In 2020, I first encountered the existence of Effective Altruism, a global philosophy and movement dedicated to reshaping the way we think about social impact by focusing on the best way to give back. The idea behind the Effective Altruism movement is simple: in a world with limited resources, our time and money should be directed toward the most impactful forms of doing good.
Effective Altruism pushes reason and evidence-based decision making to evaluate which causes we should focus on and how to do so. Broadly, there are three criteria that Effective Altruists use to evaluate charitable causes:
- Importance, assessing which causes the most number of individuals suffer from and the severity of their suffering;
- Tractability, assessing which causes are most tangibly solvable;
- Neglectedness, assessing which causes have the fewest people already working on them.
Using the Importance Tractability Neglect (ITN) framework, most Effective Altruists arrive at a similar conclusion on the areas that should receive the most attention: global health, factory farming, and existential risks (e.g nuclear war, pandemics).
Global health is a prime example of a key cause with tractability. For instance, the eradication of smallpox was estimated to have cost around 1.6 billion USD and ended up saving about 60 million lives, a figure that was conservatively estimated. This would amount to up to 25 USD per life saved. Today, Effective Altruists promote insecticide-treated malaria nets as a highly cost-effective method of preventing malaria-related deaths, with a high record of success.
Factory farming on the other hand, meets the criteria of significant neglect. Effective Altruists use neglect as a metric as it helps identify where their funds can have the most bang for their buck, by avoiding diminishing returns in causes with lots of existing money and projects. According to research by Will MacAskill, there are 3,000 more animals in factory farms than there are stray pets, but animal shelter charities receive 50 times more charitable funding than that of factory farms. This is an area where additional donations can have a huge positive impact in alleviating the suffering of factory farmed animals, which experience terrible conditions from birth to slaughter.
Donations for animal shelter charities eclipse that of factory farming charities. Source: TED
Finally, more long-termist Effective Altruists focus on tackling risks such as AI safety and biological warfare. Technologies such as AI and nuclear weapons are not just causes for concern because of their massive destructive potential, but also because they are uniquely difficult to contain once deployed. While these may appear to be far-off problems, these are prioritised due to the immense amount of lives at stake, including unborn future generations.
Notably, these causes do not just meet each of these individual criteria, but are a combination of all factors. For instance, global health solutions also meet the metric of importance and neglect, due to the sheer number of people suffering from disease and the lack of funding relative to its scale. This offers a useful lens to look at how to do the most good, especially in a world where people only tend to consider absolute poverty or world hunger. While these are undoubtedly critical, the ITN framework encourages us to think further about causes that are often overlooked, and come up with the most effective ways to solve them.
Since the COVID pandemic, charitable donations have been on the decline, with many previously regular givers citing the increased costs of living as real incomes fall. In the UK, a Charities Aid Foundation survey found that the number of people who gave to charity was 50% in 2024, a decline from 58% in 2019. Here, the question of how to do good could be reassuring for those on the fence that there are ways out there in which their donations, however tiny, can contribute to making a real impact in the world.
Despite what seems like a pretty good idea on paper, Effective Altruism has been the subject of public scrutiny and controversy. One of the most high-profile controversies of Effective Altruism was its association with Sam Bankman-Fried, the infamous founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, triggering investigations that revealed the misappropriation of 8 billion USD in customer deposits, and led to Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest. Sam Bankman-Fried had been a vocal advocate of Effective Altruism and claimed that his money-making pursuits were for the ultimate purpose of giving back to charity. While Will MacAskill (one of the pioneers of Effective Altruism) and Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook) had publicly denounced Sam Bankman-Fried’s actions, it did not take away from the fact that the case of FTX left a permanent bad taste in the mouth of the public – in fact, Will MacAskill was one of the people who convinced Sam Bankman-Fried to explore Effective Altruism when Bankman-Fried was studying at MIT. Effective Altruism was thrust into the public spotlight, introducing many to the movement not through its core principles – but through its perceived association with a disgraced billionaire.
Another incident that received less public attention but was widely discussed in the Effective Altruism community was the Effective Venture Foundation’s purchase of Wytham Abbey, a 27-bedroom manor in Oxford, for approximately 15 million GBP. Those involved explained that the purchase was to provide a long-term specialist venue for Effective Altruism conferences and workshops. This prompted the question of whether the Effective Altruism movement, specifically those at the top, wielded too much power and were slowly shifting towards excessive opulence and lavish spending. While the idea of an all-in-one conference house was short-lived (Wytham Abbey was put up for sale in 2024), the concerns it raised about Effective Altruism’s legitimacy endured.
Wytham Abbey. Source: EA Forum
Regardless of the actual validity of the argument, such an expensive acquisition on a seemingly trivial part of charity could be argued to be unstrategic in terms of the movement’s external optics. It seems reasonable that these incidents would create immense suspicion of the integrity of Effective Altruism as a concept. After all, there has been a demonstrated history of the ultra-wealthy promising that certain big ideas would change the world – only for these to be revealed as elaborate efforts of deception and at times, fronts for money laundering (see: NFT hype in early 2021).
