2026-10-05
10 分钟The Economist.
Hello, Alice Fullwood here, co-host of Money Talks, our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist.
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Thought precedes deed as lightning precedes thunder, wrote the poet Heinrich Heiner.
So it has proved with effective altruism, or EA, an ethical doctrine cooked up by philosophers in Oxford
that has gone from the ivory tower to the corridors of power with remarkable speed.
Effective altruists fill Silicon Valley, staff the world's leading artificial intelligence companies,
and alarm the Trump administration.
The United States will never be an effective altruist country, pledges the Pentagon.
The Secretary of War brands the philosophy defective altruism.
Others in the administration call it dystopian.
Take those attacks as a sign of its influence.
Some complain that the twenty-first century has seen little fresh thinking into the void have stepped maga and co making
nostalgic populism the century's big political project But the century's big idea is effective altruism.
As we report, what began in the 2000s as a geeky way to make charitable giving
more cost-effective has changed into a movement that subjects the world to complex, even bizarre, moral calculations.
For many of its adherents, the urgent ethical requirement for people
who want to do good is to stop artificial intelligence from wiping out humanity.