Thank you all so much for coming to our event tonight. My name is Dillon Bowen, I'm the cofounder and president of Tufts Effective Altruism.
We are part of an international social movement that uses reason and evidence to find the most effective ways to improve the world.
So for tonight's main event, 9 of us (although
not all of the 9 are here) are pledging between 1 and 10 percent of our lifetime income
(or in some cases ten percent of our income over a temporary period of time) to the most effective charities in the world.
The total amount of donations that we're pledging is about $2.9 million nominal value (expected nominal value).
Is about $2.9 million nominal value. The discounted value we expect is about $535 thousand. I can get into how we calculated those numbers later.
But before we get to the main event, I'd just like to say a few introductory remarks and share with you my reflections about our group over this past year.
Our overarching goal - as a student group and as a social movement - is to reform the practice of altruism.
The purpose of altruism, we believe, should not just be to make the world a better place, but to do the most good we can with what resources we have.
In practice, this means that we will do whatever is required to improve the lives of as many people and nonhuman animals as possible by as much as possible.
To understand effective altruism, it's important to understand the difference between effective altruism and traditional altruism - that is, altruism as it is currently practiced.
Nearly everyone (90% of donors in the US, as they found in one focus group) will say that they care deeply about donating to effective organizations.
Almost no one (only 3% of donors in the US) can honestly say that they have done any research to ensure that they are donating
to the most effective organizations.
Charities thrive not based on the extent to which they improve people's lives, but based on the extent to which they pull on our heartstrings.
As a result, charities have almost no financial incentive to ensure that they are implementing their projects effectively.
And so it should come as no surprise that the most effective nonprofits in the world do about a thousand times as much good per dollar compared with the average nonprofit.
Traditional altruism is not guided by reason or evidence but is guided solely by emotion and intuition.
The problem is that, since the dawn of our species some 200,000 years ago, we have been evolving to survive and reproduce in small hunter-gatherer tribes to whom Mesolithic technology looked like the iPhone 7.
Over the past 10,000 years, our world has fundamentally changed.
And so, we simply did not evolve the capacity to intuitively understand the sorts of moral systems that we require
to survive and thrive in a global civilization of 7 billion people with the technological capacity to kill or save hundreds of lives halfway around the world with the push of a button.
Due to our evolutionary and cultural history, our emotions and intuitions are biased in favor of our 'tribe members' and against 'outgroup members'.
What this means in practice is that we care less about people who live farther away, who come from foreign countries, and whose problems are difficult for us to relate to on an emotional level.
Problematically, those of us who are most capable of helping others tend to come from wealthier countries whose citizens are less in need of assistance than others elsewhere.
The result is the people who need are help most are those we care about least.
We see a child's face on a Make-A-Wish Foundation poster, we feel a strong visceral desire to help, and we donate to the cause.
End of moral calculus.
We don't often think about the fact that for the cost of granting one wish to one terminally ill child, effective organizations like the Against Malaria Foundation could have saved five children from dying at all.
Multiply this by about a million, and you'll start to get a sense for just how many people are needlessly suffering and dying because of the cognitive iron curtain that separates reason from compassion.
This is the tragedy of traditional altruism.
A child dies from malaria every minute.
These deaths are entirely and easily preventable for a small sum of money.
But they live far away from us.
They come from foreign countries and speak foreign languages.
Their problems are difficult for us to relate to on an emotional level. And so, we let them suffer and die.
This tragedy is being played out before our eyes on a global scale.
Effective altruism, I believe, is the antidote to this problem.
It breaks down the barrier between reason and compassion, and allows us to combine evidence and emotion to act on our compassion in the most effective way possible.
Effective altruism is based on two very simple premises.
First is that all else being equal, a world with less suffering and more happiness is better than a world with more suffering and less happiness.
Second is that all lives are equally important.
We do not believe that certain people's lives become less valuable simply because they live far away or come from another country or because the cause of their suffering is unfamiliar to us.
