Session #27 - Effective Altruism — Can we do Good, Better?
Details
“We should use evidence and reason to do the most good.”
William MacAskill - EA.
What if doing good wasn’t about intention… but about optimization?
(Event in english!)
In this session, we explore the philosophy of Effective Altruism (EA), a modern movement led by thinkers like William MacAskill, which argues that we should use reason, data, and careful prioritization to do the maximum amount of good possible.
This raises some uncomfortable questions:
Can morality be reduced to numbers and outcomes?Have we been donating to under-effective causes?
Are we obliged to make more money so that we can donate more?
We’ll examine key ideas behind EA:
• Maximizing impact over good intentions
• Choosing causes based on effectiveness
• The ethics of “earning to give”
• The growing focus on long-term future risks
And we’ll challenge them through discussion.
Introduction of guests (15 minutes)
We start with a short introduction of the guests with the question:
- Which do think is an effective charity to donate?
Questions (1 hour and 45 minutes)
- Utilitarianism. What it is, and why is it having a strong comeback.
- Non-consequentialism vs consequentialism – which serves humanity better?
- Is this EA a more rational moral system… or an inhuman one?
- Would you rather save your friend, or 5 strangers far away?
- Does it ignore emotions, relationships, and personal meaning?
- Does the life of 3 different given people have the same worth?
- Is saving more human lives the best measure of doing good? Even if the future would be more livable with less people (due to resource scarcity or other reasons)?
- Who gets to decide what “doing the most good” or “more effective” really means?
- Should plutocrats have all the authority about shaping the future? Or would there be better alternatives?
- Longtermism: should positively influencing the long-term future be a key moral priority at all times?
- EA and longtermism: are they securing a better and more fair future, or creating a way to a new dystopia?
- How important is the association of a movement with a scandal?
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