Room for Other Things: How to adjust if EA seems overwhelming

Abstract

Overwhelming obligations The drowning child argument has persuaded many people to join the effective altruism movement. It highlights one of EA’s central concepts: opportunity costs. The money spent on expensive clothes could instead be used to donate to cost-effective charities overseas, where it can save a person's life. Of course, the force of the argument does not stop there: If you're left with more money, or if you could work for a few extra hours to earn more, you can donate more to help additional people. Every decision we make has opportunity costs – this realization can feel overwhelming. Several critics consider the ideas behind effective altruism flawed or impractical because they appear to demand too much from us. In his widely cited essay A Critique of Utilitarianism, Bernard Williams argues that the idea of always trying to bring about the best outcome1 places too high a burden on a person by taking away their choice in what they want to do in life: > It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone’s projects, including his own, and an output of optimific decision; but this is to neglect the extent to which his actions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he is most closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense, an attack on his integrity.