In the spring of 2019, when I had about half of the chapters of this book drafted, I attended a talk given by Mark Budolfson, a philosopher at the University of Vermont who was visiting the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard for the academic year. Mark spoke at Safra about how to compare the pain and pleasure of different animal species, a topic that I found fascinating. I emailed him afterward and asked him to get together to discuss his talk. When we met, I described my ideas about the goal of being better, not perfect. He followed up on that meeting with an email, in which he suggested that the overview I’d given him of the book you’re now reading “connects to the concept of sustainability, as it focuses on finding the ‘maximum sustainable level’ of altruism.” He continued, “In this way, it is similar to the idea of managing a mature fishery by aiming for the maximum sustainable (economic) yield.” I tweaked Mark’s comment to come up with the concept of “maximum sustainable goodness.”
Mark was referring to the environmental management concept of “maximum sustainable yield” (MSY). The concept of MSY aims to maintain the population size at the point of maximum growth rate by harvesting the individuals that would normally be added to the population, allowing the population to continue to be productive indefinitely. MSY is different from the maximum catch or harvest possible in the current year, since if you catch all of the fish in a fishing basin, there won’t be any fish left to create more fish for you in the future. It turns out that lots of people have thought about MSY, starting with fisheries in Belmar, New Jersey, in the 1930s.1 MSY is a commonly used concept in the environmental world to describe environmentally appropriate behavior.2
I’ve argued in this book that if we push for far more than our maximum sustainable goodness—say, for pure utilitarianism or perfect justice—we may reject the goal as unreasonable or unobtainable; not to mention, our efforts could discourage others from even trying to do better. By comparison, the goal of being better, while not perfect, is more viable. We can try to think about how much value we can create so that we can continue to lead a purposeful and enjoyable life, with the hope of further increasing our capacity to create even more goodness in the future. For most of us, this will translate into a moderate increase in our value creation this year in comparison to last year. I’ve found that people tend to find this goal reasonable, motivating, and helpful.
This idea also nicely maps onto the latest United Nations report on climate change, which warns that unless humans change their diet, efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions will fall short of even pessimistic earlier predictions. Focusing on the land used to raise cattle and other meat-producing livestock, this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report calls on people in wealthy nations to reduce meat consumption and move toward plant-based diets. Why not just encourage people to become vegetarians? “We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a member of the report committee.3 The committee likely realized that many well-intentioned meat eaters would ignore a recommendation to become vegetarians but be open to seriously considering reducing their level of meat consumption.
CAN I KEEP THIS UP?
At the effective altruism conference in 2018 that I mentioned at the start of Chapter 1, I was interviewed in front of the large audience of people who endorsed effective altruism. The first question the interviewer asked me was “Do you consider yourself an effective altruist?”4 I had a complex reaction to this question, but since the interviewer asked for a yes or no, I started with “no.” I then mentioned that, because I was speaking in front of a couple hundred people who identified as effective altruists, I didn’t want to claim a status that I frequently undermined with imperfect behaviors, such as eating dairy, wearing leather, not donating 50 percent of my income to charity, and donating to causes that would not be selected by the effective altruism community. I argued that for all of us, the effectiveness of our altruism, and our moral behavior more broadly, can be found on an ever-changing continuum. But the question I was asked is relevant to my reasons for writing this book. I’ve attempted to describe what perfection looks like, what barriers keep us from reaching this state, and how we can move in the right direction. As a result of this exploration, I think I’m creating more value this year than I did when I was asked that question in 2018. So, I would assess myself now as a more effective altruist!
In his book 10% Happier, ABC correspondent Dan Harris argues that mindfulness won’t solve all of our problems, but, when implemented effectively, it can make us 10 percent happier.5 I am agnostic on mindfulness, but I appreciate Harris’s acknowledgment that it is not reasonable to expect any particular self-help intervention to make us completely happy, but that 10 percent happier would be a great and realistic accomplishment. Similarly, if you can create 10 percent more value in the world in the year ahead than you created in the past year, that would be an excellent accomplishment. While hard to measure, 10 percent sounds like a difficult yet achievable goal. By comparison, to most of us, 70 percent or 80 percent more value sounds unreasonable. (But if you think you can meet it, go for it!) All of us can consider maximally sustainable changes we can make in our goodness, from those that simply require engaging our active intelligence to those that might require some sacrifices to make the world better, even if it won’t make us perfect.
