A missed turn: Discovering Effective Altruism

I distinctly remember overhearing a conversation about what I now, in hindsight, recognise as Effective Altruism (EA) back in 2012. By chance, I didn’t join that conversation—a fork in the road whose significance I only realised years later. Six years later, newly arrived in Munich and a little adrift after finishing my studies, I came across EA again at a local EA group meeting. And this time I was paying attention. After a year, I joined its organising team.

What captivated me about the movement

What struck me about Effective Altruism was the unlikely pairing of earnestness—often dismissed as naive—with intellectual rigour. I was impressed by the thoughtfulness of the people I met, both morally and epistemically. Though neither the philosophy nor the people that bring it to life are without fault, I remain enthusiastic about the movement. Criticism plays a central role (as it should!), yet another reason for the enthusiasm. In very practical ways, its networks, resources and events have led me to opportunities that profoundly shaped my life. But it’s the alignment to a common cause that makes those things work uniquely well.

Applying psychology within EA

For a few years, I split my time between community building, working at a tech company (which allowed me to begin donating modest amounts through GiveWell), and freelancing as a social impact data analyst. While this offered broad opportunities for growth, dividing my energy between the three limited my ambitions in each. I was keen to focus my attention but found it very difficult to see how to apply my background in psychology within the established cause areas. This is changing as a growing number of behavioural and cognitive scientists are engaging directly with EA-relevant issues, from prosocial behaviour to machine consciousness. 

Research at the Global Priorities Institute

I was lucky to come across some of these people (chance rearing its head again!) and began work as a research assistant with Joshua Lewis and Lucius Caviola, first at New York University, and later at the Global Priorities Institute in Oxford. We investigate cognitive biases that shape how people perceive high-magnitude, low-probability risks, and collective actions, as well as moral intuitions and individual differences that affect altruistic behaviour.

PhD: Understanding wellbeing and its big-picture implications

Most recently, I’ve started a PhD in behavioural science at the University of Warwick, where I am exploring the nature of wellbeing and what it means to robustly improve it. At this stage, I am thinking about how to better conceptualise and evaluate wellbeing, given the constraints of our cognitive machinery, and how we might make decisions that promote wellbeing even if that target eludes precise definition. I believe this is important not only for evaluating interventions in the near term, but also for thinking about the welfare capacity of digital minds, the value of the long-term future, and the moral targets we want to align AI to.