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Effective Altruism Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Effective Altruism.

Effective Altruism Quotes

“One additional unit of income can do a hundred times as much to the benefit the extreme poor as it can to benefit you or I [earning the typical US wage of $28,000 or ‎£18,000 per year]. [I]t's not often you have two options, one of which is a hundred times better than the other. Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beet for $5 or buy someone else a beer for 5¢. If that were the case, we'd probably be pretty generous – next round's on me! But that's effectively the situation we're in all the time. It's like a 99% off sale, or buy one, get ninety-nine free. It might be the most amazing deal you'll see in your life.”

PovertyCharityExtreme PovertyGlobal PovertyPoverty ReductionEffective AltruismMarginal UtilityMarginal Value
Book:Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
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“... the reality is that we do not live in a world in which most people are strongly dedicated to the aim of reducing suffering for all sentient beings — at least not in terms of their actual behavior. However, most people probably are willing to support policies that reduce suffering if only the cost is sufficiently low to them personally, which suggests that a promising strategy for those who are most dedicated to reducing suffering is to tap into this vast reservoir of potential support, making marginal pushes in just the right places such that our efforts inspire broad support rather than broad hostility.”

SufferingPoliticsEffective AltruismAnimal Advocacy
Book:Reasoned Politics
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“Just as the question in career choice is not "Where can I make the biggest impact?" but "Where can I make the biggest impact that wouldn't have happened without me?" so also in philanthropy, it's relevant whether other people would have donated to the funding gap that you're intending to fill. The more effective the charity is, the more likely your donation would have been eventually replaced.”

FundingCareer ChoicesEffective Altruism
Book:Essays on Reducing Suffering
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“Responding to bereavement by trying to make a difference is certainly both understandable and admirable, but it doesn't give you good reason to raise money for one specific cause of death rather than any other. If that person had died in different circumstances it would have been no less tragic. What we care about when we lose someone close to us is that they suffered or died, not that they died from a specific cause. By all means, the sadness we feel at the loss of a loved one should be harnessed in order to make the world a better place. But we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives per se, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair on those we could have helped more.”

ImpartialitySaving LivesEffective AltruismCause Neutrality
Book:Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
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“Effective altruism is about asking "How can I make the biggest difference I can?" and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's true, and a committment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be. As the phrase suggests, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's best for the world, and a commitment to do what's best, whatever that turns out to be.”

AltruismImpartialityUtilitarianismEffective AltruismWorld ImprovementDoing Good BetterEvidence Based AltruismEvidence Based Charity
Book:Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
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“What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy. Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”

PhilosophyEthicsMoral PhilosophyConsequentialismExistential RiskEffective AltruismDerek Parfit
Book:On What Matters: Volume 3
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