How to Be an Effective Altruist

In the first part of this talk, we'll look at some real-life decisions that effective altruists have to make. There are two choice points: whether or not to diversify your philanthropic portfolio and which cause area you want to focus on. I will argue that one common way of rationalizing those common preferences is a matter of thinking about difference making in a way that's perhaps morally suspect - so if you're trying to do benevolence, then you shouldn't be doing these things. In the second case, many people feel drawn to alleviating poverty rather than addressing x risk even while buying standard arguments that mitigating existential risk has higher expected value per unit spent. So what's