Effective Altruism and Effective Research for Human Longevity

The effective altruism movement is a good example of the sort of thing that can only arise in the modern information-rich environment of easily available data and cheap communication. It is half a reaction against the waste, fraud, and general ineffectiveness that characterizes all too much large-scale philanthropy, and half a chance to meaningfully reexamine what everyday philanthropy can look like in an age of greater communication and knowledge. It is easy to salve the conscience by donating to a group that one believes are going to do good, and most people go no further than this. That allows charities to become inefficient and self-serving, and in the worst cases results in organizations that have become symbiotic with the problem they are allegedly solving, and supporting them actually makes matters worse. Is it possible, with minimal additional effort, to do better than feeling good as an individual and actually donate in ways that achieve good in the world? The effective altruists would like to pave the way to make that possible for everyone. When it comes to human aging, one doesn't have to run the numbers all that rigorously to determine that more suffering and death is produced by aging than by any other single cause. Aging is something like 600 times worse than malaria for the human race, for example, when only considering mortality. It is probably worse than that when also considering disability and duration of suffering. From the point of view of whether ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs