-Chance-The-Rapper/1d8247ccc2894a2d83bd66065dc52e2d/2/0">AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every holiday season, Americans find themselves showered with mailed appeals, beseeching phone calls and emotional pleas from Facebook friends seeking support for pet causes.</p>
<p>How should they sift through all these calls to give?</p>
<p>The conventional guidance, parroted as if it were gospel, goes something like: Be generous, follow your passions and do enough research to verify that a chosen charity won’t squander your money. </p>
<p>As a political philosopher who studies the ethics of philanthropy, I know it’s not that simple. In fact, there are at least five leading theories regarding the ethics of giving.</p>
<p>Scholars who study philanthropy and ponder why people should give to charity disagree on which is best. But they all agree that some critical reflection on how to give well is essential for making responsible decisions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196759/original/file-20171128-28862-5e7gxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=285&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sometimes the questions are clearer than the answers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/multiethnic-group-thinking-people-question-mark-637520197?src=HpGz8lgSKyE16BvwhrCDcg-1-97">pathdoc/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<h2>Giving from the heart</h2>
<p>I call the aforementioned common position, promulgated by the likes of financial pundit <a href="https://nyti.ms/2ib8oje">Ron Lieber</a>, glamorous humanitarian <a href="http://www.25amagazine.com/index.php/profiles/celebrities/item/869-jean-shafiroff-on-successful-philanthropy">Jean Shafiroff</a> and <a href="https://www.vanguardcharitable.org/blog/blog_giving_strategically_on_giving_tuesday">Vanguard Charitable</a>, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/donor-advised-funds-charities-with-benefits-74516">donor-advised fund</a> managing US$7 billion slated for future gifts to charities, “compassionate philanthropy.”</p>
<p>It urges donors to give from the heart and posits that no one can tell you what makes one cause better than another. </p>
<p>Compassionate philanthropists see choosing a cause as a two-step process. First, ask yourself what you are most passionate about – be it your religious faith, hunger, the arts, your alma mater or cancer research.</p>
<p>Then, verify that it follows sound <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-donors-can-help-make-nonprofits-more-accountable-85927">accounting and management practices</a>. </p>
<p>While simple and flexible, this philosophy of giving ignores considerations like a cause’s moral urgency and suggests that the only thing that matters when being charitable is what’s on the giver’s mind. It also implies that a charity’s effectiveness is measured only by management or finances, which is arguably untrue. </p>
<p>There are at least four other schools of thought worth considering in light of the conventional approach’s shortcomings: traditional charity, effective altruism, reparative philanthropy and giving for social change.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">This Vanguard Charitable video emphasizes a theory that donors should follow their passions when they choose causes to support.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Giving to the neediest</h2>
<p>A more traditional giving philosophy stems from <a href="http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/tzedakah.htm">Judaism</a>, <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/philanthropy/treasure-heaven">Christianity</a> and <a href="https://www.zakat.org/en/why-is-charity-so-important-in-islam/">Islam</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than telling donors to simply follow their own passions, traditional charity stresses that suffering people demand urgent attention. It treats relieving that pain and meeting those needs as the highest charitable priority.</p>
<p>People who think this way, for example, might have trouble seeing how donors can justify supporting their local community theaters when so many Americans are experiencing hunger or homelessness and could use a free meal from a charity like the Salvation Army.</p>
<p>They might be most concerned with meeting the needs of the 769 million people on Earth who live on less than what <a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/2017-global-poverty-update-world-bank">Americans can purchase for $2 a day</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Salvation Army, a Christian charity that assists people in need with free Thanksgiving turkeys and other support, quotes the Bible to illustrate its mission.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Giving mindfully</h2>
<p>A more modern, introspective approach, advanced by the philosopher <a href="http://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism">Peter Singer</a> and embraced by young Silicon Valley billionaires like Facebook co-founder <a href="http://www.goodventures.org/about-us">Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna</a>, is known as “effective altruism.”</p>
<p><a href="http://effective-altruism.com/ea/70/the_moral_imperative_towards_costeffectiveness/">This school of thought</a> instructs donors to do the most good they can in terms of global well-being based on verifiable cost effectiveness. </p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/Diuv3XZQXyc">These givers</a> argue that it’s better to give $40,000 to a carefully vetted charity in sub-Saharan Africa that can cure as many as 2,000 people of blindness than to give that same sum to a group that will spend it training a single guide dog for a blind person in the U.S.</p>
