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)

#107 – Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks

Big machine learning models can identify plant species better than any human, write passable essays, beat you at a game of Starcraft 2, figure out how a photo of Tobey Maguire and the word 'spider' ar...

4 Elo 20213h 9min

#106 – Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work

If you wanted to start a university department from scratch, and attract as many superstar researchers as possible, what’s the most attractive perk you could offer?How about just not needing an email ...

28 Heinä 20211h 53min

#105 – Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways

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,...

12 Heinä 20212h 54min

#104 – Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics

When the first person with COVID-19 went to see a doctor in Wuhan, nobody could tell that it wasn’t a familiar disease like the flu — that we were dealing with something new. How much death and destru...

29 Kesä 20212h 20min

#103 – Max Roser on building the world's best source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data

History is filled with stories of great people stepping up in times of crisis. Presidents averting wars; soldiers leading troops away from certain death; data scientists sleeping on the office floor t...

21 Kesä 20212h 22min

#102 – Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all

It can be tough to get people to truly care about reducing existential risks today. But spare a thought for the longtermist of the 17th century: they were surrounded by people who thought extinction w...

11 Kesä 20213h 56min

#101 – Robert Wright on using cognitive empathy to save the world

In 2003, Saddam Hussein refused to let Iraqi weapons scientists leave the country to be interrogated. Given the overwhelming domestic support for an invasion at the time, most key figures in the U.S. ...

28 Touko 20211h 36min

#100 – Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome

Today's episode is one of the most remarkable and really, unique, pieces of content we’ve ever produced (and I can say that because I had almost nothing to do with making it!). The producer of this ...

19 Touko 20212h 51min