I'd also like to point people towards the Giving What We Can pledge to donate some percentage of their income to charity.
While this is of course closely related to EA, which many people here are (both deservedly and undeservedly) not big fans of, it doesn't require you to choose some specific charities or agree with their moral framework. Consistently donating money to whatever cause you personally value would make the world a much better place compared to not donating anything.
I really recommend people consider doing it regardless of their views on EA or the charities they recommend. I'm not a big fan of the modern EA community myself, but I agree that the money that barely make a difference in my life could be life changing for others.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
On a somewhat unrelated note, also consider signing up for blood and stem cell donation!
It’s very distinctly anti-EA, as in EA is known to advise not to do these things, because it’s not the most “effective” altruism.
And people don’t like them for that exactly, quite deservedly.
The GWWC pledge is very explicitly an EA initiative.
If you're talking about stem cell and blood donations, yes, there are many EAs who are against that for stupid reasons like "why would I spend 30 minutes donating blood when I can spend them on my very effective work", but those are also just the vocal minority and most are pretty reasonable about doing easy helpful things in addition to the main "effective" stuff. Notably for example, many EAs even do undirected kidney donations, despite other EAs arguing it's not "effective" enough.
The "Giving What We Can Pledge" very literally was created by effective altruists and the organization that promotes it is explicitly an effective altruist organization, founded by effective altruists William MacAskill and Toby Ord.
What is “EA” in this context?
Effective altruism.
It's a very small, tech-literate and philosophically straightforward death cult.
Eh, it's more like a small international aid community which got taken over by a very vocal death cult of SF software engineers.
Can you elaborate on this? I thought Peter Singer was behind EA. What happened to the org?
Yeah, and his original ideas are mostly about helping poor countries, and some about helping animals. Those two things are still two of three main EA cause areas, and they're the good parts of the community (if you agree with the core ideas)
But then came all the people who believe AI will absolutely kill us all, and nowadays the EA community is mostly Anthropic employees thinking their work is the most important thing anyone can ever do and that they're literally saving humanity from extinction. It's just based on vibes, but they try to make it seem very evidence based by associating with a hardcore utilitarian philosophy.
It's kinda funny going to any EA website and seeing paragraphs like
"What can X$ achieve? 1. Save a human life 2. Save 500 animal lives 3. Fund 1 week of AI research"
One of those is not like the others, and yet the people advocating for it are the most vocal and famous part of EA.
What an interesting funding strategy for a Claude sub
Solid explanation. A+.