<p>Effective altruists reject <a href="https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=4756">the advice</a> of transparency groups like Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits according to the percentage of funds they spend conducting their work versus running their organizations. Instead, they heed organizations like <a href="http://www.givewell.org">GiveWell</a> and <a href="https://animalcharityevaluators.org/">Animal Charity Evaluators</a>, which draw from scientific evidence and use statistical reasoning to select charities they believe will achieve the maximum impact per donated dollar.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The philosopher Peter Singer explained what effective altruism is in a TED talk.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Giving to heal and address injustices</h2>
<p>Another way to think about making charitable donations more responsible is to see them as a form of <a href="https://histphil.org/2016/09/28/the-problem-with-discretionary-philanthropy/">reparations</a>.</p>
<p>With economic inequality <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/news/economy/inequality-record-top-1-percent-wealth/index.html">growing</a>, government spending on public education <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/trumps-education-budget-revealed/519837/">declining</a> and cutbacks taking a toll on <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-budget-envisions-big-cuts-for-1489664310-htmlstory.html">social services</a>, social injustices are proliferating.</p>
<p>The political philosopher <a href="https://histphil.org/2016/09/28/the-problem-with-discretionary-philanthropy/">Chiara Cordelli</a> developed this perspective. She reasons that under current conditions, the rich are not entitled to all of their wealth.</p>
<p>After all, under more just circumstances, they would likely be <a href="http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR37.6/martin_oneill_thad_williamson_rawls_property_owning_democracy_american_politics.php">earning less and taxed more</a>. Therefore, the rich should not think of what they spend on charity as a matter of personal discretion, nor simply as something to make lives better, Cordelli argues.</p>
<p>Instead, she sees excessive wealth as a debt to be repaid unconditionally to repair crumbling public services. One way that donors can engage in reparative philanthropy is by supplementing the budgets of cash-strapped public schools, as Chancelor Bennett – the Grammy-winning Chance the Rapper – <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/chance-the-rapper-sets-22-million-fund-for-chicago-schools-w500926">is doing in Chicago</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chance the Rapper’s SocialWorks organization had raised $2.2 million for the Chicago public schools’ arts programs by September 2017.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Giving to overcome unjust policies</h2>
<p>A fifth major school of thought advises donors to support groups challenging unjust institutions.</p>
<p>This perspective may sound radical or new but it isn’t. The 19th-century luminary <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP73.html">John Stuart Mill</a> and the civil rights leader <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/charity-is-not-a-substitu_b_7522750.html">Martin Luther King Jr.</a>
both embraced it.</p>
<p>Its adherents acknowledge that dismantling the structural causes of poverty and discrimination is hard and can take decades or longer. But they observe that even small policy changes can do more for large numbers of people than even the biggest charitable initiatives.</p>
<p>Contemporary advocates of this view like Canadian philosopher <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=r0vOZ4R9wgcC&dq=donate+charity+injustice+reform&q=Altruism+in+Philosophical+and+Ethical+Traditions#v=snippet&q=Altruism%20in%20Philosophical%20and%20Ethical%20Traditions&f=false">Will Kymlicka</a> suggest giving money to political parties, advocacy groups and community organizers. </p>
<p>Gifts to political parties and lobbyists may not sound like a conventional way to be charitable and are not currently <a href="https://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/blt/2009-03-04/mehta.shtml">tax-deductible</a>. But many advocacy nonprofits, voter education initiatives and community empowerment groups are considered charities by U.S. law and eligible for tax-deductible donations.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hpAMbpQ8J7g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An animated lecture of controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek discusses the irony of giving to charity amid unjust policies.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mixing and matching</h2>
<p>Perhaps no single school of thought offers a perfect guide to responsible giving.</p>
<p>But the scholars who espouse these different positions all agree on one key point: Donors should reflect more on their giving decisions.</p>
