Improving decision making
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Promoting effective altruism
Note that this page has been superseded by our problem profile about promoting effective altruism.
What is this cause?
Promoting effective altruism means activities which expand the capabilities of those trying to do good in a cause-neutral, evidence-based and outcome-orientated way. Interventions within this area include advocacy of key ideas in effective altruism and network-building. Some organisations in this cause include GiveWell, the Centre for Effective Altruism (our parent charity), the Copenhagen Consensus, Leverage Research, the donation pledge organisations (Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save , the Giving Pledge) and ourselves. More broadly, you could also include organisations with an effectiveness-minded approach, like the Gates Foundation and Evidence Action.
How is it different from global priorities research?
Global priorities research is working out which opportunities have the most impact, while promoting effective altruism is building capacity to act on this research. In practice, both need to be carried out at the same time, and many organisations engage in a mixture of both.
Why do we think it’s high-priority?
Promoting effective altruism is effective because it’s a flexible multiplier on the next most high-priority cause. It’s important because we expect the most high-priority areas to change a great deal, so it’s good to build up general capabilities to take the best opportunities as they are discovered.
Summary of our thoughts on how to pick a degree
Introduction
I recently came across this post, which prompted me to summarise our current thoughts on how to pick an undergraduate degree.
I’d like to caveat that most of the following is just a judgement call, based on listening to what thoughtful, successful people have said about the topic (e.g. see here, here), my experiences of coaching, and thinking through the issues. Where there is further research on the claims, I’ve linked to it. Otherwise, assume it’s just my judgement call. Note that I don’t think I’m going to say anything that’s particularly controversial or against common sense.
In summary – what’s best?
It’s highly important to go to a prestigious university, do something you’re good at (which probably means picking something enjoyable and motivating) and use free time to meet people and learn useful skills.
With this constraint in mind, and if you broadly want to keep your options open, try to do the most impressive subject you can, ideally one which gives you skills in applied maths, statistics or programming. Top subjects would be things like: Maths (especially if combined with applied courses), Physics, CompSci, Engineering, Economics and Pre-Med. If you’ll hate these subjects or find them really hard, however, it’s probably best not to do them!
Note that there’s a tension between academic success and gaining connections, work experience and other skills. If you’re interested in a research career, then go for academic success. Otherwise, concentrate on getting ‘good enough’ grades (a 2.1 in the UK or a GPA around 3.4 in the US), and use the rest of your time to meet interesting people, get useful skills and do something impressive. That’s because our impression is that most employers value these traits more than good grades.
An attempt to create a new AMF
There are several health interventions that have been found in academic papers to have a cost-effectiveness that’s similar or better than distributing insecticide treated bed-nets, but which lack a high quality charity to implement them. For someone with the right entrepreneurial skills, it could be extremely effective to create such a charity.
One example of a promising intervention is using mass media to promote positive health behaviours. Development Media International is attempting to become a highly effective, transparent, scalable charity that implements this intervention.
Clara Marquardt, a member of Giving What We Can, recently interviewed Will Snell, a member of 80,000 Hours and the Director of Public Engagement & Development at DMI.
Before scaling up, DMI decided to gather more evidence about the effectiveness of using mass media to promote health, since the existing evidence is patchy. In the interview, Will explains how DMI overcame numerous challenges to design, fund and carry out a $12mn randomised control trial into the effectiveness of their program. He also explains the story and mission of DMI, giving an insight into the advantages and challenges of running an impact-focused charity.
Careers advice from top tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen
We just came across a series of four careers advice posts by Marc Andreessen (hat tip, Satvik Beri).
We’re always on the look out for thoughtful careers advice from very successful individuals aimed at people looking to make a big impact – we think it’s one of the best sources of careers advice, and we think these posts qualify. Andressen co-authored Mosaic (the first web browser), founded Netscape, and then led a successful career in venture capital.
The advice is particularly orientated towards people who want to enter the technology industry, which we think is a particularly promising path to social impact.
