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There's something that I'd like you to see.

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(Video) Reporter: It's a story that's deeply unsettled

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millions in China:

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footage of a two-year-old girl

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hit by a van and left bleeding in the street by passersby,

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footage too graphic to be shown.

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The entire accident is caught on camera.

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The driver pauses after hitting the child,

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his back wheels seen resting on her for over a second.

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Within two minutes, three people pass two-year-old Wang Yue by.

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The first walks around the badly injured toddler completely.

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Others look at her before moving off.

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Peter Singer: There were other people

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who walked past Wang Yue,

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and a second van ran over her legs

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before a street cleaner raised the alarm.

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She was rushed to hospital, but it was too late. She died.

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I wonder how many of you, looking at that,

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said to yourselves just now, "I would not have done that.

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I would have stopped to help."

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Raise your hands if that thought occurred to you.

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As I thought, that's most of you.

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And I believe you. I'm sure you're right.

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But before you give yourself too much credit,

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look at this.

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UNICEF reports that in 2011,

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6.9 million children under five

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died from preventable, poverty-related diseases.

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UNICEF thinks that that's good news

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because the figure has been steadily coming down

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from 12 million in 1990. That is good.

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But still, 6.9 million

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is 19,000 children dying every day.

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Does it really matter

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that we're not walking past them in the street?

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Does it really matter that they're far away?

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I don't think it does make a morally relevant difference.

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The fact that they're not right in front of us,

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the fact, of course, that they're of a different nationality

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or race, none of that seems morally relevant to me.

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What is really important is,

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can we reduce that death toll? Can we save

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some of those 19,000 children dying every day?

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And the answer is, yes we can.

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Each of us spends money

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on things that we do not really need.

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You can think what your own habit is,

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whether it's a new car, a vacation

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or just something like buying bottled water

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when the water that comes out of the tap

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is perfectly safe to drink.

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You could take the money you're spending

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on those unnecessary things

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and give it to this organization,

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the Against Malaria Foundation,

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which would take the money you had given

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and use it to buy nets like this one

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to protect children like this one,

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and we know reliably that if we provide nets,

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they're used, and they reduce the number of children

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dying from malaria,

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just one of the many preventable diseases

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that are responsible for some of those 19,000 children

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dying every day.

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Fortunately, more and more people

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are understanding this idea,

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and the result is a growing movement:

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effective altruism.

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It's important because it combines both the heart and the head.

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The heart, of course, you felt.

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You felt the empathy for that child.

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But it's really important to use the head as well

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to make sure that what you do is effective and well-directed,

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and not only that, but also I think reason helps us

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to understand that other people, wherever they are,

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are like us, that they can suffer as we can,

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that parents grieve for the deaths of their children,

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as we do,

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and that just as our lives and our well-being matter to us,

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it matters just as much to all of these people.

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So I think reason is not just some neutral tool

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to help you get whatever you want.

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It does help us to put perspective on our situation.

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And I think that's why

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many of the most significant people in effective altruism

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have been people who have had backgrounds

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in philosophy or economics or math.

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And that might seem surprising,

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because a lot of people think,

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"Philosophy is remote from the real world;

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economics, we're told, just makes us more selfish,

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and we know that math is for nerds."

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But in fact it does make a difference,

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and in fact there's one particular nerd

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who has been a particularly effective altruist

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because he got this.

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This is the website of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,

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and if you look at the words on the top right-hand side,

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it says, "All lives have equal value."

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That's the understanding,

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the rational understanding of our situation in the world

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that has led to these people

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being the most effective altruists in history,

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Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

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(Applause)

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No one, not Andrew Carnegie, not John D. Rockefeller,

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has ever given as much to charity

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as each one of these three,

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and they have used their intelligence

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to make sure that it is highly effective.

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According to one estimate, the Gates Foundation

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has already saved 5.8 million lives

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and many millions more, people, getting diseases

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that would have made them very sick,

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even if eventually they survived.

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Over the coming years, undoubtably the Gates Foundation

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is going to give a lot more,

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is going to save a lot more lives.