An African child dying from malaria is just as tragic as an American child dying from cancer.
Their families grieve just as deeply, their communities suffer just as greatly, and we ought to care just as much.
We see the mentality of traditional altruism everywhere.
We can see it in signs around our campus that say things like, 'We can end hunger here'. 'Everyone knows someone who suffers from an eating disorder'. 'Charity begins at home'.
Effective altruism says, 'We can end hunger everywhere'.
Effective altruism says, 'Not everyone knows someone who suffers from schistosomiasis, or hookworm, or lymphatic filariasis, but we ought to care about them anyway'.
Effective altruism says, 'Charity begins wherever it can do the most good'.
I don't think it's any coincidence that half of our executive board is from a developing country; students from Nepal, China, Vietnam.
It's because we recognize that there is a world outside of our local community, and that we need to be engaged in the process of building a global civilization.
The reason I think we've had such success in attracting students from diverse cultural backgrounds is that we aim to treat everyone in the world as if they were a part of our local community.
Effective altruism is not just one way among many of making the world a better place; effective altruism is the best way of making the world a better place.
We want to do whatever we can to improve the lives of as many people as possible by as much as possible.
In practice, this means choosing high-impact career paths, supporting evidence-based public policy, and donating to effective charities.
The last of these is why we're here tonight. Nine of us are pledging between 1 and 10 percent of our lifetime income to the most effective charities in the world.
Several students additionally will be pledging 10 percent of their income over a temporary period of time to the most effective charities in the world.
To put this in perspective, this is about $3 million in nominal value.
After discounting for temporal discounting, counterfactual donations, and member attrition, you get down to about $535 thousand raised for top charities in this year alone.
To put this in perspective, this is enough money to save 190 children from dying of malaria.
This is enough money to provide 425 thousand deworming treatments for people in Africa.
This is enough money to spare 7.5 million animals from a life of suffering on a factory farm.
I had very high expectations for this group from the very beginning, and we have not only met them but exceeded them.
I couldn't be more proud of how far we've come this year.
I remember our first committee meeting - just the four of us - in Ziliang's dorm room in Sogo.
I remember our first event just 6 months ago. We were hosting Julia Wise and Jeff Kaufman, a local couple from Somerville that donate 50% of their income to top recommended charities by GiveWell.
Over the past year we've been extremely fortunate to host 11 major speaking events
with 3 researchers from MIT's Poverty Action Lab, with Harvard Professor Joshua Greene, with MIT Professor Max Tegmark, with Tufts Professor Daniel Dennett, and several other wonderful guest speakers.
And a week from Saturday, we are cohosting (with MIT Effective Altruism) the largest effective altruism event ever held in Boston - Effective Altruism Global X Boston 2016.
We have so many people to thank for what we've achieved this year.
We need to thank all of the departments that have advertised our events,
especially the Philosophy department, which has done a truly incredible job of advertising our events and raising awareness about Tufts Effective Altruism.
We need to thank our faculty advisor Christiana Olfert, who's done a wonderful job advising us this year.
All of the student groups that have advertised for us or co-hosted events with us, including the Freethought Society, the Vegetarian Society, Tufts Psych Society, Tufts Peace Action, and the Leonard Carmichael Society.
And of course I need to thank our core team who's just done such a tremendous job this year.
I couldn't be more proud of you and I couldn't have asked for a better team to work with.
(Stop laughing I'm serious). (Thank you, Dillon). Thank you.
Now, before we do the pledges, I want to mention that  in addition to all the support we've received,
we've also received I think more than our fair share of criticism, and so I think I should take just a few minutes to address this.
The most common thing I hear about effective altruism is that we are heartless - that we are lacking in empathy and human emotion, and that giving money isn't the 'proper' way of caring about others.
Just consider that 6 of the students in this room tonight - at least 6 - will be giving 10 percent of their lifetime income, something like $500 thousand each
to help total strangers or even animals of a different species for no other reason than the knowledge that they are effectively improving the lives of others.
