We are not used to looking at good deeds through the prism of rationality. It seems that goodness can only come from the heart, and if you take out a calculator and start planning your actions, then something is wrong with your empathy. Effective altruism convinces us of the opposite: you can help others with cold calculation. Are we able to step over our emotions?
In the words of the philosopher Peter Singer, effective altruism is "a combination of heart and mind." The heart encourages compassion and dedication, and the mind helps you to think through your actions so as to bring the maximum benefit to others. The idea is simple, but it has many subtle implications.
Charity without sentimentality
Charity has ceased to be an occupation for a narrow group of philanthropists. According to VTsIOM, over the past 10 years the number of Russians who donate to charity has increased by 8 times. The growth of the volunteer movement and the number of charitable organizations can be considered one of the most important changes that have taken place in the country during this time.
Political scientist Yekaterina Shulman calls this process a "Russian civil Renaissance": people are increasingly willing to donate their time and money to help others and jointly solve problems that the state cannot solve.
According to statistics, the most common form of charity is still donations on the streets, targeted assistance to patients via sms and bank transfers, as well as collecting small change in stores and shopping centers. People usually donate one-time and impulsively. As a result, help is rendered ineffective or even harmful, settling in the hands of scammers and swindlers.
Even the noblest intentions often lead to bad consequences. Children's homes littered with New Year's gifts; fraudulent fees on dying children on social media; Fake foundations that help non-existent patients are all forms of useless or harmful charity that should be avoided.
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Participants in the growing social movement of effective altruism believe that to make the world a better place, we do not need good intentions, but accurate data. If we really want to help others, the emotional impulse must be supplemented with logic and sober calculation.
What prevents you from effectively helping others
Psychologists distinguish two types of people who donate to charity. The former make small donations from time to time and are not particularly interested in the future of their money. People from the second group choose one area - for example, the fight against cancer - and spend a significant share of their efforts and resources on it. Both those and others make decisions about whom to help, under the influence of random circumstances. In the first case, it may be a collector who stops us in the street. In the second, a relative with cancer.
Members of the effective altruism movement believe that both of these approaches are imperfect. Feelings push us to action, but they very much interfere with bringing maximum benefit.
Research by economists shows that we are more likely to sacrifice our time and money when we have the opportunity to impress others.
In exchange for a small donation, we receive what psychologists call a "warm glow" feeling. The dopamine reward system is activated - the same areas of the brain that are energized when you eat a delicious dessert or receive a gift.
Feeling kind and good often gets in the way of helping us effectively. One of the reasons psychologists call the identifiable victim effect is that it is much easier for us to empathize with one person than with a group.
But even if our money goes to those who need it, we will help just one person. This is good, but not enough.
“Imagine walking into a burning building, kicking down a door, throwing yourself into smoke and flames, and carrying a child out,” McAskill suggests. The next day you rescue a drowning man, then dodge the bullet. After that, you can rightly feel like a hero. But in reality, you can do much more - save not one or two, but hundreds of lives.
How to Become an Effective Altruist
Every year, millions of people die from serious illnesses, suffer from mental disorders and are unable to get out of poverty. If you look closely, it turns out that just about everyone needs help. But our forces and resources are limited - it is impossible to let through all the world's troubles, let alone solve them.
Therefore, it is very important to prioritize correctly. To do this, Macaskill suggests focusing on four main issues:
- Scale. What is the significance of this problem? Does it strongly affect people's lives in the short and long term?
- Neglect. How many resources were spent on solving the problem? Is there any reason to believe that the problem will not be solved by the market or the state?
- Decidability. Are there solutions to the problem? How reliable is the evidence for the effectiveness of these solutions?
- Personal fitness. Given your skills, resources, knowledge, connections and passions, how likely is it that you will be of benefit in this area?
For example, global poverty is a very widespread problem that affects millions of people. Animal suffering on industrial farms is a less significant but neglected problem, because few people are involved in solving it. But for the victims of disasters, which the whole world is watching, it is better not to send their money - most likely, they will be more useful elsewhere.
Many effective altruists focus on existential risks - threats that can destroy humanity and all of its untapped potential. This includes the issue of nuclear disarmament and research into the safety of artificial intelligence. Philosopher Nick Bostrom has calculated that an unfriendly AI can destroy 1,052 potential lives. Although the likelihood of this event is low, the results are so disastrous that as much effort as possible should be directed to prevent it from happening.
Alexander Berezhnoy, member of the effective altruism movement:
How to choose an effective altruistic profession
Benefits can be brought not only through donations, but also through your career. Our choice of work directly affects how much good or harm we bring to the world. You don't have to volunteer for the Red Cross or hospice. Charity and social work are far from the only way to make the world around you a better place.
