Helping effectively
Suppose we want to make the world less bad in the most effective way possible. How do we choose where to help? This chapter sums up the criteria.
The main criteria
- Scale: how bad is the situation? How many victims, how much suffering, how many deaths?
- Tractability: how much of the problem can we solve with the resources we have?
- Neglect: how many people and how much money are already devoted to it? The fewer, the more difference each new bit of help makes.
Other lessons
- Measure results by the actual amount of help, not by the percentage of the problem that gets solved.
- Think long term: some actions have effects that last for generations.
- Go after the causes of problems, not just the symptoms.
What this shows
By all three criteria, the animal cause is among the most important in the world: it has a gigantic number of victims, in a very serious situation, and it gets very little attention.
In short
- Scale, tractability, and neglect help us choose.
- What counts is the actual amount of help.
- The animal cause stands out on all three criteria.