有效利他主義的興衰（和興起）

哲學家彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）思考他的創意能否在前代言人薩姆·班克曼-弗里德（Sam Bankman-Fried）垮台後倖存下來。劇透警告：他基本上很樂觀。

At the beginning of his famous 2013 TED Talk, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer shows a video of a two-year-old girl who, lying on the street after being struck by a lorry, is passed by several people before someone finally takes her to the hospital. “How many of you would have helped this girl?” Singer asks. As expected, virtually everyone in the audience raises their hand.

在2013 年著名的TED 演講開始時，澳大利亞哲學家彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）播放了一段視頻，視頻中一名兩歲女孩被卡車撞倒在街上，經過幾個人經過，最後有人把她帶到了那裡。 “你們中有多少人會幫助這個女孩？”歌手問。正如所料，幾乎所有觀眾都舉起了手。

Then, another image: a report from UNICEF stating that, in 2011, 6.9 million children died of preventable, poverty-related diseases, many of whom could have been saved with a small monetary donation. “Does it really matter that we’re not walking past them in the street?” Singer doesn’t think so. At least, not morally. If you would help someone in person, there’s no good reason you wouldn’t also help them from afar — especially if all that’s required is clicking a button.

然後是另一張圖片：聯合國兒童基金會的一份報告指出，2011 年，690 萬兒童死於可預防的、與貧困有關的疾病，其中許多人本可以透過少量捐款而得到拯救。 “我們不在街上從他們身邊走過真的很重要嗎？”辛格不這麼認為。至少，在道德上不是。如果您願意親自幫助某人，那麼您沒有充分的理由不遠端幫助他們 - 特別是如果所需要做的只是單擊一個按鈕。

This idea, first formulated in Singer’s 1971 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and expanded in his 2015 book The Most Good You Can Do eventually gave rise to a movement known as effective altruism (EA). What began as a plea to increase charitable donations in affluent countries soon grew into a concentrated effort to measure and compare the importance and efficacy of non-profit organizations. EA argues that people shouldn’t simply strive to do good but to do as much good as possible, as efficiently as possible.

這個想法最初在辛格1971 年的文章《飢荒、富裕和道德》中提出，並在他2015 年的著作《你能做的最大的好事》中得到擴展，最終引發了一場被稱為有效利他主義(EA) 的運動。最初是呼籲增加富裕國家的慈善捐款，但很快就發展成為衡量和比較非營利組織重要性和效率的集中努力。 EA 認為，人們不應該只是努力做好事，而應該盡可能有效率地做好事。

There is no single correct way to practice EA. While some join or found non-profits of their own, others enter the private sector in the hopes of earning as much money as they can so that, when they retire, they can give (almost) all of it away. For a while, the most successful and well-known of these selfless capitalists was Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. While his rise greatly expanded the EA movement, his May 2024 conviction for orchestrating one of the biggest financial frauds in history has called the future of the movement into question.

練習 EA 沒有唯一正確的方法。有些人加入或成立了自己的非營利組織，而有些人則進入私部門，希望能賺到盡可能多的錢，以便在退休時可以將（幾乎）全部捐出。有一段時間，這些無私的資本家中最成功、最知名的是加密貨幣交易所 FTX 的創辦人 Sam Bankman-Fried。雖然他的崛起極大地擴大了 EA 運動，但他在 2024 年 5 月因策劃歷史上最大的金融詐欺案之一而被定罪，這讓該運動的未來受到質疑。

In the following interview, Singer reflects on whether his brainchild will survive the downfall of its former poster boy. Spoiler alert: He’s largely optimistic.

在接下來的採訪中，辛格反思了他的創意能否在前代言人垮台後倖存下來。劇透警告：他基本上很樂觀。

The rise of effective altruism

有效利他主義的興起

“I certainly would not have expected the EA movement to become as big as it did when I wrote ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ back in the seventies,” Singer tells Big Think.

