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    The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
    The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
    The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically

    Written by Peter Singer

    Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Peter Singer's books and ideas have been disturbing our complacency ever since the appearance of Animal Liberation. Now he directs our attention to a new movement in which his own ideas have played a crucial role: effective altruism. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profound idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do." Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas, and shows how living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment than living for oneself.

    The Most Good You Can Do develops the challenges Singer has made to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good. Effective altruists are extending our knowledge of the possibilities of living less selfishly, and of allowing reason, rather than emotion, to determine how we live. The Most Good You Can Do offers new hope for our ability to tackle the world's most pressing problems.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 12, 2018
    ISBN9781977374462
    Author

    Peter Singer

    Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. The most prominent ethicist of our time, he is the author of more than twenty books, including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, and The Life You Can Save. Singer divides his time between New York City and Melbourne, Australia.

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    Reviews for The Most Good You Can Do

    3.5/5

    62 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      En este libro Peter Singer combina ideas y argumentos que desarrolla de forma más profunda en The Expanding Circle y The Life you Can Save.
      El autor conduce e introduce amablemente al lector en cuestiones de gran relevancia para que reflexionemos acerca de que es tener una vida ética.

      Effective Altruism es un nuevo ideal ético que no supone que los seres humanos seamos ideales. Es una propuesta real y factible en la que la razón juega un rol más importante que las emociones.

      Al margen de que coincidamos o no con todos sus planteos, sin duda no somos los mismos después de leer a Peter Singer.
    • 3/5
      “If doing the most you can for others means that you are also flourishing, then that is the best possible outcome for everyone.”

      I liked this book quite a lot, it gave me a new perspective to consider. I am very intrigued by "effective Altruism", and I think I will be following some of its principals in the future. Primarily, the title is a perfect summary.

      Effective Altruism is doing the most good you can do. It's giving away large sums of money, but mainly, it's ensuring that what you give is going to the most effective place it can. A thousand dollars can have very different effects depending where it goes. For example, if a program can buy 200 mosquito nets for $1,000 to go to malaria prone countries, OR a charity requires $500 per person for a medicine. Statistically, it would do more good to help 200 (or more) people, rather than 2.

      This is the goal of an effective altruist. To provide the most good they can.

      I felt this was about a 3.5/5 book. It was interesting, but I felt some points just kept being repeated, too much waffle.
    • 4/5
      Readable and compelling introduction to effective altruism and some of the philosophical basis of this approach to giving.
    • 4/5
      Singer's book addresses ways in which effective altruists are trying to make the world better. It begins by describing and analysing the actions of some effective altruists in terms of what saving more people: to work in a low-paying job that helps people directly, or to work in a high-paying job that is less ethical but allows for large donations to effective charities; people who make altruistic kidney donations; choosing the charities that can do the most good. As in The Life You Can Save, Singer makes the case for donating to charities that help people living in extreme poverty. It costs $50,000 to train a guide dog for one blind person in the US, but $25 can save a person in a much poorer country from blindness. Effective altruists are guided by logic rather than sentiment.For completeness, Singer even examines possible risks of human extinction and the likelihood of reducing them: asteroid strike; nuclear war; pandemic of natural origin; pandemic caused by bioterrorism; global warming; nanotech accident, tiny self-replicating robots multiplying until the entire planet is covered in them' physics research producing hyperdense matter; super-intelligent unfriendly artific1al intelligence. For some of these, it is difficult to estimate the risk, and even when the risk is able to be determined, the way to reduce it is not. As an illustration, Singer weighs up the possible cost of preventing an asteroid strike against estimates or the financial value of a human life. Personally I'm not planning to worry about human extinction, but logically, according to Singer's utilitarian goal of saving the greatest number of lives, it has to be considered.Singer's prose is as utilitarian as his philosophy: clear, simple and direct. A useful and thought-provoking book.