Truth · Effective · Altruism

What we pursue, and why

Truth

To pursue truth is to pursue knowledge.

A truth nobody knows changes nothing. It starts to matter when someone holds it: when it has been found, tested and can be passed on. That is why, for us, pursuing truth and pursuing knowledge are one pursuit. Knowledge is truth in a form people can carry.

Knowledge is also the only kind of truth that can correct itself. A belief held without reasons cannot be repaired when it turns out wrong; a belief built from evidence shows where to look when it fails. So we take the slower route: the question, the measurement, the argument laid out so that someone else can check it.

We pursue it because every other aim rests on it. Good intentions acting on a false belief do harm with a clear conscience. Before we can help, we have to see accurately.

Effective

Effort is limited, and its results are not equal.

Time, money and attention are always limited, and the ways of spending them are not equal. Two well-meant efforts can differ many times over in what they achieve.

Effectiveness is how we respect that difference. Before acting we ask what result we expect and how we will know whether it came, and we measure wherever we can. This is not coldness. When a better way is known and the weaker one is chosen, someone goes without the help the better way would have brought.

Effectiveness also protects the effort itself. Work that can show what it achieved earns trust, draws more hands and keeps going.

Altruism

The good of others is a reason as strong as our own.

Altruism is taking the good of others as a reason to act, as strong as our own. We pursue it because honest reasoning leads there: another person’s suffering is as real as ours, and distance, in place or in time, does not make a life count for less.

It is also what gives truth and effectiveness their point. Knowledge without care is curiosity; efficiency without care will serve any end. Turned towards the good of others, the two become a way of living.

Altruism does not ask anyone to disappear. A life that gives a settled share of its time and income, well placed, does a great deal of good and remains a life worth living.

How we try

We write down what we believe, and what evidence would change our minds.
We compare options by the good they can do: how large the problem is, how far effort can move it, and how much attention it already receives.
We prefer work whose results can be checked, by us and by anyone else.
We build instruments as well as arguments: tools that let others find what is true and put it to use.