“Effective Altruism: An Unmanifesto” by ozymandias

The most common way to identify the effective altruism movement is by pointing. Effective altruists are:

• The people who try to help the global poor in ways backed up by randomized controlled trials, generally favoring public health programs.
• The people who try to improve conditions for farmed animals through corporate outreach and policy advocacy, and who care about weird groups of animals like insects and wild animals.
• The people who spend a lot of time worrying that we’re going to make artificial intelligences and they’re going to kill everyone.

This raises many questions, like what the heck do these three groups have to do with each other and what they get out of posting on the same forums and going to the same conferences.

Perhaps we could seek out definitions that would help us. The Center for Effective Altruism says effective altruism is “a framework and research field [...]

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First published:

July 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wES2tZzZDnEnxm4aQ/effective-altruism-an-unmanifesto

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.