Should Effective Altruism Focus on Global Health or Existential Threats?

Lara Buchak (University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract: Global health interventions have a high probability of making a relatively small impact.  Interventions that seek to eliminate or minimize existential threats often have a low probability of making an impact, and the probability of both the threat itself and the impact are hard to estimate; however, if they do make an impact, that impact will be enormous.  Given these facts, which types of interventions should we focus on?  I explore the difference that risk-aversion and risk-inclination, and ambiguity-aversion and ambiguity-seeking make to this question.  Finally, I consider which of these attitudes we should adopt for purposes of ethics.