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| William MacAskill’s movement set out to help the global poor. Now his followers fret about runaway A.I. Have they seen our threats clearly, or lost their way? In the secular world, the closest thing to the path of a monk—of tithes, alms, and a life of giving—may be the model set by the young Oxford philosopher William MacAskill, who has taken a “vow of relative poverty,” and limits his personal budget to about twenty-six thousand pounds a year, giving everything else away. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes, in a deeply compelling piece in this week’s issue, MacAskill is one of the founders of the flourishing “effective altruism” movement, which takes as its premise that “people ought to do good in the most clear-sighted, ambitious, and unsentimental way possible.” Effective altruists, or E.A.s, tend to see “moral interventions as grand optimization problems.” One example is MacAskill’s “earning to give” approach, which posits that you “could become a doctor in a poor country and possibly save the equivalent of a hundred and forty lives in your medical career, or you could take a job in finance or consulting and, by donating intelligently, save ten times as many.” What was once a fringe Internet affiliation has turned into a gospel—with lively online forums in lieu of encyclicals; three-hour podcasts instead of Mass. And, as the movement expands its influence and power, particularly in Silicon Valley, controlling billions of dollars in resources, E.A.s are facing criticism for their “techno-utopian” and “benevolent capitalist” world views. What comes next for E.A.’s “moral revolution” and pursuit of “maximal good”—in a world that is already on fire? —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | |
| P.S. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was published on this day in 1854. The book has been canonized as a guide for living in harmony with nature, with famous lines including: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” But, in a closer reading, Kathryn Schulz writes, the “real Thoreau” emerges: “self-obsessed,” “narcissistic,” and “fanatical about self-control.” “Thoreau lays out a program of abstinence so thoroughgoing as to make the Dalai Lama look like a Kardashian,” Schulz says. Among the behaviors he discouraged? Drinking coffee, eating meat, gathering cranberries for jam, reading newspapers, and, God forbid, owning a doormat. | | | |
Today’s newsletter was written by Jessie Li. | | | |
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