Algemeen·NRC·3 okt

Effective altruism is this century’s biggest idea

THOUGHT PRECEDES deed as lightning precedes thunder, wrote the poet Heinrich Heine. So it has proved with effective altruism (EA), an ethical doctrine cooked up by philosophers in Oxford that has gone from the ivory tower to the corridors of power with remarkable speed. Effective altruists fill Silicon Valley, staff the world’s leading artificial-intelligence companies—and alarm the Trump administration. „The United States will NEVER be an effective-altruist country,” pledges the Pentagon. The secretary of war brands the philosophy  „defective altruism”; others in the administration call it „dystopian”. Take those attacks as a sign of its influence.