Giles Fraser gets a lot wrong about effective altruism. Its proponents can easily shrug off Fraser’s supposed counter-examples. Effective altruism involves just a commitment to using charitable giving in the most effective way possible. Contrary to what Fraser claims, that’s not utilitarianism. Nor does it require that effective altruists prefer rescuing a bag of cash that can be used to save several children’s lives by rescuing an actual child.

Fraser says effective altruism “forces all human need to express itself on a single comparable scale because of the giver’s rather nerdish requirement that the world possesses some sort of measurable order”. But surely the world does possess at least some sort of measurable order? The “effective altruist” needn’t suppose the right thing to do is always entirely measurable/rationally calculable. They need only suppose that in so far as we can calculate the most effective way to give, we should.

Read the full article by Barbara Foster about effective altruism from The Guardian