What is effective altruism?
It is actually not that complicated.
Altruism is the desire to help others.
It is the target that we set ourselves.
So we might as well reach this target
and be truly effective.
It should not only be about the pleasure we get from helping
nor an emotional response to a given situation
according to personal feelings and preferences,
but about having the greatest positive impact
with the resources we have, the skills we have,
the time we have and the energy we have.
 
It sounds like a perfectly reasonable goal.
 
So effective altruism requires rational judgement
and wisdom
precisely to determine,
according to our resources and skills,
how we can have the greatest positive impact.
Why?
It helps avoid the pitfall of sentimentalism for example,
or our preconceived ideas and personal biases.
So, for instance,
if for some personal reasons
you have the opportunity of making a child happy,
in some rich country, by spending a large amount of money,
and with the same amount of money you could save the lives
of 200 children somewhere else in the world
the answer of an effective altruist is:
save the lives of those two hundred children.
It is not merely a matter of cold calculation
that cuts us off from the context of our private life,
where we would have to sacrifice our own children
to help people that we have never seen before.
The idea is to weigh the pros and cons
of the help that you can provide.
If our goal is to help others,
it must follow that we should do the most good we can
with the resources available to us.
So it is not a dogmatic approach,
because this issue remains complex.
It is always difficult to predict the impact of our actions.
However, in the areas of health, social justice,
inequalities, oppression,
the mere survival of some populations
and also the plight of eight million other animal species
that share the world with us.
In whatever we do, think or talk about
we have to make sure that the kindness which drives us,
and I hope that it drives all of you,
can be applied in the best possible way
in order to do as much good as possible.
It does not sound complicated
but unfortunately, if we observe what happens in our own lives,
it is sometimes far from being the case.
We are influenced by so many opinions
and sometimes also because we don't bother to look up
ways that our help could be more useful here or elsewhere,
to find out whether organizations
really have the effect that they claim in their brochures,
and which charities actually make the biggest difference.
That is one of the components [of effective altruism].
The other side of effective altruism is thinking that
for some of us,
like those of us who are gathered here today,
we live in comfortable conditions.
Do we really need all the money that we make every year?
Couldn't we live a simpler life
by taking advantage of the fact
that we live in countries where life is easier
in order to dedicate part of our income
to help out where it is most needed?
It is an excellent question
that we could and should all ask ourselves.
I personally answered it in a simple way
I am a Buddhist monk so I actually do not need much.
I have no house, no land, no car or family to feed.
So it is very easy for me.
However, it is simply one example.
I do not tell you this to show off
but because it illustrates what we can decide to do.
I decided to give 100%
of the money I get from royalties, conferences, etc.
to humanitarian projects in Asia, Nepal, Tibet and India.
This choice may seem extreme
but it was personally easy to make.
But each one of us
can reduce unnecessary desires,
spendings which surpass what we truly need.
In reality the crisis that we are currently facing -
of course some people were struck hard by the crisis -
but for many of us this crisis is the crisis of excess.
We change the model of our car, tablet, mobile phone...
we could easily live without that by living a simpler life
and dedicating our resources to help others.
So these are the two aspects I see in effective altruism:
on one hand, using common sense and rationality
and on the other hand making some personal efforts.
So I am particularly happy
that my friend Peter Singer is with you today
as one of the great and longstanding advocates
of effective altruism.
His book recently published in the US
"The Most Good You Can Do"
will hopefully soon be available in France,
and I hope that many of you will be able to follow the lessons
that he drew from his own reflections
and the activities he has undertaken for the past few decades.
So: effective altruism is
acting with kindness towards human beings and other species
in a clear-sighted and rational way.
