Effective Altruism

09/09/2026

When developing interventions for wild animal welfare, there's this open question: Are you ultimately going to cause far more harm than you prevent?

Wild animal suffering is an important and neglected problem, but is it solvable? At EAG London 2026, Bob Fischer talked about Rethink Priorities' Wild Animal Welfare Intervention Database (WAWID), a tool for exploring this question. https://youtu.be/XVBpOCyP6WY?si=01ao28wiezT2gpOh

They began with a short list of interventions that have frequently been discussed in the effective animal advocacy movement (e.g., fertility control for rodents, bird-safe glass, more humane pesticides) and a short list of criteria by which to evaluate them (e.g., number of animals directly benefited, backfire risk for non-target animals, promise for coalition building).

They capped investigation time at roughly 20 hours per assigned topic, and instructed researchers to focus on scale, levers, robustness, and non-movement resources.

A few things from the initial assessments:
→ There’s something for everyone, but nothing robust to all worldviews.
→ High value of information for further research.
→ Further research will be costly and will take time.

Wild animal suffering is an important and neglected problem, but is...

02/09/2026

Grantmaking in high-uncertainty contexts, like climate, is a challenge many organizations face. At EAG London 2026, Johannes Ackva and Stan Pinsent (Founders Pledge) made the case that there are methods to make progress and that practical implementations are possible. Since 2021, the Founders Pledge Climate team has been building a methodological framework and toolbox for these harder cases, starting with climate but aiming to generalize the approach to other cause areas.

They aren't presenting a perfect solution, but they want to work toward a methodology shared across high-uncertainty cause areas, and they're looking for people to collaborate with. If you're interested in collaborating with them or using their tools, see the link in the comments.

Watch the full 25-minute talk on YouTube:

Grantmaking for well understood causes, such as direct global healt...

27/08/2026

An estimated 800 million children worldwide have blood lead levels exceeding safety thresholds, contributing to five million deaths a year and $1.4 trillion in lost productivity. Unsafe recycling of used lead-acid batteries accounts for roughly one-third of the global lead burden and persists in low- and middle-income countries because it is cheaper than safe alternatives.

In this video, Jessica Fullerton and Robbie Barbero discuss what an effective, coordinated response to this problem could look like.

An estimated 800 million children worldwide have blood lead levels ...

21/08/2026

Effective altruism is about trying to find the best ways to help others, and then putting them into practice. It is both a research field and a practical movement. Read more…

Effective altruism is partly a research field which asks which problems are most pressing and which solutions to them actually work. It looks for issues that are large in scale, tractable, and neglected. Where can an additional person do the most good?

Effective altruism is also a diverse, global, and decentralized movement. There are people across many cause areas who use research findings to do good with their time and resources. People inspired by effective altruism aren’t united by any particular solution to the world’s problems. In fact, there's no single authority. What holds effective altruism together is a handful of shared principles. Here are some of them…

1) Scope sensitivity…recognizing that some actions are far more beneficial than others. In a world where some interventions are 100x more impactful than others, there is a fundamental difference in scale that should guide decisions about where to focus our efforts.

2) Impartiality…aiming to assist those who need it most without giving extra weight to people or issues that are similar to us or geographically close. This approach often points towards supporting people in developing countries, non-human animals, and future generations whose needs might otherwise be overlooked.

3) Scout mindset…seeking the most honest understanding of the world and staying open to changing our minds based on evidence, rather than defending pre-existing conclusions. We can help others more effectively when we work together to think clearly and orient toward truth, rather than defending our existing ideas.

4) Recognition of tradeoffs…acknowledging that limited time and resources require prioritizing between different ways of doing good. Choosing to support one option often means not being able to support another, so we try to weigh those tradeoffs deliberately rather than avoid them.

If you want to learn more about effective altruism, click on the link in the comments, or visit

Effective altruism is a philosophy and a movement that asks the question: how can we do the most good with our time, money, and resources?

21/08/2026

What's the better donation: $100 that generates a 50% return, producing $150 in societal wellbeing, or $100 that helps shift a larger donor's $100,000 from a 5% return to a 50% return, producing $45,000 in additional impact? That second scenario describes the leverage created by embedding evidence teams inside government ministries. These teams help ministries generate and apply existing evidence, strengthen systems for evidence-based reform, and identify evidence gaps worth filling.

In this video, Dean Karlan discusses how to create this kind of leverage while keeping evidence standards high and managing the institutional risks and measurement challenges involved.

Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, a development and behavioural economist, and former Chief Economist of USAID. He founded Innovations for Poverty Action and previously held faculty positions at Yale and Princeton.

This video was recorded at EAG London 2026. Now available on YouTube:

What's the better donation: $100 that generates a 50% return, produ...

13/07/2026

In his TED Talk, Drew breaks down what's driving the lead poisoning crisis, why it remains so neglected, and how Pure Earth's Audacious project is working to protect more than 500 million children.

12/07/2026

08/07/2026

Can we justify the belief that our actions make the future better?

Anthony DiGiovanni argues that we can't, or at least not in the way that proponents of effective altruism often think we can. The EA Forum is running an essay competition, with cash prizes, for the best response to his argument. Essays can challenge or build on DiGiovanni’s argument, and must be submitted by August 14.

Anthony is also answering questions during an “Ask me Anything” this Thursday, July 9 on the EA Forum, with a focus on clarifying the arguments from his articles.

View more details about the competition: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2aooibAEDSdreCqrJ/announcing-cluelessness-critiques-competition

Ask Anthony anything: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZTz9BKxCys5DgaHQJ/ama-anthony-digiovanni-author-of-the-challenge-of

06/07/2026

We might be getting consciousness wrong.
Jeff Sebo argues that we have a responsibility to take nonhuman sentience seriously, even without certainty:

"If we are really not sure if they have the capacity to suffer, we should also take at least low-cost, low-hanging-fruit steps to mitigate welfare risks for them while we seek to improve our understanding of them."

Effective Altruism Stories 👉 effectivealtruism.org/stories

30/06/2026

Jeff Sebo is a philosopher working on one of the hardest questions in ethics: how much moral consideration do nonhuman beings deserve? As Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP) and the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection (CEAP) at NYU, he researches how we can better understand the moral status of animals, AI systems, and the environment.

In this video, Jeff makes the case that we should expand our conception of who deserves moral consideration and compassion. From farmed animals to wild animals to potentially sentient AI, he argues that a vast range of nonhuman minds either do, or plausibly might, have the capacity to suffer. If we are increasingly impacting populations we barely understand, we have a responsibility to take that seriously. “If you might be able to suffer, and my actions are affecting you, then I should at least consider welfare risks when making decisions.”

Jeff also addresses two common misconceptions about this work. First, that caring about nonhumans means not caring about humans. Instead, Jeff argues that considering nonhuman welfare can help us build better food systems, infrastructure, and societies for everyone. The second misconception is that advocates for animal and AI welfare claim certainty about sentience. Jeff responds: "Our argument is not an expression of certainty, it is an expression of uncertainty and caution and humility."

• See more impact stories like this one: effectivealtruism.org/stories
• Learn more about Jeff Sebo's work: jeffsebo.net
• Learn more about effective altruism: effectivealtruism.org
• Inspired? Take Action: effectivealtruism.org/take-action

Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction: Expanding Moral Consideration
00:48 – Jeff Sebo: Philosophy and the Nonhuman World
01:06 – Why Nonhuman Sentience Is So Difficult
01:55 – Effective Altruism and Neglected Populations
02:33 – Expanding the Moral Circle
03:45 – Misconception: We Don't Care About Humans
04:21 – Misconception: We're Certain About Sentience