Effective Altruism

The Effective Altruism website makes their mission statement very clear, they want to better the world.  They provide statistics to prove how they would be able to make a difference if they could raise money.  They also provide examples of all of the ways they can make a difference like raising money to reduce the spread of AIDS and HIV,  and fight poverty, fight for animal rights.

After reading this and re-reading Rhys Southan’s article “Is Art a Waste of Time?”, I started to get annoyed by Southan.  The second reading made me feel as though he was a skeptic. He kept referring to the Effective Altruists as “radical”, when in reality they are just better people than the average person.  He also didn’t try to hide the fact that didn’t quite get along with the EAs.  This is evident on the second page when he describes the aftermath of a slight disagreement between him and Hilton about the significance of art as “a lingering sense of futility”.  Glossing over the text helped me define words that I previously didn’t understand like humdrum, which I now know is another way to say dull (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/humdrum?s=ts).