Table Of ContentThe Good It Promises,
The Harm It Does
The Good It Promises,
The Harm It Does
Critical Essays on Effective Altruism
Edited by
CAROL J. ADAMS, ALICE CRARY,
AND LORI GRUEN
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Adams, Carol J., editor.
Title: The good it promises, the harm it does : critical essays on
effective altruism / Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen, eds.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022040672 (print) | LCCN 2022040673 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197655702 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197655696 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780197655726 (epub) | ISBN 9780197655733 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197655719
Subjects: LCSH: Animal rights—United States. | Anti-racism—United States. |
Altruism—United States.
Classification: LCC HV4764 .G68 2023 (print) | LCC HV4764 (ebook) |
DDC 179/.3—dc23/eng/20221123
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040672
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040673
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197655696.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Foreword ix
Amia Srinivasan
Acknowledgments xiii
About the Contributors xv
Introduction xxi
Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen
1. How Effective Altruism Fails Community-B ased
Activism 1
Brenda Sanders
2. Effective Altruism’s Unsuspecting Twenty-F irst-
Century Colonialism 8
Simone de Lima
3. Anti- Blackness and the Effective Altruist 26
Christopher Sebastian
4. Animal Advocacy’s Stockholm Syndrome 41
Andrew deCoriolis, Aaron S. Gross, Joseph Tuminello,
Steve J. Gross, and Jennifer Channin
5. Who Counts? Effective Altruism and the Problem
of Numbers in the History of American Wildlife
Conservation 59
Michael D. Wise
6. Diversifying Effective Altruism’s Long Shots in Animal
Advocacy: An Invitation to Prioritize Black Vegans,
Higher Education, and Religious Communities 76
Matthew C. Halteman
vi Contents
7. A Christian Critique of the Effective Altruism
Approach to Animal Philanthropy 94
David L. Clough
8. Queer Eye on the EA Guys 108
pattrice jones
9. A Feminist Ethics of Care Critique of Effective
Altruism 127
Carol J. Adams
10. The Empty Promises of Cultured Meat 149
Elan Abrell
11. How “Alternative Proteins” Create a Private Solution
to a Public Problem 160
Michele Simon
12. The Power of Love to Transform Animal Lives:
The Deception of Animal Quantification 176
Krista Hiddema
13. Our Partners, The Animals: Reflections from a
Farmed Animal Sanctuary 189
Kathy Stevens
14. The Wisdom Gained from Animals Who
Self- Liberate 198
Rachel McCrystal
15. Effective Altruism and the Reified Mind 204
John Sanbonmatsu
16. Against “Effective Altruism” 225
Alice Crary
17. The Change We Need 248
Lori Gruen
Contents vii
Coda— Future- Oriented Effective Altruism:
What’s Wrong with Longtermism? 265
Carol J. Adams, Alice Crary, and Lori Gruen
Index 271
Foreword
Amia Srinivasan
The movement known as “Effective Altruism” is true to its
name in at least one way: it has proven enormously effective at
promoting itself and winning powerful adherents. The story of the
consequences of Effective Altruism’s success has so far been told
by those adherents. For them, the success of Effective Altruism is
near- definitionally a moral good. Effective Altruism, after all, is a
movement committed to doing good in a maximally efficient way,
so it might appear to follow that the more sincerely committed
adherents it has, the better the world must become. But this rea-
soning assumes that Effective Altruism—u nderstood not as an ideal
type but as an actually existing social formation— in fact achieves
its stated commitments. What if Effective Altruism, whatever the
intentions of its leaders and followers, systematically harmed those
it promised to help, eroding democratic decision- making, creating
perverse incentives, and reinforcing the very structures that pro-
duce the suffering it purports to target? What if Effective Altruism
presupposed an impoverished conception of the good, and of the
“reason” it seeks to harness for its promotion? What if Effective
Altruism had the ideological function of buttressing systems of
oppression, all the while reassuring its adherents—t hemselves
very often beneficiaries of those systems—t hat they were morally
unimpeachable?
These are some of the questions raised when the story of
Effective Altruism’s success is told not by its proponents, but by
those engaged in liberation struggles and justice movements
that operate outside Effective Altruism’s terms. These struggles,
