Effective altruism requires us to search all causes globally to find the actions that can yield the most value so that we can offer the most compassion to our fellow human beings. This can only be accomplished by putting our egos aside and asking ourselves what the world most needs, not what will give us the most satisfaction. Giving to a cause only because you have a personal affinity with it is not practicing Christ’s compassion. It is primarily doing something for yourself. We should minimize the extent to which our personal desires interfere with our efforts at helping others.
Effective altruists seek to make their money go as far as possible. A good guideline is to choose the interventions that have the highest expected value. Expected value is the benefit that would result from the action succeeding multiplied by the odds of it succeeding. These are the primary criteria to select an intervention:
CRITERIA FOR PRIORITIZATION OF CAUSES AND INTERVENTIONS
Neglectedness
Is the issue crowded with actors using strategies of at least equal tractability as this intervention?
Scale of the issue and tractability of the best interventions of that issue are the two root factors for estimating impact. Neglectedness and additionality are important to consider because they affect tractability. For instance, the fewer people there are working on a given issue, the more likely it is that one more person working on it will make a difference, due to the fact that interventions are usually pursued from most effective to least effective. This is only a guideline, however, as some interventions, such as grassroots social action, won’t move the needle on an issue without a critical mass.
Additionality, such as room-for-more-funding, should always be considered. An NGO may be doing cost-effective work but is already fully funded and won’t be able to use additional funds as effectively. An additional aid worker entering a post-conflict state could be filling a void or could be contributing to an already overcrowded and disorganized effort, causing more harm than good.
To compare two causes for potential impact, let’s take local homelessness and mental health in a low-income country of 50 million people. Homelessness in one city in a rich country would have low scale by global standards. Let’s say this particular city currently has a modest effort at helping the homeless, making the neglectedness and room for more resources medium. Given this, there is also a medium level of tractability, as more shelters and outreach would moderately improve the homeless situation.
In a country of 50 million people, there would be millions of people with mental health issues. In the developing world, very few of them ever receive treatment. Thus, this is a far larger, or more important cause. Because mental health care is very neglected in the country, it could effectively utilize a large influx of funds and workers. However, its tractability is modest because it would take a large effort to educate the public on mental health and convince people to seek care.
Which cause do you think would benefit the world the most if resources were increased by an equal amount in each? Examining these causes using the above criteria, it appears that mental health in the low income country would be the more high impact choice by a large margin.