80,000 Hours Podcast11 Loka 2017

#10 - Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction

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?

Get free, one-on-one career advice

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.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(334)

#208 – Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world

"I think stories are the way we shift the Overton window — so widen the range of things that are acceptable for policy and palatable to the public. Almost by definition, a lot of things that are going...

21 Marras 20242h 22min

#207 – Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead

"I think one of the reasons I took [shutting down my charity] so hard is because entrepreneurship is all about this bets-based mindset. So you say, “I’m going to take a bunch of bets. I’m going to tak...

14 Marras 20242h 58min

Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests

With kids very much on the team's mind we thought it would be fun to review some comments about parenting featured on the show over the years, then have hosts Luisa Rodriguez and Rob Wiblin react to t...

8 Marras 20241h 35min

#206 – Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness

"In that famous example of the dress, half of the people in the world saw [blue and black], half saw [white and gold]. It turns out there’s individual differences in how brains take into account ambie...

1 Marras 20242h 33min

How much does a vote matter? (Article)

If you care about social impact, is voting important? In this piece, Rob investigates the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:The chances of your vote changing an election’s outcome....

28 Loka 202432min

#205 – Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do

"You have a tank split in two parts: if the fish gets in the compartment with a red circle, it will receive food, and food will be delivered in the other tank as well. If the fish takes the blue trian...

23 Loka 20243h 11min

#204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism

Rob Wiblin speaks with FiveThirtyEight election forecaster and author Nate Silver about his new book: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything.Links to learn more, highlights, video, and full transc...

16 Loka 20241h 57min

#203 – Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation

"In the human case, it would be mistaken to give a kind of hour-by-hour accounting. You know, 'I had +4 level of experience for this hour, then I had -2 for the next hour, and then I had -1' — and you...

3 Loka 20241h 25min