Talk:Effective altruism/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Lead

The lead for this article could be a lot more concise and easily readable and skimmable. Here's some changes I'd like to make. Let me know what you think.

1. Make this sentence more concise

• Common practices of effective altruists include significant charitable donation to evidence-based causes, sometimes through pledging to donate a certain percentage of income, and basing career decisions on the amount of good that the career achieves, which may include the strategy of earning to give.

like so

• Common practices of effective altruists include setting aside part of their income for charitable donation, and leveraging their careers to earn to give or work directly on issues.

2. I think that the details in this paragraph doesn't belong in the lead, and I'd like to delete it. The bit about rationalists can be moved to the History section.

• While many effective altruists have focused on the non-profit sector, the philosophy of effective altruism applies more broadly to the process of prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives that can be estimated to save lives, help people, or otherwise have the biggest benefit.[6]: 179–195  A related group that attracts some effective altruists is the rationalist community.[7]

3. This should be made more concise and readable

• Various critics of effective altruism have objected to the practice of cause prioritization and what they perceive as bias toward measurable interventions, as well as the neglect of more radical systemic changes.

Like so

• Critics of the movement have objected to the prioritization of some charitable causes over others and pointed out bias toward measurable interventions.

Let me know your thoughts. Ruthgrace (talk) 07:03, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts:

1. I'm going to pretend that I didn't just hear you propose to replace a perfectly clear sentence with one that includes the notorious business jargon verb "leveraging"! In this case, concision is not an improvement. If this sentence needs to be improved, a better way to do it would be to split it into separate sentences. Word choice is not the problem here; the words are already clear enough (though "basing career decisions on the amount of good" could be "choosing careers based on the amount of good" but either one is an acceptable way to communicate the same idea).
2. The purpose of the first sentence here, if I'm not mistaken, is to give a broader range of activities to which the philosophy of effective altruism is relevant—broader than what was previously mentioned in the second paragraph. This seems like a good idea. Perhaps it just needs to be shortened to: "The philosophy of effective altruism applies more broadly to the process of prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives that can be estimated to save lives, help people, or otherwise have the biggest benefit." I agree that the second sentence can go in the "History" section. I will make these changes now.
3. When I wrote this sentence, it served as part of a summary of the various sections of the article. Now that the "Criticism" section has been integrated into the rest of the article and no longer exists, I recommend deleting this sentence. I will boldly do that now, since I doubt anyone would object to me deleting my own writing.

Biogeographist (talk) 02:54, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Lol, I do use the word leverage at work... Are you okay with a change if I replace leveraging with using? I don't have a strong opinion on whether it should be sentence or two, but I think the part about significant donations and the part about giving a percentage of income is redundant. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

also, I guess we're kind of friends now, so it's not a big deal, but next time you don't like someone's word choice, you should aim to explain and assume good intention. No need to be rude about it. Nobody editing the page is trying to make it worse on purpose. Actually I think leveraging is a better word than using because it's more specific, but I'm okay with removing it since it's business jargon to you. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:13, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I wasn't questioning your intention. I'm sorry if you were offended. I could have been funnier in how I communicated that "leveraging" is terrible word choice.

I don't think "using their careers to earn to give or work directly on issues" is an improvement over the current version, "basing career decisions on the amount of good that the career achieves, which may include the strategy of earning to give". I find the latter to be clearer, though that's not to say that it couldn't be improved; I suggested an alternative above.

I don't see "significant charitable donation" and "pledging to donate a certain percentage of income" as redundant. Pledging is a notable action among effective altruists, and pledging is a subcategory of "significant charitable donation" (assuming that one has a large income) rather than synonymous with it. Biogeographist (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh God. I just discovered that there is a book titled Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge. I guess one can leverage the word "leveraging" in all kinds of ways if one so desires. I don't. Biogeographist (talk) 17:38, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I think in communicating that something is not a good word choice, it's probably better to say it with an "I" statement than a "you" statement, e.g. "I prefer not to use the word 'leveraging' which is notorious for being busines jargon". This makes it easier for people to collaborate instead of anyone getting defensive. Whether or not it's funny isn't related (though I did laugh at "leverage the word leveraging" ;) ).

1. How does this sound. before:

• Common practices of effective altruists include significant charitable donation to evidence-based causes, sometimes through pledging to donate a certain percentage of income, and basing career decisions on the amount of good that the career achieves, which may include the strategy of earning to give.

after -- I wanted to remove "evidence-based" because not all EA giving is evidence based (see: open phil's higher risk giving strategy). I think that pledging is an important aspect of this article, but I don't think we need to distinguish between pledged giving and non-pledged giving in the lead. I like your use of the word "choosing" as it's more specific and in line with the "career choice" wording used elsewhere in the article.:

• Common practices of effective altruists include significant charitable donation, and choosing careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves, which may include the strategy of earning to give.

2. Maybe we can clean up the end of this sentence a little?

• The philosophy of effective altruism applies more broadly to the process of prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives that can be estimated to save lives, help people, or otherwise have the biggest benefit.

I propose

• The philosophy of effective altruism applies more broadly to the process of prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives that can be estimated to save lives or otherwise improve well-being.

4. I am also wondering if we can delete this sentence

• People who embrace effective altruism are labeled effective altruists.

I think it's self-evident, especially as the next sentence uses the term ("Common practices of effective altruists include...")

I'm thinking that after we finish workshopping the lead that we should submit for Good Article review again! Ruthgrace (talk) 20:15, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

That all looks great except for the last point—I strongly believe it's important to explicitly define effective altruist since that term could be misinterpreted (see the footnote), and the term is used so often in the article. We don't want people to proceed to the rest of the article with any misconception about what an effective altruist is. It's certainly possible that the current sentence isn't serving its definitional purpose well, but there should be some sentence there defining effective altruist. I don't think it is self-evident what an effective altruist is. Biogeographist (talk) 20:43, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps a version of that sentence with more relevant content would replace "embrace", which is rather vague, with "pursue the goals of": "People who pursue the goals of effective altruism are labeled effective altruists." That would be better because one of the biggest misinterpretations that the term effective altruist invites is the idea that an effective altruist is someone who has achieved the goals of effective altruism (an "effective" altruist!) rather than (minimally) someone who is pursuing those goals. Biogeographist (talk) 21:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

The sentence defining "effective altruist" actually looks great when you put it at the end of the first paragraph!! Nice work :) Ruthgrace (talk) 00:04, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Editing goals, continued

(This is a continuation of a subtopic under Talk:Effective_altruism#Copy_editing that I'm putting up here for better visibility, to get feedback)

I think that for this article to be a good article, it needs to have more information on what the effective altruist movement DOES, and not just what it thinks. People reading Wikipedia want to understand why a topic is notable, not just what the definition is. Examples:

• I think we need to state the number of dollars actually donated through effective altruism, near the top of the article. The lead only talks about money pledged and not actual donations. There needs to be a summary sentence of the Donation section in the lead or just below the lead, above the Philosophy section. I had written one here but Biogeographist removed it.
• I think there should be an example of what an effective charity is, near the top of the article. Otherwise, it's difficult for people to visualize what effectiveness means. The one I wrote has been moved down in the second paragraph of the Cost Effectiveness section, but I think it should be right under the lead.

I tried to add all of this in a section titled Impact, but Biogeographist removed it. Overall my experience of editing this page is that I need to convince this user in the talk page that my edit is worthwhile before changing anything, or else there is a 50% change that they will undo it. For example, I removed the Altruism and Effectiveness definitions in the lead, because they were unecessary, and it was undone, and I had to post in the Talk Page where someone else had already suggested this change before Biogeographist removed them again. This is very frustrating and I expect that others trying to upgrade this article beyond minor copy-editing changes will feel the same. I know that this is par for the course for Wikipedia generally, but I would hope that a community focused around effectiveness would be able to do better.

My wish is for Biogeographist to step back from this article for a couple months. To be fair, this article has come a long way from the beginning, and most of that is thanks to Biogeographist. Maybe the article will be worse after a few months and Biogeographist can change it back, or maybe reducing gatekeeping will allow the article to become a Good and maybe even a Featured article. Ruthgrace (talk) 18:56, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey Biogeographist, it looks like you promosed a compromise in Talk:Effective_altruism#Philosophy as I was writing the above. Thanks - I think this is a step in the right direction. Ideally we would have a more equal collaboration in the future, where changes don't have to be approved by a single person before becoming stable in the article. Ruthgrace (talk) 19:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I will step back from editing if a few other editors evaluate my edits and decide that they are low-quality and disruptive, but I don't think it would be right for a relatively new editor to insist that I step aside just because they are not getting their way as much or as quickly as they would like. I made a major change to the article just before Ruthgrace posted the comment above, and that change was directly in response to their argument about the perceived overemphasis on the philosophy, and I attempted to address their concern.

Since the philosophy section has been moved, the donation section now immediately follows the lead section, which addresses Ruthgrace's first point above. And notice that this change was made before the comment above was posted. Patience is a virtue.

The second point above would be easy to implement now in the donations section with a link to the cost-effectiveness section below.

Regarding this partial revert that Ruthgrace complained that "someone else had already suggested", honestly I did not notice that it had been suggested before; you can see that I didn't present a counterargument to the suggestion below, because I didn't notice it among all the other issues that were mentioned, and anyway the person who suggested it could have made the edit themself if they thought it was so important. One reason why it was important to keep the definition of effectiveness at that point was because it wasn't even implicitly defined at that point; the term effective was used twice in the first sentence. Once that was fixed later, it wasn't necessary to explicitly define it. So I don't think I was being unreasonable with that partial revert, and the situation was eventually resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Editing doesn't happen perfectly all the time.

As for the impact section that was added, I responded about that in the earlier section below. Biogeographist (talk) 19:31, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I am not responsible for "most" of the progress on this article as was too generously (or facetiously?) suggested above; many editors are responsible. And the following sentence is a very artificial false dichotomy, in addition to the false premise that partially reverting or modifying a few edits amounts to "gatekeeping", portraying me as the villainous obstacle to GA status: Maybe the article will be worse after a few months and Biogeographist can change it back, or maybe reducing gatekeeping will allow the article to become a Good and maybe even a Featured article. Biogeographist (talk) 22:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for your response. I'm sorry for being too harsh. I'll try to work together, and we can go for Good Article again soon. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:16, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Same here, sorry for my contribution to the escalation of this conflict. I think we'll be able to avoid that in the future. Biogeographist (talk) 04:18, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's the beginning of a list of things I am thinking of changing in the article, both towards the editing goal of better conveying what the effective altruism movement actually does, as well as general article improvements according to Wikipedia guidelines. You're welcome to comment if you disagree or want to tweak any suggestions, and people are also welcome to make the edits directly if they seem good (maybe just mark it  Done here so we can coordinate).

