Want to do more good? The effective altruism movement aims to use evidence and reason to find the best ways of helping others, and to put those findings into practice
, the philosopher Amia Srinivasan writes that “effective altruism takes up the spirit of Singer’s argument but shields us from the full blast of its conclusion,” which is that small luxuries may be morally unacceptable. To Srinivasan, effective altruism is essentially just collective decency with better branding and organization. As she wrote, “either effective altruism, like utilitarianism, demands that we do the most good possible, or it asks merely that we try to make things better.
Another critique is that EA is too deeply rooted in the values underpinning current power structures and it shouldn’t be up to individuals to fix seismic problems. MacAskill agrees, pointing out that EAs are doing a lot of work to try and change things at the policy level, but he also believes the argument can be used as an excuse by well-off people to defer responsibility. “Society just consists of individuals; governments consist of individuals; corporations and so on,” he says.
Looking at them reminds him of the long path from these moral pioneers to the widespread uptake of their ideas. The first public protest against African American slavery was the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition. Slavery was only abolished in the British Empire in 1833, decades later in the U.S., and not until 1962 in Saudi Arabia. History encourages MacAskill to favor gradual progress over revolution.
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