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Well, you might say, that's fine if you're a billionaire,

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you can have that kind of impact.

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But if I'm not, what can I do?

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So I'm going to look at four questions that people ask

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that maybe stand in the way of them giving.

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They worry how much of a difference they can make.

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But you don't have to be a billionaire.

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This is Toby Ord. He's a research fellow in philosophy

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at the University of Oxford.

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He became an effective altruist when he calculated

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that with the money that he was likely to earn

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throughout his career, an academic career,

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he could give enough to cure 80,000 people of blindness

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in developing countries

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and still have enough left

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for a perfectly adequate standard of living.

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So Toby founded an organization

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called Giving What We Can to spread this information,

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to unite people who want to share some of their income,

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and to ask people to pledge to give 10 percent

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of what they earn over their lifetime

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to fighting global poverty.

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Toby himself does better than that.

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He's pledged to live on 18,000 pounds a year --

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that's less than 30,000 dollars --

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and to give the rest to those organizations.

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And yes, Toby is married and he does have a mortgage.

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This is a couple at a later stage of life,

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Charlie Bresler and Diana Schott,

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who, when they were young, when they met,

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were activists against the Vietnam War,

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fought for social justice,

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and then moved into careers, as most people do,

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didn't really do anything very active about those values,

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although they didn't abandon them.

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And then, as they got to the age at which many people

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start to think of retirement, they returned to them,

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and they've decided to cut back on their spending,

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to live modestly, and to give both money and time

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to helping to fight global poverty.

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Now, mentioning time might lead you to think,

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"Well, should I abandon my career and put all of my time

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into saving some of these 19,000 lives

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that are lost every day?"

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One person who's thought quite a bit about this issue

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of how you can have a career that will have

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the biggest impact for good in the world is Will Crouch.

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He's a graduate student in philosophy,

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and he's set up a website called 80,000 Hours,

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the number of hours he estimates

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most people spend on their career,

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to advise people on how to have the best,

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most effective career.

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But you might be surprised to know

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that one of the careers that he encourages people to consider,

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if they have the right abilities and character,

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is to go into banking or finance.

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Why? Because if you earn a lot of money,

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you can give away a lot of money,

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and if you're successful in that career,

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you could give enough to an aid organization

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so that it could employ, let's say, five aid workers

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in developing countries, and each one of them

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would probably do about as much good

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as you would have done.

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So you can quintuple the impact

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by leading that kind of career.

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Here's one young man who's taken this advice.

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His name is Matt Weiger.

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He was a student at Princeton in philosophy and math,

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actually won the prize for the best undergraduate philosophy thesis

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last year when he graduated.

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But he's gone into finance in New York.

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He's already earning enough

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so that he's giving a six-figure sum to effective charities

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and still leaving himself with enough to live on.

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Matt has also helped me to set up an organization

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that I'm working with that has the name taken

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from the title of a book I wrote,

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"The Life You Can Save,"

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which is trying to change our culture

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so that more people think that

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if we're going to live an ethical life,

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it's not enough just to follow the thou-shalt-nots

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and not cheat, steal, maim, kill,

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but that if we have enough, we have to share some of that

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with people who have so little.

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And the organization draws together people

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of different generations,

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like Holly Morgan, who's an undergraduate,

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who's pledged to give 10 percent

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of the little amount that she has,

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and on the right, Ada Wan,

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who has worked directly for the poor, but has now

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gone to Yale to do an MBA to have more to give.

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Many people will think, though,

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that charities aren't really all that effective.

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So let's talk about effectiveness.

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Toby Ord is very concerned about this,

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and he's calculated that some charities

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are hundreds or even thousands of times

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more effective than others,

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so it's very important to find the effective ones.

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Take, for example, providing a guide dog for a blind person.

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That's a good thing to do, right?

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Well, right, it is a good thing to do,

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but you have to think what else you could do with the resources.

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It costs about 40,000 dollars to train a guide dog

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and train the recipient so that the guide dog

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can be an effective help to a blind person.