1. It looks like the Behavior heading is meant to distinguish between philosophy-related and non-philosophy related items, but I don't think it's necessary and we can remove it and move the Donation and Career choice sections up one level.
2. I think we should have a summary of the amount of money donated based on the Donations section, and put it in the lead, replacing the sentence that says "Effective altruists have pledged to donate hundreds of millions of dollars." I think people are probably more interested to know how much money was actually donated versus just pledged, at least in the lead. Here's a summary sentence we can use:
   1. Effective altruism has led to over $100 million donated to effective charities through the Giving What We Can pledge, as well as over $370 million through the Founders Pledge.
3. I think we should contextualize what it means to be an effective charity right at the beginning of the article, and this will also help people understand what effectiveness means generally, throughout the article. I want to add a section above Donations to accomplish this that is a rearrangement of the Cost-effectiveness section, putting the example first. I would call this section Effective Charity, since it's easier to read, but I wouldn't be mad if people wanted to retain it's previous name, Cost-effectiveness: (Just realized we would also have to remove the Cost-effectiveness section from under Philosphy Ruthgrace (talk) 23:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC))
   1. Effective altruism advocates for "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". For example, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster conducting many randomized controlled trials in Kenya to find out the best way to improve students' test scores. They tried new textbooks and flip charts, as well as smaller class sizes, but found that the only intervention that raised school attendance was treating intestinal worms in children. Based on their findings, they started the Deworm the World Initiative, which is rated by Givewell as one of the best charities in the world for cost-effectiveness.
   2. Some effective altruism organizations such as Deworm the World, prefer randomized controlled trials as a primary form of evidence, as they are often considered to be at the highest level of evidence, e.g., in healthcare research. Others believe that requiring this stringent level of evidence unnecessarily narrows the focus to only those issues on which this kind of evidence can be developed, and that the history of philanthropy suggests that many effective interventions have proceeded without this level of evidence. Some individuals, such as Elon Musk, focus their altruistic efforts on entrepreneurship rather than giving.
   3. Effective altruist organizations have argued that some charities are far more effective than others, either because some do not achieve their goals or because of the varying cost of achieving those goals. When possible, they seek to identify charities that are highly cost-effective. Cost-effectiveness is commonly measured by lives extended per dollar, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) added per dollar, or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) reduced per dollar. This measure of disease burden is expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability, or early death.
4. According to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section, apart from basic facts, there shouldn't be things in the lead that aren't in the rest of the article. I guess you could argue that the list of famous people is a basic fact, but I think it's best to repeat those people in different relevant sections. I put Elon Musk in my Effective Charity copy above, and the other people that aren't mentioned in the rest of the article could be inserted at the end of the Donation section:
   1. Other famous philanthropists influenced by effective altruism include Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, Sam Bankman-Fried, Peter Thiel, as well as professional poker players Dan Smith, and Liv Boeree.

 Done I added the other famous philanthropists to the donation section. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:33, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

It'll take me a few sessions to put together all the edit suggestions I have. This is all I have time for for now, but I'll be back! Ruthgrace (talk) 23:21, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

My thoughts:

• It looks like the Behavior heading... I don't think it's necessary and we can remove it and move the Donation and Career choice sections up one level. I don't agree; although these are the only two sections we have information on for EA behavior, volunteering falls in this category too and has been discussed as a path to impact by EAs, such as 80,000 Hours here. I also think keeping them under the top-level "Behavior" heading is useful to keep them separate from the "Cause priorities" one.
• I think we should have a summary of the amount of money donated... in the lead: I agree, and I like your proposed wording. (Edit 04:01, 10 December 2021 (UTC): The Forbes contributor article isn't a reliable source, though, so we need a better one.)
• I think we should contextualize what it means to be an effective charity right at the beginning of the article: I'm sympathetic to this, but effectiveness w.r.t. EA isn't only a property of charities, it's a property of interventions as well. Effective charities are vessels for effective interventions. I also prefer to keep discussion of cost-effectiveness together with the "Philosophy" section.

Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 01:04, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi User:Qzekrom, how do you feel about calling it Strategy instead of Behavior? I'm thinking that if one's talking about a movement's philosophy, that makes sense, but if one talks about a movement's behavior, that sounds not quite as right as a movement's strategy. And maybe this will give us a clearer distinction between what goes under Philosophy versus Strategy, with Philosophy being about what to do, and Strategy being about how to do it. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ruthgrace and Qzekrom: If you don't like "Behavior", I would recommend "Practice" as an alternative heading (as in "theory vs. practice"). Philosophy/theory includes strategy: figuring out why and how. Behavior/practice is about doing what has been figured out. Obviously there is also feedback involved between the two (e.g., learning cycle, reflective practice). Biogeographist (talk) 04:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@Biogeographist: Yeah, I like that. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 16:42, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Great suggestion!! I just updated the section name. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:17, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Philosophy

Here are a few points of improvement I'm interested in making in the Philosophy section:

• I would like to remove the first sentence, "Philosophers play an important role in effective altruism." My reasoning is that this should be self-evident from the article having a prominent Philosphy section, and all the philosophers mentioned in the text.
• I would like to tighten up the next sentence. Currently, it reads:

Much of the published literature on the subject poses philosophical questions about why and how to use evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. It then tries to figure out the most plausible answers to those questions, so that people can act on the basis of those answers. Such philosophical questions shift the starting point of reasoning from "what to do" to why and how to do it.

I think the idea could be more concisely expressed like so (with all the same citations):

Philosophers of effective altruism think about why and how to use evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others, to help determine what effective altruists should do.

• The next paragraph reads:

The "guiding question"[3]: 14  of effective altruism is: how can we, individually and collectively, do the most good?[34]: 5 [12] Other important questions have been asked,[85] and effective altruists have yet to reach consensus on the answers to all such questions.[12] But the minimal philosophical core of effective altruism involves at least having some reason to benefit all others, that is, reason to promote their well-being,[86] "and more reason to benefit them more, and most reason to benefit them as much as possible, at least defeasibly and all other things being equal".[12] This core is likely to be compatible with a wide variety of views about morality and meta-ethics.[1][12] For example, the moral theory of consequentialism, including utilitarianism, supports the aim of using resources to benefit others as much as possible. However, effective altruism is not the same as consequentialism.[1][12]

I think the guiding question is redundant with the "why and how to use evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others" in the previous paragraph, so I would remove it. I think maybe this might be a good summary of the "minimum core" part?

The philosophical core of effective altruism involves having reason to promote the well-being of all others as much as possible, within reason.[34][86][12]

The rest is good, but I think it's worth incorporating the last sentece into the one before, to be concise, by using a word like "related" to differentiate consequentialism from effective altruism:

This core is likely to be compatible with a wide variety of views about morality and meta-ethics.[1][12] For example, the related theory of consequentialism, including utilitarianism, supports the aim of using resources to benefit others as much as possible.[1][12]

Ahh, i have to go. more later! Ruthgrace (talk) 03:17, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with the wording you gave here: Effective altruism has led to over...$370 million through the Founders Pledge. While Founder's Pledge is indeed an EA org, and their website solely recommends EA targets for fundraising, the contract that they have founders sign does not obligate pledgers to give to EA orgs. Only a portion of that $370m went toward EA causes. If what you're looking for is data on the actual money raised specifically for EA, I would not use Founder's Pledge as a source. (With that said, they are a great org, and I honestly really respect the impact they're making, which is quite significant. The issue here is not FP, but instead is the founders themselves, who only give a proportion of their pledged funds toward EA causes.) — Eric Herboso 05:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

😱 This is a very important detail that I wasn't aware of! Thanks, Eric. Our sentence says that "Effective Altruism led to...over $370 million through Founders Pledge." Given that Founders Pledge is EA aligned, do you think it's still accurate to say that EA led to that money being donated, even if it wasn't all to EA causes? Ideally we would be able to provide a more accurate dollar amount for money donated to EA stuff. I see that they have a donor-advised fund, which I assume would go purely to EA causes, but on a brief search I couldn't find any secondary sources about how much money has been donated through the DAF specifically. Let me know if you have any ideas.

As an aside, I think it counts as effective altruism if someone picks a less popular cause area (say, criminal justice in America) and tries to donate effectively within that area. Technically in English, altruism is the main part of the term "effective altruism" (like, think of "milk chocolate" versus "chocolate milk"). Ruthgrace (talk) 17:04, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

(This is just my opinion, though. I would call putting the effectiveness before the altruism "altruistic rationality", and others have called it "avant-garde effective altruism") Ruthgrace (talk) 17:09, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Ruthgrace said I would call putting the effectiveness before the altruism "altruistic rationality": This comment seems very much in line with Ruthgrace's previously expressed desire to split off the philosophy section into a separate article. However, without its distinctive emphasis on reasoning, there is little in effective altruism that would distinguish it from more common approaches to charity. Biogeographist (talk) 04:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I think what I will do is email Founders Pledge and see if enough of that $370M is going to effective altruism causes that it doesn't feel too misleading. If most of it isn't going to effective altruism causes then let's remove that sentence entirely. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:20, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ruthgrace: There's no need to email them. I can confirm that the percentage going toward EA causes is low enough that this would be misleading. We can still use the number as a marker for money raised for charity that otherwise presumably wouldn't have been; we just shouldn't say that that amount is an amount that is going specifically toward EA causes. (And even if this weren't true, and 100% did go toward EA causes, it's not enough to have them tell you so in an email. You have to use a secondary source to put it on the wikipedia page, which doesn't exist.) — Eric Herboso 03:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that our wording is technically accurate, since it says EA "led" to this money being donated, the EA here referring to the EA-aligned Founders Pledge. Eric, do you think we should remove the bit about the Founders Pledge from the lead to prevent people from being misled that it was $370M donated to EA causes? If so, I'm happy for you to do it. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:28, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I went to try to see if i could find a source to support the statement that though Founders Pledge advises effective charities, founders can give to whatever they want, to make things less misleading. Instead, I found this:

• "What I was most surprised about is the level of support I received. The [Founders Pledge] deployment team listened to what I was most passionate about—Mental Health and Sex Slavery of Women—went away, and then came back with a comprehensive research report that highlighted the best way I could support those charities. They identified the best charities in terms of outcomes, data-driven giving, and transparency. I now know that the money I’ve donated will actually help to free women from sexual slavery. That means a lot to me. I know the outcome and the impact I have had. My giving was effective."

So I'm feeling that it's not misleading to say that EA led to this money being donated. My viewpoint about giving effectively to a cause that's not popular in EA circles counting as "effective altruism" is probably more similar to the layperson point of view. I suspect that most people don't think about effectiveness very much at all when donating to charity. Ruthgrace (talk) 04:24, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you're correct when you say that Founder's Pledge caused counterfactually valid donations. It's just that the bulk of the donations did not go toward EA causes. I personally feel that giving to a cause that's not popular in EA circles isn't in itself effective (in the sense of EA), and thus shouldn't count as "effective altruism". With that said, the current wording on the article is technically accurate; it just feels misleading because a reader might assume we mean one thing when it technically says another.

