The world's most pressing problems
A free, self-paced tour of the problems people in effective altruism tend to prioritise, and the ideas that make them take those problems seriously.
- About 100 minutes
- Free
- No sign-up
What you'll cover
Unit 1
Why numbers matter
Our feelings don't scale with the size of a problem. Numbers have to do some of the work.
4 lessons · 14 min
Unit 3
Animals and the moral circle
People have often been wrong about who counts. We might be wrong now.
4 lessons · 16 min
Unit 4
Our final century?
Humanity can now destroy itself, and almost nothing is spent on preventing it.
4 lessons · 15 min
Unit 6
Choosing, and what you can do
Rank the problems yourself, stay open to the ones we're missing, and pick a next step.
5 lessons · 25 min
By the end, you'll be able to
Explain why intuitions about helping fail at scale, and why the choice of problem and approach can matter more than effort.
Describe, with one or two numbers each, the case for working on global health and poverty, farmed animal welfare, pandemics and other catastrophic risks, and advanced AI.
Explain an idea behind each case, and the strongest objection to it.
Rank the four problems using three questions (how big, how neglected, how solvable) and say which of your own beliefs drive the ranking.
Name one concrete next step that fits your situation.
Who it's from
Made by EA Netherlands, which also runs the free five-week intro course. The ideas come from the EA Handbook; the figures come from Our World in Data, the UN, the WHO and recent reports.
Questions
Yes. There's no fee and nothing to sign up for.
No. Your progress and answers are saved in this browser only, and EAN can't see them. If you switch device or clear your browser data, you'll start again.
Not yet. The course is in English for now. A Dutch version is planned.
This course is a short preview. The intro course is five weeks of small-group discussion, about 3.5 hours a week, where you build skills and make a plan. Many of the ideas here come up again there, in more depth.
Mostly from the EA Handbook, a collection of essays by people in the effective altruism community, and from Our World in Data, the UN, the WHO and recent reports. Every number shows its source and date, and every quoted passage is credited.
Sources and credits
Every quoted passage and figure in this course comes from these sources. Passages from the EA Handbook are used under CC BY 4.0.
- Max Roser, Our World in Data
- Our World in Data. CC BY 4.0
- Animal Ethics, "Scope insensitivity" (via the EA Handbook)
- Nate Soares, On Caring. Minding Our Way (2014), lightly edited in the EA Handbook
- Giving What We Can, "Comparing charities: how big is the difference?". Page accessed October 2026
- Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours (2023)
- Max Roser, Global economic inequality. Our World in Data (2021), via the EA Handbook
- UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), 2025 report
- United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026. 2026 report
- WHO and partners, Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2023 (April 2025). 2023 data
- GiveWell
- GiveWell, Top charities. September 2025
- Cavalcanti et al., The Lancet (2025). July 2025
- Holden Karnofsky, Radical Empathy. Open Philanthropy blog (2017), now Coefficient Giving; lightly edited in the EA Handbook
- Our World in Data, based on FAO data
- Our World in Data, based on FAO. CC BY 4.0
- Open Wing Alliance, 2025 cage-free fulfilment report. July 2025
- Linch Zhang's summary of Evan G. Williams, "The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe" (2015), EA Handbook chapter 3
- Benjamin Todd, The case for reducing existential risk. 80,000 Hours (2017, updated 2022); excerpt in the EA Handbook
- Ezra Karger on the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament, 80,000 Hours podcast
- World Health Organization (May 2022). 2020–2021
- Nuclear Threat Initiative (March 2025)
- Denise Melchin, Why I am probably not a longtermist. EA Forum (2021), EA Handbook chapter 5
- Holden Karnofsky, "This Can't Go On", Cold Takes (2021), summarised
- Our World in Data. CC BY 4.0
- METR, Frontier Risk Report (May 2026)
- METR (March 2025 paper; January 2026 update). January 2026
- Grace et al., "Thousands of AI authors on the future of AI" (2024). Survey conducted 2023
- 80,000 Hours, "Risks from power-seeking AI" (updated August 2026)
- Julia Wise, You have more than one goal, and that's fine. Giving Gladly (2019), lightly edited in the EA Handbook