Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/6x/introduction_to_effective_altruism/) is the theory and practice of improving the well-being of others as much as possible given constrained resources. It overlaps with rationality (various biases come into play (http://lesswrong.com/lw/aid/heuristics_and_biases_in_charity/)), self improvement, scepticism and the use of science to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions.

There are currently four main focus areas (http://lesswrong.com/lw/hx4/four_focus_areas_of_effective_altruism/): global poverty, nonhuman animal suffering, existential risk and "meta" (i.e. growing the movement and making its members more effective).

The movement came about surprisingly recently (a barrier for me identifying with the movement was coming to terms with the fact that the rest of the world didn't already do it that way). And for such a cooperative enterprise we don't seem to talk to each other as much as we should.

So, I intend this to be the first of many meetups on the topic - we can figure out which days and times are best for people (if you can't make it this time, feel free to post in the comments when would be good).

This meetup's for everyone, you don't have to identify as an "effective altruist" or something.