<p>Whether you settle on one school of thought or draw from several of them, thinking more about what it means to be charitable will help you give more responsibly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Lechterman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before you reach for that checkbook or give to a charity online, pause to think about what makes a cause good in the first place.Ted Lechterman, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University McCoy Family Center for Ethics in SocietyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/805922017-07-11T15:08:26Z2017-07-11T15:08:26ZJeff Bezos has asked for charitable giving advice –
here’s what he should do with his money<p>Jeff Bezos – the billionaire founder of Amazon with a net worth of over <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/">US$80 billion</a> – has <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/875418348598603776">asked Twitter</a> for advice on how to donate to charity.</p>
<p>The responses came quick. At the time of writing, there were more than 45,000 replies. Bezos must have expected it; his announcement hints at a once-in-a-generation gift of wealth.</p>
<p>Giving away money can be surprisingly hard to do. There is a <a href="https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/future_world_giving_report_250212.pdf?sfvrsn=373ef440_5">large</a> philanthropy industry in the world, and that industry is certainly not free from controversy. </p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786316301855">some</a> eye-watering tales of bad planning, such as the now infamous <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/gsb/files/publication-pdf/playpumps-gaininguserbuy-in.pdf">PlayPump scheme</a>, which sought funds for a scheme providing merry-go-rounds connected to bore holes. Children were supposed to play on the ride and so provide power to pump up water.</p>
<p>Despite tens of millions of dollars in funding for PlayPump, it turned out that “playing” on the wheel was hard and not particularly enjoyable. The charity WaterAid <a href="http://objectsindevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/wateraid_letter_playpumps.pdf">reported</a> that adults were left to turn it by hand, lumbered with an expensive and <a href="https://www-tc.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/southernafrica904/flash/pdf/unicef_pp_report.pdf">inefficient</a> type of pump.</p>
<p>But criticism of philanthropy can go far deeper than just highlighting wasteful schemes like PlayPump. At its worst, charity is said to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g">distract us</a> from the root causes of need. That is, lack of access to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9957.2011.02230.x/full">well-paid work</a>. Or as <a href="https://archive.org/details/soulmanundersoc01wildgoog">Oscar Wilde</a> put it: “… remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it.”</p>
<p>With these issues in mind, here is some advice for Bezos.</p>
<h2>Read the replies</h2>
<p>Having asked for them, Bezos will have to analyse the vast number of replies on Twitter. There is a great range of ideas vying for attention and money. Some are imaginative. For example <a href="https://twitter.com/carsjam33/status/878634660280111111">one</a> user calls for a fund to help stranded seafarers get back home. <a href="https://twitter.com/JRFuller321/status/878987755757416449">Another</a> suggests using drones as first responders in medical emergencies. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"876109682104033281"}"></div></p>
<p>Even Madonna, the <a href="http://www.historynet.com/how-famous-was-madonna.htm">world famous</a> popstar, joined the debate. She is a graduate of Rochester Adams High School, about 30 miles north of Detroit, and so she invited Bezos on a trip with her to the Motor City, hash-tagging her <a href="https://twitter.com/Madonna/status/876109682104033281/photo/1">Twitter reply</a> with charities in the area.</p>
<p>Many of the replies are straightforward reminders of poverty and global hunger. And it is when we think about <a href="http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1780">urgent need</a> that we start to really focus our minds on how to do the most good with the money we have to donate.</p>
<p>In light of this, there is one Twitter responder who is worthy of particular attention. <a href="http://www.petersinger.info/about/">Peter Singer</a>, the well-known moral philosopher, also threw himself into the fray, <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterSinger/status/878957578343989252">offering</a> – like Madonna – to personally interact with Bezos. Singer is <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/peter-singer-ted/">the founder</a> of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-to-become-a-really-effective-altruist-53684">effective altruism</a>” movement. He contends that we – all of us with a disposable income – have a so-called “duty of easy rescue”. </p>
<p>He <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">famously argues</a> that in circumstances of crisis, we are morally bound to donate – to intervene – in precisely the same way we might be morally obliged to rescue a hypothetical child we discovered drowning in a shallow pond. Because the cost of rescue is so small to anyone with disposable income, and the reward for the recipient can be so enormously high, everyone is constantly morally bound to help out in the most useful way possible. They should give money. And, Singer argues, they should give it to causes where it will have the most impact.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"875418348598603776"}"></div></p>
