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- Key ideas Understand what makes for a high-impact career.
  Introduction
  Your most important decision
  Summary
  Foundations
  A definition of impact
  Future generations & their moral significance
  Effective altruism
  Global priorities
  Why problem selection is crucial
  The case for reducing existential risks
  This could be the most important century
  Our current list of pressing problems
  Solutions
  The best solutions are far more effective
  Leverage
  What is leverage, and how to get it?
  Our list of high-impact careers
  Personal fit
  Fit is more important than you think
  Strategy
  What is career capital?
  How much to explore?
  Coordination and impact
  Balancing impact and doing what you love
  Aim higher: a rational case for dreaming big
  Three career stages
  Conclusion
  How much do careers differ in impact?
  Read the full guide →
- Problem profiles Find out about the world's biggest and most neglected problems.
  Top areas to work on
  Positively shaping the development of AI
  Global priorities research
  Building effective altruism
  Reducing the risk of catastrophic pandemics
  Nuclear security
  Improving institutional decision making
  Extreme climate change
  Other promising areas
  Mitigating great power conflict
  Global governance
  Space governance
  See all →
  Go to problems hub →
  Join our newsletter to get weekly updates on research, events, and high-impact job openings.
- Career reviews Learn about high-impact career paths.
  Key categories of high-impact careers
  Research in relevant areas
  Government & policy
  Working at effective non-profits
  Applying an unusual strength to a needed niche
  Earning to give
  Recommended paths
  The highest-impact career paths we know about
  More promising career ideas
  How to apply your existing skills
  Making the most of your current job
  Doing good in any career
  How to invest in yourself
  See all our career reviews →
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- Planning & decision making Use our tools to make concrete plans.
  Create a high-impact career plan
  8-week career planning course
  Summary
  Career plan template
  Annual career check-up
  Make good career decisions
  Make an immediate decision
  Improve your decision-making skills
  See all planning resources →
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- Browse all our content Pick a topic to explore or check out our most popular pieces.
  Selected topics
  Moral philosophy
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  Anonymous advice
  Unconventional advice
  What to study
  Advocacy
  Catastrophic risks
  Meta-causes
  Priority paths
  See all topics →
  Top articles from outside our guides
  What makes for a dream job?
  Best charities to donate to
  Misconceptions about effective altruism
  High-impact research questions
  What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
  How many lives does a doctor save?
  What's the impact of voting?
  Advice for undergraduates
  All articles →
  
  2017 career guide
  All career guide pages →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Summary
Foundations
A definition of impact
Future generations & their moral significance
Effective altruism
Global priorities
Why problem selection is crucial
The case for reducing existential risks
This could be the most important century
Our current list of pressing problems
Solutions
The best solutions are far more effective
Leverage
What is leverage, and how to get it?
Our list of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Fit is more important than you think
Strategy
What is career capital?
How much to explore?
Coordination and impact
Balancing impact and doing what you love
Aim higher: a rational case for dreaming big
Three career stages
Conclusion
How much do careers differ in impact?
Read the full guide →
Top areas to work on
Positively shaping the development of AI
Global priorities research
Building effective altruism
Reducing the risk of catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear security
Improving institutional decision making
Extreme climate change
Other promising areas
Mitigating great power conflict
Global governance
Space governance
See all →
Go to problems hub →
Join our newsletter to get weekly updates on research, events, and high-impact job openings.
Key categories of high-impact careers
Research in relevant areas
Government & policy
Working at effective non-profits
Applying an unusual strength to a needed niche
Earning to give
Recommended paths
The highest-impact career paths we know about
More promising career ideas
How to apply your existing skills
Making the most of your current job
Doing good in any career
How to invest in yourself
See all our career reviews →
Join our newsletter to get weekly updates on research, events, and high-impact job openings.
Create a high-impact career plan
8-week career planning course
Summary
Career plan template
Annual career check-up
Make good career decisions
Make an immediate decision
Improve your decision-making skills
See all planning resources →
Join our newsletter to get weekly updates on research, events, and high-impact job openings.
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Skills
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
What to study
Advocacy
Catastrophic risks
Meta-causes
Priority paths
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
What makes for a dream job?
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →

2017 career guide
All career guide pages →
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Podcast
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Big picture (83)
- Longtermism (35)
- Moral philosophy (35)
- Now vs. Later (5)
- True Impact (16)

Problem areas (243)
- Animal Welfare (22)
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- Catastrophic risks (96)
  - Artificial Intelligence (32)
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    - Geoengineering (2)
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- COVID-19 (12)
- Developed world education (1)
- Future Generations (35)
- Global Poverty (42)
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  - Developing World Education (2)
  - Global Health (10)
  - Immigration Reform (3)
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- Meta-causes (92)
  - Global Priorities Research (28)
  - Improving Decision Making (22)
  - Promoting Effective Altruism (54)
- Other causes (13)
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Priority paths (113)
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- Biorisk strategy & policy (17)
- China specialists (4)
- Earning to give in quant trading (4)
- Forecasting & related research and implementation (12)
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- Global priorities research (31)
- Roles at effective altruism organisations (13)

Careers (304)
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- Your Plan (24)
Other topics (153)
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Updates (41)

Topic archive: Research

Subtopics in "Research":

Academic Research (68)
Graduate study (15)
- PhDs (11)
Research manager (5)

Filter by content type:
All109
Podcasts58
Blog posts37
Key articles9
Career reviews3
Problem profiles2

