Virtues for effective altruists
A video of my EAGx Cambridge talk on virtues for effective altruists just went up. I argued that:
Effective altruists should cultivate virtues. Effective altruism is usually couched in terms of what actions to take: what charity to donate to, and what job to choose. But we often take actions that we wouldn’t endorse under reflection, because we’re affected by temptations, biases, and other psychological obstacles. To overcome these obstacles, we need to cultivate relevant virtues.
Specifically, effective altruists should both cultivate common sense-virtues like honesty, integrity, and kindness, and virtues that effective altruists emphasise more than others do. I discuss six such virtues: effectiveness-focus, truth-seeking, collaborativeness, determination, moderate altruism, and moral expansiveness.
See also this paper by Lucius Caviola and myself.