concept2009-present

Effective Altruism

Disciplines:

Summary

The philosophical and social movement holding that one should use evidence and reasoning to determine how to do the most good — treating all lives as equally valuable and directing resources toward the highest-impact interventions.

Core Contribution

Impartial beneficence: the interests of all people (and animals) count equally regardless of proximity. Evidence-based charity: some interventions save lives at $1,000–$5,000 per life (e.g., malaria nets); others spend orders of magnitude more per QALY. Earning to give: some people can do more good by earning wealth and donating than by working directly in nonprofits. Later: existential risk and longtermism as the highest-impact cause areas. One of the most influential new ethical movements of the 21st century.

Key Spikes & Highlights

EA's internal logic generates the conclusion that small improvements to the probability of humanity's long-term flourishing outweigh all current suffering — which led directly to longtermism and the diversion of major EA resources away from global health toward AI safety.
The FTX collapse (2022) — where EA's most prominent billionaire donor Sam Bankman-Fried defrauded customers — produced the most significant crisis of legitimacy in the movement's history.

Historical Influences

Peter Singer Derek Parfit

Intellectual Lineage

Utilitarianism Applied Ethics

Allied Works

Doing Good Better Famine Affluence and Morality The Precipice

Contemporaries & Peers

Singer's drowning child argument Impartial Consequentialism

Minds Influenced

Philanthropy Longtermism AI Safety

Intellectual Posterity

Longtermism X-Risk Research Impact Investing

Discussing