Effective altruism is still widely misunderstood in academia, so I took the opportunity to write up my thoughts on how effective altruism should be defined and why, and to respond to some of the most common misconceptions about effective altruism.

I suggest two principal desiderata for the definition. The first is to match the actual practice of those who would currently describe themselves as engaging in effective altruism. The second is to ensure that the concept has as much public value as possible.

My proposal for a definition (which is making CEA’s definition a little more rigorous) is as follows:

Effective altruism is:
(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize the good with a given unit of resources, tentatively understanding ‘the good’ in impartial welfarist terms, and
(ii) the use of the findings from (i) to try to improve the world.

(i) refers to effective altruism as an intellectual project (or ‘research field’); (ii) refers to effective altruism as a practical project (or ‘social movement’).

The definition is:

  • Non-normative. Effective altruism consists of two projects, rather than a set of normative claims.
  • Maximising. The point of these projects is to do as much good as possible with the resources that are dedicated towards it.
  • Science-aligned. The best means to figuring out how to do the most good is the scientific method, broadly construed to include reliance on careful rigorous argument and theoretical models as well as data.
  • Tentatively impartial and welfarist. As a tentative hypothesis or a first approximation, doing good is about promoting wellbeing, with everyone’s wellbeing counting equally.

Read the full article about defining effective altruism by William MacAskill at Effective Altruism Forum.