80,000 Hours Podcast

Today’s release is the latest in our series of audio versions of our articles.

In this one — How much does a vote matter? — I investigate the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:

Had World War 1 never happened, you might never have existed.

 It’s very unlikely that the exact chain of events that led to your conception would have happened otherwise — so perhaps you wouldn't have been born.

Would that mean that it's better for you that World War 1 happened (regardless of whether it was better for the world overall)?

On the one hand, if you're living a pretty good life, you might think the answer is yes – you get to live rather than not.

On the other hand, it sounds strange to say that it's better for you to be alive, because if you'd never existed there'd be no you to be worse off. But if you wouldn't be worse off if you hadn't existed, can you be better off because you do?

In this episode, philosophy professor Hilary Greaves – Director of Oxford University’s Global Priorities Institute – helps untangle this puzzle for us and walks me and Rob through the space of possible answers. She argues that philosophers have been too quick to conclude what she calls existence non-comparativism – i.e, that it can't be better for someone to exist vs. not.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

Where we come down on this issue matters. If people are not made better off by existing and having good lives, you might conclude that bringing more people into existence isn't better for them, and thus, perhaps, that it's not better at all.

This would imply that bringing about a world in which more people live happy lives might not actually be a good thing (if the people wouldn't otherwise have existed) — which would affect how we try to make the world a better place.

Those wanting to have children in order to give them the pleasure of a good life would in some sense be mistaken. And if humanity stopped bothering to have kids and just gradually died out we would have no particular reason to be concerned.

Furthermore it might mean we should deprioritise issues that primarily affect future generations, like climate change or the risk of humanity accidentally wiping itself out.

This is our second episode with Professor Greaves. The first one was a big hit, so we thought we'd come back and dive into even more complex ethical issues.

We discuss:

• The case for different types of ‘strong longtermism’ — the idea that we ought morally to try to make the very long run future go as well as possible
• What it means for us to be 'clueless' about the consequences of our actions
• Moral uncertainty -- what we should do when we don't know which moral theory is correct
• Whether we should take a bet on a really small probability of a really great outcome
• The field of global priorities research at the Global Priorities Institute and beyond

Chapters:

• The interview begins (00:02:53)
• The Case for Strong Longtermism (00:05:49)
• Compatible moral views (00:20:03)
• Defining cluelessness (00:39:26)
• Why cluelessness isn’t an objection to longtermism (00:51:05)
• Theories of what to do under moral uncertainty (01:07:42)
• Pascal’s mugging (01:16:37)
• Comparing Existence and Non-Existence (01:30:58)
• Philosophers who reject existence comparativism (01:48:56)
• Lives framework (02:01:52)
• Global priorities research (02:09:25)

 Get this episode by subscribing: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Or read the linked transcript.

Producer: Keiran Harris.
 Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
 Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.

Today’s release is the latest in our series of audio versions of our articles.

When COVID-19 struck the US, everyone was told that hand sanitizer needed to be saved for healthcare professionals, so they should just wash their hands instead. But in India, many homes lack reliable piped water, so they had to do the opposite: distribute hand sanitizer as widely as possible.

 American advocates for banning single-use plastic straws might be outraged at the widespread adoption of single-use hand sanitizer sachets in India. But the US and India are very different places, and it might be the only way out when you're facing a pandemic without running water.

 According to today’s guest, Shruti Rajagopalan, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, that's typical and context is key to policy-making. This prompted Shruti to propose a set of policy responses designed for India specifically back in April.

Unfortunately she thinks it's surprisingly hard to know what one should and shouldn't imitate from overseas.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

For instance, some places in India installed shared handwashing stations in bus stops and train stations, which is something no developed country would advise. But in India, you can't necessarily wash your hands at home — so shared faucets might be the lesser of two evils. (Though note scientists have downgraded the importance of hand hygiene lately.)

Stay-at-home orders offer a more serious example. Developing countries find themselves in a serious bind that rich countries do not.

With nearly no slack in healthcare capacity, India lacks equipment to treat even a small number of COVID-19 patients. That suggests strict controls on movement and economic activity might be necessary to control the pandemic.

