I am looking to donate about 5000 dollars to some philanthropy. I don't really have time to research it, and am looking for some charities the wise members of r/EffectiveAltruism have any advice for me. If you have a cause you care about, please write a brief explanation for why the charity is solid and a good use of the money. Thanks!

I'm very lucky to have generational wealth. I just had a meeting with a financial planner because pretty soon I will be in control of some of that wealth.

Right now, it's invested in a bunch of hedge funds and random companies many of which I don't actually support. With all these investments, I make more than enough passive income to live off of without working for the rest of my life and still turn a profit. It's way, WAY more than I will ever need if I live a normal lifestyle.

So what should I do with it? Perhaps I'll let it sit and grow as much as possible and try to live frugally until I die, at which point I give it all away. But...I don't want to invest in these awful companies like Exxon. And I've heard about Socially Responsible Investing, but unfortunately it's not as socially responsible as one might think. A lot of SRI financial agencies invest a crap ton of money into banks and then the money just gets recirculated into those terrible companies. Or even if it goes to a noble cause like mutual aid or solar energy, those companies also invest in causes I don't care for. And it's pretty shady what counts as a "socially responsible" company.

Hello! I am writing a novel that features an Effective Altruist character. I would love to speak with someone who understands this movement and ask you some questions as part of my research for the novel. Please reach out if interested and we can set up a time to chat. Thanks :)

Question in the title - given that I often read questions about how to convince and reach other people, I was wondering how it was for those who are already doing it. Was there a special event? Multiple things slowly changing the way you think? Were you raised that way? I'm curious about your story.

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As MacAskill says, convincing other people to become altruists/longtermists who take positive-impact careers and donate a large amount to charity is just as effective as doing so yourself.

I know there are organizations such as Giving What We Can which work to convince people to donate, but are there things I can do on my own time (volunteer opportunities, online forums, etc.) which are effective at convincing people to support EA? How would they compare to working side-hustles and using that money for charity?

And when you follow this logic down the line, it seems that rather than donating to certain cause areas, you should use your money to convince other people to donate to those cause areas. Is this true, or are efforts to convince people to support EA less cost-effective?

The EA case for not eating beef, pork, and poultry seems obvious to me. Keeping cows, pigs, and chickens in miniscule cages; force-feeding them garbage; not letting them see the outdoors their entire lives; keeping them diseased and in excruciating pain; only to prematurely slaughter them for the good of humans who don't even need their meat anyway, is grossly immoral. So immoral that it could reasonably be called the worst atrocity in the world today. Therefore, it is highly beneficial on both an individual and collective level to push for lower consumption of these animals' meat. (And that's not even getting into the pollution, the impact on climate change, or the negative health effects on humans caused by factory farming.)

That being said, I am less convinced of the case against eating fish. Granted, I haven't done a lot of research, but based on the few articles I have read, it doesn't seem like a farmed fish leads a much worse life than a wild fish. A fish spends its life in the water no matter what, eats essentially the same things no matter what, and usually dies after being killed by a predator (whether that predator be a shark, a bigger fish, or a human). Maybe you could argue that farmed fish are in a more crowded pool than wild fish, or that a closed pool is more limited than open rivers and seas. Yet, it is not obvious to me that being in a smaller or more crowded space would make the fish's life qualitatively worse. Frankly, I have no idea what makes a fish happy or sad, or if fish even have those emotions in any sort of way that a human could recognize. At least with other mammals, we have a rough idea of what would be good for their welfare based on our own experiences. But for fish welfare, we're really grasping at straws regarding how much fish are morally worth, or -- more to the point for this post -- how our actions could improve fish's lives even if we wanted to do so. (The same could be said of other, more fringe animal welfare causes like shrimp and insect welfare.)

Am I wrong? Is there some reason to believe that farmed fish live worse lives than wild ones? Are there any other large-scale problems caused by aquaculture that I'm not considering? Should EAs endorse pescetarianism instead of pure vegetarianism?

The main thing which comes up within EA and Utilitarianism surrounding infinity is the "Infinity-induced Paralysis." Essentially, the idea that once there is an infinite pay-off, it is impossible to make anything better or worse because either way, you've already achieved infinity. For example, in an infinite multiverse, it doesn't matter if AI risk is mitigated in one specific reality.

I've never understood this. Why does the presence of infinity make it impossible for anything to be better or worse. Mathematically, if we compare a universe of infinite utility to that same universe after one person's life is improved by finite value V, it would be:

lim x-->∞ ((x+V)-x) = V.

You could even make an infinite universe infinitely better. If you have an infinite number of agents, and you then ensure that each agent lives for eternity, you have ∞^2 vs ∞, with the former being infinitely better?

Is there something I'm failing to conceptualize?

One thing that really confuses me is comparing infinite sets. I've heard that the sum of all even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, ...) is greater than the sum of all natural numbers (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,...).

However, if you pick any finite bound (all even/natural numbers <n), the natural numbers will always be greater because you fit more numbers. So why is it that when you let n=∞, that the sum of all even numbers is greater?

As someone who's been in EA for a few years I often feel many members and orgs live in a bubble. It doesn't take a genius to understand the root cause of neglected tropical diseases, education outcomes, lack of climate change projects, etc. are the dictatorships (mostly military) running these 3rd world countries into the abyss. Ever since WWII, it has been in the best interest of neo-colonial powers to keep these countries running business as usual so they can keep extracting their resources to fund their economies and focus their cold war efforts on the USSR, and now, China.

Imo, this is the ultimate "longtermist" project. So why do EAs find grassroots charities and radical political change too difficult to measure, but happily fund highly speculative bets on AI and great power conflicts?

Is this because the mega EA funders and philosophers (mostly white European males) have an implicit colonial mindset that prevents them from working towards a new world without US / European hegemony?

I would like to think its because they're just unaware of these countries' potential - Think of Singapore's transformation but with natural resources and 300x the population levels (Africa & S. America, for example). Is there a way to showcase this?

Would love to get EAs thoughts on this

Need help finding the current most effective charities, specifically against animal abuse / factory farming but others are good to know too. Need one you can donate too from the UK if anyone would kindly suggest some. It would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance. Hope you’re all doing well.

I know that donating to the 'most effective charities' is a key philosophy of effective altruism, but has anybody researched and created small scale impact directly themselves? Using some of the key ideas of EA to implement?

I don't like the wording of the title and I can't figure out a better way to do so, but this an entirely genuine and good faith attempt I'm trying to make to understand two things that for me appear incongruent, in modern times at least if not historically. For context, though I've wondered this before (congruence of EA and a range of other behaviors, not just political ones) but am asking shortly after reading more about Peter Thiel and both his philanthropic and political endeavors, which I can reconcile even less than someone like Elon Musk.

In knowing the type of question I'm asking, I'm also hoping that people don't attack anyone who actually indulges my curiosity and gives me some insight

And of course this question could be said about plenty of other places and ideologies, and I'm open to /interested in anyone's thoughts on the matter, I just (1) don't know politics as extensively in other countries outside of the US and a few others; (2) don't know of a significant presence OF EAs in those "few others" overlapping with ideologies that seem incongruent to me

Looking for ideas on organizations that displayed amazing teamwork, greatly exceeded the expectations of pundits, and contributed to societal or employee/member wellbeing. Like NASA in its early years, the Buurtzorg nursing organization in the Netherlands, Wikipedia, Wegmans, Edward Jones, Southwest Airlines, Couchsurfing.com, In-N-Out, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, etc. Granted, there can be a lot of disagreement about whether these organizations actually benefited society or their employees, but I'm curious to hear about other people's suggestions.