We are not doing this for the prestige.
Donating 10 percent of your lifetime income isn't the sort of thing you put on your resume.
It's not the sort of thing that admissions committees will look on favorably when considering your application to graduate school.
It's not the sort of thing that often wins you awards or scholarships or public recognition.
If you were to volunteer 4 hours a week at a local homeless shelter every week for the rest of your life, you would be viewed as a hero in your local community.
But if you were to donate the income you earn from 4 hours of working every week for the rest of your life
to charities that can do 1000 times as much with your money as the local homeless shelter can do with your labor few people are going to think of you as a hero.
If you were to spend 4 years of your life working in a developing country - teaching English or building schools - your moral character would be forever beyond reproach.
But if you were to donate the income you earn from 4 years of work
to charities that can do 1000 times as much good with your money as volunteer organizations can do with your labor, few people are going to think of you as an exceptional human being.
After all, it's 'just money'.
As I've said, these students don't expect to be admired for their sacrifice, and to me, that's part of what makes it so admirable.
If anything, I would argue that it takes a greater degree of compassion and empathy to care about people from Africa or India or China as if they were a part of our local community.
People often ask me how I can care about strangers who live halfway around the world.
But I think the better question is, how could anyone not care?
How is it possible to know that nearly a billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day
- that's 2 dollars a day adjusted for prices in their home country -
and not be overwhelmed by not only grief and humility but also a desire to help them?
How could anyone not care about this?
I think I speak for everyone who's taking the pledge tonight when I say that
I care about these people for the same reason I care about being healthy or having enough food to eat or having a loving family.
I don't care about them because I get something else from them.
I care about them for their own sake; because they are intrinsically valuable to me.
You will not meet a more compassionate and caring group of young men and women than those you see in Tufts Effective Altruism, and I can assure you they are anything but heartless.
Another common thing I hear is that effective altruism is culturally insensitive.
How is it possible for us to not only comprehend the problems faced by other cultures but also to propose workable solutions to them?
Doesn't this sound like arrogance? Doesn't this sound like White Savior Complex or neocolonialism?
But I would ask, how much do we need to understand about African culture to know that mothers and fathers in Malawi don't want to see their children die of malaria?
How much do we need to understand about Indian culture to know that people in Chennai and Kolkata don't want to be living every day on the brink of starvation?
This objection becomes even more obviously vacuous when you look at the specific charities effective altruists tend to donate to.
The most effective charities identified by EA research organizations like GiveWell simply give people direct cash transfers or medical supplies that they are not producing on their own.
What could possibly be culturally insensitive about this?
As I've said, I don't think it's any coincidence that half of our executive board is made up of students from developing countries.
I would argue, in fact, that our student group is in some sense one of the more culturally sensitive groups on campus.
But instead of making this argument myself, I'd like to paraphrase something that one of my friends said
one of my best friends at Tufts
who comes from Kolkata, India.
And he said this in reference to the, at the time, recent uproar over Beyonce performing on stage wearing a Bindi.
He said, 'You know, Dillon, the average person from my country lives on $4 a day.'
'Do you honestly think we care what some American pop star wears on stage?'
'Of course not.'
'We care about things like having enough food to feed our families and making sure our children live to see the age of 10.'
'And if college students really cared about people from my culture, they would be at least as outraged about that as they were about Beyonce's wardrobe.'
The last objection I want to address is that we should be helping people at home.
Why should we bother helping people in other countries when there are people who need our help right here?
Now before I address this objection directly, I just want to pause for a moment and ask you to imagine what this objection must feel like to students from our group who come from developing countries
who come from Vietnam or China or Nepal
Throughout this entire year, they have heard this objection over and over again.
They have heard students say to them, 'I don't want to help people from your part of the world. I'm only interested in helping people from my part of the world.'
And in spite of this, they have continued to promote Tufts Effective Altruism, and to promote the ideal that all lives are equally valuable no matter where you come from.
