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Effective altruism is about doing good better

Effective altruism is a research field and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice.

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What is effective altruism?

Everyone wants to do good, but many ways of doing good are ineffective. The EA community is focused on finding ways of doing good that actually work.

This led to many ideas like the following:

• It’s critical to pay attention to how many people are affected by a particular intervention. When we do this, it seems that some ways of doing good are over 100 times more effective than others.
• We should focus on problems that are important, neglected, and tractable
• We can do a lot of good with our careers.
• New technologies might threaten to wipe out life on earth, and reducing this risk might be a key priority.
• Some sentient beings are ignored because they don't look like us or are far away.