How to be a high impact philosopher, part II
There’s a second method for high impact philosophy. Let’s call it the bottom-up method.
Begin by asking ‘which are the biggest decisions that one typically makes in life?’
New releases
Quantum Quest: Pruning Procrastination
In a series of posts, I will offer a perspective on the “quantum quest” – the evolving attempt to make tomorrow better than today. Changing the world is certainly a quest. And while the evolution may appear to be smooth and continuous, it happens in discrete steps hence the “quantum”.
Quantification – Part 2 – The Dangers
Somalia is in crisis. For decades it has been racked by civil war, famine, and political violence. Members of 80,000 Hours who want to help the people of Somalia will most likely explore various ways they can help and assess them quantitatively. Is it obvious that quantitative methods provide the correct tools to deal with a crisis like this? Or instead can quantification limit the kinds of possible interventions we think about, blinding us to significant long term solutions?
Does money make you happy?
If we’re to believe the Internet, various apologists for materialism have quipped that whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop. Indeed, the happiness of others can be bought at bargain-basement prices with a donation to an effective charity. If you’re thinking of donating a substantial portion of your income, though, it’s natural to wonder how your well-being will be affected. What can research tell us about this..?
How many lives does a doctor save? – Part 2 – Diminishing marginal returns
In the first post, I worked out an upper bound for the average direct health impact of a doctor in the UK, and found it amounted to producing about 2600 QALYs. We can think of this, very roughly, as saving 90 lives. This doesn’t, however, show how much difference you make by becoming a doctor. There’s already about 200,000 doctors in the UK. How can we take the figure for the average impact of a doctor and work out the impact of an additional doctor?
Quantification – Part 1 – An Introduction
Who was the most important person in the 20th century? JFK? Einstein? Bill Gates? On the one hand it’s a silly question. On the other our different approaches to answering it tell us a lot about how we think about issues of great importance…
Do you really know what job will make you happy?
Why are so many people dissatisfied with their jobs? A big part of the problem is that we’re pretty bad at predicting how happy things will make us, or how long that happiness will last. This has some serious ramifications for career choice…
Is there such thing as a ‘bad’ charity?
When we talk about giving to charities there’s a dirty secret we try really hard not to mention. Some charities are “bad”.
How good are the best?
Imagine you’re offered the top job at SCI one of the world’s most cost-effective charities should you take it?
Should we sacrifice doing what we love to make a difference? part 2
Making a difference can lead to a satisfying career, so you might think we should just focus on making a difference, and happiness will follow. But, a I will show, we’re also more likely to succeed, and therefore to make more difference, in careers we enjoy. So we still need to think about which careers we’ll enjoy.
How much malaria is biodiversity worth?
Every day, almost everything we do is about prioritisation. Given how important prioritisation is, and how much people seem to care about doing it right, it’s startling that relatively little research is done into how best to prioritise the most important issues facing society.
What do you think the most important challenges facing humanity are…?
Should we sacrifice doing what we love to make a difference? part 1
We all want to find a career which makes us happy: but for many there seems to be a conflict between doing what one loves, and making a difference. My initial interest in 80,000 Hours was sparked by a desire to resolve a conflict between wanting to make a difference in my career, and wanting to pursue philosophy research (which I considered fairly low impact.)(1) I recognised that I could potentially make more difference by applying my numerical skills to a high-earning career and donating to greater causes – but the thing is, I just don’t want to do this. And shouldn’t this count for something, even for the aspiring effective altruist? Should we have to give up doing what we love in order to make a difference?
How many lives does a doctor save?
It seemed a pretty good career move for a 17-year old wanting to make a difference. Like thousands of others, I applied to read medicine. This is what I wrote on my personal statement: “I want to study medicine because of a desire I have to help others, and so the chance of spending a career doing something worthwhile I can’t resist. Of course, Doctors don’t have a monopoly on altruism, but I believe the attributes I have lend themselves best to medicine, as opposed to all the other work I could do instead.” Was I right? Is medicine a good career choice for someone wanting to ‘make a difference’?
Project Launch: Effective Animal Activism
Among the goals of 80,000 hours is to provide resources to our community on the issues that matter most to us. As a result, we took the initiative to launch a new web-page dedicated to Effective Animal Activism: http://effectiveanimalactivism.org/, as a part of 80,000 hours, for our members to research, share, and act upon the most effective forms of giving our time or money to help animals.
How to find a job you’ll love
If you want to be satisfied at work, what characteristics should you look for? Prestige, money, something you’re passionate about, a corner office? Books on careers guidance often start by asking you to consider your values and desired lifestyle, and then to find a job that matches them. But why expect this approach to work? Research has shown that the only consistently present characteristic of satisfying jobs is that the work itself is mentally challenging (1)(2). This suggests that finding challenging work should be the starting point for a satisfying career.
Social interventions gone wrong
Lots of social interventions end up doing more harm than good. Many more make no difference at, and they’re just a waste of resources. At times, we’ve probably argued with friends about which interventions we’d like to see, and which we wouldn’t. But are we any good at judging what’s likely to work?
Try and guess which of these eight programs made a difference, which had no effect, and which made things worse…
What is going on at 80,000 Hours?
This is an exciting time for 80,000 Hours. One month ago we took on our first full-time staff members. Over this summer there will be six of us working full-time on 80,000 Hours…
Should you go into research? – part 1
Should you go into a research career? Here’s one striking fact about academic research that bears on this question: in most fields, the best few researchers get almost all the attention…
Don’t ‘do what you’re passionate about’ – part 2
In the last post, I showed that we can’t blindly follow the widely-quoted careers guidance “do what you’re passionate about.” A more reasonable idea is that “do what you’re passionate about” is a heuristic for career choice but even this doesn’t seem like good advice…
Don’t ‘do what you’re passionate about’ – part 1
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?