EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM POTSDAM

Reading Material


A lot of material has been developed on how we can go about doing a lot of good. Here is some of the best.

If you like TED talks, watch Peter Singer’s The Why and How of Effective Altruism or check out any of the other TED talks and presentations on effective altruism. The Life You Can Save (Singer’s first book on Effective Altruism) in 3 minutes is also a great watch.

A great place to start is this introductory list on the EA forum. Ryan Carey has also put this in a more detailed pdf format.

Ben Kuhn compiles a great set of articles here.

A good primer on GiveWell, global poverty reduction (and charities in general): Giving 101: the basics

Peter McIntyre write a post summarising charity selection heuristics, and some cause areas: Effective charities 101

How should you spend your 80 000 hours of your working life? 80 000 Hours (where did they get the name from?) has put together an incredible guide on careers.

Singer’s books: The Life You Can Save, and The Most Good You Can Do are good introductions, and have changed many people’s lives.

Will MacAskill’s book, Doing Good Better, introducing effective altruism was published in August 2015.

Additionally, many individual writers and other sites have interesting material on effective altruism – you can find some great blogs on the EA Hub.

More on EA

You want to get to know us a bit better?

Even though an informed opinion on Effective Altruism based on internet resources and books is a good starting point we believe it is equally important to get to know the people and the community. Therefore we offer a broad range of frameworks you can use to get in touch with us.

You want to join us but also to stay in the background for the time being? Then our Meet-Ups would be a perfect fit for you. We discuss Effective Altruism and related topics in a bigger crowd where you can always find someone to discuss your questions or just meet new interesting people. And sometimes we go for a walk in Potsdams spacious parks! For concrete questions you occupy yourself with we give you the opportunity to meet one of the local organizers for a coffee or another drink to discuss those specific questions exclusievly with you. This way you can get answers to all the questions you might think of as too trivial/inappropriate/critical to discuss them in a bigger group.

If you want to become an active member of our local group we have a variety of task you can join in on. EA Potsdam stands for community building in a local, nationwide and global scope, exchange of expertise and spread of EA related knowledge. To accomplish the associated tasks you will learn to use new tools, socialize with the local organizers and get a look behind the curtains of EA Potsdam and its structure. In any case you can benefit from it!

If you have any other questions or remarks concerning EA Potsdam just send us a message via this form.