Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours
19 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago -A collection of ten top episodes of the 80,000 Hours Podcast, specifically selected to help listeners get up to speed on effective altruism as quickly as possible.
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Episodes
Effective altruism in a nutshell
April 12, 2021 23:00 - 9 minutes - 4.42 MB'Effective Altruism: An Introduction' is a collection of ten top episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast specifically selected to help listeners quickly get up to speed on the school of thought known as effective altruism. Here the host of the show — Rob Wiblin — briefly explains what effective altruism is all about, and what to expect from the rest of this series.
One: Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil's plan to do the same
April 12, 2021 22:00 - 2 hours - 71.5 MBThe Green Revolution averted mass famine during the 20th century. The contraceptive pill gave women unprecedented freedom in planning their own lives. Both are widely recognised as scientific breakthroughs that transformed the world. But few know that those breakthroughs only happened when they did because of a philanthropist willing to take a risky bet on a new idea. Holden Karnofsky has been studying philanthropy’s biggest success stories because he’s Executive Director of Open P...
Two: Dr Toby Ord on why the long-term future matters more than anything else & what to do about it
April 12, 2021 21:00 - 2 hours - 59.8 MBOf all the people whose well-being we should care about, only a small fraction are alive today. The rest are members of future generations who are yet to exist. Whether they’ll be born into a world that is flourishing or disintegrating – and indeed, whether they will ever be born at all – is in large part up to us. As such, the welfare of future generations should be our number one moral concern. This conclusion holds true regardless of whether your moral framework is based on comm...
Three: Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways
April 12, 2021 20:30 - 2 hours - 79.6 MBThe effective altruist research community tries to identify the highest impact things people can do to improve the world. Unsurprisingly, given the difficulty of such a massive and open-ended project, very different schools of thought have arisen about how to do the most good. Today’s guest, Alexander Berger, leads Open Philanthropy’s ‘Global Health and Wellbeing’ programme, where he oversees around $175 million in grants each year, and ultimately aspires to disburse billions in th...
Four: Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions
April 12, 2021 20:15 - 2 hours - 62.9 MBWill SpaceX land people on Mars in the next decade? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner? Spencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems. In this conversation from 2018, Spencer walks us through how to reason through difficult questions more accurately, and when we should expect to be overconfident or underconfident. Full transcript, related links, and summary of this interview...
Five: Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
April 12, 2021 20:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBImmanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to kill illegitimate children, and that there was a ranking in the moral worth of different races. Throughout history we’ve consistently believed, as common sense, truly horrifying things by today’s standards. According to University of Oxford P...
Three: Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
April 12, 2021 20:00 - 1 hour - 51.7 MBImmanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to kill illegitimate children, and that there was a ranking in the moral worth of different races. Throughout history we’ve consistently believed, as common sense, truly horrifying things by today’s standards. According to University of Oxford P...
Six: Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
April 12, 2021 19:30 - 2 hours - 80.8 MBImagine that humanity has two possible futures ahead of it: Either we’re going to have a huge future like that, in which trillions of people ultimately exist, or we’re going to wipe ourselves out quite soon, thereby ensuring that only around 100 billion people ever get to live. If there are eventually going to be 1,000 trillion humans, what should we think of the fact that we seemingly find ourselves so early in history? If the future will have many trillions of people, the odds of...
Five: Dr Paul Christiano on how OpenAI is developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem', and his vision of how humanity will progressively hand over decision-making to AI systems
April 12, 2021 18:00 - 3 hours - 106 MBWill artificial intelligence transform the world gradually, or explosively? Could an advanced AI that doesn’t share human goals still have moral value? Which decade should we expect human labour to become obsolete? Paul Christiano — researcher at OpenAI and legendary thinker in the effective altruism and rationality communities — is one of the smartest people we know, and has a very unusually thought through view of how AI will change the world. In this conversation from 2018, ...
Six: Prof Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better
April 12, 2021 17:00 - 2 hours - 63 MBHave you ever been infuriated by a doctor's unwillingness to give you an honest, probabilistic estimate about what to expect? Or a lawyer who won't tell you the chances you'll win your case? Their behaviour is so frustrating because accurately predicting the future is central to every action we take. If we can't assess the likelihood of different outcomes we're in a complete bind, whether the decision concerns war and peace, work and study, or Black Mirror and RuPaul's Drag Race. ...
Seven: Prof Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better
April 12, 2021 17:00 - 2 hours - 63 MBHave you ever been infuriated by a doctor's unwillingness to give you an honest, probabilistic estimate about what to expect? Or a lawyer who won't tell you the chances you'll win your case? Their behaviour is so frustrating because accurately predicting the future is central to every action we take. If we can't assess the likelihood of different outcomes we're in a complete bind, whether the decision concerns war and peace, work and study, or Black Mirror and RuPaul's Drag Race. ...
Eight: Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
April 12, 2021 16:00 - 2 hours - 77.2 MBThe barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re never getting back? According to philosophy Professor Hilary Greaves - Director of Oxford University's Global Priorities Institute, this simple decision will completely change the long-term future by altering the identities of almost all futur...
Seven: Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
April 12, 2021 16:00 - 2 hours - 77.2 MBThe barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re never getting back? According to philosophy Professor Hilary Greaves - Director of Oxford University's Global Priorities Institute, this simple decision will completely change the long-term future by altering the identities of almost all futur...
Eight: Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
April 12, 2021 15:00 - 2 hours - 81.2 MBThe 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that question in the most direct way possible. In 2019 we published a summary of all our key ideas, which links to many of our other articles, and which we are aiming to keep updated as our opinions shift. All of us added something to it, but the single biggest contributor was our CEO and today's guest, Ben Todd, who founded 80,000 ...
Nine: Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours
April 12, 2021 15:00 - 2 hours - 81.2 MBThe 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that question in the most direct way possible. In 2019 we published a summary of all our key ideas, which links to many of our other articles, and which we are aiming to keep updated as our opinions shift. All of us added something to it, but the single biggest contributor was our CEO and today's guest, Ben Todd, who founded 80,000 ...
Nine: Dr David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8 billion people through an asteroid/nuclear winter
April 12, 2021 14:00 - 2 hours - 81.2 MBIf an asteroid impact or nuclear winter blocked the sun for years, our inability to grow food would result in billions dying of starvation, right? According to Dr David Denkenberger, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What: no. If he's to be believed, nobody need starve at all. Even without the sun, David sees the Earth as a bountiful food source. Mushrooms farmed on decaying wood. Bacteria fed with natural gas. Fish and mussels supported by sudden upwelling of ocean nutrient...
Ten: Benjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it
April 12, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 37.9 MBIs effective altruism just about donating money to fight poverty? Does it include a moral obligation to give? How do you talk about it to people who've never heard of it? In this conversation from 2020, Arden Koehler and 80,000 Hours CEO Ben Todd cover a bunch of topics related to effective altruism. We also have an article on misconceptions about effective altruism – based on Will MacAskill’s paper The Definition of Effective Altruism – and this episode can act as a companion p...
What's next
April 12, 2021 12:00 - 2 minutes - 1.36 MBNow you've finished Effective Altruism: An Introduction, here's what we suggest you do next. And if you’ve listened to this series and found the ideas resonated with you, our one-on-one team might be able to help you apply them to your career. We can talk to you about career options, make introductions in your chosen fields, and help you work out next steps on a free careers call. Apply now.
Introducing the Learn Effective Altruism feed
December 07, 2020 21:14 - 9 minutes - 4.17 MBAn introduction to Learn Effective Altruism — a collection of ten top episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast specifically selected to help listeners rapidly get up to speed on the school of thought known as effective altruism.