Effective altruism Archives

All the Lives You Can Change

All the Lives You Can Change, Dominic Roser, David Zhang and J. D. Bauman, foreword by Laura Buchak. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802885135) 2026.

Summary: Using the tools of effective altruism, focuses on how we may love neighbors near and far more effectively.

We want our lives to matter. And if we care deeply about that, we ask how our impact may be most effective given our time, talents, resources, and influence. That is the basic idea behind effective altruism. It is not only that we care deeply about others, but that we think carefully, even quantitatively, about our impact. For example, this book mentions the case of improving educational outcomes for African children. An agency wanted to give laptops with educational software to each child. As generous as that seems, an investment that goes much further at lower cost and greater impact is providing malaria netting to each child.

The idea of effective altruism was developed by secular ethicists. However, the authors of this book believe in many respects it reflects a Christian concern for wise and generous stewardship that loves our neighbors with both heart and mind. First of all, the authors argue that loving one’s neighbor means radical empathy. That is, we put ourselves in the neighbor’s shoes. Then, the radical part thinks beyond the normal boundaries of our compassion–across racial, economic and national lines. But the model of Christian effective altruism proposes not just giving more to more. It proposes giving better by loving with our minds. So, how do we do that?

A major concept in this book is the ITN framework. It is used to prioritize causes and select the best out of many good options. It stands for:

Importance: the severity and scale of a problem
Tractability: the likelihood of our actions having a positive impact on the cause area.
Neglectedness: whether or not there are already has a lot of attention, funding and resources working on it.

The authors offer examples working through ITN for extreme poverty, climate change, religious persecution, human trafficking, AI safety, farm animal welfare, and heritage preservation. They then identify seven habits of mind by which reason and evidence become instruments of love. These include chasing after truth, relevance, numbers and evidence, and listening to empirical science, to the affected, and to God.

After addressing barriers to this kind of life, the concluding chapters of the book look at our finances, our careers, our influence, and our time. With regard to finances, they explore wise habits that free up funds to give. They note that we should not always despise “band-aid solutions.”. Sometimes a bandaid, like a malaria net, can be very effective. Strategic donations may have far more impact than ethical consumerism, which is still consumerism. Then, careers are important, 80,000 hours of our lives. They urge asking how pressing are the problems we focus on, how effective are the solutions we’re pursuing, how much leverage we can apply, and what our personal fit is. The chapter on influence offers a framework, which it illustrates with the work of Katherine Hayhoe as an environmental influencer.

There are several things I appreciate about this book. It takes living a generous lifestyle of radical empathy far more seriously than most Christians would take it. Likewise, it is not afraid to consider questions of effectiveness, and to allow decisions informed by data and not sentiment. It assumes Christians sold out on the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

One thing that isn’t addressed is Christian effective altruism and the local congregation. Many Christians devote significant investments of their time, talents, and resources to and through the local congregation. I wonder by the criteria the authors propose, whether this is effective. It’s striking that most examples in the book are outside the local congregational context. It certainly challenges congregations to think hard about their effectiveness and how it is measured.

Neither is much said about investing in the arts. It is striking how musical performances were critical to the life of prisoners of war and beseiged cities. In educational contexts, arts programs often are as important to academic motivation and success as STEM subjects. Yet these on their face may not appear “effective” and often are deprioritized for funding both in the church and the culture.

However, the book is a thought-provoking read. The personal stories at the end of each chapter put effective altruism practices in reach of all of us. It also poses challenging questions to organizations addressing various human needs. Are these utilizing the most effective strategies, or just the ones they love? Read this book at your peril. You may not look at your finances, your work, or your influence in the same way. On the other hand, Jesus says that only those who lose their lives will find them.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Most Good You Can Do, Peter Singer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Summary: Singer’s argument for living a life of effective altruism, using evidence and reason to make the most effective decisions to improve the world.

The holidays are often spoken of as the giving season. Indeed, charities make a flurry of appeals during this season, capitalizing both on the holiday spirit, and for most people, the end of the tax year. Peter Singer would contend for a much more thoughtful approach to a lifestyle of giving, deliberate rather than episodic. He speaks of this approach as effective altruism, which he defines as “a philosophy or social movement which applies evidence and reason to work out the most effective ways to improve the world.” For many, far from sacrifice, this life of giving brings deep fulfillment and satisfaction.

