Be Greedy For The Most Good You Can Do – Kerry Vaughan – EA Global Melbourne 2015
Filmed at EA Global Melbourne 2015 Slides of talk are here
Kerry Vaughan discusses:
What is effective altruism? what is it’s history? what isn’t EA? and how to succeed at being an effective altruist.
Approaches to doing good include:
– Being Skeptical – using the case study of play pumps in africa – hoping to utilize the renewable energy of children playing – on the surface it looked like a good idea, but unfortunately it didn’t work – so be skeptical
– Changing your Mind – you can score social points in the EA movement by changing your mind – so yay! Moving beyond entrenched beliefs to better ways of thinking leads decision making – do change your mind, update your beliefs when there is evidence to support you doing so
– Do it! – when you find out better approaches to being altruistic, actually follow up and do it – without getting too involved in theorizing whether you have a moral obligation to solve the problem, just go solve it
– 3 strands to the history of EA – Peter Singer’s work, Holden Karlovsky and Elie Hassenfeld at Give Well, the rationalist movement (inc CFAR)
Kerry then discusses the growth of the EA movement.
Approaches to EA based on evidence (empiricism) and also strong philosophical arguments (esp in the absence of evidence – for instance with Existential Risks or far future scenarios)
How to succeed at EA Global: get help, and make radical life change.
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