“The EA’s guide to Moral Ambition” by OGTutzauer🔸

Epistemic status: An email thread with a representative for Moral Ambition, consumption of Rutger Bregman's and Moral Ambition's book and social media. A year of leading my local EA group, deep understanding of EA ideas.

Introduction

In early 2025, historian and best-selling author Rutger Bregman published his book Moral Ambition, urging readers to "stop wasting talent and start making a difference." The book serves as a compliment and guide to the movement he's founded [1] called The School for Moral Ambition (SMA). In less than a year, they've grown to more than 9000 members and over 1000 people have completed their Circles Program, which corresponds to an intro fellowship.

Is this just EA with the serial numbers filed off? Or the successor to our stumbling community? To make sense of this new movement and its relationship to EA, I've corresponded with Marijn Scheltens who works as Community Manager [...]

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Outline:

(00:25) Introduction

(01:24) Comparison of Principles

(02:48) Similarities

(03:02) The world sucks, we should fix it

(03:45) Cause Prioritization

(04:10) Cause Areas

(04:33) Differences

(04:41) Criticism Culture

(05:38) Impact

(07:40) Motivations

(08:40) Ethics

(09:19) Personal thoughts

(09:29) Novelty

(09:57) Baggage

(10:26) Should you join SMA?

(11:19) Collaboration

(11:58) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 3rd, 2025

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/piNDCbpmGiy8P85hL/the-ea-s-guide-to-moral-ambition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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