What is Effective Altruism?
Effective Altruism is the idea of using evidence to find the best ways to help others and putting those altruistic methods into practice. Using evidence to identify altruistic practices is likely to yield more benefits compared to regular practices that involve giving back to society. Below are tools that can be used to evaluate and identify effective altruism.
Low-Hanging fruits
In a business setting, Low Hanging Fruits refer to actions or tasks that take little time and effort to complete. Although Low Hanging Fruits do not provide much to achieve the desired result, the minimal allocation of resources to these tasks make them worthwhile.
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Examples:
1. Re-using previously-used assets for current projects (previous marketing advertisements, physical assets)
2. Empowering employees through feedback and recognition
Expected Values
Expected values refer to the average of each possible outcome of a future event, by taking into account the probability of a certain outcome and the value of each outcome. This tool is especially useful when comparing charities with low-risk and low-upside charities to high-risk and high-upside charities.
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Example:
Advertising for a charity has a 30% chance of producing $20 worth of benefits, 20% chance of producing -$40 worth of benefits, and 50% of producing $10 worth of benefits
(0.3 x 20) + (0.2 x -40) + (0.5 x 10) = $3
On average, every time there is an advertisement for the charity, $3 worth of benefits will be generated.
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Quality-Adjusted Life Years
Using previously collected data, Quality-Adjusted Life Years calculations are used to compare the severity of different illnesses/conditions. They may also be used to compare the trade-off of living with an illness or condition compared to living with an illness while being treated.
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Example:
Provide antiretrovirals for a 40-year-old with AIDS. Lives an extra 5 years (10 more years in total) and has better health all for it
- Quality of life with AIDS: 50% or .5
- Quality of life on AIDS drugs: 90% or 0.9
- Lives extra 5 years with better health all for it
(0.9 - 0.5) x 5 + 0.9(5) = 6.5 QALYs
100x Multiplier
For those living in rich or developed 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.
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Example:
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Your job offers you a raise of $28,000 in salary while there are other people in developing countries making $280 in salary. By donating this increase in salary to 100 people in developing countries, you can double the happiness of 100 people instead of doubling the happiness of only yourself.