「我當然不會想到 EA 運動會變得像我在 70 年代寫《飢荒、富裕和道德》時那樣大，」Singer 告訴 Big Think。

The internet helped the movement take off in the early 2000s, enabling people with unusual ideas to more easily connect. “The internet also made it easier to conduct the kind of research necessary to give as effectively as possible,” Singer adds.

網路在 2000 年代初期推動了這項運動的興起，使擁有不同尋常想法的人們能夠更輕鬆地相互聯繫。辛格補充說：“互聯網還使得進行必要的研究變得更加容易，從而盡可能有效地提供援助。”

Over the years, Singer’s ideas have taken on a life of their own, with other academics building on the groundwork offered in “Fame, Affluence, and Morality.”

多年來，辛格的思想已經有了自己的生命力，其他學者也以《名譽、富裕和道德》為基礎。

“I don’t think you could read my 1971 article and see it as specifically advocating effective altruism,” Singer explains. “It’s advocating altruism, to be sure, and saying we can and should help people, but I didn’t do any research to show that we can find out how effective a particular non-profit is, nor argue that we should focus on those that give us the biggest bang.”

「我不認為你讀了我 1971 年的文章後會認為它是專門提倡有效的利他主義，」辛格解釋道。 「當然，它提倡利他主義，並說我們可以而且應該幫助人們，但我沒有做任何研究來表明我們可以找出特定非營利組織的有效性，也沒有爭論我們應該關注那些這給我們帶來了最大的衝擊。

These contributions came from people like Toby Ord — a fellow Australian philosopher, a co-founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism and author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity — and William McAskill, a Scottish philosopher and author of Doing Good Better and What We Owe the Future, among others.

這些貢獻來自像托比·奧德（Toby Ord）這樣的人——澳大利亞哲學家、有效利他主義中心的聯合創始人、《懸崖：存在風險與人類的未來》一書的作者，以及蘇格蘭哲學家、《行善》的作者威廉‧麥阿斯基爾（William McAskill）。

Thanks to the internet and social media, EA has spread to all parts of the globe, from Wall Street and Silicon Valley to Europe, India, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In May, Singer traveled to Paris to attend a meeting organized by Effective Altruism France, attended by nearly 1,000 people.

由於網路和社群媒體，EA 已傳播到全球各地，從華爾街和矽谷到歐洲、印度、香港和新加坡。 5月，辛格前往巴黎參加法國有效利他主義組織的會議，有近1,000人參加。

“It’s a universal idea, and easy to grasp,” he says of the movement’s cross-cultural following. “We are wealthy people who think nothing of spending more on a latte than people in the developing world earn in a day.”

「這是一個普遍的想法，而且很容易理解，」他在談到該運動的跨文化追隨者時說道。 “我們是富有的人，我們認為買一杯拿鐵花的錢不會比發展中國家人民一天的收入多。”

“Maybe we can help them by reducing our expenditure on things we do not really need and be rewarded with a sense of purpose, by helping those who through no fault of their own are less fortunate than us.”

“也許我們可以通過減少在我們並不真正需要的事情上的支出來幫助他們，並​​通過幫助那些並非由於自己的過錯而不如我們幸運的人來獲得使命感的回報。”

EA after FTX

FTX後的EA

How does Singer feel now that nearly every news article on Bankman-Fried’s trial mentions his connection to EA and, by extension, himself?

幾乎所有有關班克曼-弗里德審判的新聞文章都提到了他與 EA 以及他自己的關係，現在辛格有何感想？

“Not frustration,” he says, “but certainly disappointment that what began very promisingly collapsed the way that it did.”

“不是沮喪，”他說，“但肯定是失望，因為一開始很有希望的事情卻以最終的方式崩潰了。”

“I believe Sam Bankman-Fried was entirely genuine in wanting to earn a lot of money and then give away nearly everything he earned; he became the richest person in the world under

「我相信薩姆·班克曼·弗里德是真心實意地想賺很多錢，然後把他賺到的幾乎所有錢都捐出去；他成為世界首富