Stop the robot apocalypse

Abstract

This article discusses effective altruism, a new utilitarianism-based philosophy that maintains that we should seek not only to do good, but to do the most good we can. Practical applications of this philosophy include deciding which career paths to pursue (favoring those which earn a lot of money which can be donated to charity) and which products to buy (favoring products with a strong social/environmental return relative to cost). The author details the mental models that effective altruists use to make these calculations, and gives their justifications for doing so. – AI-generated abstract.