Interview with malaria vaccine researcher Katie Ewer
Introduction
A recent case study candidate asked us whether he should enter vaccine research. As part of our research for that study, we contacted the Jenner Institute, an international centre based in Oxford that develops vaccines for infectious diseases . Our aim was to interview one of the scientists to better understand how careers in this sector tend to go, and to get their thoughts on a variety of important questions (especially those concerning vaccines) for our case study candidate to cross-check against other interviews we have done with medical researchers.
Katie Ewer, a cellular immunologist based at the Institute, agreed to talk to us. We sent her a list of questions by email (see the appendix), and discussed them on Skype. Below, we present a summary of her responses and key quotes from the Skype call.
Key updates for us
- Katie was less keen on starting your career by studying medicine than our previous interview, because she didn’t think the benefits are worth the lost time, which made us less certain about this question.
- We updated slightly in favor of the idea that most of the benefits of doing vaccine research on a specific disease are flow through effects i.e. advances in one vaccine have many benefits for other vaccines, reducing pandemic risk, and medical research more generally. This suggests that ability at research is relatively more important than the priority of the research question than we previously thought.
- Katie suggested without prompting that research into neglected tropical diseases might be particularly neglected, which fits with previous research done by Giving What We Can into the Sabin Vaccine Institute.
- Katie, as with everyone else we’ve spoken to, said that strong motivation by the subject is very important, because the work is tough and the pay is low.
- Katie thought that the vast majority of people would be better off supporting research through earning to give than by becoming researchers, though talented people should do research, which fits with our view.
- A useful way to test out a medical research career is to take a research assistant job over the summer.
- We found that careers in medical research might be more flexible than we had first thought.
Career Opportunities for Economics PhDs
Introduction
This post presents some research notes we made while investigating the value of economics PhDs. We were motivated to do this research because we have some reasons to think that an economics PhD is a particularly good way to build career capital and keep one’s options open. We have coached several individuals who are considering applying to economics PhD programs. We lacked information about a) how useful an economics PhD is for high impact careers outside of academia and b) how important attending a top ranked program is for different career options. With more information, we can be more confident in determining whether an economics PhD or an alternative is the best option in individual cases.
Summary
Key findings from our research are:
A majority (about 60%) of economics PhDs place into academic positions immediately following graduate school. About one-in-six place into government, and a similar percentage place into the private sector. Very few place into nonprofits or think tanks.
Program tier does not appear to affect what sector one places into, but placement types can vary widely between individual programs.
Within academia, professorships in top departments are largely held by graduates of top tier programs. For example, twenty-six percent of faculty at the top 15 departments earned their PhDs at Harvard or MIT.
One-in-three professors at LSE and Oxford, top ranked departments outside of the US, went to a 1st tier program in the US.
Prestigious awards within economics tend to go to individuals who graduated from top-ranked programs.
Interview with a Cambridge Professor of Medical Genetics on research careers
Introduction
I recently interviewed John Todd, a Professor of Medical Genetics at Cambridge, as part of a series of interviews we’re carrying out for a case study. The aim of the series is to find out what key people in the field think about:
- What opportunities are best in the medical research field?
- What’s the balance between talent constraints and funding constraints?
- Who’s a good fit for medical research?
- Would our case study candidate be a good fit?
- How to go about this kind of career
Summary
The main points made in this interview were:
- John would prefer a good person in his lab to an extra £0.5mn in annual funding. Generally, there are enough grants, so finding good people is a bigger constraint than money.
- People with both medical knowledge with statistical and programming skills are highly sought after.
- Within medical research, it’s not straightforward to try to “pick” an area to work on and it changes quickly, though there are some broad strategies to use (e.g. pick diseases neglected by pharma, take a longer term perspective, avoid bandwagons)
- If you want to fund medical research, it would be difficult to beat going with the Wellcome Trust or Gates Foundation. Likewise, if you want to find the best areas to work on, these foundations are a good start.
- Getting an MD, then doing a PhD as a registrar is a good way in. If you have programming and statistics, you don’t need the PhD.
- He prefers Academia to Pharma.
