What's the effect of installing PlayPumps compared to funding hand pumps?

PlayPumps International

Good intentions aren’t enough

Imagine you’re in charge of a hospital…

Causes don't deserve support. People do.

How much should the government pay to save 200,000 birds?

How to avoid scope neglect

Which strategy do you think brings the greatest reduction in CO2e emissions per $100 of US government spending?

How many more lives does the most effective global health charity save per $100 spent than additional UK public health spending?

How much more can be accomplished per $100 implementing the most effective solution for Problem B than Problem A?

What is the best way for you to help?

We are in triage every second of every day

Why the problem you work on is the biggest driver of your impact

How to achieve hundreds of times more

Have more people died from causes directly related to terrorism or COVID-19 over the last 50 years globally? How much more?

Factor 1: Importance

How much does the US government spend on terrorism vs. pandemics?

Factor 2: Neglectedness

Do preventative-care home visits to elderly patients by healthcare professionals improve life expectancy?

Do drug substitution programs reduce criminal offending among drug addicts?

Does formally processing crimes committed by juveniles reduce criminal re-offending?

Factor 3: Tractability

The ITN framework

Which of the following problems is higher impact to work on according to the ITN framework?

The ITN framework, cost-effectiveness, and cause prioritisation

Introduction to EA – Why & How to Prioritize Problems to Work On

Global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

We can use science to end poverty faster. But how much do governments listen to it?

Choosing the most critical problem

What happened to GDP per capita in England after 1825?

Our wealth across the ages

The industrial revolution changed everything

Comparing wealth across countries and time

We’ve seen progress across most areas of our lives

Billions now live free from extreme poverty

We’ve become vastly better educated

In what period did global life expectancy grow the most?

Our growing life expectancy

We could make the future radically better

Takeaways

The world is much better; The world is awful; The world can be much better

We radically improved the world, and could again

Know whether you’re actually helping

What impact did your colleague have from pushing the doctor out of the way to do CPR?

The real impact of saving a life

What was your true counterfactual impact?

Real positive change wouldn't have happened without you

Does Scared Straight help difficult kids commit less crime?

Scared straight?

You can accomplish more in hard-to-replace jobs

'Replaceability' isn't as important as you might think (or we've suggested)

Shapley values: Better than counterfactuals

How to be irreplaceable

Who deserves our concern?

Should you report the kidnapping to the police?

Kidnapper conundrum

We should care for moral patients

A golden rule

The all-knowing dictator

The blind dictator

We’re making moral progress

Same-sex relationships are now legal in the majority of countries

Approval of marriage between Black people and White people flipped from 4% to 94%

Many more women now enter the workforce than a century ago

We’re not done yet

Being a moral entrepreneur

Our descendants will probably see us as moral monsters

Identifying and tackling prejudice

Every answer has an element of uncertainty

Expected value is a tool for handling uncertainty

Assuming you could afford to lose, should you take this bet?

Let’s make a bet

Averting a nuclear disaster

What is the expected value, in additional years of healthy life, of a dose of Paxlovid?

Paxlovid

Expected value is used by leaders across industries

Which of your options has the highest expected value?

Sink or swim

Probabilities can be subjective and made up

If we accept GiveWell’s analysis, what increase should we expect for receiving deworming treatment?

Deworm The World

Expected value doesn’t handle extremes gracefully

The Fox And The Hedgehog: A Story of Triumphs and Tragedy

Moral cluelessness, population ethics, and probability within a multiverse

How to manage uncertainty in impact

Which problem should you work on?

Your career is loooooong…

You could change the course of history

There’s never been a better time to change the world

Which option would have a bigger direct impact on CO2 emissions?

Which of these factors has the strongest relationship with happiness on average?

Which graph best describes the relationship between income and happiness?

You can be financially secure and impactful

Take action

How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)

80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good

Making the most of your career

At what age is the average American’s salary the highest?

Build career capital to set yourself up for success

How often do we change our minds about our values, relative to what we expect?

Conduct quick tests to find your best long-term option

To get the best score you can, how many hours should you research before you start writing?

How much should you research?

What percent of technology startups fail to return a positive investment?

Reach high, with a backup

Score your options

Career exploration: when should you settle?

What to do when you’re uncertain

How many citations do the top 20% of scientists account for?

1_How many citations do the top 20% of scientists account for

You won’t know if something’s a good fit for you until you’ve tried it

What percent of American undergraduate students change degrees?

Take small steps to become more confident in a degree

How many passionate students are there in sports, music, or art for every job?

Don't blindly follow your passion

How often, on average, does a member of Gen Z change jobs?

Try out more options than you think you need to

Which undergraduate degree has the highest median salary?

Choose a flexible degree to not lock yourself in

High school is 12 years long. What is the value, in increased earnings, of finishing that last year of high school compared to finishing only 11 years?

Prestigious degrees open doors

Infrequently asked questions

Many Undergrads Should Take Light Courseloads

Half-assing it with everything you've got

What to study at university

Compare your long-term paths

Create a plan that makes sense for you

Your most impactful, fulfilling career

Common misconceptions

How many lives a doctor saves

What's more important to check to find out if this charity would actually help people?

Save The World By Helping Things™

The overhead myth

Compared to a doctor, how many more lives per year does Elijah, the engineer, save?

What does it cost in the field of global health to save a life, to the nearest order of magnitude?

How does the median American income compare to the rest of the world?

How rich will you be?

You can save lives without a medical degree

Join or build a community changing the world

Confidently taking your next steps

How you can help now

How to actually change the world

It’s common to show more concern for those who are more similar to us – people in our family, fans of the same football team, or citizens of the same nation.

