Effective altruism The cause that you choose to work on is a big factor in how much good you can do. .
If you choose a cause where it’s not possible to help very many people, or where there just aren’t any good ways to solve the relevant problems, then you will significantly limit the amount of impact you can have.
If, on the other hand, you choose a cause with great prospects and tested solutions, you may have an enormous impact.
For instance, some attempts to reduce the suffering of animals appear to be incredibly effective.
How can we figure out which causes we should focus on?
Working on a cause is likely to be high impact to the extent that it is:
- Great in scale (they affect many people’s lives, by a great amount)
- Highly solvable (additional resources will do a great deal to address the problem), and
- Highly neglected (few other people are working on addressing them).