Episode Details

Subtitle: Sometimes the easily defended view is the one you really want

The most striking thing about effective altruism, dialectically, is that it's a neglected truism:

Moral truisms may still be widely ignored. The moral truism underlying Effective Altruism is that we have strong reasons to do more good, and it's worth adopting the efficient promotion of the impartial good as one among one's many life projects.

Most people do not, in fact, adopt the efficient promotion of the impartial good as even one among their many life projects. That's a shame! I think more people should try this, and I take encouraging this change to be a constitutive aim of the EA movement (along with helping those attempting this project to pursue it more effectively).

Those who don’t like this idea generally don’t reject it explicitly. Nobody says, “As one of the wealthiest people in history, I would really much prefer to keep over 90% of my income for personal consumption, get moral kudos for purely symbolic acts, and not have to think at all about the interests of emotionally unappealing moral patients like shrimp or distant future generations.” But nor will they endorse the moderate EA ask. [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 4th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NT3j5dwEEGL8neB8P/the-schmotte-and-bailey-fallacy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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