On one hand, it makes sense to be more concerned about people we know because it’s easier for us to help them.

However, this natural tendency has a dark side – it can cause us to be prejudiced against people who might be equally deserving of our consideration.

Keeping this part of ourselves in check has led to some of the greatest moral victories in history and presents some of the best opportunities for us to help others today.

On your way to school in the morning, you watch a white van pull up next to a child a hundred metres away. Someone slides the back door of the van open, and quickly snatches the child. 

You run after them, but they drive off before you get there. There was no one else on the street, so you’re not sure if anyone else saw.

You could go to the police, but you’d spend the rest of the day at the station giving a report. Then you’d have to explain it to your school, who might not believe you.

Yes, I should report the kidnapping despite inconveniencing myself

No, I don’t need to report the kidnapping, I owe that child nothing

It'll be a small inconvenience to you, and could potentially save the child's life, so it seems cold and uncaring to leave them without reporting it.

It seems a bit callous to not report the kidnapping.

You’re preparing a last-minute report for geography class on pedestrian flow in South Africa’s public squares.

As part of your research, you’re watching a livestream of a public square, when you clearly see a white van pull up next to a child and kidnap them.

The website shows there are a dozen people watching with you, but you have no idea whether anyone else saw what you did.

You could call the South African police, but you’d spend the rest of the day on the phone. Then you’d have to explain it to your school, who might not believe you.

Distance doesn't seem morally relevant in this case. If someone you loved was in another country, it's unlikely you should love them any less for their distance. So, too, in this case – if you'd report the kidnapping in your town, shouldn't you report it wherever it occurs?

Suppose you’ve got a rock in your hand, and see a child crossing the street. A horrific thought crosses your mind: you could throw the rock at them.

You immediately know this is morally wrong, but certainly not because it would be harmful 

. The rock just isn’t morally relevant, while the child obviously and self-evidently is.

The technical term for someone deserving of our concern is a 

. Above, the child is a moral patient, while the rock isn’t.

While it is normally agreed that typical humans are moral patients, there is debate about whether human embryos, non-human animals, future people, and computers are, or could be, moral patients.

Nerdy aside: Moral patients vs moral agents

You’re creating a new cryptocurrency for the food lovers club at your school, CrunchX. Coin holders will be eligible for delicious snacks, so the stakes are high.

You’re distributing CrunchX to club members. You’re minting 100 coins to start with, which you’re allocating into 10 wallets - one for each member.

After you seed the wallets, you’re free to distribute them however you like, including to yourself. Knowing this, and assuming you’d really like to get plenty of tasty snacks (and don’t much care who else gets them), how might you divide the coins between wallets?

Before you allocate coins to wallets, one of your members makes a suggestion. “Hey," they say, “couldn’t our leader just put most of the coins in one wallet, then take that one for themselves? Why don’t we randomise who gets what wallet - the leader can still make one wallet bigger than the rest, but they’d have no control of who gets which!” Everyone but you immediately votes for this proposal, overruling you.

How would you allocate the coins if you didn’t know which wallet you’d get?

Nerdy aside: the veil of ignorance

As the philosopher Peter Singer explores in his book 

In the distant past, people mostly just cared about their own family or small tribe, and put very little weight on the welfare of others. But over time, we’ve come to care about the wellbeing of more and more people. Today, most people care about the welfare of fellow members of their nation, and many are also concerned for people overseas and non-human animals.

The circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings. The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism.

– Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle, p. 120.

It’s not just philosophers interested in this kind of thing - we really do treat more and more people with respect and dignity worldwide.

For example, let’s consider one indirect way of measuring global attitudes towards same-sex couples: whether it’s legal for them to be in a relationship.

 Here we see that access to the legal institution of marriage has expanded greatly since the 18th century.

Humanity as a species has come far, but there is still so much injustice and suffering. 85% of the world still lives on less than what you can buy in the US for $30 per day.

 In many parts of the world there is still discrimination enshrined in law based on sex or sexual orientation. Inequality within developed countries is rising.

So while we’ve made a lot of progress, it would be a mistake to rest on our laurels. We can do much better.

Warning: graphic discussion of animal suffering

Nerdy aside: How might our descendants view us as moral monsters?

Some of the most impressive moral figures of the past advocated for populations that otherwise weren’t getting much support or attention. In this sense, they were moral entrepreneurs.

The suffragettes fought hard to secure the right to vote for women - something that hadn’t occurred to many people as a real possibility before. And Martin Luther King Jr. championed the rights of black Americans at a time when many were complacent about segregation and Jim Crow laws.

Moral progress is hard won. But it starts with the conviction that some group of people deserves to be treated better.

Conventional morality has failed us in the past, with lots of abhorrent treatment of others.

But we’re getting better – we show more concern now for others from different backgrounds than we historically did.

There’s not a good reason to suggest our morality has reached its final state.

Moral entrepreneurship has allowed history's most positively influential people to have an impact, and is an opportunity to make an outsized difference to others' lives.

History is littered with examples of conventional morality seeming clearly wrong from a modern perspective.

Overall, prejudice has been decreasing over time as people show greater concern for those from different backgrounds and with different characteristics such as race, gender and sexual orientation.

What will our descendents think of what we do today? Which things will 

“Moral entrepreneurship,” which is the way some of history’s most positively influential people made their impact, is an opportunity for you to make an outsized difference as well.

Identifying and tackling prejudice

What you'll be able to do