<p>Bezos has a staggeringly large amount of money at his disposal. He can do a lot more than most. He also says on Twitter that he wants to make an immediate difference with his philanthropy, in the “here and now”. Following Singer, a good place to start would be to look at impact in relation to need, and target his money where that impact is greatest. And there are websites such as <a href="https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-Donate/Selection-Methodology">The Life You can Save</a> and <a href="http://www.givewell.org/">Give Well</a> that make this easy for Bezos (or anyone else looking to give effectively), which outline how effective different charities are, based on different criteria. </p>
<h2>Charity starts at home</h2>
<p>There is some more difficult advice to give Bezos. It is reasonable to ask him how he has come to be in a position of such <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/images/2015/08/16/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf">enormous power</a> in the first place. After all, he is one of the eight people that <a href="http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2017/01/eight-people-own-same-wealth-as-half-the-world">Oxfam estimate</a> own the same wealth as the bottom half of the world population combined.</p>
<p>That money mostly comes from labour hours. Despite his undoubted entrepreneurial talent, at root he makes a profit from the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-26121-5_15">time of others</a>. That is the nature of commerce: Amazon famously employs large numbers of agency staff and questions have been asked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work">about their treatment</a>. Like all profit-seeking companies, Amazon <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-7953-5_15">is concerned with profit margins</a>.</p>
<p>This brings things full circle – to Wilde’s comment that charity should not blind us to the root causes of poverty. It is difficult to think of a more intuitive way for Bezos to improve the world than <a href="http://strongerunions.org/2015/04/15/what-working-for-amazon-really-does-to-your-health-the-truth-is-starting-to-come-out/">paying his workers well</a>, while also ensuring that everyone in Amazon’s enormous global supply chain can make ends meet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Picton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An expert in the charity sector responds to Jeff Bezos’s request for advice on how to give his money away.John Picton, Lecturer in Charity Law, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/790602017-06-08T14:21:17Z2017-06-08T14:21:17ZEffective giving: how the world’s wealthy could help millions more people for free<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172952/original/file-20170608-32339-11qs6j6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">PA</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/image-details/2.31262167">PA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/30/sir-stelios-haji-ioannou-giving-pledge-half-2bn-fortune-charity">pledged</a> to give away half of his
£2 billion fortune. He was inspired by Bill Gates to join the <a href="https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx">Giving Pledge</a>, an organisation that encourages the world’s wealthiest people to publicly commit to giving at least half of their wealth to charity.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172953/original/file-20170608-32318-1t693ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the brains behind easyJet, has just signed up to give half his fortune to charity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/search-results/fluid/?q=Stelios%20Haji%20Ioannou&amber_border=1&category=A,S,E&fields_0=all&fields_1=all&green_border=1&imagesonly=1&orientation=both&red_border=1&words_0=all&words_1=all#2.31302596">PA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Founded in 2010 by Bill and Melinda Gates (Microsoft), together with Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), the Giving Pledge now has 169 signatories, including Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Richard Branson (Virgin), Sara Blakely (Spanx), and Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX). The list continues to grow.</p>
<p>No less important than whether to join the Giving Pledge is which charities to give to once you have joined. Many well-intentioned charities fail to have any positive impact, and of those that do, some have far greater positive impact than others, per dollar received. People with money to donate must choose carefully if they want their giving to be cost-effective. </p>
<p>For example, dollar for dollar, some HIV/AIDS interventions produce <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/1427016_file_moral_imperative_cost_effectiveness.pdf">1,000 times the health benefit</a> that others do. And while around $100,000 could be used to help two blind people by training their guide dogs, the same amount of money could <a href="http://effective-altruism.com/ea/19w/fact_checking_comparison_between_trachoma/">prevent</a> at least 1,000 people from suffering <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs382/en/">trachoma-induced blindness</a>.</p>
<p>Such striking facts about the “cost-effectiveness landscape” are well-known to members of the Giving Pledge who have been keeping up with the <a href="https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism/">Effective Altruism</a> movement, like <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/">Bill and Melinda Gates</a> or billionaire couple <a href="http://www.goodventures.org/about-us">Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz</a>. Effective Altruism promotes the use of reason and evidence to work out how to help others the most with limited resources – be it time, money, or effort.</p>