If what we're looking for here are some good impressive numbers on money actually spent on EA causes, I would instead turn to Benjamin Todd, who estimates that EA received $416m from highly engaged EAs in 2019. However, the bulk of this comes from Tuna/Moskovitz & Bankman-Fried. Marek Sklenka later estimated that ~$65m of this $416 comes from non-outliers (i.e., non-billionaires): "In the 2019 EA survey respondents reported total donations of 16.1M million USD in 2018. They estimate in this post that 40% of highly engaged EAS filled in the survey. Assuming the same amount donated per person among EAs who didn't fill in the survey, the total amount donated by the EA community was 65 million USD." Although Sklenka just made a hypothesis here, and we shouldn't confuse this with actual data, it does give a better impression of how much is likely being donated annually by highly engaged EAs. At a minimum, we could cite Todd's figure that includes donations by billionaires (though that's also just an estimate).

I should also mention that Todd's above figures are for 2019, not 2021, and there have been large changes since 2019. Specifically, OP has dramatically increased its level of funding. Eventually, the increase will be seen in their grants database, but not all of these increases have been listed there yet. From OP's blog post: OP has "tentative plans to donate an additional $500 million per year in 2022 and 2023" to GiveWell alone. If they did this, that would dwarf even the $416m total figure from 2019, as this doesn't even count donations toward other causes, let alone donations from sources other than Tuna/Moskovitz. — Eric Herboso 10:16, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

This is valid and really good to know! I'm not sure about citing blogs on Wikipedia, though. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the article lede per this discussion. Unfortunately, I can't find a secondary source that cites these specific numbers. However, keep in mind that WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD sometimes, and I think it applies in this case. Todd, on behalf of 80k Hours, is giving his appraisal of what the whole movement has accomplished. This is a blend of a primary and secondary source: primary due to 80k being part of EA, but secondary, because it's a report on a larger group of which he is only a part, and for which the majority does not have power over 80k.

The other concern is that technically this is a blog post source, which is frowned upon on Wikipedia. Instead of citing the blog post, I could do a WP:VIDEOREF of Todd's talk at EA Global, which would be legitimate. But it is preferred to instead cite the text transcript of the video of conference talks, if available, and this blog post is in effect that transcript, as you can see from the video itself. I believe this makes citing this particular blog source acceptable (though not preferred). Once a journalistic writes about these numbers, we should change the sources over to that journalist's article instead; but, until then, I think it is acceptable to use this particular blog post as a source for these numbers.

Lastly, while doing this, I removed the following: "as well as over $370 million through Founders Pledge". FP is still listed below in the "Donation" section, so I think removing them from the lede is okay. If others disagree, I'm open to re-adding them to the lede, so long as it is done knowing the objections I brought up above. — Eric Herboso 06:51, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey Eric! Thanks for your work on this. The citations look great and the new numbers are awesome. I was wondering what you think about workshopping the lead a little so that it's a little easier to see the important numbers when skimming. Currently it says:

• Effective altruism has over $46.1 billion committed to effective charities moving forward,[4] with $100 million donated through the Giving What We Can pledge alone,[5] and approximately $416 million total donated each year, as of 2019,[6] representing a 37% annual growth rate since 2015.[4]

I think the amount of money and year over year growth is the most important info, so I'd like to change the lead to read:

• $416 million was donated to effective charities identified by the movement in 2019,[6] representing a 37% annual growth rate since 2015.[4]

and then add this to the end of the Effective_altruism#Donation section (the $100M number is already mentioned in that section). Note that the citation says of the 46.1B number that "This could easily be off by $10 billion", so I think it's better to take off the decimal point so we're not misleading people about the accuracy of the number, and replace "over 46B" with "about 46B":

• Effective altruism has about $46 billion committed to effective charities.[4]

How does that sound to you? No worries if you disagree on the specific numbers -- my editing goal here is to highlight only a few important numbers to make it easier to understand at a glance. Ruthgrace (talk) 04:29, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

These changes sound good to me. (c: — Eric Herboso 07:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!  Done Ruthgrace (talk) 23:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the first sentence of the philosophy section was redundant/self-evident, and I've removed it. I think the suggestion above for the rest of the first paragraph isn't as good because it removes the emphasis on questions, which are important, for example, in The Most Good You Can Do, in Doing Good Better, and in Kelsey Piper's published chapter summarizing EA in How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy. Effectiveness in effective altruism isn't merely about running an algorithm to crunch the numbers. It involves questioning assumptions in a way that could be counterintuitive for many people. I made an edit that shortened the first paragraph while retaining the focus on questions; take a look and see if it is satisfactory.

I agree that the guiding question in the second paragraph was redundant, and I've removed it. I'm not sure about the suggestion above for the description of the philosophical core; I don't know exactly what "within reason" is supposed to mean, and I doubt other readers would know either. The current quotation used in that sentence is from a published encyclopedia article, so it's already concise, but there may be some other way to make it more concise. As for the last couple of sentences about consequentialism and utilitarianism, I just deleted them, as I think those sentences are implied by and closely related to the next paragraph. Biogeographist (talk) 04:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!! Those first two paragraphs in the Philosophy section are looking really good now!! Ruthgrace (talk) 03:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Here are some edits I'd like to make from the 3rd paragraph onwards, to the text right under the Philosophy heading:

• In the first two sentences,

"Views vary about whether effective altruism entails normative ethical claims such as "we should do the most good we can". One view is that effective altruism is not a set of normative claims telling people what they "should do", but instead a process of trying to figure out how to do the most good with a given unit of resources and of putting what has been learned into practice."

I feel like both the first and the second sentence are kind of explaining what a normative claim is, so I'd like to cut the second sentence down to be less redundant. I suggest editing like so:

"Views vary about whether effective altruism entails normative ethical claims such as "we should do the most good we can". One view is instead of normative claims, effective altruism is a process of trying to figure out how to do the most good with a given unit of resources and of putting what has been learned into practice."

• Last sentence on the third paragraph -- should it be just "good" instead of "the good" to be gramatically correct? Or is that terminology a philosophy thing?:

"Effective altruism is not a complete philosophy of how to live morally, but effective altruism may be relevant for any view that assumes some reason to promote the good and that the well-being of others is part of the good."

• 4th Paragraph under Philosophy:

"Effective altruists, such as Kelsey Piper, have reported that the questions posed by effective altruism have helped them learn more about complex problems as well as gain a deeper sense of meaning and a feeling of satisfaction from helping others more effectively."

The linked reference is Effective_altruism#cite_note-88. It cites two effective altruists. Both mention getting meaning out of effective altruism, but only Kelsey talks about learning more about complex problems. So I think if we are going to talk about effective altruists plural, we should only say the part about getting meaning from EA. Also, I think just "meaning" sounds less biased than "a deeper sense of meaning". I also think "satisifaction" is more concise and means the same as "a feeling of satisfaction". Finally I don't think Kelsey Piper is famous enough outside of EA to be worth naming in this context. So I would edit like so:

"Effective altruists have reported finding meaning and satisfaction from helping others more effectively."

• For the last sentence,

"The following subsections describe important ideas that are discussed in the published literature about effective altruism."

I would prefer to just name the important ideas, instead of having to refer the reader to other places in the text. The subsection headings then follow naturally.

"Important ideas that are discussed in literature published about effective altruism include impartiality, cause prioritization, cost-effectiveness, and counterfactual reasoning."

Ruthgrace (talk) 03:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

In the first two sentences, I wouldn't use the rather awkward proposed construction One view is instead of normative claims. Such a rewrite isn't necessary since essentially all you're proposing is removing the clause telling people what they "should do", so you could just remove that clause and have a grammatically clearer result (in my opinion). But also consider that it may be easier to understand for the non-technical reader with the redundant clause retained. I'm inclined to retain the small redundancy for that reason, but I wouldn't oppose its removal since I'm not sure how important it is. There's often a trade-off between absolute concision and ease of reading for non-technical readers.

Last sentence of third paragraph: "the good" comes straight from the source (MacAskill 2019a), where it is used repeatedly. (I just checked the source again and it has an excellent discussion of the definitional issue that we discussed on this talk page recently. I recommend reading the source, which I had forgotten about even though I'm the one who cited it.) I don't know exactly why MacAskill uses the definite article. He also omits the article occasionally, as in the construction "do good" (because nobody says "do the good" [edit: I retract this lazy claim, since it is refuted by a quick visit to my favorite search engines]), but he uses the definite article more often. I notice that on Wikipedia, the good redirects to Good. I would just link to the good for anyone who wants to know what "the good" is (I just added this link), and leave it as it is, following MacAskill.

In the 4th paragraph, Kelsey Piper's name was added in an edit less than a couple of weeks ago. Adding her name is not an idea that would have occurred to me, but I don't agree with your reason for removing it: I don't think it matters whether she is "famous" outside of EA; she is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, where EA is mentioned in the first sentence, so she seems like a good example of someone who is committed to EA and has thought through the issues in the way this section is talking about. I have removed her name for concision, but I think it's fine to keep her name if anyone else wants to add it again. I added another example to the footnote that I think justifies keeping the "learning" part in that sentence, which I shortened per your suggestion (in part) to: Effective altruists have reported that the questions posed by effective altruism have helped them learn as well as find meaning and satisfaction from helping others more effectively.

I've changed the last sentence to your suggestion. I removed another word for concision: "published". Biogeographist (talk) 16:38, 12 December 2021 (UTC) and 18:08, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I love what you did and I'm pretty happy with this section now! Thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 02:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Philosophy, 2nd round of edits

Here's an edit that I want to do that I'm posting here beforehand because I think it might be controversial

The first two sentences of this section read

Effective altruists have pondered answers to philosophical questions about the most effective ways to benefit others.[46][93] Such philosophical questions shift the starting point of reasoning from "what to do" to why and how.[44]

I would like to delete the second sentence, because it's just something Peter Singer said in a talk, not a core tenant of Effective Altruism. Also, it's unclear what it means without explanation -- one would assume from reading Wikipedia that "why" means "why should we do good" when that's not what the reference addresses, and "how" would mean "how do we do good" when the reference means "how do we choose which things do the most good". Ruthgrace (talk) 02:19, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Practice

Alright! I've been trying to figure out how to get an example of effectiveness right at the beginning of the article, because I think otherwise the whole article can be a little difficult to understand for someone coming in with no context. Now that we've renamed this section Practice, maybe it can be done. I'd like to remove the first sentence:

"The philosophical or intellectual part of effective altruism (see § Philosophy below) is about learning how to do the most good through the use of evidence and reasoning. The behavioral or practical part is about using what has been learned."

and replace it with the example (which can be moved out of the bottom of the Cost-effectiveness section):

"Effective altruism advocates for "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis".[1] For example, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster conducting many randomized controlled trials in Kenya to find out the best way to improve students' test scores. They tried new textbooks and flip charts, as well as smaller class sizes, but found that the only intervention that raised school attendance was treating intestinal worms in children. Based on their findings, they started the Deworm the World Initiative, which is rated by Givewell as one of the best charities in the world for cost-effectiveness.[6] People practice effective altruism in different ways, such as donating to organizations like Deworm the World, using their career to make more money for donations or directly contributing their labor, and starting new non-profit or for-profit organizations."

This will lead into the next sections, which are Donation, Career choice, and I'd like to add one about entrepreneurship that can say something about Charity Entrepreneurship. What do you think? Ruthgrace (talk) 03:23, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

In general this change looks fine, but instead of repeating the definition in the first sentence, I would just put a version of your last sentence first, since it focuses on practice, and then give the example: People practice effective altruism in different ways, such as donating to organizations like Deworm the World, using their career to make more money for donations or directly contributing their labor, and starting new non-profit or for-profit organizations. For example, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster conducted many randomized controlled trials in Kenya to find out the best way to improve students' test scores. They tried new textbooks and flip charts, as well as smaller class sizes, but found that the only intervention that raised school attendance was treating intestinal worms in children. Based on their findings, they started the Deworm the World Initiative, which is rated by GiveWell as one of the best charities in the world for cost-effectiveness. Note the added wikilinks to Kremer & Glennerster & RCT & GiveWell & cost-effectiveness, and verb conjugation of "conducted". Biogeographist (talk) 17:16, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done Nice, just added the example with your edits. Thanks! Ruthgrace (talk) 02:43, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Cause priorities

For the first sentence in the Effective_altruism#Cause_priorities section:

• Since effective altruism aims for cause neutrality (see § Cause prioritization below),[35] it is in principle open to helping in whichever causes allow people to do the most good, impartially considered.[36][37]

Does it still make sense if I delete "impartially considered"? The extra phrase seems unecessary to me (redundant with "cause neutrality"), but maybe I just don't understand what it means. Ruthgrace (talk) 05:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I would keep "impartially considered", which I think refers to impartiality, which is a principle that informs cause neutrality but is not exactly the same as it. In this edit, I wikilinked "cause neutrality" to the Cause prioritization section and "impartially considered" to the Impartiality section. Biogeographist (talk) 15:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I'm still having trouble parsing the sentence, probably because I'm not familiar with a lot of these philosophical terms. This is maybe tooo far translated into layman terms that it takes away some of the original nuance, but maybe you can help me workshop something that is both easier to read and correct?

• Effective altruism is in principle open to furthering any cause that allows people to do the most good, taking into account that all lives are equal.

Overall, I think the main thing that would make it easier to read is if one half of the sentence was about effective altruism being open to any cause, and the other half of the sentence was about cause neutrality / impartiality, rather splitting up the clauses about cause neutrality / impartiality. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, you're convincing me that the redundancy is a problem. But it may be better to emphasize cause neutrality instead? E.g., Effective altruism is in principle open to furthering any cause that allows people to do the most good, while taking into account cause neutrality. Biogeographist (talk) 23:12, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

That's perfect!! Thanks so much for helping me with this, and merry Christmas! :) Ruthgrace (talk) 14:31, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Trying to figure out how to make the second half of this sentence more readable:

• Many people in the effective altruist movement have prioritized global health and development, animal welfare, and risks to the survival and flourishing of humanity and its descendants over the long-term future.

What do you think of this?

• Many people in the effective altruist movement have prioritized global health and development, animal welfare, and mitigating risks that threaten the future of humanity.

Ruthgrace (talk) 18:39, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Biogeographist (talk) 18:56, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 23:45, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

The second sentence in this section starts with

• Examples of causes include providing food for the hungry

where "hungry" links to the Hunger article. I propose either deleting the link, because everyone already knows what being hungry means, or linking "the hungry" with something like the Food security article. What do you think? Ruthgrace (talk) 05:27, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done I changed "the hungry" to "those with food insecurity" and updated the link also. Ruthgrace (talk) 06:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Entrepeneurship

I'd like to add a subsection inside Effective_altruism#Practice, below Effective_altruism#Career_choice, called Entrepeneurship. What do you all think of this text for the new section?

• Some effective altruists are entrepreneurs, and aim to start non-profits that create new cost-effective ways of improving well-being. For example, the Happier Lives Institute does research on the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in developing countries, Canopie develops an app that provides CBT to women who are expecting or postpartum, Giving Green analyzes and ranks climate interventions for effectiveness, and the Fish Welfare Initiative works on improving animal welfare in fishing and aquaculture.

All the charities mentioned came out of Charity Entrepeneurship, however I couldn't find any good secondary sources about CE. Ruthgrace (talk) 14:43, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Right now I don't have any comment about the proposed content, but regarding the references, I would note that most (perhaps all?) of the references in this article use citation templates, so if you could learn to create citation templates either manually or using one of the citation tools, that would save time for other editors who would otherwise need to convert the references to citation templates per WP:CITEVAR. (This is not a requirement, just a courtesy—no pressure.) Also, WP:BLOG posts on Forbes (which are different from articles in Forbes magazine) are generally not considered reliable sources. Biogeographist (talk) 21:56, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Oooh, good catch with the bad Forbes reference, thanks! And yes, I suppose it's time for me to learn to do citations the way that all the cool people do citations. :) I'll add this to the article (with the citation templates and the Forbes reference removed), and also see if I left any raw citations that I can change to templates. Thank you for the link to the citation template instructions!

• Some effective altruists are entrepreneurs, and aim to start non-profits that create new cost-effective ways of improving well-being. For example, the Happier Lives Institute does research on the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in developing countries, Canopie develops an app that provides CBT to women who are expecting or postpartum, Giving Green analyzes and ranks climate interventions for effectiveness, and the Fish Welfare Initiative works on improving animal welfare in fishing and aquaculture.

Ruthgrace (talk) 21:34, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Wow, you lovely people have already cleaned up the messy citations I added before. Thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 21:49, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea and execution of the entrepreneurship section. I have made some revisions to this section to also reflect for-profit entrepreneurship for earning to give (especially Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX), which I hope you agree with Ruthgrace. Another great example we may consider adding is Wave, a large mobile banking company operating in Africa, which was founded by the EA Lincoln Quirk (but it looks to me like Wave is currently missing a Wikipedia article; a major oversight!). -- Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 09:47, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

looks dope, thank you!!! I love the Wave example, also. What do you think of this?

• change the first sentence from

Some effective altruists are entrepreneurs, starting either non-profits to implement cost-effective ways of improving well-being or for-profits to earn to give.

to

Some effective altruists are entrepreneurs, starting non-profits to implement cost-effective ways of improving well-being, for-profits to earn to give, or for-profits to make social impact.

• add to the end of the subsection

An example of a for-profit company that aims to make social impact is Wave, a "radically affordable" mobile money service operating in Senegal that allows for free deposits and withdrawals, and charges a 1% fee for sending money.

• One small tweak here:

Sam Bankman-Fried founded the crypto currency exchange FTX with the explicit goal of amassing a fortune (currently more than $20 billion) to then donate almost everything to charity.

There's a reference to 80K and Vox. The Vox article doesn't say how much he plans to donate, and the 80K one says "He plans to eventually donate most of his wealth", so I suggest changing the sentence to say

Sam Bankman-Fried founded the crypto currency exchange FTX with the explicit goal of amassing a fortune (currently more than $20 billion) and then donating most of his wealth to charity.

Ruthgrace (talk) 05:09, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't have a source for this, but it's more accurate to say Sam intends to donate "almost all" his wealth. I served on a board with him, so I know tbat's his intention, but when I do quick google searches I also only see people saying "most" of his wealth. Unfortunately, I'm not a valid source of info for wikipedia. I guess this change makes sense in the absence of us finding an official source that says otherwise, but I'm surprised they all seem to say "most" when I know he meant "almost all". — Eric Herboso 14:33, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

That's super cool even if we can't put it in the article! Thanks, Eric! Ruthgrace (talk) 05:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done I made the above edits to add the Wave example and correct the SBF donation info. Ruthgrace (talk) 05:19, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Global health and development

Some suggestions for this section:

• The alleviation of global poverty and neglected tropical diseases has been a focus of some of the earliest and most prominent organizations associated with effective altruism.

Charity evaluator GiveWell was founded by Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 to address poverty and is part of the effective altruism community.

Can we remove the redundancy in the second sentence like so?

• The alleviation of global poverty and neglected tropical diseases has been a focus of some of the earliest and most prominent organizations associated with effective altruism.

Charity evaluator GiveWell was founded by Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 to address poverty.

And maybe we could do the same with this sentence?

• The effective altruist organization The Life You Can Save, which originated from Singer's book of the same name,[53] works to alleviate global poverty by promoting evidence-backed charities, conducting philanthropy education, and changing the culture of giving in affluent countries.[54][55]

like so

• The organization The Life You Can Save, which originated from Singer's book of the same name,[53] works to alleviate global poverty by promoting evidence-backed charities, conducting philanthropy education, and changing the culture of giving in affluent countries.[54][55]

Finally, I don't think we need quite so much detail about the relationship between Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy.

• In 2011, GiveWell announced the creation of GiveWell Labs, which was later renamed the Open Philanthropy Project, for the purpose of research and philanthropic funding of more speculative and diverse causes such as policy reform, global catastrophic risk reduction and scientific research.[57][58] It is a collaboration between GiveWell and Good Ventures.[59][60][61]

What do you think of changing it to be more concise like so?

• The Open Philanthropy Project, in collaboration with GiveWell, does research and philanthropic funding of more speculative and diverse causes such as policy reform, global catastrophic risk reduction and scientific research.[57][58][59][60][61]

Ruthgrace (talk) 05:16, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done I completed the above edits just now. Ruthgrace (talk) 06:59, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Animal welfare

Here are the copy edits i would like to make for this section:

• I propose changing the first sentence (which is marked "better source needed") from

Many effective altruists believe that cost-effective ways are available to reduce animal suffering.

to the following, which is easier to find citations for, and means something similar

Many effective altruists care about animal welfare.

• I would like to arrange these sentences for readability and conciseness

In 2010, Singer quoted estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the British organization Fishcount that 60 billion land animals are slaughtered and between 1 and 2.7 trillion individual fish are killed each year for human consumption. Singer argued that effective animal welfare altruists should prioritize changes to factory farming over pet welfare. Singer also argued that, if animals such as chickens are assigned even a modicum of consciousness, total suffering can be reduced more effectively by reducing factory farming (for example, by reducing global meat consumption) than by reducing human poverty.

like so

Singer argues that effective animal welfare altruists should prioritize changes to factory farming over pet welfare. 60 billion land animals are slaughtered and between 1 and 2.7 trillion individual fish are killed each year for human consumption. Since so many animals are affected, if animals such as chickens have some consciousness, total suffering could be reduced more easily by reducing factory farming than by reducing human poverty.

