Effective Altruism! Is Working in Finance the Best Way to Help the World? Is It Best to Spend $40,000 on Bed Nets Instead of Leader Dogs? Is Colonizing Space & Fighting A.I. Our Best Use of Resource?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: The movement, known as E.A. to its practitioners, who themselves are known as E.A.s, takes as its premise that people ought to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible. Among other back-of-the-envelope estimates, E.A.s believe that a life in the developing world can be saved for about four thousand dollars. Effective altruists have lashed themselves to the mast of a certain kind of logical rigor, refusing to look away when it leads them to counterintuitive, bewildering, or even seemingly repugnant conclusions. For a time, the movement recommended that inspirited young people should, rather than work for charities, get jobs in finance and donate their income. More recently, E.A.s have turned to fretting about existential risks that might curtail humanity’s future, full stop. This paragraph comes from an article in the New Yorker titled: "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism."  The article is written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.  You can read the full article here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/the-reluctant-prophet-of-effective-altruism Zac and Don discuss the concept of Effective Altruism.  They wonder if this style of doing good is the best way to help the most people.  They wonder if the belief in helping future generations is the best use of today's resources.     --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bestparagraph/message