Another parallel for thinking about maximally sustainable goodness might be our diets. I am tall (6'2") and not visibly overweight, but about fifteen years ago, I discovered that my lipid levels were terrible, particularly my triglycerides. After some research, I found Dr. Frank Sacks, a Boston cardiologist who has done foundational research on lipids. The recipe he ordered for me was to take a statin, exercise more, and reduce the unhealthy fats in my diet. By then, I was already a vegetarian, and my diet was fairly healthy. Thus, having bad lipids that were a threat to my health was a bit frustrating. I really like interesting food and consuming a moderate level of alcohol. So, how could I balance these pleasures with my desire for a long and healthy life? First, I stopped paying for a Harvard parking pass, which forced me to walk to work, nudging me toward ten thousand steps a day. Second, spurred by Dr. Sacks, I made a series of wise food trades. I was happy to give up butter for olive oil. I stopped eating mediocre bread, but still eat great bread when it is in front of me. I cut back dramatically on ice cream. I still eat great pizza, which I love, but avoid mediocre pizza. Regarding alcohol, I like cabernets (particularly Silver Oak, Sequoia Grove, Groth, and Stonestreet, in case you were wondering) and stouts (such as Sam Smith’s Chocolate Stout). When I did some research, I found out that cabernet was much healthier for me than stouts, so my cabernet drinking increased at the expense of the stout makers. No more cookies or pie, and fewer chips. While the changes took some adjustment, they required little suffering. Overall, my diet got better, my lipid levels improved dramatically, and I still get to eat great meals. I think I found a maximally sustainable diet!
Peter Singer highlights that doing the most good we can, from a practical standpoint, requires us to be a well-adjusted human being.6 He describes the struggle that Julia Wise, a visible effective altruist in the Boston area, faced when deciding whether to have children. As an effective altruist, she was concerned that the costs of raising children (food, education, college, etc.) would take away from her and her spouse’s ability to donate as much as possible to charity. But she also understood that not having children would create enough emotional downside and unhappiness that it would make her less effective in many other ways at making the world better. As I write this in 2019, Julia is the president of Giving What We Can, serves on the board of GiveWell, and writes about effective altruism at “Giving Gladly.” She and her husband are also the proud parents of a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and they continue to donate half of their income to the most effective charities they can find. Julia seems to have figured out how to be far better without trying to be perfect.
INFLUENCING OTHERS—IN A SUSTAINABLE MANNER
Imagine that you have a goal of reducing the consumption of animals as much as possible. You are open to nudging your friends toward reducing their animal consumption as well. You are meeting a friend for lunch, and after you get to the restaurant, which you have been to multiple times, he texts you to say that he’s running a little late, and asks you to order him a veggie burger. He is a carnivore and hasn’t been to the restaurant before, and you realize he might be trying to be polite, given your diet. You immediately see this as an opportunity to move him toward eating more plant-based products. The two options on the menu, both of which you have had before, are a great-tasting vegetarian burger (not vegan; they use some egg to moisten the burger and bind ingredients) and a dry, bland vegan burger that you didn’t like at all. Which do you order for your carnivore friend? In his book How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach, Tobias Leenaert argues that while the vegan burger might be the more idealistic choice, the vegetarian burger is more likely to have a positive impact on your friend—and to create maximum sustainable goodness.7 Thus, to move others toward greater goodness, it is useful to think about what level of change is viable and sustainable. More broadly, the best way to influence others is to think about their mindset, rather than focusing on an unobtainable ideal state—something that I failed to do in the opening anecdote of this book when I teased a stranger about being a “fisheterian.”
IS IT OKAY TO ENJOY YOUR INCREASED GOODNESS?
