Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours

'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.

The 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 Philanthropy, a major foundation which gives away over $200 million a year — and he’s hungry for big wins.

In this conversation from 2018 Holden explains the philosophy of effective altruism and how he goes about searching for giving opportunities that can do the most good possible.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on February 27, 2018. Some related episodes include:

• #41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
• #37 – GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.
• #10 – Dr Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

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 conversation from 2017, Toby makes the case that aiming for a positive long-term future is likely the best way to improve the world.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on September 6, 2017. Some related episodes include:

• #10 – Dr Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction
• #45 – Prof Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
• #68 – Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
• #72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
• #73 – Phil Trammell on patient philanthropy and waiting to do good
• #86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

The 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 the most impactful ways he and his team can identify.

In this conversation from 2021, Alexander explains the case in favour of adopting the ‘global health and wellbeing’ mindset, while going through the arguments for the longtermist approach that he finds most and least convincing.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on July 12, 2021. Some related episodes include:

• #22 – Dr Leah Utyasheva on the non-profit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates
• #37 – GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.
• #83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

Will 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.
 

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on August 7, 2018. Some related episodes include:

• #7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
• #11 – Dr Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm.
• #15 – Prof Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
• #30 – Dr Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
• #40 – Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions.
• #48 – Brian Christian on better living through the wisdom of computer science
• #78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and measuring some of the most important drivers of AI progress

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

Immanuel 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 Professor Will MacAskill, it’s extremely likely that we’re in the same boat today. If we accept that we’re probably making major moral errors, how should we proceed?

In this conversation from 2018, Will makes the case that we need to develop a moral view that criticises common sense intuitions, and gives us a chance to move beyond them.
 

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on January 19, 2018. Some related episodes include:

• #16 – Dr Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
• #42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
• #67 – Dave Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
• #68 – Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
• #72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
• #73 – Phil Trammell on patient philanthropy and waiting to do good
• #86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

Imagine 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 us appearing so strangely early are very low indeed.

If we accept the analogy, maybe we can be confident that humanity is at a high risk of extinction based on this so-called ‘doomsday argument‘ alone.

There are many critics of this theoretical ‘doomsday argument’, and it may be the case that it logically doesn’t work. This is why Ajeya Cotra — a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy —  spent time investigating it, with the goal of ultimately making better philanthropic grants.

In this conversation from 2021, Ajeya and Rob discuss both the doomsday argument and the challenge Open Phil faces striking a balance between taking big ideas seriously, and not going all in on philosophical arguments that may turn out to be barking up the wrong tree entirely.
 

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on January 19, 2021. Some related episodes include:

• #45 – Prof Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
• #40 – Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions.
• #42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
• #3 – Dario Amodei on OpenAI and how AI will change the world for good and ill
• #41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
• #10 – Dr Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction
•  #62 – Paul Christiano on messaging the future, increasing compute, & how CO2 impacts your brain.

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

Have 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.

Which is why the research of Professor Philip Tetlock is relevant for all of us each and every day.

In this conversation from 2019, we discuss how his work can be applied to your personal life to answer high-stakes questions, like how likely you are to thrive in a given career path, or whether your business idea will be a billion-dollar unicorn — or fall apart catastrophically.
 

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on June 28, 2019. Some related episodes include:

• #7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
• #11 – Dr Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm.
• #15 – Prof Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
• #30 – Dr Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
• #40 – Katja Grace on forecasting future technology & how much we should trust expert predictions.
• #48 – Brian Christian on better living through the wisdom of computer science
• #78 – Danny Hernandez on forecasting and measuring some of the most important drivers of AI progress

Series produced by Keiran Harris.

The 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 future generations.

This conversation from 2018 blends philosophy with an exploration of the mission and research agenda of the Global Priorities Institute: to develop the effective altruism movement within academia.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on October 23, 2018. Some related episodes include:

• #16 – Dr Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
• #42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
• #67 – Dave Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
• #68 – Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
• #72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
• #86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us

Series produced by Keiran Harris.