Why do we save the larger number? Because we give equal weight to savi — Effective altruism

"The implication is that goodness can only come from selfless feelings, that goodness itself is nothing more than externalized character traits. Many, many people hold this view. I grew up getting this message indirectly in church and school. Its a common objection to effective altruism: were "cold and calculating," we arent "giving from the heart." And it makes me crazy, because I think viewing good acts merely as evidence of character is unbelievably narcissistic. This is what makes giving about the giver and not the receiver."

"[Effective altruism is] the application of cost-effectiveness to charity and other altruistic pursuits. Just as some engineering approaches can be thousands of times more effective at solving problems than others, some charities are thousands of time more effective than others, and some altruistic career paths are thousands of times more effective than others. And increased efficiency translates into many more lives saved, many more people given better outcomes and opportunities throughout the world. It is argued that when charity can be made more effective in this way, it is a moral duty to do so: inefficiency is akin to letting people die."

"Unrestricted altruism is not so common that we can afford to fritter it away on a plethora of feel-good projects of suboptimal efficacy."

"Effective altruism is a growing social movement founded on the desire to make the world as good a place as it can be, the use of evidence and reason to find out how to do so, and the audacity to actually try."

"Humanity faces some big challenges in the 21st century, and Im glad the effective altruism movement exists to tackle them."

"The Roman historian Sallust said of Cato "He preferred to be good, rather than to seem so". The lawyer who quits a high-powered law firm to work at a nonprofit organization certainly seems like a good person. But if we define "good" as helping people, then the lawyer who stays at his law firm but donates the profit to charity is taking Catos path of maximizing how much good he does, rather than how good he looks."