Let's face it, we're not all cut out to join the Peace Corps, but most of us still want to find ways to be a good person in our everyday life. Unfortunately many of us are busy, broke, or downright lazy. How can normal people contribute meaningfully to the world?

I thought it would be useful to compile a list of ways to improve the world which are incredibly easy that almost anyone can do. Some of them are obvious, but others are not so obvious.

I'll get the obvious ones out of the way first. Recycle. Donate to charity. Volunteer in your community.

To be honest, I'm more interested in the less obvious ones though. Here are some of the first ones which come to mind.

-Donate your idle computer time to worthy BOINC projects like Rosetta@home. Basically you download a special screensaver which uses your computer to advance medical research for the scientific commons. Piece of cake! DO THIS RIGHT NOW!

-Lend Microloans to worthy projects. Kiva.org allows you to find people from around the world who are looking for small loans for specific projects. While you won't make any money, you should receive your money back in full.

-Freecycle. Instead of throwing away old stuff, give it away on Freecycle.org. You can also find stuff you might want. In either case, you can save something from ending up in the landfill and even the recycling center, neither of which are ideal.

-Buycott. Essentially a reverse-boycott and exercise in collective ethical consumerism. Buycotters hold competitions for businesses to behave ethically and the winner is flooded with business from the buycotters. Carrotmob.org allows people to organize such events.

-Seed good data on P2P networks. File Sharing networks get a bad rap because of all the music "piracy" but there is plenty of good legal data which can be shared, and enabling the sharing of knowledge is a very noble pursuit. There are tons of public domain books available on Gutenberg.org which can be shared, though most of the good ones should already be available, so just search for them and then download in order to start sharing. Similarly, some old moviesare finally entering the public domain... some good Marx Brothers flicks, and more every year. Also, most open source projects such as Ubuntu allow you to download their software via your favorite bittorrent client.

-Contribute to the Digital Commons. If you are the creator of any artwork, music, software, blueprints, recipes, or any other creation which can be transmitted in digital form, you can easily share it. Heck if you have some old photos lying around in your computer which you think could be of use to someone, as long as it is not private and you aren't making any money on it, please share it! Find sites to submit the work to under a copyleft or public domain license. Creative Commons is perhaps the best known repository for this sort of thing, and it is super easy to submit stuff. You could also put it up on a P2P network.

-Contribute to Wikipedia. Whenever you see something wrong with an article, be sure to fix it. Don't just figure somebody else will. Please.

Anyone else have any more good ideas?

Nice thread. Some of these are less easy than others, so perhaps they'd be worth categorising by their relative impact? Kiva looks very interesting, but a lot of them involve livestock trade, which is frustrating. I'd be much more willing to fund education, but that didn't return a single hit. Perhaps because it doesn't typically make any money?

Re BOINC, I've really liked the idea for a long time, but I've been specifically warned off it by one computer scientist friend who claimed that it would make your PC more visible to hackers/malware. I'd like to hear some more on that before I risk it, since I've been smashed by viruses before.

Re P2P, I'd actually say seeding illegally is at least as valuable. The arguments against IP for entertainment media seem overwhelming, and the more people seed illegal material, the more difficult it becomes to prosecute major individual seeders for basically providing a public service for free.

A couple of others to add to the list:

- Buy second-hand. Especially in the UK, where we have a thriving set of charity shops, including Oxfam, who're a reasonably effective group according to Toby. But even if you're just buying from a thrift store, you're saving resources on shipping, packaging, etc, and probably saving yourself money in the process.

- Eat less meat. It's bizarre how we treat vegetarianism as an all-or-nothing proposition. If you think the arguments against meat-eating are sound but don't have the willpower to give it up immediately, just spend a bit more time perusing vegetarian options when you're eating out, and see if anything appeals on that particular day. If you're wavering between something with a few strips of bacon and an entire steak, one kills a lot fewer average animals...

- Pay attention to your salary. If Alan Dawrst is even close about the difference a dollar can make, then getting an extra grand a year and giving even 10% of it to charity is going to do a lot of good. A lot of people who basically think of themselves as good claim not to care too much about their wage - within certain boundaries at least - but if you have the chance to negotiate it up and you miss it, or take the lower paid of two jobs for a minor reason (eg, worst of all, modesty), then you've missed a chance to prevent a hefty chunk of suffering.

- Think like an act utilitarian. There's an annoyingly common assumption in both anti- and pro-utilitarian literature that this is basically impossible. But we do it all the time, when deciding whether someone's close enough behind to be worth holding a door open for, or pulling over to let someone past you on a narrow road, etc. Get into the habit of considering how valuable feasible alternatives to whatever you're doing are, and try occasionally doing one of them instead.

I'd like to find a way of restructuring this thread so it sounds less dogmatic, though.

Arepo wrote:Nice thread. Some of these are less easy than others, so perhaps they'd be worth categorising by their relative impact?

Well this idea actually was partly inspired by an earlier idea of mine to rank different projects by the criteria of Easiness, Obscurity, and Utility. This is mainly focusing on the first one, but I'd be open to creating a wiki where we could list out all these ideas and rank them. I could even turn it into fully searchable website eventually, if it gets long enough.