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It costs somewhere between 20 and 50 dollars

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to cure a blind person in a developing country

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if they have trachoma.

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So you do the sums, and you get something like that.

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You could provide one guide dog

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for one blind American,

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or you could cure between 400

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and 2,000 people of blindness.

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I think it's clear what's the better thing to do.

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But if you want to look for effective charities,

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this is a good website to go to.

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GiveWell exists to really assess the impact of charities,

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not just whether they're well-run,

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and it's screened hundreds of charities

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and currently is recommending only three,

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of which the Against Malaria Foundation is number one.

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So it's very tough. If you want to look for other recommendations,

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thelifeyoucansave.com and Giving What We Can

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both have a somewhat broader list,

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but you can find effective organizations,

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and not just in the area of saving lives from the poor.

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I'm pleased to say that there is now also a website

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looking at effective animal organizations.

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That's another cause that I've been concerned about

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all my life, the immense amount of suffering

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that humans inflict

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on literally tens of billions of animals every year.

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So if you want to look for effective organizations

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to reduce that suffering,

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you can go to Effective Animal Activism.

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And some effective altruists think it's very important

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to make sure that our species survives at all.

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So they're looking at ways to reduce the risk of extinction.

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Here's one risk of extinction that we all became aware of

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recently, when an asteroid passed close to our planet.

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Possibly research could help us not only to predict

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the path of asteroids that might collide with us,

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but actually to deflect them.

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So some people think that would be a good thing to give to.

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There's many possibilities.

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My final question is,

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some people will think it's a burden to give.

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I don't really believe it is.

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I've enjoyed giving all of my life

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since I was a graduate student.

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It's been something fulfilling to me.

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Charlie Bresler said to me that he's not an altruist.

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He thinks that the life he's saving is his own.

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And Holly Morgan told me that she used to battle depression

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until she got involved with effective altruism,

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and now is one of the happiest people she knows.

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I think one of the reasons for this

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is that being an effective altruist helps to overcome

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what I call the Sisyphus problem.

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Here's Sisyphus as portrayed by Titian,

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condemned by the gods to push a huge boulder

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up to the top of the hill.

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Just as he gets there, the effort becomes too much,

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the boulder escapes, rolls all the way down the hill,

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he has to trudge back down to push it up again,

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and the same thing happens again and again

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for all eternity.

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Does that remind you of a consumer lifestyle,

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where you work hard to get money,

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you spend that money on consumer goods

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which you hope you'll enjoy using?

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But then the money's gone, you have to work hard

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to get more, spend more, and to maintain

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the same level of happiness, it's kind of a hedonic treadmill.

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You never get off, and you never really feel satisfied.

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Becoming an effective altruist gives you

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that meaning and fulfillment.

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It enables you to have a solid basis for self-esteem

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on which you can feel your life was really worth living.

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I'm going to conclude by telling you

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about an email that I received

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while I was writing this talk just a month or so ago.

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It's from a man named Chris Croy, who I'd never heard of.

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This is a picture of him showing him recovering from surgery.

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Why was he recovering from surgery?

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The email began, "Last Tuesday,

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I anonymously donated my right kidney to a stranger.

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That started a kidney chain

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which enabled four people to receive kidneys."

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There's about 100 people each year in the U.S.

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and more in other countries who do that.

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I was pleased to read it. Chris went on to say

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that he'd been influenced by my writings in what he did.

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Well, I have to admit, I'm also somewhat embarrassed by that,

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because I still have two kidneys.

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But Chris went on to say that he didn't think

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that what he'd done was all that amazing,

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because he calculated that the number of life-years

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that he had added to people, the extension of life,

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was about the same that you could achieve

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if you gave 5,000 dollars to the Against Malaria Foundation.

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And that did make me feel a little bit better,

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because I have given more than 5,000 dollars

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to the Against Malaria Foundation

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and to various other effective charities.

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So if you're feeling bad

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because you still have two kidneys as well,

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there's a way for you to get off the hook.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)