My Philosophy of Life: Effective Altruism

June 12, 2025 Effective Altruism reflection

Over the past 1.5 years I’ve significantly changed my view on how I should live my life. Concisely, I went from not thinking about a personal philosophy of life to, roughly, believing the philosophy of effective altruism is what I should follow. Here, I’ll briefly outline what effective altruism is and why it makes most sense to live one’s life accordingly.

Effective altruism is about doing good as effectively as possible. It is easiest to illustrate with an example. Say you have €5,000 and you’re feeling altruistic. You give it to your local fundraiser for helping stray dogs. However, the region this money is used has few stray dogs. Also, some money gets lost in the service fee, and some more gets lost in taxes. By the end of it, even with that much money, few stray dogs have been saved. (And besides, if you are like me and live in the Netherlands, stray dogs will have a pretty decent life anyway).

An effective altruist would feel altruistic, realize they can do more good by investigating what options they have, and donate their money to a highly effective charity. I didn’t choose €5,000 arbitrarily, you can save a life with that money! Although this example doesn’t show nearly the complexity of the philosophy, it shows how doing good by reflecting on how to do it most effectively can be, quite literally, life-changing! For more examples of effective altruism in action, see here.

Now that I’ve explained effective altruism, let me explain why it makes most sense to live one’s life accordingly, after I’ve given some personal background.

When I was learning more about ethics (i.e., the investigation of normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right), I realized it was crucial I adopted a moral philosophy of life. Actions, bad or good, one takes anyway. I thought it to be a shame if I lived my life taking actions without contemplating whether they be good or bad, and being able to reason why they be good or bad.

Adopting a moral philosophy ties in with the question, “how should one live?” One might think we shouldn’t bother with this question in the first place. However, it makes more sense to think about how to live life than not, for you are already living it.

Quickly after deciding I should think more thoroughly about how to live my life, I came across the aforementioned philosophy of effective altruism. I’ve thought a lot about why it stuck with me immediately, and I’m still not entirely certain. The most honest answer is: it makes the most sense. I’ll explain why.

As mentioned, one will live life. One will make actions, good and bad. This will impact both oneself and others! Especially the impact on others is important, as this world is occupied by a rough 8 billion others. All of these people will live life. All of these people will make actions, good and bad. If everyone takes mostly bad actions, purposeful or not, the world will become a worse place to live. If everyone takes mostly good actions, purposeful or not, the world will become a better place to live. I realize the above might appear trivial. However, it elegantly leads to effective altruism.

I prefer the world to be a better place than a worse place. With the above logic, all people should take mostly good actions to accomplish this, which means I should take mostly good actions. But really, I care most about the effect of those good actions, because the reason I think I should take them is because I prefer the world to be a better place rather than a worse place! Thus, it makes most sense to think about how to most effectively take good actions: effective altruism.

There are, of course, many caveats and possible objections. To mention just two:

I’ve not defined what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. My preference for a better world rather than a worse world is completely subjective. Although I’d like to elaborate on both of these points in more detail, I’ll give a concise overlapping answer here.

It seems to me that everyone must have some kind of value hierarchy, with some value at the top (or bottom, depening on how you define a hierarchy). One must point to a value and place it at the top without reason, and in my opinion, based purely on aesthetics. Otherwise, one can always keep asking, “why?”, when trying to define what is good and bad, or why one holds a preference. (This ties in closely with Emotivism, a topic I’ll be writing about more later.) For me, that top value is life, in its broadest sense. I accept I don’t have a good answer for why this is the case (although I’ll keep reading about it to learn more), but believe this to be the right one, and I understand I must have one.

Answering the two questions is now trivial! ‘Good’ is everything that increases the welfare of life and ‘bad’ is everything that decreases the welfare of life. And, I prefer a better world over a worse world because it’s better for life.

Of course, much nuance is left out in the above description. I hope it gives a rough overview of my life philosophy, and why it is my life philosophy. I’ll be writing much more on this topic in an attempt to elaborate on possible objections that I’ve now left out in the open.