• Same with these sentences

Alternatively, Animal Ethics and Wild Animal Initiative focus on wild animal suffering.[71][72] In 2018, the book The End of Animal Farming by Jacy Reese Anthis discussed animal welfare issues from an effective altruism perspective, with a specific focus on the potential for cultured meat to address farm animal suffering and the importance of expanding the circle of concern to help people care more about future beings, wild animals, invertebrates, and artificial sentience.

I think it would be more concise like so:

Other animal initiatives affiliated with effective altruism include Animal Ethics' and Wild Animal Initiative's work on wild animal suffering,[71][72], addressing farm animal suffering with cultured meat, and expanding the circle of concern so that people care more about all kinds of animals.

 Done these are done now! Ruthgrace (talk) 19:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Thank you for making these edits! I like aspects of your edits, but I’d like to suggest some adjustments:

• I propose changing the first sentence from:

Many effective altruists care about animal welfare.[64][65][66]

to

Improving animal welfare has been a focus of many effective altruists. [64][65][66]

I prefer that wording because I think “caring” is less relevant to the article than where resources have been dedicated.

• I propose changing the next few sentences as follows:

Singer argues that effective animal welfare altruists should prioritize changes to factory farming over pet welfare.[67][68] 60 billion land animals are slaughtered and between 1 and 2.7 trillion individual fish are killed each year for human consumption.[69][70][71] Since so many animals are affected, if animals such as chickens have some consciousness, total suffering could be reduced more easily by reducing factory farming than by reducing human poverty.[33]: 138, 146–147

to

The welfare of farmed animals has received particular attention within effective altruism. Advocates of this approach argue that philanthropic resources within the animal welfare movement have thus far been disproportionately focused on the welfare of companion animals (i.e., pets), despite the magnitude of animals involved in industrial agriculture; [67][68] 60 billion land animals are slaughtered and between 1 and 2.7 trillion individual fish are killed each year for human consumption.[69][70][71] Some thinkers, such as Singer, have argued that the magnitude of suffering resulting from industrial agriculture means that, if animals such as chickens have some consciousness, total suffering could be reduced more easily by reducing factory farming than by reducing human poverty.[33]: 138, 146–147

I prefer that wording because I think it’s better to start by being more general and then later moving to arguments from particular philosophers. Also, the sources cited don’t actually talk about Singer’s beliefs; they’re more general. Any thoughts/suggested changes? Seaweed Llama (talk) 03:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey Seaweed Llama! Sorry, I didn't see your reply until now. I encourage you to change anything you feel strongly about in the article directly! My editing style is that I prioritize readability over pretty much anything else, since I think the goal of Wikipedia is to make it easy for a lot of people to read the article and come away with some basic understanding. For this style of editing, the details are not super important. I really like the book On Writing Well by William Zinsser as a guide to writing highly readable non-fiction. But I'm not "in charge" of this page any more than you are. I just hope that you would try to keep readability and conciseness in mind, e.g. by replacing terms such as "have thus far" with "has" and removing words that can be removed without changing the meaning, like removing "particular" in the phrase "received particular attention". Ruthgrace (talk) 02:51, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Criticisms

See responses by Daron Acemoglu, Angus Deaton and more here: http://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism. I don't have the time to edit it in, so I'm leaving it here for someone else to do (or me to later do). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 00:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

This article has criticisms integrated into the main body of the article, but also a separate dedicated criticism section. From Wikipedia's guidelines on criticism, "Often it is best to integrate the negative criticism into the article: negative information is woven throughout the article in the appropriate topical sections. The article does not have a dedicated "Criticism" section." From the wording, this seems to be the preferred approach. Perhaps the article should be restructured to disperse criticism organically throughout the article? Or alternatively, it could all be gathered into the criticism section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:400:C100:5510:9D87:A37F:3ADD:BC39 (talk) 23:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

When a criticism leads to a modification or evolution of part of the philosophy that advances the philosophy while keeping it intact, it makes sense to integrate the criticism into the relevant section, since it has become part of the history of the philosophy's development, but when a criticism is basically a rejection of necessary and fundamental principles of the whole philosophy (i.e. when the philosophy has not been able to respond to or evolve to accommodate the criticism) it may make more sense to keep it in a separate section. Whether the content of the current "Criticism" section pertains to one category or the other would require further evaluation. I am not a supporter of abolishing all "Criticism" sections; the best solution for dealing with this material needs to be decided case-by-case. Biogeographist (talk) 15:28, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, what the IP editor quoted above is from WP:CRIT, which is an WP:ESSAY—not a WP:GUIDELINE. Biogeographist (talk) 15:36, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the criticisms make sense to be worked into the rest of the article.

• "Legitimacy of comparisons within and across causes" can go into the "Cause neutrality"" section
• "Bias toward measurable interventions" cxan be worked into the "Cost effectiveness" section which already speaks to this a little
• "Perceived neglect of radical economic change" can also be worked into the "Cost effectiveness" section as an extension of the discussion on bias towards measurable interventions

We can also add that OpenPhil has spent some money on preventing recessions. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:25, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Copy editing

@Flagrant hysterical curious: You recently added the copy editing tag to this article. Can you explain here what needs to be copy edited? I am wondering if it is the same issues as in the GA review above or something different? Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 21:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Biogeographist: One copy edit related concern I had was that I thought there might be issues with the format of the Criticism section including the headings used. Expansion and editing of this section has been discussed above. Another possible concern (that the definition of Altruism used in the lead/lede might be awkward and could be unnecessary) is found within the lead/lede and I see that rewriting the that section has also recently been mentioned. The use of so many quoted phrases, as well as the use of a list under the Philosophy might be edited to be different and perhaps more encyclopedic or clear and the use of "(see ... below)" within the article could be eliminated. I am not sure if those concerns have been mentioned in the GA review above. Flagrant hysterical curious (talk) 23:01, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I created the list of quoted questions in the Philosophy section. It would be great if someone would accurately rewrite them to avoid having to use quotation marks, but the use of bullet points seems to be the most accessible way to summarize such a large variety of questions. I don't see how collapsing them all into a paragraph would be helpful for readers.

I also created the "see ... below" links. I have learned in the past that some editors apparently don't like them, but I find them helpful, and as far as I know there is nothing against them in the manual of style. How else would you indicate that a topic is covered in more detail later in the article? Biogeographist (talk) 23:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Hey @Biogeographist: I agree with Flagrant hysterical curious about not including the definition of Altruism in the lead. I think the same applies with the definition of Effectiveness. My reason is that 1) These are pretty common words, so I don't think it's worth taking valuable lead space to define them and 2) They have their own articles and people can click on those if they want to know more. Would you be mad if I removed them again? Ruthgrace (talk) 02:24, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I removed them. I agree, they're not essential. Biogeographist (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Philosophy

I would really love to get this article to be perfect, or close to it. One thing that bugs me are the Subsequent Questions in the Effective_altruism#Philosophy section. I think that this information belongs better in a citation or maybe a Philosphy of Effective Altruism sub-article. I also think that it's not very encyclopaedic, in that I think these questions aren't essential to explain the concept of Effective Altruism, and that they're not stable -- other philosophers after Singer may work on Effective Altruism and have different lists of questions. Can I remove these? Ruthgrace (talk) 02:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Putting the questions into a footnote is a great idea, which I've implemented. It keeps the relevant information accessible while greatly improving readability. Biogeographist (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ruthgrace: I moved the philosophy section to later in the article as suggested below. What do you think? I am still opposed to splitting the philosophy into a separate article but this may be an acceptable compromise? Biogeographist (talk) 18:52, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm leaning in favor of keeping the philosophy section in this article (if justifiable, there could at some point be a separate longer article on the "Philosophy of effective altruism" with a summary in the main EA article). I thought moving the philosophy section below the practice and cause priorities sections was an excellent move! -- Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 09:18, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Editing goals

In the interests of making this a perfect article, I'd like to start a conversation about editing goals. Overall, I think that people read Wikipedia to learn about notable aspects of a topic. My opinion is that for Effective Altruism, people are less interested in a deep-dive into the philosophy, and more interested in, for example, the types of initiatives that grew because of the effective altruism movement, and interesting cultural aspects, like Elon Musk and AI Safety. To this end, I would like to propose moving everything in the Effective_altruism#Philosophy section to a separate Philosphy of Effective Altruism article, and either taking an excerpt of the lead of that article for the main Effective Altruism article, or writing a 2 paragraph summary. How do other people feel about this? Ruthgrace (talk) 17:34, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's a link with an explaination of Wikipedia summary style. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I am opposed to a separate Philosophy of effective altruism article. There is not so much philosophy here that it needs to be split off. The prosesize tool says that the readable prose size of the article is currently 25kB, which is far below the purely quantitative threshold for splitting articles per WP:SIZERULE. I don't find the philosophy section to be a very "deep dive". In the absence of evidence that people are "less interested" in the philosophy, I would guess that you're projecting your own interests onto people in general. I didn't find Elon Musk to be very important in the published EA literature when I reviewed it. AI safety is a cause area that presumably some people will be interested in but others won't be (it doesn't interest me very much, for various reasons); it's not the philosophical core of effective altruism. There may be ways to make the philosophy section more concise, but I don't see how it could be condensed to two paragraphs. If you're annoyed that you have to skim through, or skip over, so much philosophy before arriving at what interests you, and if others agree with you, the philosophy section could be moved to later in the article. It makes sense to me to state the philosophy first, but I generally like to see the big-picture "why" first, and this may be no more than my own preference. Biogeographist (talk) 18:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I would love to hear more feedback from others. I think what I'll do is request another Good Article review, but first I'll do some reviews myself to help them out with their backlog. Then whatever the review / reviewer says is what we can work on, and we can also ask them specifically about the Effective_altruism#Philosophy section, and editing goals generally to get the article to good (and maybe eventually featured!) article status.

