I was sitting at Blenz Coffee as a gathering of Christmas carolers stumbled into the coffee shop with portable instruments- a group of young and old, meek and the bold. I glanced up at my laptop screen and noticed it was 10:30pm, a little late for these children to be out but surely, this felt harmless enough. A young boy then came up to me with a laminated pamphlet and a transparent donation box with two $50 bills sitting in there as display. I asked if they were raising money for a registered charity and he opened up the pamphlet confidently, but even then, something felt off. So in the span of those few seconds, I did a quick Google search and my screen was flooded with the term “scam”. I promptly back the pamphlet and told him I didn’t have any change at the moment. I felt bad- maybe this little boy really thinks he is raising money for an important cause, but situations like this make me wonder: how can I do good, and how do I do it right? For example, had I given the boy money, I would have done more harm than not donating at all.
So in comes “Doing Good Better”, by William MacAskill, a book about how we can practice effective altruism (“how can I make the biggest difference I can?”) to help others, do work that matters, and make smarter choices about giving back. There is a lot to unpack in the book, and I’m not sure if I agree with everything MacAskill has to say. Regardless, here are some things I hope to remember from the book:
We have ~80,000 (40 years x 50 weeks x 40 hours) working hours in our career, how do we maximize what we do in these hours?
Earning to give: rather than trying to maximize the direct impact we have with our jobs, we can also try to increase our earnings so we can donate more, improving people’s lives through our givings rather than our day-to-day work.
This feels important as I try inch closer to graduation, and recognize that I might not always be able to make “the type of difference” I hope to make. In fact, despite being a book about effective altruism, MacAskill explicitly recommends against working in a non-profit straight out of college, to prioritize building skills and credentials that could help us in the longer term. Our first job might last a few years, but our subsequent career will last decades.
The five key questions of effective altruism:
How many benefit, and by how much?
Is this the most effective thing you can do?
Is this area neglected?
What would have happened otherwise?
For example, imagine a town with only three doctors, who save 100 lives each (and spend the rest of their time treating non-life threatening sicknesses, such as the common cold). If one of the doctors leave, the two remaining doctors will still save the 300 people, but perhaps the people with common colds will now be neglected. So that’s the difference that extra doctor would have made- which is probably less than what we would have thought at first glance. It’s difficult to think about the impact we make in that way, but seeing what would happen otherwise can help us see our direct impact in a clearer way.
What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?
When evaluating a charity, we can evaluate:
What does this charity do?
How cost-effective is each program area?
How robust is the evidence behind each program?
How well is each program implemented?
Does the charity need additional funds?
Some additional things to think about:
The 100x Multiplier: for those of us living in rich countries, we should expect to be able to do at least one hundred times as much to benefit other people as you can to benefit yourself.
People often believe that: If many people did this thing, then change would happen. But any individual person doesn’t make a difference. This isn’t true if we consider expected value.
We can use expected value to compare higher-risk but higher-upside actions with actions that are certain to have an impact. In the small chance that our action does matter, what is the outcome?
For example, in the case of the US elections, a voter has a one-in-sixty-million chance of affecting the outcome, but the expected value is very high.
When it comes to helping others, being unreflective often means being ineffective.
If you’re curious about Effective Altruism overall, you can learn more here, and here’s the book I read. I’m learning, but there’s still lots to learn! I’m excited for the new year. 🎉
