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..?
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…
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..?’
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…
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’…
Fundraising sometimes has a bad reputation, but there are a lot of reasons to think that being a fundraiser, or perhaps more likely, managing fundraisers may be a very effective career…
Here’s a claim to supplement the replacement effect (RE):
The flat margin effect: If you take a job that seems to have a strong (positive or negative) impact on the economy, the actual difference it makes to social welfare will be minimal.
So who is this relevant to? And why should you believe it?
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?
How much you give and the effectiveness of the organisations that you give to together determine the impact of your donations. The seemingly trivial decision of whether to pay by cheque or credit card may affect both these factors, so it’s worth considering which payment method will help you do the most good…
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.
In his recent talk, Aubrey de Grey argued that the SENS foundation’s life extension research should be the most important project for any effective altruist. I collared him for an interview afterwards…
Women donate more than men. They are more likely to give, and they give more money. So why is the smart giving/effective philanthropy/whatever-you-want-to-call-it movement so skewed male?
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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?
High earning careers are often perceived as unethical careers. It’s not just that people think earning lots of money is bad, it’s also that a lot of the careers that make you really rich involve things that also seem immoral… This article will look at something called the replaceability effect. It’s the idea that, often, if you don’t take a job, someone else will take it. For some types of jobs, this is a very safe assumption, and it makes the harm you do by taking a job in an unethical industry much smaller than you might first guess.
For the last two years whenever I have felt charitable, rather than directly give away the money – to Village Reach incidentally – I have offered to match donations made by my Facebook friends 1:1. Initially I could only raise a few hundred dollars in matching donations, but most recently I attracted almost $2000 with little effort. I always kept the maximum amount I was willing to match above what I expected would be forthcoming, so that matchers were apparently inducing me to donate more. Is all this a good thing to do?
Dambisa Moyo’s best-selling 2009 book Dead Aid caused a considerable stir upon its release; written by a young African woman, it stood out in a field dominated by ageing, white academics. It stands, along William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth and The White Man’s Burden, as the central work of foreign aid scepticism…
80,000 Hours is built around the idea of effective altruism. What does that mean?
The replaceability issue often means that pursuing conventional ethical careers isn’t the way to have the most impact.
Instead, it’s better to focus activities in which you have a special edge, or on neglected activities – those which wouldn’t get done if it wasn’t for you.
The last month has been a big one for the 80,000 Hours website. Thanks to our comms and web team for working so hard on it!
Here’s a whirlwind tour of the recent changes…
Here’s another candidate for Most Important Person Ever, albeit one whose footsteps will be harder – hopefully impossible – to retread.