What to Say (Pitch Guide)
Content
How to Use This Guide
This article has suggestions about how to concisely talk about EA, commonly called “Pitches”. “Pitch” isn’t really the right word though, because it is best not to think about your conversation as a sales pitch, but more about letting a person know about EA ideas, so they can learn more if they are interested.
Have a read through these suggestions and pull out a few to try yourself. For example, as part of a conversation you could:
Give a simple summary of EA
Give a reason why you personally find EA ideas compelling
Explain cause prioritisation and a couple of high-impact cause areas to work on
Or describe a couple of your favourite charities.
Ways to Frame Your Introduction to EA
EA is a question
Effective altruism is a movement united by the question, “Using the resources I have, how can I do the most good?”
Idea from Helen Toner (Source)
EA has three parts
Effective altruism is a growing social movement founded on:
Desire to make the world as good a place as it can be
The use of evidence and reason to find out how to do so, and
The willingness to take action.
Idea from CEA
You probably already agree with EA
Here are four ideas that you probably already agree with. Individually, they each might seem a bit trite or self-evident. But taken together, they have significant implications for how we think about doing good.
It’s important to help others
Everyone should be valued equally
Helping more is better than helping less
Our resources are limited, so we should prioritise how we use them.
So if we agree that these four ideas embody important values — and I think that they do — then there are big implications for how we should act. The best options for improving lives are sometimes hundreds of times better than the average. That might mean the difference between helping one person, and helping hundreds of people for exactly the same amount of time or money. Therefore, we should first focus on the causes where we can help the most people with our limited time and money, not just on those that we happen to have already heard about.
From Sam Deere (Source)
Or focusing more on the ‘final point’ - EA helps us prioritise: The reality of the above points is hard, we will always instinctively care more for the people we see, despite knowing that there are millions of people around the world dying of entirely preventable causes. Acknowledging that it makes no difference that they aren’t in front of us means we are always in triage. EA helps us decide where we can help the most first.
Idea from Holly Elmore (Source)
EA is a response to our empathy towards others
Most of us want to make a difference - to do something - when we see suffering, injustice and death. But working out what that ‘something’ is, let alone actually doing it, is difficult, and the challenge can be disheartening. EA is a response to this challenge. It is a research field using high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help others as much as possible. It is also a community of people taking these answers seriously, by focusing their efforts on the most promising solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
Idea from effectivealtruism.org
EA is a much-needed ethical revolution
In terms of power to change the world, we live in an unprecedented time in human history - the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions transformed both our understanding of the world and our ability to alter it, but our ethical understanding hasn’t yet caught up with this. What we need is an ethical revolution so that we can work out how to use these resources to improve the world. There are many issues to address if you want to tackle this: whether to do good through charity, your career or political engagement, what programs to focus on, who to work with. But what I think is the most fundamental problem is; Of all the many problems that the world faces, which should we try to solve first?
From Will MacAskill (Source)
EA is about overcoming unawareness
Most people aren’t fully aware of the extent of global problems, or do know but aren’t sure how to address them; instead, they work on things they feel they understand better. EA is a response to this unawareness. Note: this naturally provokes questions about the extent of problems or how to address them, and doesn’t appear to blame others, since “not being aware” is morally neutral and not shameful to imply.
Idea from Aaron Gertler (Source)
EA is about overcoming indifference
All the major causes of suffering in the world seem to be the result of the absence of caring, or numbness to the suffering (i.e. indifference). For example, factory farming is not the result of human hatred towards non-human animals but of human indifference towards the intense suffering of these animals. EA is the serious attempt to overcome our collective indifference towards the major causes of suffering in the world. Note: If you use this framing, ensure you make it clear you are not insinuating the person you are talking to is indifferent, more that society is generally indifferent.
Idea from Darius Meissner (Source)
EA combines the head and the heart
Effective Altruism is important because it combines both the heart and the head. The heart, of course, you feel. But it’s really important to use the head as well to make sure that what you do is effective and well-directed, and reason helps us to understand that other people, wherever they are, are like us, that they can suffer as we can, that parents grieve for the deaths of their children, as we do, and that just as our lives and our well-being matter to us, it matters just as much to all of these people.
From Peter Singer (Source)
OR: When you really care about someone, and that person needs help, you don’t just want any random help - you want the best possible help. EA is about showing that we really care by using research and evidence to give people the best possible help.
From Julia Wise (Source)
Why is EA Important?
Doing good is a major part of living a satisfying life
Emphasise doing good as an approach goal, rather than an avoidance goal (e.g. to avoid guilt, to avoid breaking moral obligations), based on a desire to improve the lives of others. Altruism is a major part of a truly worthwhile and well rounded life.
Idea from Will MacAskill, Roman Duda and Ben Todd
You are richer than you might think
Most people think that millionaires should give something back. But it may surprise you to learn that those of us on or above the median wage in the developed world are usually within the richest 5% of people in the world, and have more than 20 times the median income in the world. I feel very lucky/privileged to live in the developed world, to have been educated, to be literate, to have access to good food and medical care, etc.
A lot of people aren’t as lucky, and it doesn’t seem fair that I should get to live in luxury, relative to almost everyone else, because I happened to be born lucky. I want to share my good luck with people who aren’t as fortunate, and EA helps me do that.