The authors of the "80,000 hours" project from the University of Oxford recommend that when choosing a profession be guided not by the call of the heart and the calls to "follow the dream." Instead, it is worth trying to figure out where you can most effectively serve the common good.
The area in which your inclination towards altruism will be realized to the maximum can be determined using a special test.
How to compare the effectiveness of charity programs
Where should the efforts be directed to help as many people as possible? This question was asked by Oxford University alumni Toby Ord and William McAskill a few years ago. In 2009, they began researching charitable programs to find out which ones were doing the most for the dollar they spent.
For example, training one guide dog in the United States costs about $ 48,000. For the same amount, in third world countries, a simple operation can restore the vision of about a thousand people. GiveWell estimates that saving one life would cost about $ 3,400 (RUB 221,600) if you donate that amount to a fund that provides malaria nets to African families. Of course, this is not as effective as rescuing a child from a burning house, but no less effective.
Supporters of effective altruism believe that completely different things can be compared with each other - for example, treating AIDS and getting rid of blindness. One of the tools they use for this is the QALY (quality-adjusted life year) metric, which measures the number of years of life adjusted for quality. According to surveys of patients, people, on average, rate life with untreated AIDS as 50% of life in full health, and life in a blind state as 40%. Therefore, antiretroviral therapy for one patient will be less beneficial than treating a blind person.
Want to improve the performance of children in poor countries? It is better to give them medicines for parasitic worms, rather than buy new textbooks. Want to add value to your career? It is better to work not as a volunteer in Africa, but as a broker on Wall Street: this way you will make a lot of money and can help more people through regular donations.
Effective altruism has grown into an international movement with thousands of followers and has received the approval of many public figures, from Bill Gates to Stephen Pinker.
But such a cold and balanced approach to mutual assistance causes criticism and rejection from many. This is no coincidence. Like many good ideas, the maximum performance mindset is no longer good when pushed to its limits.
Why you don't want to be an effective altruist
Imagine walking past a small lake and seeing a child drowning in it. If you decide to save him, your best suit and expensive shoes will be hopelessly ruined. Most likely, you will not even think about the cost of the boots and immediately jump into the lake.
According to the philosopher Peter Singer, we find ourselves in this situation all the time.
For us, these are incomparable things, but the point is solely in the weakness of our imagination. We do not see the suffering of others in front of us - but this does not mean that they do not exist.
Singer has been called the father of effective altruism. He proceeds from the ethics of utilitarianism, which says: you need to act in such a way as to maximize the benefit - that is, to help as many people as possible. According to this logic, you should sacrifice your own welfare in all cases if you lose less than the other gains.
Utilitarianism makes no distinction between races and nationalities. If all people suddenly became utilitarians, Russian charities would immediately lose their money. Donations will be more useful in Africa, which means they need to be sent there. Even if you only earn 50,000 rubles a month, you are in the top 10% of the richest population in the world. Your money will bring more benefits to others - therefore, it is worth sharing at least some of it.
The 19th century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick called this "the point of view of the universe." All lives have the same value, and helping Russian patients, and not African ones, means acting unfairly, submitting to the random circumstances of one's birth.
This reasoning is quite logical, but to most people it will seem deeply wrong. Peter Singer believes that the problem lies in the limitations of human psychology.
But we can expand this sphere - for this we need intelligence. We must overcome these limitations in order to become more humane and rational.
But what's wrong with the welfare of loved ones more than the welfare of strangers? As the philosopher John Gray recalls, the universe does not have its own point of view - and if it does, it is not available to us. There is nothing strange that we care less about the suffering of African children than about the suffering we see in our own country, city or home. Good deeds are usually pushed by sympathy for concrete people, and not for abstract humanity.
Effective altruism has been criticized for an engineering approach to philanthropy that reduces human suffering to a quantitative problem. If we start comparing and measuring unhappiness, then we give preference to one and not other unhappy people.
But most effective altruists still do not support radical utilitarianism and absolute impartiality. They are unlikely to insist that we stop giving money to Russian foundations and taking care of our loved ones. They consider this to be a human trait to be reckoned with. We cannot do without emotions: without them, we would stop helping someone altogether - like patients with damage to the limbic system, who cannot make even the simplest decisions.
Yes, maybe your loved ones are no more important to the Universe than the loved ones of your neighbors. But the social model in which you take care of the people living in your home is still effective in its own way.
To be an effective altruist, you don't have to give up personal attachments. The main thing is to realize that good intentions are not enough for a good deed.
Emotions motivate you first, and then you start thinking. If we really want to help others, it is important not to skip any of these steps.
Author: Oleg Matfatov
