effective-altruism

In this chapter we’ll focus on existential risks: risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential.

The importance, neglectedness, tractability framework: The most important problems generally affect a lot of people, are relatively under-invested in, and can be meaningfully improved with a small amount of work.

Thinking on the margin: If you're donating $1, you should give that extra $1 to the intervention that can most cost-effectively improve the world.

Crucial considerations: It can be extremely hard to figure out whether some action helps your goal or causes harm, particularly if you’re trying to influence complex social systems or the long-term. This is part of why it can make sense to do a lot of analysis of interventions you’re considering.

We fundamentally believe that progress on most problems must be locally driven. So we seek to improve people’s abilities to make progress on their own, rather than taking personal responsibility for each of their challenges.

One more approach to “putting locals in the driver’s seat”: give to GiveDirectly to support unconditional cash transfers. We feel that global health and nutrition interventions are superior because they reach so many more people (per dollar), but for those who are even more concerned than we are about the trap of “whites in shining armor,” this option has some promise.