It involves some or all of the following:

Adopting a modest lifestyle enabling one to donate a large part of one’s income, even more than a tenth.
Researching the most effective charities working in the most critical fields toward which one directs one’s giving.
Making career choices that allow one to earn as much as they can so they can give as much as they can, rather than living affluently.
Spreading the gospel of effective altruism to others so the movement will spread.
Consider donations of part of one’s own body to help others–blood, bone marrow, and a kidney.

This life is hedged about by commitments to justice, freedom, equality, and knowledge. Furthermore, it avoids the violation of human rights as a means to some proposed good end.

Singer elaborates these choices of doing the most good one can and defends the one of the most attacked proposals of taking high paying jobs to give more by, among others, citing John Wesley who said, “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” He then turns to our motivations and justifications for giving. He argues that love is not all of what we need. Using reason rather than just responding for emotional appeals allows us to have the greatest impact in our giving and other life decisions.

The last part of his book talks about choosing causes. He introduces organizations that study charitable effectiveness. He argues that many of the things to which we donate, such as cultural and arts organizations do not make “the cut” when we consider the dire needs of people in many parts of the world, people who are often “them” rather than “us.” Here, as elsewhere, Singer includes animal suffering in his argument and contends that supporting efforts to reduce animal suffering at factory farms, including making changes in our diets are part of the movement of effective altruism.

One of the most fascinating implications of this way of thinking is that he believes that, on a rationale basis, there are good reasons to spend money to prevent the possibility of mass extinction events, like an asteroid collision.

It is fascinating, as a Christian, to read Singer’s argument. If the examples he cites are true, there are many individuals who do not share Christian beliefs (and one he mentions who does) who are both more intentional and generous in their giving than most Christians, many of whom do not even give a tithe, or tenth of their income, considered traditionally to be a baseline of giving (one study, commissioned by Christianity Today, indicates that the average is more like 2.5 percent). Furthermore, the intentionality toward making one’s gifts count stands as a challenge to our appeals grounded in evoking sympathetic emotions. Likewise, the rigor of evaluating the effectiveness of what people are being asked to give to is worth attention.

My most significant reservation would have to do with the tight focus on only supporting efforts that alleviate poverty or human or animal suffering. I would affirm his arguments that on the basis of reason and impact alone, these deserve far more attention than they receive. But I am reminded of Mary’s extravagant anointing of Jesus with expensive perfume before his death. I’ve always argued that Mary would likely be the last person to be indifferent to the poor. Might extravagant givers be able to both walk and chew gum, to generously support both the arts, for example, and efforts to alleviate poverty and suffering? Might a community of such givers, bringing tp bear the careful assessments Singer encourages, have far more impact than similar donors in the past, both in the arts and with human poverty and suffering. Theoretically, this would still seem to provide less to efforts to alleviate suffering and poverty. But actually? I wonder if this would be the story. Is this a zero sum game?

Still, the lifestyle Singer describes stands as a challenge to many of us, Christian or not, in the affluent West. For Christians, the challenge is if anything greater. Singer asks us where our treasure is, and how that shapes what we do with our lives. He challenges our consumerism, proposing the greater fulfillment of living modestly and giving extravagantly, though intelligently. For those of us who proclaim pro-life commitments, he challenges how far we will go to pursue a consistently pro-life ethic. Will we give blood, or even a kidney to save the life of someone we don’t know? Will we change our diet if it means fewer creatures suffering in factory farms?

Singer is known for asking uncomfortable questions and for provocative stances. He does not accept the sanctity of all life and has come under criticism for arguing for the choice of euthanizing disabled infants and has argued for newborns not having the same qualities of personhood as adults, differentiating the significance of killing a newborn or fetus from killing an adult. Similarly, there are aspects of his argument foe effective altruism one might disagree with. Whether we concur with his arguments, we must admire him and those like him who live consistently with those arguments and ask whether we are doing as well living by the principles and beliefs we embrace.