Effective Altruism and Transhumanism represent distinct approaches to improving the world. Effective Altruism focuses on maximizing impact through evidence-based interventions across diverse causes, while Transhumanism centers on enhancing human capabilities through technological advancements. The choice between them depends on one's philosophical alignment and priorities.
| Attribute | Effective Altruism | Transhumanism |
|---|---|---|
| Core Principles | Using evidence and reason to improve the world, prioritizing causes impartially, open truth-seeking, collaborative spirit, scope sensitivity. | Betterment of the human condition through technology; right to choose or refuse augmentative technologies; using technology for the benefit of all humanity; adapting ethical frameworks to technological advancements; values reason, science, and human creativity; adaptability, lifelong learning, and enhanced empathy. |
| Ethical Framework | Evidence-based decision-making, honesty, transparency, aiming for maximizing impact while respecting widely held values. | Study of potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies and the ethics of their use; recognition that some technologies could cause great harm; raises ethical questions, such as the potential for widening social inequalities. |
| Impact Measurement | Identifying cost-effective interventions, comparing causes and charities, using scale, solvability, and neglectedness framework. | Focus on evidence-based approaches to integrate innovations responsibly and effectively into medicine, ensuring patient safety and real-world applicability. |
| Practical Applications | Donating to effective charities, choosing high-impact careers, starting ventures, frugal lifestyle to donate more. | Gene therapies, AI-powered prosthetic implants, nanotechnology; existing medical devices like pacemakers, insulin pumps, and cochlear implants; bionic implants, genetic engineering, and AI technologies. |
| Community Engagement | Global community, creating connections, local groups, conferences, social support. | Seeks to create a world where individuals can choose to be enhanced or remain unenhanced, with these choices respected. |
| Criticisms and Controversies | Lack of diversity, focus on future problems, overemphasis on quantification, hyper-individualistic approach, association with FTX bankruptcy. | Likelihood of achieving transhumanist goals; objections to the moral principles or worldview sustaining transhumanism; concerns regarding threats to human values, hubris, existential risk, eugenics, dehumanization, and threats to democracy; potential damage to the world and social well-being. |
| Long-term Goals | Solving global problems, building a radically better world, reducing existential risks, improving the moral value of the long-term future. | Radically extending human lifespans, enhancing cognitive and physical abilities, eliminating disease and suffering, and ameliorating social and economic inequalities; some transhumanists aim for superintelligence and digital immortality by uploading minds to a 'Global Brain Cloud'. |
| Resource Allocation | Prioritizing resources based on impact, using importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework. | Requires public funding for the pursuit of posthumanity. |
| Technological Dependence | Addressing existential risks from technology, researching biotechnology and AI risks. | Relies heavily on technology, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science; concerns exist regarding the potential consequences of this dependence. |
| Existential Risk Mitigation | Prioritizing research and advocacy to mitigate threats such as AI, nuclear war, and pandemics. | Recognizes a moral duty to promote efforts to reduce existential risks; research is conducted on protecting humanity against existential risks, including artificial general intelligence, asteroid impacts, and pandemics. |
| Focus on Specific Causes | Global health and development, animal welfare, mitigating risks to the long-term future of humanity. | Improving the human condition and overcoming fundamental human limitations; radical life extension, disease elimination, and enhancement of intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. |
| Philosophical Origins | Utilitarianism, influenced by Peter Singer and William MacAskill. | Roots in Enlightenment humanism, emphasizing progress, reason, and the scientific method; Julian Huxley popularized the term 'transhumanism' in 1957; the first fully developed transhumanist philosophy was defined by the Principles of Extropy in 1990. |
| Price | Not available | Not available |
| Ratings | Not available | Not available |