80,000 Hours founder Will Crouch appeared with Private Eye editor Ian Hislop on BBC Radio 4’s The
Today Show. The interview opens with Will explaining the logic behind 80,000 Hours’ “Banker vs. Aid Worker”
campaign: namely, that a professional philanthropist, or someone who enters a lucrative career with
the intention of giving much of it away, can fund the work of several aid workers, and as such can do
several times as much good.
Want to make a difference? Want to make the most different that you can?
Become a banker. An ethical banker.
Not what you expected? Research on professional philanthropy by an Oxford
University ethicist today reveals a new way of looking at ethical careers.
Believe it or not, it is possible to be an ethical banker. William Crouch
today discusses his research at the Uehiro Centre in Oxford University’s
Philosophy Faculty with Ian Hislop on the Today Programme at 8:45am.
If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’re convinced by the philosophy of 80,000 Hours – so you won’t find an argument for that philosophy here. This post is just to help you decide where to best give your money right now, based on the combined recommendations of the above organisations allowing for a couple of factors they don’t address.
So… plenty of organisations want your money, but a select few really stand out. What’s the best option?
Paul Ehrlich began his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, with this statement:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to
death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a
substantial increase in the world death rate.
Ehrlich predicted the deaths as a consequence of the challenge of feeding a
rapidly growing world population, pointing to recent devastating famines in
South Asia. But even as those words were written, the fields were being planted
with new, higher-yielding semi-dwarf strains of wheat and rice.
“I prefer to give to local organizations.” I’ve heard this a lot.
Imagine a high school student who sits down to study for exams. Her chemistry
book is lying closest to her on the desk, so she decides to study chemistry.
Her father points out that since she has an A in chemistry and a D in geometry,
studying geometry might help her grades more. “But that book is all the way
over there in my backpack,” the student points out; “I prefer to study
locally.”
This argument seems common to many debates:
‘Proposal P arrogantly assumes that it is possible to measure X, when really
X is hard to measure and perhaps even changes depending on other factors.
Therefore we shouldn’t do P’.
This could make sense if X wasn’t especially integral to the goal. For
instance if the proposal were to measure short distances by triangulation
with nearby objects, a reasonable criticism would be that the angles are hard
to measure, relative to measuring the distance directly. But this argument is
commonly used in situations where optimizing X is the whole point of the
activity, or a large part of it.