80,000 Hours Podcast

Prof Philip Tetlock is a social science legend. Over forty years he has researched whose predictions we can trust, whose we can’t and why - and developed methods that allow all of us to be better at predicting the future.

 After the Iraq WMDs fiasco, the US intelligence services hired him to figure out how to ensure they’d never screw up that badly again. The result of that work – Superforecasting – was a media sensation in 2015.

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It described Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project, which found forecasting methods so accurate they beat everyone else in open competition, including thousands of people in the intelligence services with access to classified information.

Today he’s working to develop the best forecasting process ever, by combining top human and machine intelligence in the Hybrid Forecasting Competition, which you can sign up and participate in.

We start by describing his key findings, and then push to the edge of what is known about how to foresee the unforeseeable:

* Should people who want to be right just adopt the views of experts rather than apply their own judgement?
* Why are Berkeley undergrads worse forecasters than dart-throwing chimps?
* Should I keep my political views secret, so it will be easier to change them later?
* How can listeners contribute to his latest cutting-edge research?
* What do we know about our accuracy at predicting low-probability high-impact disasters?
* Does his research provide an intellectual basis for populist political movements?
* Was the Iraq War caused by bad politics, or bad intelligence methods?
* What can we learn about forecasting from the 2016 election?
* Can experience help people avoid overconfidence and underconfidence?
* When does an AI easily beat human judgement?
* Could more accurate forecasting methods make the world more dangerous?
* How much does demographic diversity line up with cognitive diversity?
* What are the odds we’ll go to war with China?
* Should we let prediction tournaments run most of the government?

Listen to it. Get free, one-on-one career advice. Want to work on important social science research like Tetlock? We’ve helped hundreds of people compare their options and get introductions. Find out if our coaching can help you.

“When you're in the middle of a crisis and you have to ask for money, you're already too late.”

That’s Dr Beth Cameron, who leads Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Beth should know. She has years of experience preparing for and fighting the diseases of our nightmares, on the White House Ebola Taskforce, in the National Security Council staff, and as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs.

Summary, list of career opportunities, extra links to learn more and coaching application.

Unfortunately, the countries of the world aren’t prepared for a crisis - and like children crowded into daycare, there’s a good chance something will make us all sick at once.

During past pandemics countries have dragged their feet over who will pay to contain them, or struggled to move people and supplies where they needed to be. At the same time advanced biotechnology threatens to make it possible for terrorists to bring back smallpox - or create something even worse.

In this interview we look at the current state of play in disease control, what needs to change, and how you can build the career capital necessary to make those changes yourself. That includes:

* What and where to study, and where to begin a career in pandemic preparedness. Below you’ll find a lengthy list of people and places mentioned in the interview, and others we’ve had recommended to us.
* How the Nuclear Threat Initiative, with just 50 people, collaborates with governments around the world to reduce the risk of nuclear or biological catastrophes, and whether they might want to hire you.
* The best strategy for containing pandemics.
* Why we lurch from panic, to neglect, to panic again when it comes to protecting ourselves from contagious diseases.
* Current reform efforts within the World Health Organisation, and attempts to prepare partial vaccines ahead of time.
* Which global health security groups most impress Beth, and what they’re doing.
* What new technologies could be invented to make us safer.
* Whether it’s possible to help solve the problem through mass advocacy.
* Much more besides.

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Considering a relevant grad program like a biology PhD, medicine, or security studies? Able to apply for a relevant job already? We’ve helped dozens of people plan their careers to work on pandemic preparedness and put them in touch with mentors. If you want to work on the problem discussed in this episode, you should apply for coaching:

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Do most meat eaters think it’s wrong to hurt animals? Do Americans think climate change is likely to cause human extinction? What is the best, state-of-the-art therapy for depression? How can we make academics more intellectually honest, so we can actually trust their findings? How can we speed up social science research ten-fold? Do most startups improve the world, or make it worse?

 If you’re interested in these question, this interview is for you.

