[Linkpost] “Doing Good Effectively is Unusual” by Richard Y Chappell

EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular) - A podcast by EA Forum Team

tl;dr: It actually seems pretty rare for people to care about the general good as such (i.e., optimizing cause-agnostic impartial well-being), as we can see by prejudged dismissals of EA concern for non-standard beneficiaries and for doing good via indirect means.Introduction.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 among one's life projects. (One can do this in a “non-totalizing” way, i.e. without it being one's only project.) Anyone who personally adopts that project (to any non-trivial extent) counts, in my book, as an effective altruist (whatever their opinion of the EA movement and its institutions).Many people don’t adopt this explicit goal as a personal priority to any degree, but still do significant good via more particular commitments (to more specific communities, causes, or individuals). [...] ---Outline:(03:14) Let's be honest(08:36) OK, but what about the actual movement/institutions?(09:32) Serious Evaluation Goes Beyond VibesThe original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: December 1st, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YKidYukDhKLBtDqsh/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual Linkpost URL:https://rychappell.substack.com/p/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.