Episode #5 - Doing Good Better

Billy Ray Taylor joins the podcast to discuss Doing Good Better by William MacAskill and drink Lagavulin 16 year scotch. Topics include: Effective Altruism, moral philosophy, problems of loyalty, leadership organizations, and how to make the world better.

0:00:00 - Introduction
0:03:02 - Episode dedication
0:04:09 - Billy Ray Taylor and Lagavulin 16 introduction
0:05:37 - Disclaimer about the difficulty of talking about charity without sounding like a d-bag.
0:07:44 - A free beer offer, John’s natural selfishness, and discovering altruism by process of elimination.
0:14:00 - How Effective Altruism appealed to a certain, young Warren Buffett wanna-be.
0:16:54 - Emotion vs rationality in charity, and using passion (an emotion) to avoid burnout
0:22:25 - The magic #13 and planned gifts
0:24:36 - The Play Pump vs Deworm the World - Part 1
0:30:15 -  Nonprofits = no regulations?, Gates/Buffett, and EA leadership
0:33:48 - Effective altruists as effective leaders
0:36:03 - The Play Pump vs Deworm the World - Part 2
0:40:09 - QALY’s and effectiveness benchmarks in US Public Health vs developing countries.
0:42:34 - Emotion, charity research, and Boy Scout Popcorn
0:45:33 - 3 great sites for evaluating charity: givewell.org, givingwhatwecan.org, and thelifeyoucansave.org
0:47:50 - Peter Singer: the “evil” moral philosopher
0:51:00 - The problem of loyalty
0:57:00 - How effective is donating to Boy Scouts, or to leadership organizations, in general?
1:01:17 - Opportunity costs for the global 1% (aka you, probably.)
1:04:28 - Heroic bankers and admirable yeyo dealers
1:12:49 - Quick recap of book and Billy Ray’s life advice
1:17:24 - Hard to quantify “goodness” and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
1:22:28 - Policy changes
1:24:01 - Depression and/or friendship in the developed world as Effective Altruism
1:30:20 - Strangers Drowning: How do we balance loyalty and morality?
1:49:02 - Humans are assholes or How effective altruism can be an act of rebellion against an imperfect world.
1:52:47 - Some is better than none. Take some action. Be a hero.

See more at booksandboozepodcast.com

https://www.givewell.org/
https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/