Effective Altruism at UCLA Intro Talk

Let’s Break the Ice!!

Name, Major, and If you had to replace your head with any object (but it stays fully functional), what would you pick and why?

Our Background

A bunch of cool people

Is about using reason, empathy, and science to do as much good as we can

But One Person Can’t Do Everything…

But You Can Do a Lot!

• Highly educated at a top 0.6% global university₁
• Early Career, Young, Adaptable
• In a free country, with countless options
• Likely to be a top 5% or higher global earner₂

With the average UCLA graduate

salary of $60,000/year

You’re in the top 5% of global earners

With limited resources, �how can we do the most good?

1. Cause prioritization

2. Impartial altruism

3. Open Truth-seeking

1. Prioritize between different causes

Being fair to people requires being unfair to causes: picking the best opportunities to support people, rather than dedicating time and money to all important causes.

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Causes don’t deserve support. People do.

A Thought Experiment

• You’re a medic and first responder stepping into an emergency medical tent after a recent bombardment in Ukraine

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• Before you are dozens of injured people, many in critical condition

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• You don’t have sufficient time nor sufficient medical supplies. You can’t save them all.

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• Who do you save and why?

You must use your resources

as effectively as possible to

save as many lives as you can

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$500

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$500

Equally supporting all the causes we care about is unfair.

Our intuition is heavily influenced by what problems are most visible to us.

Pay most attention to reason and evidence, rather than just going by intuition.

But many of the worst injustices in the world are suffered silently and distantly — we need to look for them, if we want to help end them.

A problem that affects thousands of people might feel similar to one that affects billions, but between them, there’s a world of difference.

Our intuitions are great for many things, but they’re terrible at dealing with numbers – especially large numbers.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

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A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

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million deaths

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So, to find better opportunities to help, we need to look for and explicitly consider factors that make causes better or worse opportunities to help.

Three features seem especially promising opportunities to improve the world:

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Scale

Tractability

Neglectedness

Scale

(the number affected & severity)

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Climate Change: likely to �kill millions and displace more than 100 million by 2050

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ALS: likely to kill 180 thousand (rough estimate) by 2050

World Health Organization (2018).

ALS News Today.

Rigaud. K. K., et al. World Bank (2018).

Tractability

(our ability to solve the problem)

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Neglectedness

(how little attention is already being given)

What do we offer?

Impact Fellowship

• Meets on a weekly basis to read about and discuss EA Philosophy and applications.

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• You will dive into the ideas behind EA and connect them with practical decisions about career, impact, and global priorities.

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• Sign up by Sunday, January 18th.

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Longtermism Fellowship

• Meets on a weekly basis to read about and discuss EA Philosophy and applications.

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• You will dive deeper into some of the philosophical ideas that motivate longtermist thinking

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• Will only run if there is interest!

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Blogging & Research Group

• Meets on a weekly basis to brainstorm ideas for blog posts or personal projects, hold each other accountable, peer review, and publish and promote each other’s work!

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• Sign up by Sunday, Jan 18.

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Mentorship & Career Guidance

Speaker Engagements & Discussions with EA Professionals

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Career Workshops & Retreats

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EA Global Conferences

Social Events

Stay Connected

@eaucla

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tinyurl.com/eauclanews

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