The French philosopher Auguste Comte, who coined the term “altruism,” defined it as “self-sacrifice for the benefit of others,” where “the only moral acts were those intended to promote the happiness of others.”8 According to Comte, if an action was performed for reasons beyond improving the well-being of others, it was not morally justified. If you get a tax deduction for a charitable donation, that donation is no longer altruistic, according to Comte’s extreme view. If you enjoy your act of generosity or see it as “enlightened self-interest,” it also fails Comte’s standard for altruism. Once again, I find the standards of a philosopher to be too extreme. No one can meet Comte’s standard, and this realization is likely to lead people to not try and to limit the value that they actually create. I prefer the following viewpoint expressed by Martin Luther King Jr., “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”9 King clearly believed that being creatively altruistic would lead to a more meaningful and enjoyable life.
Evolutionary scholars believe that altruism has evolutionary roots—that cooperation and generosity promote the survival of the species. But there are other, more System 2–like bases for altruism. Altruism is one aspect of what social psychologists refer to as prosocial behavior—actions that benefit other people, no matter what the motive or how the giver benefits. Psychologists have suggested many reasons we engage in prosocial behavior: doing so activates pleasure centers in the brain, allows us to experience positive reinforcement for being nice, enables us to meet social norms, and has emotional benefits. Because these benefits accrue to the altruist, they’re all inconsistent with Comte’s definition of altruism. Some psychologists believe that true Comteian altruism exists; others think that it does not—that we always get something out of the deal. I have often heard people criticize altruistic acts as having some secondary motive, such as “They do it for the recognition.” Yet, virtually all (if not all) behaviors that we might define as altruistic—behaviors we want to encourage—have some potential to benefit the altruist, in Comte’s view. We should embrace the benefits that people get from their altruism, rather than criticizing them, as they are on the path of creating more value.
There are exceptions to this conclusion. For example, I don’t endorse charitable contributions connected to corruption, like in the academic legacy story detailed earlier. Thus, if someone “buys” their way into an elite institution, I don’t endorse this action, as this corruption reduces value for reasons we covered in Chapter 4. But if people take pride in creating value, or even want to be publicly acknowledged for doing so, we should give them that credit—which will encourage more value creation in the process. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of doing better, and that pride doesn’t take away from the intrinsic merits of our acts. In fact, adding extrinsic reasons to the intrinsic reasons for creating value adds up to a formula for doing far better.
Some people fear that following a utilitarian North Star takes the fun out of being better. We all know people who have tremendous passion for a cause—often, a cause that effective altruism would not recommend. Does trying to maximize our goodness come at the cost of a loss of passion? Does it require too much cognition and not enough emotion? Both of these are reasonable concerns. Yet I see amazing passion in the ideas and actions of people like Uma Valeti and Bruce Friedrich as they try to figure out how to do the most good possible. Even without knowing which people or animals they are helping, or without meeting those that benefit from their behaviors, they take enormous pride in the very high level of sustainable goodness they are able to create. Personally, I aspire to create more good, while also enjoying my role in creating greater goodness.
THE PATH FORWARD
Perhaps you are the kind of person who likes to assess how you are doing. So, have you reached your maximum sustainable goodness? The good news is that we have some acceptable metrics for this question: How does the total of your charitable contributions this year compare to last year? How effective are the organizations that you contributed to this year in comparison to last year? Are you being more thoughtful about your moral choices? Are you avoiding waste and using your time more wisely? Are you actively aiming to treat people and other creatures with whom we share the earth with greater equality? Are you thinking about future generations and doing more to protect them?
Answering these questions is probably a much more pleasant task than thinking about whether you are reaching a philosophical definition of morality. But you probably want to go beyond reviewing the past and start thinking about the future. So, if you are with me on the idea of being better next year than last, how do you get there? For me, part of the answer is to start with some easy wins. As you consider how you make decisions, think about how you provide help to others, how you make trade-offs, what you waste, and how you make charitable decisions. Are your current actions what you would recommend to others? If not, why not—and how can you kick your old habits and create new ones? Over the last ten years, I have thought more carefully about when I say yes, given more to charity than in the past, made wiser decisions about who gets our charitable dollars, tried to be helpful to my intellectual community, offered my time to important philanthropic groups, and tried to be more environmentally conscientious. Yet I remain very far from the North Star of utilitarian behavior. Next year I will get closer, while still remaining far away, on this fascinating pathway toward my maximum sustainable level of goodness. I hope that this book helps you along a similar path.