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A scientist, entrepreneur, writer and mathematician, Spencer Greenberg is constantly working to create tools to speed up and improve research and critical thinking. These include:

* Rapid public opinion surveys to find out what most people actually think about animal consciousness, farm animal welfare, the impact of developing world charities and the likelihood of extinction by various different means;
* Tools to enable social science research to be run en masse very cheaply;
* ClearerThinking.org, a highly popular site for improving people’s judgement and decision-making;
* Ways to transform data analysis methods to ensure that papers only show true findings;
* Innovative research methods;
* Ways to decide which research projects are actually worth pursuing.

In this interview, Spencer discusses all of these and more. If you don’t feel like listening, that just shows that you have poor judgement and need to benefit from his wisdom even more!

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We’ve helped hundreds of people compare their options, get introductions, and find high impact jobs. If you want to work on any of the problems discussed in this episode, find out if our coaching can help you.

What if you were in a position to give away billions of dollars to improve the world? What would you do with it? This is the problem facing Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project - people like Dr Nick Beckstead.

 Following a PhD in philosophy, Nick works to figure out where money can do the most good. He’s been involved in major grants in a wide range of areas, including ending factory farming through technological innovation, safeguarding the world from advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence, and spreading rational compassion.

 Full transcript, coaching application form, overview of the conversation, and links to resources discussed in the episode:

This episode is a tour through some of the toughest questions ‘effective altruists’ face when figuring out how to best improve the world, including:

* * Should we mostly try to help people currently alive, or future generations? Nick studied this question for years in his PhD thesis, On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far Future. (The first 31 minutes is a snappier version of my conversation with Toby Ord.)
* Is clean meat (aka *in vitro* meat) technologically feasible any time soon, or should we be looking for plant-based alternatives?
* What are the greatest risks to human civilisation?
* To stop malaria is it more cost-effective to use technology to eliminate mosquitos than to distribute bed nets?
* Should people who want to improve the future work for changes that will be very useful in a specific scenario, or just generally try to improve how well humanity makes decisions?
* What specific jobs should our listeners take in order for Nick to be able to spend more money in useful ways to improve the world?
* Should we expect the future to be better if the economy grows more quickly - or more slowly?

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We’ve helped dozens of people compare between their options, get introductions, and jobs important for the the long-run future. If you want to work on any of the problems discussed in this episode, find out if our coaching can help you.

Of 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 common sense, consequences, rules of ethical conduct, cooperating with others, virtuousness, keeping options open – or just a sense of wonder about the universe we find ourselves in.

 That’s the view of Dr Toby Ord, a philosophy Fellow at the University of Oxford and co-founder of the effective altruism community. In this episode of the 80,000 Hours Podcast Dr Ord makes the case that aiming for a positive long-term future is likely the best way to improve the world.

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We then discuss common objections to long-termism, such as the idea that benefits to future generations are less valuable than those to people alive now, or that we can’t meaningfully benefit future generations beyond taking the usual steps to improve the present.

Later the conversation turns to how individuals can and have changed the course of history, what could go wrong and why, and whether plans to colonise Mars would actually put humanity in a safer position than it is today.

This episode goes deep into the most distinctive features of our advice. It’s likely the most in-depth discussion of how 80,000 Hours and the effective altruism community think about the long term future and why - and why we so often give it top priority.

It’s best to subscribe, so you can listen at leisure on your phone, speed up the conversation if you like, and get notified about future episodes. You can do so by searching ‘80,000 Hours’ wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to help ensure humanity has a positive future instead of destroying itself? We want to help.

We’ve helped 100s of people compare between their options, get introductions, and jobs important for the the long-run future. If you want to work on any of the problems discussed in this episode, such as artificial intelligence or biosecurity, find out if our coaching can help you.

Overview of the discussion

3m30s - Why is the long-term future of humanity such a big deal, and perhaps the most important issue for us to be thinking about?
9m05s - Five arguments that future generations matter
21m50s - How bad would it be if humanity went extinct or civilization collapses?
26m40s - Why do people start saying such strange things when this topic comes up?
30m30s - Are there any other reasons to prioritize thinking about the long-term future of humanity that you wanted to raise before we move to objections?
36m10s - What is this school of thought called?
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