Effective Altruism as an Inspiring "Religion"

What I learned from E.A.

Photo by Ilya Chunin on Unsplash

The New Yorker recently published a fascinating longform profile of the leader of “effective altruism,” William MacAskill. In essence, E.A. is a form of humanitarianism that is obsessively focused on finding the absolutely most effective way of allocating resources. It’s Utilitarianism on Big Data.

One of the more remarkable aspects of the article is the clear way the author, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, brings out the religious dimensions of the philosophy:

Effective altruism . . . furnishes an all-encompassing world view. It can have an ecclesiastical flavor, and early critics observed that the movement seemed to be in the business of selling philanthropic indulgences for the original sin of privilege. It has a priestly class, whose posts on E.A.’s online forum are often received as encyclicals. In the place of Mass, E.A.s endure three-hour podcasts. There is an emphasis on humility, and a commandment to sacrifice for the sake of the neediest.