Is Effective Altruism Compatible with My Volunteer Work?
During the fall semester of 2019, I completed the Arete fellowship here at UNC, where we discussed effective altruism and how to maximize our impact on the world. I hadn’t anticipated how quantitative the discussion would be, emphasizing the importance of donating to the most effective charities. Our money can be used for a lot of good or a lot of not-good, but throughout the Arete fellowship, we focused on how to make sure our money is used for the MOST good. For effective altruists, this is often measured in terms of lives saved or quality of life years improved.
There are existing concerns about the effective altruist movement, ones I also contemplated during the fellowship. There are worries that this view of aid is too black and white, and doesn’t account for emotional motives behind providing donations or services (2). Further, there are concerns that effective altruism doesn’t address institutional causes of poverty that are crucial to avoid overlooking the root cause of these world problems (1). It can still be valuable to be more careful with our dollars and strive to maximize their impact, but I will provide a personal example of how this movement created a conflict about the decisions I should make in my own life with my own time.
It was around the same time that I began to think of money in this way that I was presented with the opportunity to do a public health service trip to Honduras through Global Brigades UNC. I knew this would be a tremendous chance to grow my experience, while also improving the quality of life for two Honduran families. Since my preparations for this trip overlapped with my time in the Arete fellowship, it was inevitable that I began to reflect on the impact of my dollars in this scenario.
To elaborate, effective altruism uses a number of measurements to assess how much good is being done, such as number of lives saved and QUALYs, or quality-adjusted life-years. The metrics are used to deem certain charities more effective than others. I had a hard time with this in the fellowship, because to me it seems that there are crucial considerations left out of quantitative analysis. I interviewed Nick, one of the leaders of the Arete Fellowship at UNC, and he explained that of course the measurements will never be perfect, but they are intended to be our best approximations that are, well, the best we've got.
In reflecting on the dollars I spent to go to Honduras, which was about $2000, I began to consider if I had made the wrong choice going on this brigade. If my money contributed enough supplies to build sanitation stations for two families, and about $1000 of those dollars were spent on a flight to physically get me there, could I have improved the quality of life for four families by simply donating the money instead of making the journey myself? It seems that through quantitative analysis, I could have doubled my impact of improving the quality of life for Honduran families through sanitation infrastructure by not going there myself.
So should I have done something differently? Nick explained to me that effective altruism isn’t normative, so it doesn’t suggest that one OUGHT do the most good; it just provides a framework for establishing with a high degree of confidence WHAT does the most good through measurement and expected outcome. For me though, it seems that if I’ve established that I could’ve done more good by donating all my money, shouldn’t I have done so? If I care about doing the most good with my life, that is.
What I feel is left out of this analysis, however, is what cannot be quantified. The Honduran leader of our brigade breaking down to us in appreciation for what we made possible for the people of her community, the hugs and tears in the airport, the children that we played with and taught for hours despite speaking a different language than them. There are aspects of experience that are immeasurable and unpredictable. You can’t quantify hope.
Effective altruism does not deny this about life, but it doesn’t really have a way of accounting for it. For this reason, it seems to me that its reasoning is most applicable to matters of fiscal donation alone. To compare a donation to an experience is essentially like comparing apples to oranges. Which is okay, because I’m deeply thankful for what I’ve been able to take with me from both the Arete fellowship and my work in Honduras. They've both re-framed how I think about my life decisions and the value that is carried with them.
References:
1. Berkey, Brian. “The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism.” Utilitas, vol. 30, no. 2, 2017, pp. 143–171., doi:10.1017/s0953820817000176.
2. Jay. “Effective Altruism: Arguments For and Against.” Social Good Stuff, 5 July 2016, socialgoodstuff.com/2016/02/effective-altruism-arguments-for-and-against/.