P.S. If there were anything in this article about Elon Musk, it would probably say something about how AI Safety spawned out of the EA movement, and that people like Elon Musk are on board. (He is unfortunately not a part of the EA community after having a poor experience at EA Global 2015.) Ruthgrace (talk) 05:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I thought about it some more, and I think my concern is that effective altruism is about doing the most good, and if we're using "the literature" to define the movement then we are biased towards people who like to think and write about effective altruism (including a lot of philosophy), which overlaps with but isn't the same as the group of people who practice effective altruism. I think notability (as an average person would define it) should trump the amount of literature on a topic, when we are deciding what is worth spending a lot of words on in this article. The article should be written for a general audience, not tailored for people who are similar to the people already part of the effective altruism community. Ruthgrace (talk) 06:10, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

What's the alternative to using reliable published sources? That's what Wikipedia uses, per WP:RS. You said that people who like to think and write about effective altruism (including a lot of philosophy) ... overlaps with but isn't the same as the group of people who practice effective altruism. But in the area of overlap, the group of people who write about EA and the group of people who practice EA are the same: William MacAskill, for example, who is the most repeatedly cited author in the philosophy section—and he is not the only one cited who is in both "groups". I don't see a contest here between philosophers and philanthropists. It's not a zero-sum game: the philosophy and the philanthropy can both be covered. The philosophy is "notable" as an average person would define it; why wouldn't it be? Your argument (if I understand you correctly) that we shouldn't say much about the philosophy because the article should be written for a general audience doesn't make sense because all of Wikipedia is written for a general audience, and there is plenty of philosophy in Wikipedia (not to mention even more difficult subjects), so it's possible to write about the philosophy for a general audience. So I still don't see any good rationale for splitting the philosophy section into a separate article and/or reducing it to one or two paragraphs. Biogeographist (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I (boldly) added an Impact section to show what I mean! I hope that this section will give more context to people reading this article on what effective altruism does. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts :) Ruthgrace (talk) 19:29, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Wow, that new section sounded to me like it was written by some NGO's public relations office! ("Look at our impact!") Wikipedia is not about selling the subject to readers by convincing them how great the subject is (per WP:NOTADVOCACY). I'm not saying that advocacy was your intention, but that's what the section sounded like to me, and we need to avoid advocacy here per Wikipedia policy. There was some new content in the section that I dispersed into relevant sections. I kept the "famous people" in the lead section since it seems to fit better there than anywhere else. The article by Zachary Pincus-Roth in WaPo Magazine that you cited is a good one. Biogeographist (talk) 23:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think a bunch of facts about the amount of money donated is advocacy. I think it's important information that needs to be upfront. You can call it something other than impact if you like, but I have a strong opinion that there needs to be something in the lead and in the first section about what EA actually does, and not only what the definition is. Maybe the crux of our disagreement is that I think that this article is about the EA movement, while you think the article is about the philosophy of EA. In any case, this has overall been really frustrating editing experience. I was really excited to contribute but I feel like I can't make improvements. Yet I feel strongly that the current state of this article is inadequate equilibria. If you gave me a little freedom I would do all the work it would take to get it to good article status. It's too difficult to work on it right now though. Ruthgrace (talk) 03:53, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe in a dichotomy between the philosophy and practice of effective altruism; much EA philosophy is applied and developed through practice. Also, I don't think that reliable published sources need be biased towards the "philosophy" side rather than the "applied" side. Future Perfect has many articles about how EA ideas are applied in the real world, like this one. I haven't read the article carefully so I don't have a sense of whether it's more heavily weighted toward the "philosophy" or "practice" side, but in principle, I do think we should add information about EA as a practice if there isn't enough. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 06:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Qzekrom. Biogeographist (talk) 13:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Key figures

I weakly think that Kelsey Piper should either be removed from the key figures section or the list of key figures should be quite a bit longer. For instance, if she's included why not Dylan Mathews and Rob Wiblin -- not to mention Ben Todd and Elie Hassenfeld. What do y'all think? Cuvs (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

The list of figures was also questioned in the first GA review above. The list used to be in the lead, then was wisely moved toward the end, but it is questionable whether such a list is necessary at all. A few of the figures are already mentioned in the history section, and if any of the other figures are really so important, they could be mentioned in the history section as well and the "key figures" list could be removed. Piper is already mentioned and linked elsewhere in the article; I'm not advocating removing her from the "key figures" list, but I am saying that the list may be redundant. Biogeographist (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I also think it should be removed. Key figures can be mentioned in their respective sections, e.g. "famous philanthropists associate with EA are..." or "famous entrepreneurs associated with EA are..." Most of the people in the key figures list are already mentioned in this fashion elsewhere in the article, so I think the list isn't worth the amount of space it takes up. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:53, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done I deleted the Key Figures subsection, and I also edited the Effective Altruism template at the bottom of the page (Kelsey Piper and Scott Alexander were in the Key Figures section I deleted but not in the template, so I've added them to the template). Ruthgrace (talk) 00:02, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Definition of Effective Altruism

I see there is some very good feedback from User:J Milburn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effective_altruism/GA1) on how the lead of this article can be made better, and I've decided to take on this task. I want to make sure I get the definition of EA right before I change something so vital to the article. Currently the first sentence is:

> Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates the use of evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to improve the quality of life others.

It's true that evidence-based practices, specifically randomized controlled trials, have been used in the past to determine which interventions are most effective. However, in recent years, the movement has been evolving, with the realization that this kind of "randomista development" is not the most effective (see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bsE5t6qhGC65fEpzN/growth-and-the-case-against-randomista-development). It turns out that doing things like opening up trade with a developing country can do much more to improve citizens' quality of life than health-based interventions. I propose changing the first sentence to the following.

> Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates identifying and contributing to the most effective ways to improve the quality of life others.

I know rationality is a big part of Altruism, and I do see that that community is already mentioned later in the lead. What do you think? Ruthgrace (talk) 01:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

In 2017, MacAskill submitted a document of guiding principles of EA to several EA organizations in the hope that the movement could agree to a single set of principles. At the beginning of that document, a short definition of EA was included. The contacted EA orgs voiced their support for this document.

While it is true that movements do change over time and it would be appropriate to carry those changes over to the EA wikipedia article, when it comes to the lede of this article, I would prefer that the wikipedia page stick to the definition of EA that was agreed to by several EA orgs back in 2017 in that document. This means keeping the "evidence and reason" language. However, that document also seems to support making your proposed change to include "contributing" to the lede. These are just my immediate thoughts; I don't feel certain on this and am open to others' opinions. — Eric Herboso 06:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

No strong take on this. Personally, I quite like the CEA definition in the document that Eric linked to ("Effective altruism is about using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis."). I'm not too worried that mentioning "evidence" in the definition is a misrepresentation of EA since "evidence" in the Bayesian sense is much broader than RCTs. However, I also really like Ruth's formulation, except that I'd favor the simpler formulation "to benefit others" over "to improve the quality of life of others". —— Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I solicited the first GA review at Talk:Effective altruism/GA1, and I already revised the article from the top through the philosophy section to address the review; it is the rest of the article that still needs revision. (I'm not implying that my revisions don't need improvement, but they do address the GA-review issues.) Especially keep in mind the complaints from other editors on this talk page that the article relies too much on primary sources, grey literature, and self-published sources (see, e.g., WP:PSTS, WP:SPS). I addressed this issue in the part of the article that I reviewed by changing the cited sources (and changing the text to reflect the sources, of course) to published books and articles as much as possible. Eric Herboso above said that he liked a certain document by MacAskill, but that is merely a web page, and MacAskill says basically the same statements in a published and presumably peer-reviewed article in the journal Essays in Philosophy, so it is a preferable source and is already cited in the first sentence and in several other places in the article. There are also published sources in the "Further reading" section (mostly about philosophy) that are not yet cited in the article but could be. A big problem with Ruthgrace's recent edit to the first sentence (which I've partially reverted, as the edit is otherwise fine) is not sticking to the cited sources, and again the sources are published sources, not posts from forum.effectivealtruism.org. Biogeographist (talk) 17:19, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi Biogeographist! Really appreciate all the work you've done on this. Do you think we could ask for another Good Article review, since you've already addressed the feedback from before? I feel like for it to be a Good Article, it should be more succinct, and some of the more specific philosophy stuff can maybe moved to relevant philosophy pages. However, I'm relatively new to editing Wikipedia, so it might be worth it to get a 3rd party opinion. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:34, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I haven't recently looked at the remaining issues from the past GA review, so I don't remember how much work remains to be done. It seemed like a lot of work to me at the time, but that may be because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and someone with lower standards may want to look at it! In any case, it's best to make sure the issues from the first GA review are resolved before soliciting another one. Biogeographist (talk) 17:40, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Biogeographist, Ruthgrace, thank you both for everything you've done and are doing on this article! Just to chime in here, I think the article needs more continued attention before it's resubmitted for the GA review. My sense is that it could use general improvement, including tightening up of individual sections and potentially tweaks to the organization and flow of the sections overall, as well as a more comprehensive resolution of the issues from the first GA review. I haven't looked through everything from the GA review, but at least parts of it are outstanding; I think the Greaves/Pummer book could be referenced more extensively and the McMahan referenced in-line, and I think the overall sourcing could use some improvement. My suggestion would be that we circle back for a GA review after the article has undergone further revision, but that's just my two cents! Seaweed Llama (talk) 05:17, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I think what Eric Herboso said about the fact that the CEA/MacAskill definition is endorsed by a number of organizations does give that definition a lot of legitimacy, and a way to acknowledge that would be to insert a quotation as follows, which directly quotes the part of the CEA/MacAskill definition that is in the first cited source: Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". I think this is superior to the current first sentence, since it doesn't repeat the word "effective" and adds the important "taking action" part. It also eliminates the quasi-citogenesis involved in citing Singer (who quotes Wikipedia), which I've felt uneasy about ever since I did it. Biogeographist (talk) 21:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm super happy with your resolution of this, User:Biogeographist! Thanks for making the edits to the page. I'm going to move this discussion to a subpage now that it's resolved. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I reverted the move to a subpage because old sections should be archived at the same place used by the auto-archiving bot when auto-archiving is enabled as it is on this talk page. I believe there is a tool that can be used to archive manually to the right place; I have seen other editors use the tool, but I have never used it myself. The settings of the auto-archiving bot may need to be tweaked; right now it's set to archive sections that are 5 years old, which could be changed to something more frequent. In any case, it may be premature to archive this particular section since the discussion is so fresh. Biogeographist (talk) 03:13, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Rework the "Criticism" section into a "Reception" section

First, I think we should change it to a "Reception" section, so it incorporates positive and negative things that outsiders have said about the EA movement, as well as neutral commentary by outsiders. A criticism section is bad practice anyway.

Second, I'd like to see more coverage of how EA is received outside developed, English-speaking countries. The EA movement is concentrated in the US and UK, but since people in the Global South are the main beneficiaries of EA's global development efforts, and EA animal advocacy orgs are doing more outreach into the Global South (particularly Latin America, Africa, and Asia), it'd be good to incorporate more information on how EA is received in these regions. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 07:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I disagree that "A criticism section is bad practice anyway" in all cases; WP:CRIT is an essay not a guideline, as I mentioned above in § Criticisms, and WP:CRIT just says that a Criticism section should be avoided when it draws "undue attention to negative viewpoints". I don't think the Criticism section here draws undue attention, nor has it been a troll magnet. I don't think that "Reception" currently makes sense as a title for the section: much of the positive reception of EA is already implicit in the rest of the article insofar as it describes a number of organizations and a movement of people adopting the philosophy. The Criticism section currently contains critiques, not positive and negative reactions, so let's call it what it is: criticism.

