The opportunity we have

Picture this:

You are walking to your 10am class at LSE. You turn the corner, and suddenly there is a burning house next to you. You stop the music on your phone, and you listen. A girl screams. You see her through the ground floor window: she’s banging it, the flames gushing behind her. She’s trapped. You grab a brick nearby, and you throw it at the window. The glass breaks, and the girl jumps out. You have saved her – a life that would have otherwise perished had you not have done what you did.

Imagine how happy and amazing you feel in that moment. Imagine the girl’s friends, how grateful they are to be able to see their friend again. Imagine her family, how happy they feel to be able to hug their daughter again. The potential and talent of that girl, preserved to be fulfilled. Imagine how you would think about what you have done, how happy you are to have saved a life, and the desire you would have to do it again, to save more lives. You feel like a hero because you are one.

***

The fact is that all of us have the opportunity to be such a hero, by dint of our sheer good luck. Most of us have been born into stable countries, with loving parents, educated in fantastic schools, and had our basic needs of security and food met each and every day of our lives. On the opposite end of the spectrum, by sheer bad luck, millions of children are born into squalor and poverty, often ridden by disease. Through absolutely no fault of their own, children around the world are born into burning houses, like the girl in the thought experiment above, each and every day.

We have the opportunity to be the hero that these children need. In fact, we could be this hero every single year for the rest of our lives (perhaps every single month, if you get that high-paying job at Goldman Sachs that you have dreamt about for so long). If you are reading this article, you are most likely already in the richest 1% globally (by household income), or will eventually be when you get a job after graduation (average graduate starting salary in the UK is £28,000).

GiveWell, a non-profit charity evaluator, estimates that approximately £2,790 is needed to save a life. This is based on research they have conducted about the most efficient and best charities in the world today. Currently, it is the Against Malaria Foundation, a charity that provides bed nets for children to prevent a disease that killed an estimated 306,000 children under the age of five last year.

You could be earning the average graduate starting salary in the UK and donate enough to save a life every year, a life that would not otherwise have survived had you not intervened, and still have £2100 to spend each month. That amount is well above both the estimated monthly cost of living comfortably in the UK as well as in London, according to the Living Wage Foundation. But remember, that is only if you are earning the average graduate starting salary. Most of us LSE students will undoubtedly be earning much more over the course of our careers.

Therefore, almost everyone reading this article today has the resources to save the girl in the burning building, every single year of their lives after they graduate. It is not merely a metaphor – you can actually save the lives of dozens of children throughout your lifetime with the money you will certainly make throughout your career.

Why wouldn’t you do so if you know you can?

Good intentions aren’t good enough

Having hopefully made clear the opportunity you have to do good in the world throughout your life, let’s address the following question: you want to do good, but how should you spend your time and money?

The answer involves recognising that wanting to do good is not enough. We must try to do the most good in the world with the resources each of us have. If you want to help people, you must want to help as many people as possible. If you want to save lives, you must want to save as many lives as possible.

That is what Effective Altruism is all about. It is a social movement that tries to apply evidence and reason to maximise the amount of good each of us do.

At this point, all of this might seem rather obvious or commonsensical – of course we should apply evidence and reason to our efforts to do good! Of course we should try to save as many lives as possible! But, to resort to cliché, common sense is not so common.

For example, the ALS Ice Bucket challenge was a massive internet phenomenon. Almost everyone from Stephen Hawking to the next President of the United States filmed themselves being drenched with icy water, and finished their videos by urging their friends to give money to support efforts to battle the disease.

However, evidence suggests that the money donated to fighting ALS as a result of the viral challenge could have been better spent on other causes. Riluzole, the drug that is used to treat ALS, costs around $50,000 each, and one typically extends an ALS patient’s life by three months (one disability adjusted life year). However, if that $50,000 was spent on buying bed nets to prevent malaria, it is estimated that the money would buy five hundred times as many life years. That is to say that the money you and your friends donated to fighting ALS could have been five hundred times more impactful.

Effective Altruism: combining empathy and evidence

Everyone has an equal right to have good lives, but that doesn’t mean that all causes are equal. Some causes are simply better than others, and some charities simply do more with the money you give them than others. Effective Altruism is all about combining empathy with evidence to find out which causes and charities do the most good, and therefore where our time and money should go towards.

It is not enough to have good intentions – we must work to have the best outcomes. It is not enough to seem good – we must want to actually be good. This means investing time in doing research to find out how your money can have the most impact. This means researching what the most pressing problems in the world today are, and which issues are being neglected when they shouldn’t be.

Think about the causes you have supported in the past, the money you have given them, perhaps even your own time and effort to support these causes. Could your time and money have been better spent elsewhere? How much good did you actually do?

Saving lives and helping those who need help must always be our number one concern when thinking about philanthropy and charity. Hence, we must banish superficial concerns about the social benefits of donating to and supporting specific charities, such as the ALS ice bucket challenge phenomenon, or whether giving to a cause gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Was it necessary for you and your friends to travel all the way to a faraway land during your gap year, to help build schools that could have been built by locals themselves? Could the money you spent on buying plane tickets have been directly used to save lives, by donating it to charities that prevent malaria and other diseases?

These are tough questions that require rigorous research and reflection. But, they are absolutely necessary if we are serious about wanting to do good in the world. Only then can we call ourselves true altruists, rather than people who pretend to be.

Check out www.GiveWell.org to get started. 

William MacAskill, professor of philosophy at Oxford University and founder of the Effective Altruism movement, is having a Q&A session with LSE students interested in the ideas of effective altruism tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5:15pm (location to be confirmed). Check out the Facebook page for the event here.