New releases

Don’t ‘do what you’re passionate about’ – part 1

Blog post by · Published August 3rd, 2012

Common advice in choosing a career is “do what you’re passionate about.” An article on lifehack begins: “If you could do one thing to transform your life, I would highly recommend it be to find something you’re passionate about, and do it for a living.” The first paragraph of the major careers advice book Career Ahead ends “You owe it to yourself to do work that you love. This book will show you how.” But what happens if your passion is for beautifully executed contract killings?

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Universalisability – Immoral Industries Part 3

Blog post by · Published July 31st, 2012

When I tell people that they might want to consider professional philanthropy as a career choice, they react in a lot of different ways. Some people raise an eyebrow. “Seb,” they say as if explaining something very obvious, “if everybody quit their jobs and took a high earning career to give money to charities, then there wouldn’t be anybody to give the money to!”

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Collective Action: working in unethical industries part 2

Blog post by · Published July 29th, 2012

In my last article I looked at how it sometimes the best option is to take a high-earning job, even in an industry one thinks is harmful, in order to donate more to charity. There were a lot of caveats. The job has to earn more than you could have made otherwise to make up for the marginal harm you do by taking it. But, for a competitive job market in a mainstream job, that marginal harm is often much smaller than the total harm caused by the job.

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The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: A popular but flawed way of understanding your personality

Blog post by · Published July 24th, 2012

It’s difficult to work out which jobs will suit you. To help with this problem, a variety of personality tests have been developed. It’s hoped these tests provide understanding of your personality in a way that can be used to predict what sorts of job might suit.

One of the most widely used tests is the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). According to Malcolm Gladwell, 2.5 million Americans every year take the test and 89 out of the fortune 100 companies use it.

But it turns out there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about its use in choosing careers…

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The wider consequences of giving away money

Blog post by · Published July 22nd, 2012

Like most of the people here, I’m asking myself what I could do that would have a positive impact on others – about what would have the most positive impact on others. One important part of this is making decisions about what to do with money. This matters for anyone with more money than they feel they need for themselves and those close to them; and it matters especially for people who plan to do good by earning a lot and giving a lot away. I think it’s fair to say that, so far, this site has generally answered this question by focusing on the good that can be done by giving to well-functioning charities. There is a lot to be said for this. The questions, though, seem wider to me. I’ll try to explain here why I think so…

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Why do people love charity workers? pt 1

Blog post by · Published July 16th, 2012

Many careers guides and agencies suggest that ethically minded folks go into the nonprofit sector. And some use the phrase “ethical careers” as a near-synonym for charity work. Of course, some charity workers do a lot of good. But there seem to be many career options that do at least as much good as charity workers. Why, then, do people love charity workers..?

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Biases in career choice: Don’t be misled by the category ‘high impact career’ when deciding between careers

Blog post by · Published July 11th, 2012

I’ve noticed a bias in my thinking about career options that I’d like to help you avoid: I often group several careers together into a ‘high impact’ category even when the careers are very different in their potential to make an impact…

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The high impact PA: how anyone can bring about ground-breaking research

Blog post by · Published July 9th, 2012

Suppose you could identify a really important research topic – one that could yield huge benefits to millions of people … something like ending ageing, developing a cheap, clean supply of energy, or discovering a cheap vaccine for HIV/AIDs. Suppose you think that carrying out this research is one of the most important things for humanity to do.

At this point, it’s easy to think ‘how can I get involved with this field..?’

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Following in Schindler’s footsteps

Blog post by · Published June 29th, 2012

Can it be ethical to take a job working for an immoral corporation if one does so with the aim of making the world a better place?

Suppose, for example, that you could work for an arms company, supplying munitions to soldiers fighting an unjust war, in order that you could earn enough money to save thousands of lives? You know that, if you don’t take that job, someone else more ruthless than you will take it, hurting more people than you would.

Is that sufficient? Intuitively, it seems that it just can’t be ethical to do this. But a historical case suggests otherwise…

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On triage

Blog post by · Published June 20th, 2012

Effective altruism focuses on efficiency. Any action that fails to effect the maximum possible reduction in suffering is considered suboptimal. But isn’t this standard for use of one’s time and money too harsh? As long as one is making some sort of positive impact on the world, isn’t that enough? Can’t one live ethically without devoting all of one’s energy and attention to helping others?

I believe that the answers ought to be ‘no’…

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How to be a high impact philosopher

Blog post by · Published May 8th, 2012

Philosophy is often impractical. That’s an understatement. It might therefore be surprising to think of a career as a philosopher as a potentially high impact ethical career – the sort of career that enables one to do a huge amount of good in the world. But I don’t think that philosophy’s impracticality is in the nature of the subject-matter. In fact, I think that research within certain areas of philosophy is among some of the most important and practical research that one can do. This shouldn’t be surprising when one considers that philosophy is the only subject that addresses directly the fundamental practical question: what ought I to do?

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The haste consideration

Blog post by · Published April 16th, 2012

Here’s a crucial issue for altruists.

The Haste Consideration: Resources for improving the world are vastly more valuable if you have those resources sooner.

I’ll first explain one way to see that the haste consideration is true, and then I’ll talk about one important implication of this consideration.

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Heuristics for a good life

Blog post by · Published March 29th, 2012

I wondered what careers or the like help other people the most. Tyler reposted my question, adding:

(Let’s) rule out ‘become a billionaire and give away all your money’ and ‘cure cancer’ by postulating that said person ends up at the 90th percentile of achievement in the specified field but no higher.

Unfortunately calculating the net costs and benefits of all the things one could do with oneself is notoriously impossible. So how about some heuristics for discerning what types of jobs tend to be more socially beneficial?

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