Key concepts: Effective Altruism, Scout Mindset, Trade-offs, Differences in impact, Marginal impact
Bonus concepts: Scope (in)sensitivity
Description: This week we’ll explore why it's important to think carefully about how you spend your time and money to help others, and why a "scout mindset" is critical to finding the best opportunities. We will also see that some efforts to help appear to be much more effective than others, for example in one promising focus area: reducing global poverty.
Required readings (120 min.)
About this handbook (5 min.)
Read “What the program is about” and “How we hope you’ll approach this program”
The Effectiveness Mindset (2 min.)
Introduction to Effective Altruism (35 min.)
The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better. (10 min.)
Why you think you're right - even if you're wrong (video) (12 min.) - Wherein Julia Galef introduces the “Scout Mindset” - an attitude of trying to see the world how it really is.
Differences in impact (2 min.)
Comparing charities - how big is the difference? (10 min.) - Argues that the biggest determiner of one’s charitable impact is where you give.
Global Economic Inequality (7 min.) - Shows that most economic inequality exists between countries, rather than within them.
GiveWell's "Giving 101" Guide (2 min.)
We are in triage every second of every day (5 min.) - Argues that, whether we like it or not, we are making life-or-death decisions all the time.
On Caring (15 min.) - Introduces scope insensitivity - the inability for the amount that we care, emotionally, to scale with the size of the problems.
Marginal Impact (5 min.) - How does thinking on the margin change our donation and career decisions?
Required exercises (20-30 min.)
Donation exercise (20-30 min.)
Recommended
500 Million, But Not a Single One More (5 min.) - An ode to humanity’s ability to collectively overcome ancient scourges, like smallpox, through determined effort.
Criticism
List of ways in which cost-effectiveness estimates can be misleading (25 min.) - A checklist of things to keep in mind when using cost-effectiveness estimates.
Growth and the case against randomista development (37 min.) - An argument that research on and advocacy for economic growth in low- and middle-income countries is more cost-effective than the things funded by proponents of randomized controlled trials development. (1 hour - if you’re short on time, read Sections 1-3)
Why Charities Usually Don't Differ Astronomically in Expected Cost-Effectiveness (36 min.)- Argues that flow-through effects, replaceability considerations, cross-fertilisation of ideas, and low-hanging fruit add up to the conclusion that we should not expect radically more effective interventions
Write down your reflections on the readings and exercise(s) in the box below
Some prompts:
In your own words, what is effective altruism?
What are the most important new ideas that you took away from the readings this week?
What kind of problems can we run into when we try quantifying cost-effectiveness? Are there important features of an intervention that are not captured by cost-effectiveness estimates?
What don’t you agree with?
What surprised you when doing the readings and exercises?
What uncertainties do you still have?