But many people in India and elsewhere can't afford to shelter in place for weeks, let alone months. And governments in poorer countries may not be able to afford to send everyone money — even where they have the infrastructure to do so fast enough.

India ultimately did impose strict lockdowns, lasting almost 70 days, but the human toll has been larger than in rich countries, with vast numbers of migrant workers stranded far from home with limited if any income support.

There were no trains or buses, and the government made no provision to deal with the situation. Unable to afford rent where they were, many people had to walk hundreds of kilometers to reach home, carrying children and belongings with them.

But in some other ways the context of developing countries is more promising. In the US many people melted down when asked to wear facemasks. But in South Asia, people just wore them.

Shruti isn’t sure whether that's because of existing challenges with high pollution, past experiences with pandemics, or because intergenerational living makes the wellbeing of others more salient, but the end result is that masks weren’t politicised in the way they were in the US.

In addition, despite the suffering caused by India's policy response to COVID-19, public support for the measures and the government remains high — and India's population is much younger and so less affected by the virus.

In this episode, Howie and Shruti explore the unique policy challenges facing India in its battle with COVID-19, what they've tried to do, and how it has gone.

They also cover:

• What an economist can bring to the table during a pandemic
• The mystery of India’s surprisingly low mortality rate
• Policies that should be implemented today
• What makes a good constitution

Chapters:
 • Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
• The interview begins (00:02:27)
• What an economist can bring to the table for COVID-19 (00:07:54)
• What India has done about the coronavirus (00:12:24)
• Why it took so long for India to start seeing a lot of cases (00:25:08)
• How India is doing at the moment with COVID-19 (00:27:55)
• Is the mortality rate surprisingly low in India? (00:40:32)
• Why Southeast Asians countries have done so well so far (00:55:43)
• Different attitudes to masks globally (00:59:25)
• Differences in policy approaches for developing countries (01:07:27)
• India’s strict lockdown (01:25:56)
• Lockdown for the average rural Indian (01:39:11)
• Public reaction to the lockdown in India (01:44:39)
• Policies that should be implemented today (01:50:29)
• India’s overall reaction to COVID-19 (01:57:23)
• Constitutional economics (02:03:28)
• What makes a good constitution (02:11:47)
• Emergent Ventures (02:27:34)
• Careers (02:47:57)
• Rob’s outro (02:57:51)

 Producer: Keiran Harris.
 Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
 Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.

The killing of George Floyd has prompted a great deal of debate over whether the US should reduce the size of its police departments. The research literature suggests that the presence of police officers does reduce crime, though they're expensive and as is increasingly recognised, impose substantial harms on the populations they are meant to be protecting, especially communities of colour.

 So maybe we ought to shift our focus to effective but unconventional approaches to crime prevention, approaches that don't require police or prisons and the human toll they bring with them.

 Today’s guest, Jennifer Doleac — Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, and Director of the Justice Tech Lab — is an expert on empirical research into policing, law and incarceration. In this extensive interview, she highlights three alternative ways to effectively prevent crime: better street lighting, cognitive behavioral therapy, and lead reduction.

One of Jennifer’s papers used switches into and out of daylight saving time as a 'natural experiment' to measure the effect of light levels on crime. One day the sun sets at 5pm; the next day it sets at 6pm. When that evening hour is dark instead of light, robberies during it roughly double.

Links to sources for the claims in these show notes, other resources to learn more, and a full transcript.

The idea here is that if you try to rob someone in broad daylight, they might see you coming, and witnesses might later be able to identify you. You're just more likely to get caught.

You might think: "Well, people will just commit crime in the morning instead". But it looks like criminals aren’t early risers, and that doesn’t happen.

On her unusually rigorous podcast Probable Causation, Jennifer spoke to one of the authors of a related study, in which very bright streetlights were randomly added to some public housing complexes but not others. They found the lights reduced outdoor night-time crime by 36%, at little cost.

The next best thing to sun-light is human-light, so just installing more streetlights might be one of the easiest ways to cut crime, without having to hassle or punish anyone.