To these students, I want to say that many members of the Tufts community owe you an apology,
and I think every member of the Tufts community owes you our most sincere admiration for what you have accomplished this year.
The fact is that many students, who so easily recognize the moral impropriety of discriminating based on race, gender, or sexual orientation
are shamelessly willing to discriminate on the basis of nationality, and I find this immensely disappointing.
I think we will one day look back on this mentality
the mentality that we shouldn't donate to help people who were born on the other side of some imaginary, man-made line
with the same shame and horror with which we view racism today.
Why should we donate to help people abroad?
Because the poorest quintile of the world's population is 10 times as destitute as the poorest quintile of the US population,
because the child mortality rate of Sub-Saharan Africa is 20 times that of the US.
The most effective charities working abroad are a thousand times as effective as the average charity working at home.
Global issues are, in general, more terrible and yet easier to mitigate than issues we face here in the United States.
I'm sometimes asked how I expect effective altruism is going to work.
What I don't think some people realize is that it's already working.
Just look at our impact this year.
The amount of money we've raised in nominal terms is $2.9 million.
Even after accounting for member attrition, and temporal discounting, and counterfactual donations, the value of these pledges is still over half a million dollars that we've raised in this year alone for top charities.
When you consider our effectiveness, every hour of time we have dedicated to this group is worth something like $340 in donations to top charities.
I would guess that not only are we the most effective student organization on campus, but also that we've had a bigger overall impact than even much larger social service student organizations.
As far as I know, we are the first and only student group at Tufts to have conducted a rigorous evaluation of our impact.
We believe this information is important.
We believe that when students are choosing which organizations to get involved with, they want to know how much good is going to come of their time and money.
This is our answer: Each hour you spend working for Tufts Effective Altruism is worth approximately $340 for the most effective charities in the world.
If this sounds incredible to you, well, that's because it is.
But don't take our word for it. We have all of this information on our website; you can find all of the data that went into our calculations as well as the reasoning behind our calculations on our website.
It's publicly available, and we want it to be.
When we were starting this group back in September, there was a great deal of skepticism.
Many people asked, how many students did we actually think were going to sign up to give 10 percent of their lifetime income to effective charities.
The answer is, 'not many'.
The students who are taking this pledge tonight represent 0.2 percent of the Tufts undergraduate population.
But it is a mistake to think that in order to have an impact we need to convince large groups of people.
Sometimes, to have an extraordinary impact, you need only to convince a few extraordinary individuals.
And believe me, these young men and women are extraordinary.
With this pledge, we are joining 1,700 other effective altruists from 60 nations who have pledged nearly $700 million in total to the most effective charities in the world.
Charity evaluation organizations like GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators are moving tens of millions of dollars each year.
Organizations like the Future of Life Institute, that focus on global catastrophic risk, are growing in size, influence and sophistication.
Now, there are still 900 million people in the world who live on less than $2 a day
but for $1,000 a year, we can double the income of a family living in extreme poverty, increasing assets, decreasing hunger, and most importantly, increasing sustainable earnings.
For just over $1, for $1.26, we can cure a child of guinea worm or schistosomiasis.
For just over $1 we can spare an animal from a life of suffering on a factory farm.
The philosopher Peter Singer theorizes about an expanding moral circle.
He says that, over the course of human history, we have learned to care about people from other races, other religions, other cultures, other city-states.
I theorize that the next step in the expansion of the moral circle will be to include people from other countries.
And it will one day include nonhuman animals and it will one day include future human beings who will be born decades or even centuries from today.
Effective altruism is continually pushing the boundaries of the moral circle and driving the evolution of moral progress.
Making even the simple decision to donate to effective organizations can increase our impact by orders of magnitude.
Faced with this fact, it should be clear by the light of our own values that it is no longer acceptable to just make the world a better place.
This is too modest a goal.
Instead, we should endeavor to improve the lives of as many people as possible by as much as possible, and use our altruism to do the most good we can.
Thank you.