<h2>Head and heart</h2>
<p>Joining the Giving Pledge does not require an individual to support any particular causes or organisations, but instead “encourages signatories to find their own unique ways to give that inspire them personally and benefit society”. Recently, New York Times’ David Brooks illustrated how fun it is to engage in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/opinion/giving-away-your-billion-warren-buffett.html">heartwarming fantasies</a> about how to use billions for good. But successful giving involves the head as well as the heart.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172963/original/file-20170608-32312-1gmm0c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Melinda and Bill Gates co-created the Giving Pledge which helps feed, secure and safeguard the health of millions around the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.paimages.co.uk/image-details/2.7434933">PA</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>It is crucial that signatories take full advantage of the “opportunities to gather throughout the year to learn from experts about how best to leverage their philanthropy to address some of the world’s biggest challenges” that the Giving Pledge provides, and that they seek out the best available data and advice from independent charity evaluators such as <a href="http://www.givewell.org/about">GiveWell</a>. Failing to do this may be both irrational and wrong.</p>
<p>Consider the following analogy. A runaway train is headed towards one child trapped on the north track. There is another runaway train headed towards three children trapped on the south track. You can place your arm on the north track and stop the first train from killing one child, or you can place it on the south track and stop the other train from killing three children. Either way, you will sacrifice an arm. There is no other way to stop either train, and you cannot stop both in time. All other things are equal – for example, all four children are strangers to you.</p>
<p>Even if it’s not wrong to decline placing your arm on either track, it would be wrong to sacrifice your arm to save only one child, when you have the opportunity to save three children.</p>
<p>Similarly with charity. Even if it is not morally wrong to decline giving away half of your fortune, it would be wrong to give it to some charities when it’s clear that by giving to others you would be helping substantially more people, and at no extra cost.</p>
<h2>Bigger and better</h2>
<p>This conclusion is at odds with a fairly common assumption in the ethics of giving that, if it is permissible to keep some money for yourself, then it is also permissible to donate it to any charity you choose. In my recent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/papa.12065/epdf">research paper</a>, I argue this assumption is false. </p>
<p>I am not arguing that it is always clear which charities will most effectively use your money – although often it is. Nor am I arguing that it is wrong to give to causes close to your heart over more cost-effective ones that aren’t. After all, not giving to your favourite cause in favour of one that will help many more people may come at a significant personal cost to you. </p>
<p>Investigating matters of cost-effectiveness can itself be an expense to consider. But surely it is worth signatories to the Giving Pledge subtracting a very small fraction of the sum they’re pledging and putting it towards working out how they could give in the most effective way? By doing this, they could dramatically multiply their money’s positive impact at no extra cost.</p>
<p>In addition to encouraging signatories to give as effectively as they can to their favourite causes, the Giving Pledge should consider providing them with the option of adding a clause about cost-effectiveness.</p>
<p>Those signing up to such an “Effective Giving Pledge” would publicly commit to giving away half their wealth to whichever organisations they believe would “most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come”.</p>
<p>If billionaires took this pledge they would simultaneously become the wealthiest individuals to take the <a href="https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/about-us/">Giving What We Can Pledge</a>, from which the clause above is quoted. An Effective Giving Pledge could supplement, rather than replace, the Giving Pledge. </p>
<p>Just as the Giving Pledge has successfully inspired many of the wealthiest people to give bigger, an Effective Giving Pledge would help inspire them to give better. </p>
<p>Helping millions of people is good, but helping billions is much better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Theron Pummer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Billionaires who pledge their fortunes to charity must not just give big, but give better. It’s all about effective altruismTheron Pummer, Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536842016-02-08T10:53:21Z2016-02-08T10:53:21ZFive ways to become a really effective altruist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109247/original/image-20160126-19645-pt8vuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ice Bucket challenge: for you or the cause?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonbandphotos/14788711540/in/photolist-owQ1Hb-oP3U5v-owQ2tu-oP3WDZ-owPZDC-owQnNL-oPhYmQ-oP3Wea-oMi25b-owPW5n-oRHnQC-oBfmLz-oBgm6x-oBfkxT-oxzcXN-uHTqyB-ozdewE-oREyEq-oB2KTG-oCBiyp-oUqgvf-oVUrSP-oUWwt4-rtNqVL-oTSzvw-oTBE2p-oDqhVp-oBpSJn-p3UrJX-oCFoX2-oKUBB4-otGiYV-oL9yWY-oLbqWZ-oLbrLz-otFE4t-otFG14-otG19Y-oCDx35-oEGoFB-otFGr5-oUxiZo-oWbrnK-oWgawX-oBhWfA-oBhxEK-oTKKsf-oTvS12-oTvSfa-oBix2M/">Henry Huey/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement which aims not only to increase charitable donations of time and money (and indeed more broadly to encourage leading a lifestyle which does good in the world), but also encourage the most effective use of these resources, usually by looking for measurable impacts such as lives saved per dollar. </p>
