Promoting_effective_altruism.page

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title: Promoting effective altruism
format: markdown
categories: promoting-effective-altruism Cause_areas
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See [this post on 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/which-cause-is-most-effective-300/#promoting-effective-altruism) for an overview of the cause.

Broadly, all EA organizations are to some extent part of this.

# Some places to look

- There is some discussion on making donating more socially acceptable [here](https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/587025271353834/) (not specifically about CP)

# Importance

FIXME

# Tractability

FIXME

# Neglectedness

FIXME

# Potential problems

What are some failure modes? Why might promoting effective altruism not be so good?

Effective altruists may have real disagreements with others about ethics and values, which makes helping people to discover effective altruism more like trying to convert them. Katja Grace [proposes](http://effective-altruism.com/ea/8t/why_is_effective_altruism_new_and_obvious/) that this is one reason effective altruism may not be so obvious or have many precursors:

>Other people think of themselves as having different values to Effective Altruists, not as merely liking their aggregative  consequentialism to be ineffective. They care more about the people around them than those far away, or they care more about some kinds of problems than others, and they care about how things are done, not just the outcome. Given the large number of ethical disagreements in the world, and unpopularity of utilitarianism, it is hardly a new surprise that others don't find this aspect of Effective Altruism obviously good.

See [Ben Kuhn's critique of effective altruism](http://lesswrong.com/lw/j8n/a_critique_of_effective_altruism/) and comments.

See [Jacob Steinhardt's critique of effective altruism](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jfm/another_critique_of_effective_altruism/) and comments.

May apply to many existing or proposed [Large-scale social movements]().