However, such incidents and the discourse surrounding them do not necessarily paint a full picture of the merit of the original ideas. Individuals may sometimes disagree with specific elements or actions taken by a movement, which often bleeds into the rejection of all ideas that the movement is associated with.
Take the environmental movement, for instance. Many people oppose more extreme methods of advocacy, such as the Just Stop Oil protesters that famously threw soup at Van Gogh’s paintings at the National Gallery in London. However, it is unrepresentative to characterise the environmental movement as this single homogenous entity that endorses extremism – there is no overarching authority that greenlights every action that individual environmentalists take. In practice, the “environmental movement” refers to disparate groups with different interests and different ideologies sharing little in common except for the fact that they believe more should be done for the environment. The consequence of this is that simplistic rhetoric demonising environmental activists crowds out actually useful discourse about environmental policy and what we should do for our planet. Thus, while one may disagree with the actions of more extreme environmentalists, it should not immediately disqualify their very real concerns about the entrenched power of big oil and the ticking time bomb of climate change.
Just Stop Oil protesters. Source: Los Angeles Times
Similarly, while the purchase of a 15 million GBP estate may warrant outrage at those at the top, it should not take away from the merit of the actual philosophy behind Effective Altruism: focusing on causes where one can have the most impact, on causes that we can reasonably solve, and on causes that are presently neglected by other sections of society. These principles can be adopted without having to endorse the leaders of movements that initially propagated them. One can still donate to an animal-rights charity (look at the Aquatic Life Institute or the Humane League), even if they do not agree with what some Effective Altruist organisations are doing.
To be clear, this does not mean that ecoterrorists or extravagant philanthropists should not take accountability for their actions – they very well should. In fact, one could argue that separating the ideas from the individual holds them accountable even more, as such individuals cannot hide behind a veil of social justice or a “greater good”. This allows for a more concentrated criticism of bad actions, without tainting the causes they support.
Other critics of Effective Altruism are more opposed to the underlying principles behind the movement, rather than specific individuals or groups. Some argue that the utilitarian line of thinking of Effective Altruism is innately flawed, as by prioritising one cause, it quantifies and classifies other causes as less important. Proponents of this view suggest that it is dehumanising to have your suffering be calculated with numbers and deemed to be less significant, especially when it is unclear if our assessment of “tractability” or “neglect” are reliable and objective.
Despite its shortcomings, this is a fair objection – and one that deserves more of our time and attention. Yet, many discussions overlook this aspect entirely, choosing instead to focus on the scandals of FTX and Wytham Abbey. But, through bringing these criticisms to light and separating the ideas from the people, we can ensure that people are equipped with the information needed to make well-informed and thoughtful judgments about whatever topic they are discussing. It is only then that we can have productive debates about the merits of such ideas, rather than being distracted by the noise of individual controversies.
The point is this: ideas may sometimes be backed by individuals or institutions that we find problematic, or are at odds with our beliefs. But in order to have constructive discourse of the state of society, we require people to engage with the core of such ideas, not just the identities of the individuals promoting them. It all begins with asking the right question: not whether a movement or its backers are perfect, but whether its core principles can help us find a more thoughtful way to do good – in where we donate to, but also in how we approach new ideas.
Sources:
Christian, A. (2023). FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried believed in ‘effective altruism’. What is it? [online] Bbc.co.uk. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20231009-ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-believed-in-effective-altruism-what-is-it.
Gayle, D. (2022). Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/14/just-stop-oil-activists-throw-soup-at-van-goghs-sunflowers.
Karnofsky, H. (2022). EA is about maximization, and maximization is perilous. forum.effectivealtruism.org. [online] Available at: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T975ydo3mx8onH3iS/ea-is-about-maximization-and-maximization-is-perilous.
nikos. (2023). Reflections on Wytham Abbey. forum.effectivealtruism.org. Available at: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/76dQ6YfBuLzJDdTgz/reflections-on-wytham-abbey.
Peachey, K. (2025). Millions give less to charity as bills rise and interest wanes. BBC News. [online] 28 Mar. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36wgr4d03ko.
Probably Good. (2024). The ITN Framework: A Simple Framework to Assess Impact. [online] Available at: https://probablygood.org/core-concepts/itn-framework/.
Reiff, N. (2024). The Collapse of FTX: What Went Wrong with the Crypto Exchange? [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/what-went-wrong-with-ftx-6828447.
TED (2018). What are the most important moral problems of our time? | Will MacAskill. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyprXhvGVYk.
Whittlestone, J. (n.d.). Global Health and Development | Effective Altruism. [online] Available at: https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-global-health-and-development.
