Effective altruism
A social and intellectual movement, emerging in the late 2000s out of analytic moral philosophy and the rationalist community, that argues we should use evidence and careful reasoning to maximise the good done by our charitable giving and career choices. Its philosophical roots lie in Peter Singer's "drowning child" argument — that geographic distance and statistical aggregation do not diminish our duty to help — and in expected-value reasoning applied to causes ranging from global health (e.g. deworming, malaria nets) to animal welfare to long-term existential risk. EA is associated with concrete commitments like the Giving What We Can 10% pledge and with the meta-charity GiveWell. It has also drawn substantial criticism, both from inside and outside the movement, over its drift toward longtermism, its tolerance of high-variance bets, and the FTX collapse.
Episodes
- 67. Middlemarch, part 1: A wish-fulfilment fantasy for spergy scholars
- 65. Walking away from 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'
- 60. Was the sexual revolution a mistake? (Houellebecq's Atomised, part 1)
- 46. Anna Karenina FINALE: Revenge of the Reddit Atheists
- 45. Anna Karenina part 2: I am begging you to touch grass
- 27. Chekhov urself before u wreck-ov urself (The Little Trilogy)
- 25. Crime and Punishment finale: is Dostoevsky...overrated??
- 20. Albert Camus' The Fall: Signalling, scrupulosity, and pathological self-awareness
- 12. W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, part 1: Nobody loafs like Larry
- 4. John Williams' sleeper hit Stoner: Finding perfection in mediocrity
Fleeting mentions
- 68. Middlemarch, part 2: Pity the man with the young hot wife
- 62. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Thank God for Incognito Mode
- 31. The Moviegoer: In which we escape a deep existential malaise
- 23. Crime and Punishment, part 1: Mister Schizo and the First Trad
- 16. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, part 1: Post-nut clarity and forbidden knowledge