Case study: Working in the financial sector to promote a flourishing long-term future
Introduction
This post is a write up of an in-depth case study, exploring one person’s decision about where to work in the financial sector, from the perspective of helping the long-run future.
Key recommendations made
- If you particularly care about long-run impacts, these are some of the interventions that have been pursued.
- We rate cause prioritisation research and advocacy as high priority (to be explained in an upcoming post)
- If you’re pursuing prioritisation research within finance and don’t want to pursue earning to give, then we recommend generally aiming to build career capital, building a community of people who support prioritisation, and promoting areas of social finance that seek to assess the social value of different projects. Though note that this is a judgement call.
What we learned
- We prepared this list of ways that people are trying to improve the far future.
- The direct impact of doing ‘impact investing’ (attempting to invest in socially beneficial companies) doesn’t seem high relative to donations to cost-effective charities, but the industry might be improvable, could produce useful research and could move more resources into altruistic causes (as we’ll explain in an upcoming report).
- Impact investing seems like a reasonable area for someone looking to build career capital and promote prioritisation, though we don’t have much confidence in this.
Live Q&A in Oxford with Dame Stephanie Shirley
Introduction
We recently held a public Q&A with Dame “Steve” Shirley at our Oxford student group.
In the talk, Dame Stephanie filled us in on her fascinating life, which includes pioneering work in tech entrepreneurship (during which time she took on the name “Steve” in order to secure meetings in the male dominated industry, and built a company of 300 female programmers), followed by a philanthropic career in which she has founded 5 non-profits, became the first UK Ambassador of Philanthropy, and donated £67mn (primarily towards fighting Autism but also interdisciplinary research into the social consequences of the internet at the Oxford Internet Institute). She plans to donate 95% of her wealth.
We held the talk in order to hear about the career ideas of someone extremely successful in areas that are particularly interesting to us (tech entrepreneurship and philanthropy).
This blog post highlights three questions and responses that are of particular interest to our members.
What should you do with a very large amount of money?
A philanthropist who will remain anonymous recently asked Nick Beckstead, a trustee of 80,000 Hours, what he would do with a very large amount of money.
Nick, with support from Carl Shulman (a research advisor to 80,000 Hours), wrote a detailed answer: A long-run perspective on strategic cause selection and philanthropy.
If you’re looking to spend or influence large budgets with the aim of improving the world (or happen to be extremely wealthy!) we recommend taking a look. It also contains brief arguments in favor of five causes.
Thoughts on my experience working at GiveWell
Introduction
In this post, I offer some thoughts on my experience working at GiveWell. I’ve had a number of different people ask me about this, and I think many people interested in effective altruism are curious about working there. So I thought I would explain my views in detail so that others who are thinking about working there have more information.
Summary
In summary:
I worked at GiveWell for two months in 2012, during which time I mainly did literature reviews and constructed cost-effectiveness models for a few different interventions (breast-feeding promotion, vaccination for neonatal tetanus, vaccination for meningitis, and vaccination for measles).
While there, I primarily learned about how to do a literature search, how to evaluate research (especially causal attribution in economics), and how to construct cost-effectiveness models. I also learned a lot about how to run an effective organization in general, which may have been the most valuable part of the experience.
For people who may be a good fit and have the opportunity to work at GiveWell, I recommend trying it without hesitation. I believe that working at GiveWell is an outstanding opportunity for personal development and having an impact. I also found it a very enjoyable place to work.
I didn’t end up working at GiveWell because the work they wanted me to do didn’t line up well with the work that I wanted to do, working there offered me less autonomy than my best alternative (working at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford), and I believed that working at the Future of Humanity Institute would offer me more job security and options in the future.
Why consider becoming a trader?
Introduction
The following is an article by 80,000 Hours member, Joe Mela, about (i) why he thinks trading can be better than other finance jobs (ii) what the work’s like (iii) who might especially suit it. Joe has over 5 years experience in trading, and was keen to share his perspective with other 80,000 Hours members on why this might be an especially promising career path.
