In 1972 Peter Singer published what was to become one of the most widely read philosophy papers of recent times entitled ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. In it he makes the case that people with disposable income have an obligation to give away most of their money. Specifically, he argued that it should be spent where it could do the most good, providing for the basic needs of those in the most impoverished nations. Influenced by Singer, in 2009 Oxford philosopher Toby Ord announced he would give away ten percent of his yearly income to the most effective charities – an impressive one million pounds over his lifetime. He set up the advocacy organisation Giving What We Can to encourage others to do the same. 2015 saw the founding of Dublin’s GWWC chapter, set up by adopted Dubliners Michael Nee and Emily Bourke. We caught up with them to hear more about ‘effective altruism’ and their upcoming fundraiser, a Settlers of Catan tournament(!) which will be held in Alfie Byrne’s pub on the Saturday 1st August.
Why did you set up the Dublin chapter of GWWC and what do you hope it will achieve?
Michael: I first became aware of effective altruism as a movement when I was doing a course online, given by Peter Singer. I started to think well, I agree with this, and if I don’t do anything about it, that’s kind of hypocritical. When I joined [GWWC] they had a notification page saying would you like to join a chapter, or start one? The way I justified starting the Dublin chapter to myself was if I get one more person to join GWWC then I’ve effectively doubled the good.
Emily: We have monthly meetings in The Duke, where we hash out some ideas around effective altruism. I know I might feel a little intimidated going along to a group of people who are really into a subject and sitting down and having a chat, but they’ve been really informal. At our first meeting we had about 15 people there; most of them just came along and weren’t necessarily invested in the subject. We had an amazing discussion and we’ve had a few people coming along quite regularly. We’re trying to get the word out in different ways too and find different audiences, like with the Catan tournament.
What gave you the idea for the Catan night?
E: The great pun! We have more pun-inspired events lined up too.
M: Hopefully it will get people thinking about effective altruism in a way that’s a little less dry and more inclusive. That’s partly what we wanted to do [with the chapter], make it a social thing. A lot of the effective altruist movement is based online. Most of the best ways to donate are via direct debit, there’s no real sense of a movement. If you have a chapter you can meet up with that’s a much more human interaction than you’d find on a forum.
Tell us about it, what should people expect if they go along?
M: We’re doing it in collaboration with a group called the Boardhouse Game Café, they’re looking to set up a boardgame café in Dublin. That will be a really cool place to hang out, I think there’s the starting of a community around boardgames there. It’s only a tenner in, some of the money will go to funding the prizes, but everything else will go to charity. A group called Charity Science are going to match the proceeds, so it should be a pretty solid donation. There will be boardgame prizes and depending on what position you come in you can have your pick. The winners also get to choose how the donation money is allocated.
Do you need to be a Catan nerd to take part?
E: It’ll be really casual, so you don’t have to be a super intense Catan player.
M: If you don’t like Catan bring a different game, there’ll be other people playing boardgames casually around the place. If you don’t want to participate in the tournament, come along to Alfie Byrne’s, they’ve got nice beer and good food.
Q Could you explain the significance of the term effective altruism?
M: A lot of charity is very questionable. You get billionaires donating huge amounts of money to Yale and Harvard, these economy-sized universities. It’s at least as important to think where you’re giving your money to as it is to give your money.
E: I donate through Give Well, an organisation that direct money to effective charities. They shift around their donation recommendations based on how much money has come in, where that money has been directed, and whether a charity has the resources to allocate it. If more people suddenly start donating, that list of charities is going to expand as there are more funds. It’s not concrete, it’s very fluid.
M: A good example of that was the Against Malaria Foundation which for years was Give Well’s top rated charity. In 2013 they took it down as a recommended charity, because they’d gotten loads of funding and weren’t able to distribute it effectively so it was sitting in their accounts. Last year they put them back on the list because they had secured contracts to distribute malaria nets in highly malarial areas. It’s reactive.
A central aspect of GWWC is that members make a pledge when they join. Could you tell me about “the pledge”? How formal is it?
E: When you go to sign up with them, you pledge to donate ten percent of your income to whatever charities you feel are the most effective. They post you a form, and you don’t have to send it anywhere but it’s supposed to feel a bit ceremonial. A huge part of promoting effective altruism is having groups like GWWC who can come out and say look, we’re sending this much money to charities through people who are concerned with where their money is going. When you make the pledge and you have it formalised, it’s a way of putting the weight of your donation behind them.
M: It’s a letter from Toby [Ord] basically, signed by him.
E: Welcome to the cult!
Q Do you think it’s better to donate money than it is to volunteer your time with charitable organisations?
M: You have to think about where you can have the most impact, and it’s inarguable that when choosing whether to volunteer your hours here in Ireland, or earn money that could be donated abroad, you will be doing more good by donating money to an effective charity abroad. People don’t like to hear that, but this is an objective economic fact. I don’t want to denigrate anyone’s work but I think it does just come down to that hard question. I volunteer, and I think that volunteer organisations do great work, but the reality is if you can de-worm someone in the Congo for 30 cent, you’ve got to be doing some amazing volunteer work to achieve the same value here.
E: I think intuitively though you do feel an obligation to people physically close to you. It’s something that comes up every time we have this conversation. I come down on the side of volunteering here, because it does feel cold being so completely objective.
If one buys into the idea that it is better to donate money than it is to give your time to charitable causes, is there a pressure to earn more money?
E: The concept of ‘earn to give’ is very big among some sections of the community and they will go and retrain as a software engineer or an investment banker in order to earn as much money as possible, and give it away. People talk about finding a lot satisfaction from it, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be happy as an investment banker. I’d have a mental breakdown after six months and be totally miserable.
M: The example Singer always uses is of the aptly named student Matt Wage, a philosophy student at Princeton. He was offered a scholarship at Oxford, but he had grades that would allow him to go into investment banking. He said, what would it be like if a building was on fire, and I went in and I saved ten people’s lives. That would be one of the most amazing things I ever did and I would be proud of that for the rest of my life. Then he thought I can do roughly the same sort of thing, every month, on a banker’s wage. It’s not as immediate, and you don’t burn your trousers or whatever, but, people that would have died, don’t, and that is an amazing thing. It can seem stark putting it in those terms, but with the right research, and sufficient basis for making that claim, you can make it. For some people that is the motivator. On the other hand a lot of the people involved are philosophers and students. It’s not exactly big bucks territory.
Are there any other elements of the effective altruist lifestyle that appeal to you?
M: If you’re someone who finds the consumerist lifestyle problematic, what they call the Hedonic Treadmill, where you’re just always trying to get more money, always keeping up with whoever the next Joneses are. You get people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars who feel unsatisfied; it’s a natural psychological effect. Altruism is a simple way of stepping off that. Your spare money goes to something that is genuinely good, and that is a real basis for self-esteem, a real expression of your values. It’s pretty well documented: people who volunteer or committed long term to an altruistic cause tend to have higher happiness levels than those who don’t.
Full details of the GWWC Catan Tournament can be found here with tickets (€10) available through Eventbrite here.
Words: Rachel Graham