Arepo wrote:Kiva looks very interesting, but a lot of them involve livestock trade, which is frustrating. I'd be much more willing to fund education, but that didn't return a single hit. Perhaps because it doesn't typically make any money?

I agree, but they do let you choose which projects specifically to fund, which is nice. Other sites take this strategy, but for charity rather than microloans. A good example is Akvo. This should appeal to anyone with utilitarian leanings.

Arepo wrote:Re BOINC, I've really liked the idea for a long time, but I've been specifically warned off it by one computer scientist friend who claimed that it would make your PC more visible to hackers/malware. I'd like to hear some more on that before I risk it, since I've been smashed by viruses before.

I have never seen anything about this, but the best way to prevent viruses in general is to switch to a Linux-based operating system. I use Ubuntu and it is amazing. It is itself another form of ethics for lazy people, because it is a public service, just as Wikipedia is, because it enables the free flow of information. Since it is a community, your participation actually helps the project. It also saves you money which you can use for other purposes. While it does require downloading and burning a CD, then booting your computer with the CD, it is still trivially simple. Though if that is a problem, there is a windows-based installation that uses the windows file system, and is thus slightly less good, but even easier to install.

Arepo wrote:Re P2P, I'd actually say seeding illegally is at least as valuable.

I actually agree, but my list was trying to appeal to everyone regardless of political philosophy. I also agree with all your other ideas.

I'll start with what I know: buying electronics.

Printers are cheap whereas ink is expensive. Don't buy a printer until you know how much the ink costs per page. Then, have the cartrige refilled for a fraction of the price of a new cartrige.

Electronics in Australia
Buy computers and computer accessories from [urlhttp://www.msy.com.au/]MSY[/url]. You can buy identical branded, packaged products for cheaper. For computers it's roughly 20% cheaper than Dick Smith where I once worked. For accessories it's around half price. Alternatively, go to a Dick Smith store near you and request that they price-match MSY (sell you the product for MSY's price).

Phone and Internet in Australia
For an infrequent mobile user, [url=try http://www.virginmobile.com.au/rates/bean_counter.html]Virgin prepaid Bean Counter[/url]. For a frequent mobile user, try a plan with the brand TPG. For ADSL broadband, try TPG.

Price-comparison
For other big one-off purchases e.g. televisions, use a price-comparison site. Price Grabber seems to be a popular American one. For small products that nonetheless offer serious yearly savings, shop around. Be honest with yourself about what offers a serious saving (e.g. buying less bottled water or cafe coffee) and what is not so significant (1 frequent flyer point per $100 spent on one's credit card).

Banking
don't leave a debt on your credit card at the end of a month. If you have trouble with this, stop using your credit card whenever possible.

I'll think of more suggestions soon.

EmbraceUnity wrote:Re BOINC, I've really liked the idea for a long time, but I've been specifically warned off it by one computer scientist friend who claimed that it would make your PC more visible to hackers/malware. I'd like to hear some more on that before I risk it, since I've been smashed by viruses before.

I've been wanting to set up a dual-boot for Windows/Linux for ages, but haven't found the courage/competence.

Another question with these is whether the good the programmes do outweighs the harm from the power used to programme your PC. I suspect it varies a lot between projects. That in itself would make an interesting thread. Do you have any insight into how the various options measure up against each other?

Arepo,

There are two ways of test driving Ubuntu without touching your filesystem. Every Ubuntu CD is a "live CD" meaning you simply make sure the CD is in the drive while you are booting up, and it will load into a fully functioning Ubuntu environment, only nothing will be permanently saved unless you decide to run the friendly installation wizard.

As I mentioned before, the other method is the windows based installer Wubi. Just go to the website and press the big download button. It doesn't require you to burn a CD, and it will install itself into the windows filesystem, and thus you can remove it at any time by loading up windows and uninstalling Ubuntu through the Add/Remove Programs wizard. What could be simpler?

Linux is about choice, and there are many good options, and it is highly flexible. Some linux distros run off of a thumb drive. Some run in "the cloud." Some run on Playstation3.

I personally prefer Kubuntu, but normal Ubuntu is equally good. Wubi will let you choose either Ubuntu or Kubuntu, or you can download whichever liveCD you prefer and test it out. Don't be afraid! You will like it!

The problem is I have a PC halfway through being set up to dual boot with Windows and Linux. I have a partitioned hard drive, half of which runs Windows and the other half of which does nothing. A friend set it up planning to put Linux on the other half, but then moved away and hasn't had a chance to finish the job.

I imagine the method's documented online somewhere, but I haven't looked very hard for it yet...

When you are going through the installation process, there will be an option that says "use available free space" and you can click that, instead of "use entire disk," and it will install itself onto the proper portion of your hard drive.

If it says you don't have enough space, then he likely formatted the free space, in which case you would have to go through the manual partitioning process. If that is the case, you can simply exit the installation process, and I can help you through that later. It isn't too bad, and on the plus side you will have more usable disk space when it is done.