有效利他主义的兴衰（和兴起）

哲学家彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）思考他的创意能否在前代言人萨姆·班克曼-弗里德（Sam Bankman-Fried）垮台后幸存下来。剧透警报：他基本上很乐观。

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 演讲开始时，澳大利亚哲学家彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）播放了一段视频，视频中一名两岁女孩被卡车撞倒在街上，经过几个人经过，最后有人把她带到了那里。医院。 “你们中有多少人会帮助这个女孩？”歌手问道。正如所料，几乎所有观众都举起了手。

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.

然后是另一张图片：联合国儿童基金会的一份报告指出，2011 年，690 万儿童死于可预防的、与贫困有关的疾病，其中许多人本可以通过少量捐款而得到拯救。 “我们不在街上从他们身边走过真的很重要吗？”辛格不这么认为。至少，在道德上不是。如果您愿意亲自帮助某人，那么您没有充分的理由不远程帮助他们 - 特别是如果所需要做的只是单击一个按钮。

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.

这一想法最初在辛格 1971 年的文章《饥荒、富裕和道德》中提出，并在他 2015 年的著作《你能做的最大的好事》中得到扩展，最终引发了一场被称为有效利他主义 (EA) 的运动。最初是呼吁增加富裕国家的慈善捐款，但很快就发展成为衡量和比较非营利组织重要性和效率的集中努力。 EA 认为，人们不应该只是努力做好事，而应该尽可能高效地做好事。

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.

练习 EA 没有唯一正确的方法。有些人加入或成立了自己的非营利组织，而另一些人则进入私营部门，希望能赚到尽可能多的钱，以便在退休时可以将（几乎）全部捐出。有一段时间，这些无私的资本家中最成功、最知名的是加密货币交易所 FTX 的创始人 Sam Bankman-Fried。虽然他的崛起极大地扩大了 EA 运动，但他在 2024 年 5 月因策划历史上最大的金融欺诈案之一而被定罪，这让该运动的未来受到质疑。

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.

在接下来的采访中，辛格反思了他的创意能否在前代言人垮台后幸存下来。剧透警报：他基本上很乐观。

The rise of effective altruism

有效利他主义的兴起

“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.

“我当然不会想到 EA 运动会变得像我在 70 年代写《饥荒、富裕和道德》时那样大，”Singer 告诉 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.

互联网帮助这场运动在 2000 年代初兴起，让拥有不同寻常想法的人们能够更轻松地相互联系。辛格补充道：“互联网还使得进行必要的研究变得更加容易，从而尽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.”

多年来，辛格的思想已经有了自己的生命力，其他学者也以《名誉、富裕和道德》为基础。

“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.”

“我不认为你读了我 1971 年的文章后会认为它是专门提倡有效的利他主义，”辛格解释道。 “当然，它提倡利他主义，并说我们可以而且应该帮助人们，但我没有做任何研究来表明我们可以找出特定非营利组织的有效性，也没有争论我们应该关注那些这给我们带来了最大的冲击。”

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.

这些贡献来自像托比·奥德（Toby Ord）这样的人——澳大利亚哲学家、有效利他主义中心的联合创始人、《悬崖：存在风险与人类的未来》一书的作者，以及苏格兰哲学家、《行善》的作者威廉·麦阿斯基尔（William McAskill）。更好，以及我们欠未来什么等。

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.

得益于互联网和社交媒体，EA 已经传播到全球各地，从华尔街和硅谷到欧洲、印度、香港和新加坡。 5月，辛格前往巴黎参加法国有效利他主义组织的会议，有近1000人参加。

“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.”

“这是一个普遍的想法，而且很容易理解，”他在谈到该运动的跨文化追随者时说道。 “我们是富有的人，我们认为买一杯拿铁花的钱不会比发展中国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.”

“也许我们可以通过减少在我们并不真正需要的事情上的支出来帮助他们，并通过帮助那些并非由于自己的过错而不如我们幸运的人来获得使命感的回报。”

EA after FTX

FTX后的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?

几乎所有有关班克曼-弗里德审判的新闻文章都提到了他与 EA 以及他自己的关系，现在辛格有何感想？

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

“不是沮丧，”他说，“但肯定是失望，因为一开始很有希望的事情却以最终的方式崩溃了。”

“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

“我相信萨姆·班克曼·弗里德是真心实意地想赚很多钱，然后把他赚到的几乎所有钱都捐出去；他成为世界首富