Doing good better: A crash course on effective altruism

Many people are altruistic and will routinely do things like donate money to charity organizations. We all assume that these organizations have good intentions and are improving the world to some extent by their actions. The former might be true; however, the latter is not necessarily so. Work from David Anderson, from the Coalition for Evidence Based Policy estimates that 1) the majority of social programs have not been rigorously evaluated and 2) of those that have, about 75% of them produce small or no effects, and in some cases may even have negative effects.

Effective Altruism is a recently emerging movement that uses evidence-based approaches to prevent this from happening. The followers of this movement make use of data to try to maximize the good impact of their actions in the world by answering one question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? During the course, we will cover the main principles underlying Effective Altruism, learn how to use evidence to assess interventions, find out about some of the most impactful areas to work on, be introduced to the basics of starting a charitable organization, and reflect on some of the success stories of people who have done great good to our world.

The Effective Altruism community is a diverse environment with people from multiple backgrounds and with different characteristics. They all have in common a desire to improve the world. This course is designed for anyone who might want to learn more about this and have a better impact. No specific skills or knowledge are required to attend the lectures and participate in the activities.