A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm?
- This Economist article asking if effective altruism has lost its way is well worth a read: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm?
- This Economist article asking if effective altruism has lost its way is well worth a read: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad
- Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
- If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
- For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com