We have an amazing opportunity
Extreme global inequality, the ease with which we can move money/resources, and the technology that allows us to research the effectiveness of interventions provides those of us in the developed world an unprecedented opportunity to save lives and to prevent suffering. Almost no human who has existed in the generations prior to us will have had so much power to help others. Each of us could save the lives of tens or hundreds of children or prevent the suffering of thousands of people, without even making a significant difference to our own standards of living.
Ideas from Sam Hilton based on ideas in talk by Toby Ord
We have an obligation to help others (the “Drowning Child” argument)
Note: Talk about obligation with care, the risk is that it can seem judgemental towards others. Consider talking about how you feel an obligation, rather than that we have an obligation. More discussion on this topic here.
Imagine you are walking past a shallow muddy pond, and you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. You have to act immediately to save the child. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy, but it will mean that you get your expensive clothes and your fancy smartphone would be ruined. The question is - do you have any obligation to rescue the child? Most people say they do, as the importance of saving a child so far outweighs the cost of ruined belongings. Would it make any difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps, but similarly in danger of death, and equally within your means to save, at no great cost – and absolutely no danger – to yourself? We are all in that situation of the person passing the shallow pond: we can all save lives of people, both children and adults, who would otherwise die, and we can do so at a relatively small cost to us.
Idea from Peter Singer (Source)
We need to consider cost-effectiveness
Most people give to nearby causes. Many people in wealthy nations usually donate to causes that are close to them, or causes that affect wealthy people (over 90% in the case of donations from the US stay in the US) - leaving little money for international issues. But, our money doesn’t go very far in very rich countries, while in low income countries people die of diseases that could be prevented or cured easily and cheaply.
The charitable sector lacks normal economic forces. Imagine two pizzerias in your town, each serving high-quality pizzas, but one for $500, and the other for $5. That sounds crazy, but what do you think would happen? No one would buy the expensive pizza and they would go out of business. Charities aren’t bound by the same economic forces, because the people donating aren’t the same people receiving the benefit. Even though some charities are hundreds of time more cost-effective (cheaper to do more good), it is the charities that are better at advertising that get the most money.
Guide-dog example. The Blind Foundation can help someone with incurable blindness by providing a guide dog, for $50,000, who can provide service for about 9 years. However, The Fred Hollows Foundation can cure blindness from cataracts through a simple surgery, for about $1000 (in some low-income countries), Both The Blind Foundation and The Fred Hollows Foundation are helping people, but one is having a much bigger impact, with the same resources. (Source)
HIV/AIDS example. Surgery to treat Kaposi’s Sarcoma (a common cancer in people with AIDS) is an effective treatment, but it is expensive. In comparison, improving education for high-risk groups reduces the spread of HIV and AIDS - and it’s estimated to be 1,400 times more cost-effective than surgical treatment for Kaposi’s sarcoma. (Source.)
Cause Prioritisation
Scale, Neglectedness, and Tractability
We choose to work on causes according to whether the cause is
Great in scale (it affects many lives, by a great amount)
Highly neglected (few other people are working on the problem), and
Highly tractable (additional resources will do a great deal to alleviate it).
From Will MacAskill (Source)
EA encompasses a wide range of interventions
To do the most good, we don’t want to restrict ourselves to a specific cause area, or only to actions we can rigorously study, so EAs look for actions that exist on a scale: (Source)
At one end - very cost-effective, with strong evidence of their impact, e.g. insecticide treated bednets.
At the other - actions that we don’t know will help but, if they do help, could be extraordinarily cost-effective, e.g. advocating for policy changes that could improve the lives of many.
Current Key Cause Areas
Global health impacts billions, it is super solvable, and some interventions/areas are incredibly neglected. We have an amazing track record - rates of death from measles, malaria, diarrheal disease are down by over 70 percent, and in 1980 smallpox was eradicated. On our current best estimates, we can save a life by distributing just a few thousand dollars worth of long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets.
Factory farming impacts billions of non-human animals, is something we can easily impact and is super neglected. There are 70 billion land animals used every year for food, and the vast majority of them are factory farmed, living in conditions of horrific suffering. They’re probably among the worst-off creatures on this planet, and in many cases, we could significantly improve their lives for just pennies per animal.
Existential risks are events like a nuclear war or a global pandemic that could permanently derail civilization or even lead to the extinction of the human race. This is highly neglected, mostly due to indifference toward less tangible problems, especially those affecting future generations, as well as scope insensitivity. These problems still seem reasonably tractable though - there are various ways you can contribute with your money, your career or your political engagement.
From Will MacAskill (Source)
Describe a particular effective charity
Talking about the general principles of EA can be quite abstract, so it is often useful to talk about some outstanding charities you think are doing excellent work. See the recommended charities from Givewell, The Life You Can Save, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Founders Pledge for examples. This Global Poverty FAQ has information and responses for common questions about GiveDirectly, the Against Malaria Foundation and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.
Explain How You Got Involved In Effective Altruism
If you can, tie in your own personal story of exploration of these ideas into the narrative.
How did you come across EA ideas?
What inspired you?
What things do you do?
What changed you?
If you cannot provide your own story, try telling the story of a friend or someone who inspired you.