It's a good idea to "globalize" the article, but confining "the rest of the world" to a separate section may not be the best approach (unless it's criticism, in which case it makes sense in a Criticism section). Biogeographist (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I also don't think that Qzekrom's vision of the article as divided into "outsiders" and (implied) insiders is good. "Effective altruism" refers to a philosophy and practical project, not just to a community (see current footnote 4 in the article), and "effective altruist" minimally refers to a person who endorses that philosophy and tries to implement that practical project; it does not necessarily mean that the person participates in the EA community. So the article should not be seen as being about a group of insiders as opposed to some outsiders, in my view. Biogeographist (talk) 15:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Global poverty alleviation → Global health and development

I've renamed the section on global poverty alleviation to "Global health and development", to emphasize that the EA movement focuses on both global poverty and cost-effective global health interventions. The section currently puts too much emphasis on global poverty and not enough on global health, so I could use some help adding more details about global health to make it more balanced. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 03:49, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Added images

I added four images to the article; please feel free to replace the images or improve the captions. Here are some notes on a few of the images and why I chose them:

• File:Ravi Varma-Lady Giving Alms at the Temple.jpg - a painting of an aristocratic Indian woman giving alms. I decided to use this image to illustrate the section on donation, and particularly to illustrate the idea of earning to give (since she is rich).
• File:FlorentineCodex BK12 F54 smallpox.jpg - an illustration of Nahua people infected with smallpox. I chose this image to represent pandemics because the diseases brought by the Columbian exchange killed an estimated 90% of the indigenous American population. Extremely devastating pandemics such as the Black Death and the Columbian epidemic are the focus of the EA movement within biological risks.
• I chose both images because they depict non-European peoples, and I wanted to counter systemic bias in how these concepts are presented. We already use a French illustration to represent impartiality, so I thought these would balance it out.

Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 04:13, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

None of these are directly related to the subject. Removed. Even though they accompany the prose about certain aspects, they do not support the subject as a whole. It comes across like marketing for this philosophy, or maybe just trying to prop up a page when it already has sourcing that has been called into question. If anything, the images confused me as a reader as I tried to figure out how they were related. Outdatedpizza (talk) 06:08, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Improving sourcing

The previous GA review of this article highlighted sourcing issues. As it currently is, the article relies too much on self-published sources, primary sources, and grey literature. See WP:PSTS and WP:SPS for more information on Wikipedia sourcing guidelines. In particular, there are a number of references to the websites for EA-affiliated orgs, including 10 (!) for 80,000 Hours, 6 for GiveWell, 5 for the Open Philanthropy Project, and a few each for various other organizations, such as the Centre for Effective Altruism. There are also 2 references to the EA Forum that definitely need to be replaced, in my understanding.

I’m going to get to work at improving the sourcing, but I’d appreciate some help. Also, I would appreciate if someone could clarify the extent to which these sources are permissible per Wkipedia sourcing guidlines; it’s not always clear to me when primary sources are appropriately used in this article. Regardless, I think it would definitely be helpful to reduce the amount that they’re used as a starting point. Seaweed Llama (talk) 05:00, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The issue of improving sourcing was repeatedly discussed earlier; anyone who is new to editing the article can review the talk page archive, most recently the "Sourcing" section. In early 2020, I tried reducing the references to EA orgs starting from the top but didn't get through the whole article, and the article has been rearranged since then. I agree that the EA Forum is not an appropriate source in general, but there is one reference to it in the history section that should stay, namely:

MacAskill, William (March 10, 2014). "The history of the term 'effective altruism'". forum.effectivealtruism.org. Archived from the original on February 20, 2020. Retrieved February 2, 2020.

It is written by MacAskill, which makes it an exception to WP:SPS: "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications". Some other reasons to keep it is that it does not contradict what published sources say about the history, and it provides details about the history that are not available elsewhere.

If there is a question about a particular source, the reasons for including or excluding it can be discussed here, as I did for MacAskill's EA Forum post above. Biogeographist (talk) 17:56, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much for sharing that! Very helpful and I will work based on that info as well. Seems reasonable on the MacAskill bit. Thank you! Seaweed Llama (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Evidence-based decision-making, in and out of government

I think evidence-based philanthropy is important. However, I am also interested in evidence-based policy. One could argue that it is more vital for us to get our government policy right (or aligned with evidence) than philanthropy. For example, governments can start wars and often has a monopoly on violence. Government can put people in jail, take property, and destroy or help people in ways that philanthropy can't. They can mismanage global pandemics, education, and science. Anyways, I feel the Evidence-based policy page is essential. However, it is very poorly written. Also, is there any way to focus them both inside the larger world of evidence-based decision-making? Does it matter that one is government-based decision-making, and the other is private? I know that it will count for some of their pages, but they should also overlap. Shouldn't they have the same goals, history, philosophy, and processes? Can we make an effort to place them both within a larger context, or at least distinguish between them better? I hope you have a chance to check out the Evidence-based policy and Evidence-based legislation sites. Myclob (talk) 03:15, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Name calling

Isn't this just name calling: "Ken Berger and Robert Penna of Charity Navigator, writing in Stanford Social Innovation Review, derided effective altruism as "defective altruism"" Myclob (talk)

I am OK with the next part. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to just keep it: "condemned its practice of "weighing causes and beneficiaries against one another", calling this "moralistic, in the worst sense of the word". Myclob (talk) 03:50, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

How else are we supposed to evaluate the relative merit of different goals, without evidence? I'm not sure their argument makes any sense? Are we supposed to use anecode, and bad logic? We have to chose using good logic, or bad logic. Shouldn't we chose to use good logic? Myclob (talk)

MacAskill responded in the same magazine, defending the rationale for comparing one beneficiary's interests against another and concluding that such comparison is difficult and sometimes impossible but often necessary.Myclob (talk) 03:50, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is name calling, but it perfectly accurately represents the tone of Berger & Penna's article. I noticed when the "defective altruism" quote was added in this edit, and I didn't object because the quote accurately represents the intellectual level of the quoted article. And that's not complimentary toward the article. Biogeographist (talk) 15:31, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Just a friendly reminder that we are not here to draw personal conclusions or eliminate/editorialize criticisms when they are WP:DUE. We are here to focus on WP:RS and how/where to include it. We must also be careful to maintain WP:NPOV by not putting author's or any particular subject's views in WP:VOICE...DN (talk) 19:55, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, but the term in question was recently edited out anyway, so it's a moot point. Biogeographist (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Good Article Review #2

Hi Mujinga, really appreciate you taking the time to review. It's super helpful to have guidance on how to improve the article. I have 2 questions:

1. You talked about the lead not having 3-4 fully formed paragraphs. It seems to me from the style guide that the length is a suggestion. Do you have specific feedback on the lead and how it can serve its purpose better?

2. Same question for the Entrepreneurship section. You wrote, "Only one sentence of explanation before going into examples". Was there anything specific missing in the explanation that we should expand on?

All the best Ruthgrace (talk) 01:38, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Hiya. The lead does not adequately summarize the article currently, but I didn't get into it further because I found larger structural issues, which would necessitate rewriting and therefore a new lead. Each major sections should at least be mentioned in the lead; I can say at the moment there are citations in the lead which don't need to be there since the summarized info should be cited in the body and there seems to be info which isn't mentioned below eg the figure of $416 million. Perhaps it's worth reading all of MOS:LEAD, there is a specific "house style" and it is a GA requirement to fit to it without a good reason to the contrary. "Only one sentence of explanation before going into examples" - what I meant there was that it's great that you give examples, but these should be illustrating the (philosophical) arguments for entrepreneurship which are missing. Good luck with the article, I was thinking just now it is a hard task to do the topic justice. Mujinga (talk) 13:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. Thanks again! Ruthgrace (talk) 18:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Re: there seems to be info which isn't mentioned below—if Mujinga implied by this comment that everything in the lead also needs to be in the article body, this is not correct. A lead section has multiple functions, only one of which is summarizing the article. MOS:LEAD says that the lead "serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents" (notice the two functions mentioned: introduce and summarize) and "should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies" (notice the multiple functions listed). The sentence containing "$416 million" could be considered part of introducing and establishing context instead of summarizing, but if so could be separated from the article summary. Biogeographist (talk) 17:34, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Pasting the contents of Good Article Review #2 so we can mark what's been addressed. Ruthgrace (talk) 22:12, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Earwig gives some high hits, mostly quotes but there's a bit of closeparaphrasing in "Cause priorities"
• Article is stable

Lead

• This will need some work, I'll come back to it last [quickfailed so didn't do this]
• At 46k prose size there should be three or four whole paragraphs summarizing the article, per MOS:LEADLENGTH

Clarification from the reviewer: Hiya. The lead does not adequately summarize the article currently, but I didn't get into it further because I found larger structural issues, which would necessitate rewriting and therefore a new lead. Each major sections should at least be mentioned in the lead; I can say at the moment there are citations in the lead which don't need to be there since the summarized info should be cited in the body and there seems to be info which isn't mentioned below eg the figure of $416 million. Perhaps it's worth reading all of MOS:LEAD, there is a specific "house style" and it is a GA requirement to fit to it without a good reason to the contrary.

*  Done I've reduced it to 4 paragraphs, and made sure that all major sections (currently History, Philosophy, Practice, and Cause Priorities) are touched on. Someone else has put the $416M number in the Donations section. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Practice

• I'll have more of a handle on this after reading the whole article, but this isn't how I would imagine the article would begin. Right now this first paragraph feels like an advert for Deworm the World, whereas I would be expecting mention of who first came up with the idea and an introduction to the themes of donation and career, to be expanded below

 Done Ruthgrace (talk) 22:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm interpreting this and other structural feedback below to say that it would be a good idea to put the History section (which explains who came up with the idea) closer to the top. To this end, I've expanded the history section so that it is more accurate; previously it gave a very CEA-centric history. Ruthgrace (talk) 22:15, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Got some feedback from a friend on the history section, fixed it up, and moved it up top! Ruthgrace (talk) 22:27, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I also reduced mention of Deworm the World in the Practice section; hopefully that helps. Ruthgrace (talk) 22:30, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Donation

• "who had become wealthy through Facebook" - you mean by investing in Fbook?