The second approach is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), in which you're taught to slow down your decision-making, and think through your assumptions before acting.

There was a randomised controlled trial done in schools, as well as juvenile detention facilities in Chicago, where the kids assigned to get CBT were followed over time and compared with those who were not assigned to receive CBT. They found the CBT course reduced rearrest rates by a third, and lowered the likelihood of a child returning to a juvenile detention facility by 20%.

Jennifer says that the program isn’t that expensive, and the benefits are massive. Everyone would probably benefit from being able to talk through their problems but the gains are especially large for people who've grown up with the trauma of violence in their lives.

Finally, Jennifer thinks that lead reduction might be the best buy of all in crime prevention…

Blog post truncated due to length limits. Finish reading the full post here.

In today’s conversation, Rob and Jennifer also cover, among many other things:

• Misconduct, hiring practices and accountability among US police
• Procedural justice training
• Overrated policy ideas
• Policies to try to reduce racial discrimination
• The effects of DNA databases
• Diversity in economics
• The quality of social science research

Get this episode by subscribing: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app.

Producer: Keiran Harris.
 Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
 Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.

No democracy has ever incarcerated as many people as the United States. To get its incarceration rate down to the global average, the US would have to release 3 in 4 people in its prisons today.

 The effects on Black Americans have been especially severe — Black people make up 12% of the US population but 33% of its prison population. In the early 2000's when incarceration reached its peak, the US government estimated that 32% of Black boys would go to prison at some point in their lives, 5.5 times the figure for whites.

 Contrary to popular understanding, nonviolent drug offenders make up less than a fifth of the incarcerated population. The only way to get its incarceration rate near the global average will be to shorten prison sentences for so-called 'violent criminals' — a politically toxic idea. But could we change that?

According to today’s guest, Professor James Forman Jr — a former public defender in Washington DC, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, and now a professor at Yale Law School — there are two things we have to do to make that happen.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

First, he thinks we should lose the term 'violent offender', and maybe even 'violent crime'. When you say 'violent crime', most people immediately think of murder and rape — but they're only a small fraction of the crimes that the law deems as violent.

In reality, the crime that puts the most people in prison in the US is robbery. And the law says that robbery is a violent crime whether a weapon is involved or not. By moving away from the catch-all category of 'violent criminals' we can judge the risk posed by individual people more sensibly.

Second, he thinks we should embrace the restorative justice movement. Instead of asking "What was the law? Who broke it? What should the punishment be", restorative justice asks "Who was harmed? Who harmed them? And what can we as a society, including the person who committed the harm, do to try to remedy that harm?"

Instead of being narrowly focused on how many years people should spend in prison as retribution, it starts a different conversation.

You might think this apparently softer approach would be unsatisfying to victims of crime. But James has discovered that a lot of victims of crime find that the current system doesn't help them in any meaningful way. What they primarily want to know is: why did this happen to me?

The best way to find that out is to actually talk to the person who harmed them, and in doing so gain a better understanding of the underlying factors behind the crime. The restorative justice approach facilitates these conversations in a way the current system doesn't allow, and can include restitution, apologies, and face-to-face reconciliation.

That’s just one topic of many covered in today’s episode, with much of the conversation focusing on Professor Forman’s 2018 book Locking Up Our Own — an examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice practices in the US, and his experience setting up a charter school for at-risk youth in DC.

Chapters:

• Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
• The interview begins (00:02:02)
• How did we get here? (00:04:07)
• The role racism plays in policing today (00:14:47)
• Black American views on policing and criminal justice (00:22:37)
• Has the core argument of the book been controversial? (00:31:51)
• The role that class divisions played in forming the current legal system (00:37:33)
• What are the biggest problems today? (00:40:56)
• What changes in policy would make the biggest difference? (00:52:41)
• Shorter sentences for violent crimes (00:58:26)
• Important recent successes (01:08:21)
• What can people actually do to help? (01:14:38)

 Get this episode by subscribing: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Or read the linked transcript.

Producer: Keiran Harris.
 Audio mastering: Ben Cordell.
 Transcriptions: Zakee Ulhaq.