<p>For an effective altruist, <a href="http://www.effectivealtruism.org/about-ea/">the core question is</a>: “Of all the possible ways to make a difference, how can I make the greatest difference?” It might be argued, for example, that charity work isn’t the best use of time; a talented financier may be better off working for a bank, and use their earnings to pay for others to work for charities instead.</p>
<p>To this end, those in the movement often perform complex calculations to determine which charities and careers do the most good – something that is frequently attacked. Charitable causes that effective altruists have argued should come lower in our list of priorities include charities like the ALS Association, which benefited from the viral <a href="https://theconversation.com/critics-pour-cold-water-on-the-ice-bucket-challenge-are-they-right-30900">ice bucket challenge</a>, and the arts. </p>
<p>These comparisons are not based on the worthiness of the cause, the good it does or even the levels of suffering it alleviates, but the cost to benefit ratio. For example, Peter Singer, a moral philosopher and <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-with-peter-singer-on-effective-altruism-40964">icon of the effective altruism movement</a>, has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/08/excellence-in-opera-or-saving-a-life-your-choice/">argued</a> that homelessness and infant mortality in the developed world should have a lower priority than equivalent causes in the developing world. It isn’t that these problems are trivial or undeserving, but because of a greater impact per dollar. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Diuv3XZQXyc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p><a href="https://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism">Effective Altruism</a> is exciting and beneficial in many ways. It gets people to think about how to help others, and encourages people to act in ways that do help others. Many people don’t contribute as much as they should, maybe because of doubts about the difference it will make or where to put their efforts. But while we wholeheartedly support the movement, calculating which causes are better than others risks being oversimplified. So here are five practical ways to become a really effective altruist instead.</p>
<h2>1. Don’t support useless or harmful causes</h2>
<p>This is uncontroversial and already a central tenet of effective altruism. We all agree that waste and harm are bad, and many charitable causes <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/20/doing-good-better-william-macaskill-review">do more harm than good</a> – so let’s avoid them. However, there are lots of altruistic acts that do some good — often lots of good — even if they’re not the best. Different people can contribute in different ways, and diversity spreads benefits to many worthwhile causes. Aiming for only the best option leaves little leeway for individuality and experimentation, and can instead turn many people off.</p>
<h2>2. Do what you enjoy and excel at</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110444/original/image-20160205-18253-we436g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Doesn’t work on me.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-186616703/stock-photo-sad-pensive-dog.html?src=x5436O20G1FC_apxArOdSg-1-3">Dog by Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>If people aren’t able to build sturdy houses, they shouldn’t volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. And if they don’t enjoy working with animals they don’t volunteer at the RSPCA. The same goes for financial contributions. If the most good that my money can do is to help free animals in factory farms but I really don’t care about these animals then I’m unlikely to give as much, as often, or for as long as I would for a cause that I deeply care about. The idea that we should work for or contribute to the most effective charity, regardless of what we care about, is self-defeating. Most people’s passions aren’t that flexible – they can’t or won’t start caring about a cause simply because a calculation tells them to. Better to follow a passion than be demotivated.</p>
<h2>3. Spread the love</h2>
<p>If you really are passionate about a cause, encourage others. If they are not passionate about your cause, encourage them to help others in their own way. We can do more to improve the world if we get other people to help out. </p>
<p>If we were to try to determine which person has done the most good in history, we’d get different answers. Effective altruism can come from inspiring others, by being a teacher or a good parent for example. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/23/peter-singer-philosophy-animal-welfare">Take Singer</a>, he hasn’t prevented nuclear war or eradicated small pox, but he has led very many people to help others. In turn, these followers have followers themselves, who help others more than they otherwise would have. </p>