 Done Someone else has fixed this, it now says "who had become wealthy through co-founding Facebook" Ruthgrace (talk) 22:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• " estimates that effective altruism has roughly $46 billion committed to effective charities" - well the source says "How much funding is committed to effective altruism (going forward)? Around $46 billion." It doesn't say it's in charities. Further, the article has more stats that might be worth adding

 Done updated the wording to say "roughly $46 billion has been committed to effective altruism" Ruthgrace (talk) 22:34, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Career choice

• Link The Most Good You Can Do on first mention and not later

 Done someone else has fixed this already. thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 22:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Entrepreneurship

• Only one sentence of explanation before going into examples

I asked the reviewer for clarification above, and they said "what I meant there was that it's great that you give examples, but these should be illustrating the (philosophical) arguments for entrepreneurship which are missing." The philosophical arguments for entrepreneurship is probably that all the ways of effectively doing good likely haven't been discovered yet, and so the movement needs entrepreneurs to start new ventures so that we can have more and better ways of doing good. Ruthgrace (talk) 22:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I took a crack at it and changed the beginning of the section to say "Some effective altruists believe that best possible ways of benefiting others as much as possible might not exist yet and become entrepreneurs. Such entrepreneurs may start non-profit organizations to implement cost-effective ways of improving well-being, for-profit organizations to earn to give, or for-profit organizations to make social impact." Mujinga, am I going in the right direction? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruthgrace (talk • contribs) 22:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm gonna update this to "Some effective altruists become entrepreneurs, aiming to either make money for philanthropy or find even better ways of doing good that don't exist yet." Ruthgrace (talk) 04:04, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Cause priorities

• There's some close paraphrasing here with International Encyclopedia of Ethics. We have: Examples of causes include providing food for those with food insecurity, protecting endangered species, mitigating climate change, reforming immigration policy, researching cures for illnesses, preventing sexual violence, alleviating poverty, eliminating factory farming, or averting nuclear warfare. and it has" They include, for example, feeding the hungry, protecting endangered species, mitigating climate change, reforming immigration policy, researching cures for illnesses, preventing sexual violence, aiding those in extreme poverty, eliminating factory farming, averting nuclear war.

 Done I went ahead and deleted this sentence. Ruthgrace (talk) 22:50, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Global health and development

• "direct unconditional cash transfers" what does unconditional mean here?

 Done Someone deleted "unconditional" here. Thanks! Ruthgrace (talk) 00:00, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• this section could be pulled together into two paragrpahs

 Done Ruthgrace (talk) 00:05, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Animal welfare

• " total suffering could be reduced more easily" - who is arguing this

 Done someone else has removed this. thanks! Ruthgrace (talk) 00:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Other animal initiatives affiliated with effective altruism include Animal Ethics' and Wild Animal Initiative's work on wild animal suffering,[73][74] addressing farm animal suffering with cultured meat,[75][76] and expanding the circle of concern so that people care more about all kinds of animals.[77][78][38] - does this sentence really need seven citations?

Mujinga Is it necessary to remove citations for Good Article? I'm not sure how this fits into the good article criteria. Ruthgrace (talk) 00:07, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Long-term future and global catastrophic risks

• The Ord quote should be a blockquote per MOS:BQ but also you could trim it

 Done (turned into blockquote) Ruthgrace (talk) 00:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Philosophy

• "and most reason to benefit them as much as possible" - who said this

 Done I ended up removing this sentence becaues I felt it contradicted the next sentence. Ruthgrace (talk) 00:16, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• "how to approach hard questions" - who said this

 Done I think someone else removed this. Thanks! Ruthgrace (talk) 00:16, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• This could be pulled into two paragraphs

I will leave the last single-paragraph sentence alone for now because it introduces the sections, and I see below that the reviewer has questioned whether or not one of the sections should exist. Ruthgrace (talk) 00:16, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done that last sentence is deleted now! Ruthgrace (talk) 22:57, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Impartiality

• only link Peter Singer on first mention (as well as lead and image captions)

 Done Ruthgrace (talk) 23:00, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• I'm getting a bit lost here to be honest, I'll come back to this in a genera comment

I think this section would be more effective if it were only one paragraph explaining what impartiality means in the context of effective altruism, including which famous person talked about it first (Singer, 1972). I will work on it. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done Ruthgrace (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Obstacles

• Not sure if this needs its own (sub)section
• "Sociological research" - one paper or a school of thought?

 Done someone's removed this. thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 17:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Cause prioritization

• importance, tractability, and neglectedness. Importance is the amount of value that would be created if a problem were solved, and tractability is the fraction of a problem that would be solved if additional resources were devoted to it. These three criteria - only two of the three were defined

someone else has defined neglectedness. thank you! Ruthgrace (talk) 17:49, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done Ruthgrace (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Cost-effectiveness

• The article is not reading very well to me I'm afraid, we seem to be veering from topic to topic without signposting

 Done I've moved this under Practice > Themes. Hopefully that will help. Previously this was under Philosophy. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:12, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Room for more funding

• unneeded header

 Done someone's removed this. thank you!

Anti-capitalist and institutional critiques

• These critiques should be in their own third level section, they are a vital part of the article

I feel that articles have a more neutral point of view when the criticisms are folded into the main body of the article. (see Wikipedia:Criticism#Integrated_throughout_the_article) I've folded the content in this section into the section about Cost Effectiveness. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• lots of names mentioned without saying who they are or where they are writing

 Done I removed some of the names. Of the remaining names, one has a publication attached, and I've noted that the other is a philosopher Ruthgrace (talk) 23:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Counterfactual reasoning

• What a bizarre paragraph to have its own section.

 Done I've moved this under Practice > Themes, which I think makes more sense than having it under Philosophy. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:12, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

History

• I would expect at least some of the information here at the beginning of the article, not at the end

 Done History is now the first section of the article after the lead Ruthgrace (talk) 23:01, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

References

• I'd suggest splitting out the notes

Hi Mujinga, do you mind clarifying what you mean here? Should there be two different reference sections for notes versus citations? What about notes about citations? Thanks in advance. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:58, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• More detailed comments would follow but I'm afraid this article already needs a lot of work. More below.

Overall comments

• Having had a close read of this article, there are I think structural issues here. I would expect an article on effective altruism to begin by saying where the name came from, when it was first proposed, who proposed it, what books/articles are seminal and so on. Compare for example our articles on Existentialism or (better perhaps) Accelerationism. Instead we start with a paragraph focused mainly on Deworm the World. The article does a good job of giving examples of groups/people engaging in effective altruism but unfortunately could do a lot better in explaining what it is.

 Done I've tried to address this by moving the History and Philosophy section to the top. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• The structure of the article is not working for me. We need signposting and by the time we got into the philosophy it's like we enter a different article. And then within philosophy we get to a section which is a single paragraph on counterfactual reasoning which just seems bizarre to me. The history should prob be at the beginning and then a clearer, signposted structure is needed as at Accelerationism. I guess I would like something along the lines of 1 what is it 2 philosophical underpinnings 3 themes and realworld examples 4 criticisms

 Done See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effective_altruism#reworking_the_philosophy_section Ruthgrace (talk) 23:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Yew-Kwang Ng and Derek Parfit are both mentioned in the nav box as "key figures" but they aren't in the article. Severla works mentioned as key aren't in the article.

 Done mentioned in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism#Philosophy section. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:11, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• The prose could be improved as there are quite a lot of single sentence paragraphs

 Done I only found one single sentence paragraph in the Career choice section, and have copy-edited that section including removing the single sentence paragraph. I think the rest of the single sentence paragraphs have been removed by others. There's one more remaining in the Criticisms section that I am going to fold into the rest of the article. Ruthgrace (talk) 23:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Overall I'm going to quickfail this now since the article in its current state does not meet 1 and 3 of the good article criteria and I find it hard to imagine these problems could be fixed in a week. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I'd be happy to clarify if anything is not clear but I think this will take some work before becoming a good article. I was going to suggest consulting WikiProject Philosophy then I saw there is actually WikiProject Effective Altruism as well. Mujinga (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

reworking the philosophy section

The Good Article Reviewer recommended this structure to the article:

1. what is it
2. philosophical underpinnings
3. themes and realworld examples
4. criticisms

I've moved the History section up top, so hopefully along with the lead, people will have a good understanding of what EA is at the top of the article.

For philosophical underpinnings, I noticed that out of all the Principles listed, it seems to me that the only one is Impartiality, and the rest are related to applying impartiality to effective altruism work (cost-effectiveness, counterfactual reasoning, etc). So I'm wondering if it would be alright to reduce the philosophy section to the two beginning paragraphs plus one paragraph about impartiality. I think the other sections -- cause prioritization, cost-effectiveness, and counterfactual reasoning can be incorporated into the Practice section or a themes section. What do you think? Ruthgrace (talk) 17:58, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Maybe Themes can the first subsection under Practice? Ruthgrace (talk) 21:11, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I've done it to see how it feels. This is the revision for the reorganization: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effective_altruism&type=revision&diff=1091868489&oldid=1091868060 Ruthgrace (talk) 21:32, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

thumbnail for link sharing

It looks like the thumbnail when this article is shared on social media is the "aristocratic woman giving alms", but I'd like it to be the "Women and children receive anti-malarial nets in Malawi.". Anyone know how to change that? Ruthgrace (talk) 00:01, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Recent revisions

Recently there were many revisions to this article by Ruthgrace. Without mentioning the problems that I see, I first want to ask if other editors have examined the changes and think the current version is better than the version before Ruthgrace's revisions? Biogeographist (talk) 03:17, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Good question. I've been working on the article to try to address the feedback from our second failed Good Article Review. I don't necessarily think the reviewer necessarily knows best, but I think it makes sense to follow their recommendations. I've been keeping track of that here: Talk:Effective_altruism#Good_Article_Review_#2 Ruthgrace (talk) 20:27, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

It has been two weeks and nobody has answered my question above. Is anyone else watching this page? Biogeographist (talk) 12:17, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I had a glance at the diff between then and current, and reviewed a couple of the contributions. Nothing looked like it was a particular problem to me, particularly in the context of someone working to GA recommendations, but it wasn't a thorough check Joe (talk) 18:20, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Deworming debunked

Effective Aatruism goes hand in hand with proper science. One of the main causes advertised on this page was supposedly debunked in a study published in BMJ in 2015. It seems that what was once thought to be a cost-effective cause might have turned out to not be silver bullet everybody is advertising here. If what this study is true, it is very problematic.

Why is there absolutely no mention on this? Why is GiveWell not putting a pinch on salt of the early findings?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/23/research-global-deworming-programmes 2A02:8108:4640:10CB:2042:C354:FFC1:22B4 (talk) 12:30, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

“Our current view is that these new papers do not change our overall assessment of the evidence on deworming, and we continue to recommend the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative and the Deworm the World Initiative”. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/deworming-really-effective-response-recent-deworming-studies DashDashUnderscore (talk) 14:18, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

This is a very long topic and it's pretty complicated is the answer. There are also other new studies which back the original findings IIRC correctly. Nathan PM Young (talk) 17:00, 5 October 2022 (UTC)