Summary
In summary, Joe thinks:
If you have excellent quantitative skills, have yet to start your career, and are thinking of earning to give, you should consider going into a hedge fund or proprietary trading firm to trade stocks or other assets. You can reach a seven figure bonus within five years by working on interesting problems. You’ll work with really smart, focused people and have transferable skills if you choose to leave.
Linearity – a useful assumption in evaluating careers and causes
Introduction
When analysing the good done by different paths, we’ve often found it useful to assume that the value of your resources are linear – i.e. donating $2mn is roughly twice as good as $1mn, persuading two people to support a cause is roughly twice as good as persuading one person, and so on. For more in-depth examples, see our upcoming analysis of the value of becoming a politician or this analysis of the ethics of consumption.
This assumption, however, faces a number of objections. In this post, Paul Christiano, a Research Associate at 80,000 Hours, responds to these objections to linearity, arguing that it’s normally a reasonable approximation to make.
What do I mean by “linearity”?
More precisely, the assumption is:
The value of a resource is very likely to be linear when considering changes that are a small fraction of the current supply of that resource; is very likely to be diminishing through most of the range; and is likely to be increasing only as you come to control the majority of that resource, and even then only in some cases.
In the abstract it’s not a very objectionable sounding claim, but below I go over a few common objections in particular cases.
Note that “current supply” means resources that would be used in the pursuit of similar goals. When it seems like the current supply is negligibly small, I think we are probably drawing the boundaries wrong: don’t consider money being spent on a very narrow cause, consider money being sensibly spent on improving the world, etc. In the most extreme case, where the relevant supply of resources really is tiny, then this number will still be driven up by incidentally relevant behavior by people with completely different goals.
Of course I don’t think this is an ironclad law, but in practice I rarely believe objections people make against local linearity. That said, there is lots of room for me to revise my views here.
First, I should say that linearity seems to be the right prior presumption. If we do something twice, a priori we should suppose that the second time we do it will have the same (expected) effect as the first time we do it. So I see my role here (at least with respect to linearity) as defending the prior presumption from various objections that might be raised.
Interview with the World Health Organisation
Jeremy Lauer is a researcher at WHO-CHOICE, a project of the World Health Organization to encourage cost-effectiveness via both research and communication with policy-makers Rob Wiblin and I sat down to interview Jeremy and learn about WHO-CHOICE, a potentially promising career path for 80,000 Hours members interested in promoting cost-effectiveness research – one of our high priority causes to investigate.
Summary
Jeremy’s main points were:
WHO-CHOICE is about giving countries the tools needed to establish priorities in the health sector and make good, high-impact-for-money policy.
The landscape of global public health is starting to shift to a time where, more and more, “best buys” and “magic-bullet solutions” such as vaccines are fully funded. This is exciting because it means people are getting important treatments, but it is also daunting because the next generation of interventions will involve more complex technical work and clearer communication with the public.
If you have a strong economics background, are quantitatively minded, and also have interests in epidemiology, biostatistics, or computer programming, a career at WHO-CHOICE or a similar organization could be rewarding and impactful.
Why I’m doing a PhD
I’ve just started a PhD in Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. People who have thought hard about how to make a difference seem to disagree about the value of PhDs. Having thought about this quite thoroughly for my own situation, I’ve decided to write up my decision process. Hopefully some of the considerations that were relevant for me will be generally applicable and useful to others making similar decisions.
Summary
Essentially, I’m doing a PhD because:
I want to use my career to do as much good as I can. However, I’m quite uncertain about which causes are most important and what I should do with my career long term. This means I want to spend the next few years learning and building “career capital” to keep my options open for whatever is highest impact later.
