Property News · November 23, 2017

It’s called effective altruism – but is it really the best way to do good? | Loose canon | Giles Fraser


The reduction of morality to a data-driven calculation has proved especially attractive in an age where Stem disciples make so much of the cultural runningGiving to charity goes up at Christmas time. Many of us, secretly repulsed by our gluttonous orgy of collective servitude to next February’s landfill delivery, yearn for a better use for our money. Bombarded by advertisements, sometimes a thought peeps though the fog of amplified desire: what if we used our money to do some good in the world rather than fill it with more and more meaningless crap? But how to make the most effective difference?In a central London pub this week, I joined a hundred or so young people who meet up regularly to talk about precisely this: what might a data-driven approach to doing good look like? The effective altruism movement emerged around the start of this decade in Oxford. The big idea is to encourage a broadly utilitarian/rationalist approach to doing good, and it is particularly aimed at graduate higher earners who have more money to give and who thus, on a utilitarian calculus, can achieve more. This approach has proved particularly attractive to those with backgrounds in maths and computer science, and chapters of effective altruists have sprung up in Silicon Valley, New York and London, with many pledging at least 10% of their income to charity. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…It’s called effective altruism – but is it really the best way to do good? | Loose canon | Giles Fraser

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