Effective altruism (EA) is a contemporary movement that rebrands 18th-century utilitarianism as a system for maximising ‘utility’ measured in QALYs (quality-adjusted life-years). It emerged from analytical-philosophy ethics departments and has grown into a large-scale movement with substantial institutional and financial backing.
Core principles
Effective altruism operates on utilitarian calculative ethics. Rather than Bentham’s ‘hedons’, it uses QALYs as units of measurement. The central claim is that ethical action requires calculating which actions produce the greatest measurable good consequences.
Following this logic, effective altruists argue that:
- What people naturally care about (those close to them, the here and now) is ethically misplaced
- Caring for acquaintances rather than strangers is mere prejudice
- Priority should be given to potential future people—there are vastly more of them than present people
- People should maximise wealth accumulation to redirect it through charitable giving
Philosophical foundations
Peter Singer’s founding argument
The founding text is Peter Singer’s 1972 paper in Philosophy and Public Affairs. Singer argued that anyone willing to save a drowning child at the cost of dirtying their clothes should equally recognise the obligation to send money to distant starving children via charities, even at the cost of forgoing new clothes.
Crucially, Singer takes the apparatus of charity under capitalism as given—a structural assumption that shapes the entire movement.
Rejection of moral intuitions
Unlike much analytic philosophy, utilitarianism explicitly rejects reliance on ‘our moral intuitions’. As Philippa Foot observed, ‘non-utilitarian principles are apparently deeply embedded in our ordinary morality’. Utilitarianism’s willingness to override these principles distinguishes it from intuition-based approaches but also reveals its detachment from actual human ethical life.
Institutional structure
Major EA institutions have centred on Oxford University:
- Future of Humanity Institute (2005-2024): founded by Nick Bostrom, shut down April 2024
- Giving What We Can (2009): founded by Toby Ord and William MacAskill, absorbed into Centre for Effective Altruism (2012)
- Global Priorities Institute (2018): continues to operate
- Wytham Abbey (luxury retreat for EA brainstorming, ceased operation April 2024)
The movement claims substantial resources. In 2021, the 80,000 Hours website boasted: ‘How much funding is committed to effective altruism (going forward)? Around $46 billion.‘
Connections to wealth and power
Effective altruism has cultivated deep ties with those who have amassed the greatest fortunes under neoliberal capitalism:
- Elon Musk has blessed leading figures Bostrom and MacAskill
- Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX cryptocurrency founder (convicted of fraud 2023), was a major EA figure and funder
- The movement attracts tech industry wealth through its narrative that maximum wealth accumulation serves altruistic ends
Demographics and culture
The movement exhibits stark demographic patterns:
- Overwhelmingly white
- 70% male
- When the Future of Humanity Institute closed (2024), it had no women in its hierarchy above PhD students and ‘affiliates’
Sexual harassment
In the United States, a culture of sexual harassment has been documented in EA research centres. Time magazine reported (based on testimony from seven women) that many men attempted to sleep with as many women as possible, serving fantasies about their genetic superiority and obligations to reproduce.
Critiques
Structural conservatism
By taking capitalism and its charitable apparatus as given, EA directs energy away from structural transformation toward wealth redistribution within existing systems. Normal student activism seeking social change is replaced with the ideology of personal wealth accumulation for charitable redirection.
Calculati’ve ethics divorced from care
EA treats what people naturally care about—relationships, proximity, immediate needs—as ethical errors to be overcome. This represents a profound alienation from human ethical life and social bonds.
Future-bias absurdity
The prioritisation of potential future people over existing ones leads to bizarre conclusions where addressing current suffering becomes less important than speculative interventions for hypothetical future populations.
Philosophical poverty
As an ethical framework, EA represents a retreat to ‘extremely crude eighteenth-century style reasoning’. Its critics argue that rejection of intuition-based philosophy, combined with detachment from culture, psychology and history, leaves proponents ‘thrown back’ into unsophisticated utilitarian calculation.
The 2024 collapse
April 2024 saw the closure of the Future of Humanity Institute and Wytham Abbey, suggesting institutional crisis. Whether this represents the movement’s decline or merely restructuring remains to be seen.
Relationship to analytic philosophy
Effective altruism exemplifies certain tendencies within analytic ethics:
- Calculative approaches to ethical questions
- Abstraction from actual human social life
- Deference to ‘rational’ calculation over embedded practices
- Methodological individualism
- Ahistorical and acultural framing
Yet it also departs from analytic philosophy’s typical reliance on intuitions, explicitly rejecting ‘our moral intuitions’ as unreliable guides.
Further reading
- Singer, P. (1972). ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1
- MacAskill, W. Doing Good Better and subsequent works
- Alter, C. (2024). ‘Sexual Harassment in Effective Altruism’, Time
- Critiques from virtue ethics and care ethics perspectives