I believe that the PhD I’m doing is the best way for me to do this right now because:
It gives me the opportunity to build skills across a variety of disciplines/areas, whilst expanding my network and also giving me credentials that will help me later
At the same time, the research itself could be valuable – I’ve got a lot of flexibility with what I focus on, within an area that has the potential to be very important and useful (improving rationality/decision making)
I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to work on other high impact projects during the next few years alongside my PhD – volunteering for 80,000 Hours being just one example
More on What Really Matters for Finding a Job You Love
We think being satisfied in the work you do is really crucial if you want to make a difference: you won’t be motivated otherwise. This is why we’ve spent time over the past year trying to summarise the evidence-based research on job satisfaction, to help you find a job you’ll love and make a difference in. In doing this, we found something a bit surprising: the common view that you should find a career that is a good fit for your personality type doesn’t have much support in the job satisfaction literature. The evidence seems to point towards the characteristics of the job itself (things like having variety, a sense of contribution, and clearly defined tasks) being more important than your personality fit.
Of course, we don’t think that this is the end of it – that all that matters when it comes to job satisfaction are five simple factors. So we’ve spent a bit more time delving into the job satisfaction literature to get a better sense of what personal or social factors might be most important alongside this. One finding that seems to be fairly well supported is that, whilst “personality fit” might not matter that much, feeling socially supported at work on the other hand, does.
In summary:
Feeling like you are socially supported at work – that you are able to get help and advice from your supervisors and coworkers – correlates with increased satisfaction at work
This is pretty intuitive, and seems to be both due to the direct benefits of social interactions, and the fact that support from coworkers also means we’re less likely to suffer from stress
This suggests it may be worth explicitly focusing on finding a working environment where you feel supported e.g. having a manager who you can go to with problems, perhaps above things like “personality fit” or “being the right type of person.” It also means that organisations (like 80,000 Hours!) should make creating this environment high priority
Interview with the founder of Giving Games
Like both Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, Jon Behar left a lucrative job at a hedge fund to create a startup called “A Path That’s Clear”. Here, he runs “Giving Games” which engage people around the world in discussions about effective giving.
Rob Wiblin and I sat down to interview Jon Behar and learn more about his career choices and what it’s like to leave your job to pursue dreams of running effective altruist projects. Jon’s main points were:
It can be worthwhile to take some time off to think about things if you no longer are enjoying your job.
Working on something that you think is important can make you more motivated and more productive.
When starting an effective altruist project, it could be important to consider how you could partner with an existing organization rather than proliferate the large amount of EA orgs that exist.
The best way to get into a career in any field is to find people who are already in that field and ask them for advice, even if you don’t know them. You’ll be surprised by the number of people who agree to speak with you.
Interview with Matt Clifford
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In 2011 Matt Clifford and Alice Bentick, left their consulting jobs in McKinsey to found their own non-profit, Entrepreneur First. Their idea is to take about 30 talented and ambitious graduates each year and help them form teams and start companies, in order to promote entrepreneurship as a career path. They have already achieved some impressive results with their first cohort group of 32 graduates founding 11 companies which collectively achieved a market valuation of £22 milion In their first funding round.
As part of our research on the best routes into entrepreneurship we talked to Matt Clifford about this questions.
Summary
Key points Matt made in the interview:
A high level of technical skills seems to be the most important single attainment of someone interested in becoming a tech entrepreneur.
Startups inevitably involve failures and things going wrong, so determination is an important trait for entrepreneurs.
If you are interested in starting a startup consider developing domain expertise in a sector other than tech that is ripe for disruption.
It remains hard to find good data on indicators of success in entrepreneurship, current research is more qualitative and indicative.
Influencing the Far Future
Introduction
In an earlier post we reviewed the arguments in favor of the idea that we should primarily assess causes in terms of whether they help build a society that’s likely to survive and flourish in the very long-term. We think this is a plausible position, but it raises the question: what activities in fact do help improve the world over the very long term, and of those, which are best? We’ve been asked this question several times in recent case studies.
First, we propose a very broad categorisation of how our actions today might affect the long-run future.
Second, as a first step to prioritising different methods, we compiled a list of approaches to improve the long-run future that are currently popular among the community of people who explicitly believe the long-run future is important.
The list was compiled from our knowledge of the community. Please let us know if you think there are other important types of approach that have been neglected. Further, note that this post is not meant as an endorsement of any particular approach; just an acknowledgement that it has significant support.
Third, we comment on how existing mainstream philanthropy may or may not influence the far future.