<p>A teacher should get some credit for the good that his students do but would not have done if not for his teaching. We can do good both directly and indirectly, by inspiring others.</p>
<h2>4. Use carrots rather than sticks</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110447/original/image-20160205-18295-7m7m2r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Praise where its due.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/7175596256/in/photolist-bW5NLQ-cbUwUJ-99Whkz-7ELnH7-9ufwm2-8w3mr-55iRD-zNttc5-aeVYbL-fUJpVy-2gYqju-5pwQAH-65EDV-9RgPXP-qyXoX-57CYDv-bgqXtV-4kjkgg-8B3v16-a2kF4x-52Kvxf-dCGBaN-8ukFba-8ukEHp-8XA5dE-ceQoSb-pfarqx-ahrCnN-aYq83H-8XA5cJ-5g9gu2-72DBAK-aeVY8b-iMxrHa-457tNd-8Ss3zv-ac2fHD-6tCqvR-9nLryn-9F6HXx-728UoR-8Xx1ux-buq6s-5M2dsd-4sTipk-3jb6Wy-nciSzF-fG6roD-6eqEXy-asxe8M">Carrot by Shutterstock</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>If someone is doing good and more good than most but could still do more, then they deserve praise and encouragement. To encourage people to do better, we should be generous with praise for those who do more good than is common and add more praise for those near the top. Criticising those who fall short of the ideal only discourages others. If we’re right, then criticism should be reserved for those who fall well below what most people do to help the needy. </p>
<h2>5. Avoid overconfidence</h2>
<p>Really effective altruism aims to do the most good over all time. The world, present and future, is a very uncertain place. It is difficult to predict what will do the most good, either now or far in the future. Humility is necessary in the face of this uncertainty. Who would have thought that the invention of the mobile phone would have done so much good or knows what the final effect of the communications revolution will be.</p>
<p>As the philosopher John Stuart Mill recognised, originality, diversity, and experiments in living are necessary to discover what is the best life. The same applies to the well-being of others. Be willing to revise your goals in the light of new evidence and reflection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Savulescu works for the University of Oxford, an exempt charity under the terms of the Charities Act 1993, and receives research funding from charitable foundations including the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, the Wellcome Trust, and the Leverhulme Trust. He has previously received funding for research from other charitable foundations, a full list is available. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has received research funding from charitable foundations, including the Templeton Foundation. A full list is available.</span></em></p>Effective altruists say you should make the greatest difference – here’s a better way to get people giving.Julian Savulescu, Sir Louis Matheson Distinguishing Visiting Professor at Monash University, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics, University of OxfordWalter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor of Practical Ethics, Duke UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409642015-04-30T20:48:35Z2015-04-30T20:48:35ZSpeaking with: Peter Singer on effective altruism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79738/original/image-20150429-23384-k95cgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer is a strong advocate of effective altruism, and has written a book on the movement called The Most Good You Can Do.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/birkbeckmediaservices/14395559514/">Birkbeck Media Services/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australians are among the <a href="https://www.cafonline.org/publications/2014-publications/world-giving-index-2014.aspx">most charitable people in the world</a>, donating around A$2.4 billion a year. But how can we ensure the money we donate is used as effectively as possible?</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.acnc.gov.au/ACNC/FindCharity/QuickSearch/ACNC/OnlineProcessors/Online_register/Search_the_Register.aspx?noleft=1">more than 60,000 registered charities in Australia</a>, ranging from international NGOs to environmental organisations. </p>
<p>While most appeal to our emotions when fundraising, someone wanting to have the greatest positive impact could equally apply reason, mathematics and moral philosophy when deciding who, and what, they donate to.</p>
<p><a href="https://centreforeffectivealtruism.org/">Effective altruism</a> is a social and philosophical movement that tries to provide a rational framework for deciding how we should spend our money and time (including which careers we should pursue) in order to do the most good.</p>
<p>Australian philosopher Peter Singer is a vocal champion of the movement, and has recently written a book on effective altruism called <a href="http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300180275">The Most Good You Can Do</a>.</p>
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<p>Music: Free Music Archive/<a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Glacier_Quartet/">Blue Dot Sessions: Glacier Quartet</a> (CC BY-NC)</p>
<p>Additional audio: The Centre for Effective Altruism</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australians donate around A$2.4 billion to charity each year, but how many lives does that impact? Effective altruism is a social movement focused on maximising the impact of your donated time and money.William Isdale, Research Assistant, T.C. Beirne School of Law, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.