Six Reasons Why Effective Altruism Isn't Going Anywhere

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Sam Bankman-Fried might have a lengthy prison sentence in his future, but reports of the death of effective altruism, the philanthropic movement he vocally espoused, have been greatly exaggerated. 

For over a year now, the downfall of the crypto mogul has bred a litany of commentary to the effect that EA, already controversial before Bankman-Fried’s rise, is morally and philosophically bankrupt and lacks a future in philanthropy. Now, it’s true the movement has been dealt a body blow, and that most people now learning about EA through the lens of Bankman-Fried’s lies and misdeeds will likely come away with a bad taste in their mouths.

Nevertheless, like it or not, it’s hard to envision effective altruism fading away anytime soon. Long after SBF’s sentencing this coming March, effective altruism will likely remain on the scene — controversial and embattled, just as before, but still a potent force in the philanthrosphere. Here are six reasons why.

Effective altruism is (actually) popular 

It may be hard to square with the chorus of negative coverage attending Bankman-Fried’s meltdown, but Americans actually like effective altruism quite a bit — at least when it’s defined in general terms. A YouGov poll conducted in early October found that 67% of respondents either “strongly approved” or “somewhat approved” of effective altruism. Among a sample “who have heard of effective altruism,” those numbers were even more positive, with a full 81% expressing approval. 

Those results were contingent on the definition of effective altruism the pollsters used, which was a very general one: “A philosophy that advocates using evidence and reasoning to try to do the most good possible with a given amount of resources.” Call that “lower-case” effective altruism. 

“Upper-case” EA, however, which Bankman-Fried and other tech-sector moguls have proselytized, is a more specific movement and encompasses a relatively select community of donors and practitioners. It involves practices that would probably not get rave reviews from the general public — things like going to potentially extreme lengths to “earn to give” (which was Bankman-Fried’s stated rationale for starting FTX) or assigning numerical values to human suffering and the “worth” of current and future human beings. 

I’d argue that when you combine the popularity of the more expansive definition with the attractions of the more specific one for many tech and business types, what results is at least some level of future donor buy-in across the board.

Donors will always look to get the most bang for their buck

However you conceptualize effective altruism (and there’s an ever-expanding mountain of debate to that end), its defining feature comes with the name. That is, it’s seeking “effectiveness,” which has been a cornerstone of philanthropic discourse for decades. Of course, there will always be donors engaged in what some might call “ineffective” giving. But a decent proportion of donors, large and small alike, will always be looking to rationally maximize their impact with the resources at their disposal.

Only some of those donors will consider themselves effective altruists; some may never even come across the EA movement. But they’ll still fit that wider, lower-case definition of the term. Moreover, top-down philanthropy isn’t going anywhere, as much as we might lament the fact. In a deeply unequal economy, it’ll always take a lot to convince the “winners” that they don’t have a superior ability to reason out how to improve the world. EA speaks directly to that impulse.

EA wasn’t and isn’t just SBF

In light of the curb-stomping EA received in the wake of Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace, it’s worth reiterating that the movement long predated him. It’s also been championed by less controversial and less newsworthy megadonors.

For instance, EA’s biggest billionaire proponents are actually rather understated in their tone and approach. In a quest to spend down their Facebook fortune, Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna have spent over a decade disbursing billions through avenues like Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy. The latter organization partners with charity evaluator GiveWell and applies effective altruist principles in its work, prioritizing global health funding but also giving across a range of other issues. Open Philanthropy has also sought to grow the effective altruism “community,” which extends not only to other Silicon Valley luminaries, but to thousands of donors with more modest means. 

At the same time, some of the wealthiest billionaires out there (including the world’s richest man) have demonstrated at least some affinity for EA even if they don’t identify with it in the same way SBF did. 

Effective altruism gives donors a specific model to follow

For a long time, philanthropic pluralism has prevailed in U.S. philanthropy — the idea that the civic sector at its best backs a wide variety of causes, and that there isn’t one “right” way to do philanthropy. In recent decades, though, as philanthropy scholar Benjamin Soskis explored in a recent report, pluralism has increasingly given way to prescription: the idea that some uses for philanthropic cash are better than others.

Among the advocates of prescription, Soskis notes two camps that “are not often regarded as closely allied” — racial equity philanthropy and effective altruism. Both of those schools can be characterized by their strong positions on what donors should do with their money. The former, which can be broadened to encompass intersectional social justice philanthropy, involves very current calls to prioritize general support for organizations led by and serving people of color, for instance, or to back movements rather than projects. 

Effective altruism, on the other hand, carries with it some of the spirit of top-down “strategic” philanthropy, but takes things even further by actually attempting to math out the good that philanthropic investments could accomplish, and then guiding donors toward the winning causes in that calculus. In both cases, donors on a quest for impact get the benefit of specific paths to follow, and ideological and philosophical frameworks to back them up.

Longtermism still has legs

Along with “earning to give,” the idea of “longtermism” has been one of the most maligned aspects of effective altruism. It’s one of two schools of EA, if you will, the other being “short-term” giving to save lives and relieve suffering, which typically involves support for global health and development. 

Longtermism maintains that a philanthropist can do the most good by staving off catastrophic and existential threats to humanity and the planet. These can vary: The dangers of AI are in vogue right now, but any number of doomsday possibilities fit the bill, from runaway climate change to pandemics, asteroidal impacts and nuclear apocalypse. 

On one hand, there’s something creepily speculative about longtermist funding, with donors patting themselves on the backs for saving millions of lives that were perhaps never in danger in the first place. On the other, some longtermist causes that perhaps once seemed science fictional have become far more tangible. Consider the fact that there was a time not that long ago when Open Philanthropy’s interests in pandemic preparedness and AI threats seemed a little out there. Today, it seems odd that more funders didn’t have those things on their radar. At its best, EA gives donors a lens through which they can stare down some cold, hard realities, and ask if there’s anything they can do about them.

Nevertheless, longtermism has taken on a sour taste due to its association with Bankman-Fried and other tech types who position themselves as clear-eyed arbiters of humanity’s future salvation and then proceed to tank their companies and evaporate their clients’ wealth. But despite its PR problems, the longtermist school of EA won’t go anywhere as long as existential threats remain on the radar of apprehensive donors. And we’re amassing quite a collection of those to worry about these days. 

Effective altruism dovetails with wider currents in philanthropy

Writing in the immediate aftermath of FTX’s bankruptcy a year ago, my colleague Mike Scutari discussed the relatively small amount of money going out the door that is actually billed as effective altruism. Next to $500 billion in total U.S. charitable contributions in 2022, even generous estimates of that figure still fail to break the billion-dollar mark. 

But what about when we go by that wider “lower-case” definition of effective altruism: using evidence and reason to try to do the most good possible with your money? You could argue that this applies to quite a broad swath of philanthropy, particularly those mega-grantmakers engaged in “strategic” forms of giving. Though it doesn’t bill itself as an effective altruist organization, the Gates Foundation is one grantmaker that ostensibly takes this approach, and it’s hardly the only one. 

In that sense, EA simply takes to greater logical extremes the principle behind most modern philanthropy, which is that it’s justifiable for capitalists to use the wealth they glean to advance their own visions of the greater good. It’ll take far more than the downfall of SBF, or even of a dozen SBFs, to derail that train.