“We don’t have ways to control aging, which is the major cause of death, and we don’t have ways to control mood, which is the major cause of suffering. After we solve those, the biggest problems are and will be those related to global [cooperation].”

— Nick Bostrom, Panel discussion “Global coordination” (Effective Altruism Global 2015: Oxford University)

“Consider for a moment what our planet is and what it might be. At present, for most, there is toil and hunger, constant danger, more hatred than love. There could be a happy world, where co-operation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture.”

— Bertrand Russell, 1967

“[I]ndividuals must decide what to do against the background of what others will in fact do.”

— Jeff McMahan, Philosophical Critiques of Effective Altruism

“If we don’t believe in strategic compromise with those we can’t identify with, we don’t believe in it at all.”

— Noam Chomsky

“It is so inefficient that there are pro- and anti- gun control charities and pro- and anti-abortion charities. Charities on either side of the divide should be able to agree to ‘cancel’ off some of their funds and give it to a mutually agreed good cause (like developing world aid). This would do just as much for (or against) gun control as spending it on their zero-sum campaigning, as well as doing additional good for others.”

— Toby Ord

*“[A]ny man to whom you can do favor is your friend, and […] you can do a favor to almost anyone.”

— Mark Caine

“Most of humanity’s problems are fundamentally coordination problems / selfishness problems. If humans were perfectly altruistic, we could easily eliminate poverty, overpopulation, war, arms races, and other social ills. There would remain “man vs. nature” problems, but these are increasingly disappearing as technology advances.”

— Brian Tomasik, Thoughts on Robots, AI, and Intelligence Explosion (Foundational Research Institute)

“It’s quite plausible that someone will take over the future by disregarding the wishes of everyone else, rather than by combining and idealizing them. Or maybe concern for the powerless will just fall by the wayside, because it’s not really adaptive for powerful agents to care about weak ones, unless there are strong, stable social pressures to do so. This suggests that improving prospects for a reflective, tolerant future may be an important undertaking. Rather than focusing on whether or not the future happens, I think it’s more valuable for suffering reducers to focus on making the future better if it happens – by encouraging compromise, moral reflectiveness, philosophical wisdom, and altruism, all of which make everyone better off in expectation.”

— Brian Tomasik, Risks of Astronomical Future Suffering (Foundational Research Institute)

“Imagine what seven billion humans could accomplish if we all loved and respected each other.”

— Anthony Douglas Williams