All content tagged "Research"

2021

October

#113 – Varsha Venugopal on using gossip to help vaccinate every child in India
Podcast
#112 – Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
Podcast

September

#111 – Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms
Podcast

August

#109 – Holden Karnofsky on the most important century
Podcast
#108 – Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree
Podcast
#107 – Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks
Podcast

July

#106 – Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work
Podcast

June

#104 – Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics
Podcast
#103 – Max Roser on building the world's first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data
Podcast
#102 – Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all
Podcast

May

Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems — curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast
Article
#98 – Christian Tarsney on future bias and a possible solution to moral fanaticism
Podcast

March

#95 – Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate
Podcast
#92 – Brian Christian on the alignment problem
Podcast

January

#90 – Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be
Podcast
Rob Wiblin on self-improvement and research ethics
Blog post

2020

December

#89 – Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems & layers of defense against potential global catastrophes
Podcast

November

#87 – Russ Roberts on whether it's more effective to help strangers, or people you know
Podcast

October

#86 – Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us
Podcast

August

Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline
Article
How to use your career to help reduce existential risk
Article
Why I’ve come to think global priorities research is more important than I thought
Blog post
#84 – Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked
Podcast
Ideas for high-impact careers beyond our priority paths
Blog post

July

#83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons
Podcast
#82 – James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Podcast

June

#80 – Professor Stuart Russell on why our approach to AI is broken and how to fix it
Podcast

May

#77 – Professor Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19
Podcast
Climate change (extreme risks) (Updated)
Problem profile

April

Policy and research ideas to reduce existential risk
Blog post
#74 – Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 & catastrophic biological risks
Podcast

March

#72 – Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures
Podcast

February

#70 – Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)
Podcast

January

#68 – Will MacAskill on the paralysis argument, whether we're at the hinge of history, & his new priorities
Podcast

2019

December

#67 – David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness
Podcast
#66 – Peter Singer on provocative advocacy, EA, how his ethical views have changed, and drowning children
Podcast

October

#64 – Bruce Schneier on the big risks in computer security, secrets, and surveillance without tyranny
Podcast

September

#63 – Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, blockchain's failures, & effective giving
Podcast

August

Philosophy academia
Career review

June

#58 – Pushmeet Kohli of DeepMind on designing robust & reliable AI systems and how to succeed in AI
Podcast

April

#56 – Persis Eskander on wild animal welfare and what, if anything, to do about it
Podcast

2018

December

#50 – Dr David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8 billion people through an asteroid/nuclear winter
Podcast
#49 – Dr Rachel Glennerster on a year's worth of education for under $1 and other development best buys
Podcast

November

#47 – Catherine Olsson & Daniel Ziegler on the fast path into high-impact ML engineering roles
Podcast

October

#46 – Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions
Podcast
#45 – Prof Tyler Cowen's stubborn attachments to maximising economic growth, making civilization more stable & respecting human rights
Podcast
New career review on becoming an academic researcher: Highlights on your chances of success, which fields have highest GRE scores, & having impact outside research
Blog post
#44 – Dr Paul Christiano on how OpenAI is developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem', and his vision of how humanity will progressively hand over decision-making to AI systems
Podcast
Academic research
Career review

September

#42 – Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
Podcast

August

#41 – David Roodman on incarceration, geomagnetic storms, & becoming a world-class researcher
Podcast
#39 – Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions.
Podcast

July

#38 – Prof Yew-Kwang Ng on anticipating EA decades ago & how to make a much happier world
Podcast
#36 – Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism
Podcast
Global priorities research (Updated)
Problem profile

May

#33 – Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war
Podcast
#32 – Prof Bryan Caplan on whether the Case Against Education holds up, totalitarianism, & open borders
Podcast
#30 – Dr Eva Vivalt on how little social science findings generalize from one study to another
Podcast
#29 – Dr Anders Sandberg on three new resolutions for the Fermi Paradox and how to easily colonise the universe
Podcast

April

#28 – Dr Owen Cotton-Barratt on why scientists should need insurance, PhD strategy & what if AI progresses fast
Podcast
#26 – Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it in every supermarket
Podcast

March

#25 – Prof Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do
Podcast

February

#20 – Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming
Podcast

January

#17 – Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster
Podcast

2017

December

#16 – Dr Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals
Podcast

November

#15 – Prof Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise
Podcast
Why you should consider applying for grad school right now
Blog post

October

#13 – Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results
Podcast
#11 – Dr Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm
Podcast

September

#7 – Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad
Podcast

June

#2 – Prof David Spiegelhalter on risk, stats and improving understanding of science
Podcast

April

Should you wait to make a difference? (Updated)
Article
Why and how to earn to give (Updated)
Article

2016

June

How to do high impact research (Updated)
Article

May

To find work you love, don’t (always) follow your passion (Updated)
Article

April

Climate change (extreme risks) (First published)
Problem profile
Global priorities research (First published)
Problem profile

February

Plan change story: interview with Dillon Bowen, founder of Effective Altruism group at Tufts University
Blog post

2015

September

Are too many people going into biomedical research – or too few?
Blog post

June

I want to make a difference. Should I become a philosopher?
Blog post
Should you do a computer science PhD?
Blog post
Why an economics PhD might be the best graduate program
Blog post
Economics PhD
Career review
Advice on entering a US economics PhD from the UK with a non-quantitative background
Blog post
Check with your gut, but don’t go with it (Updated)
Article

April

Get paid to do existential risk reduction research
Blog post

March

Education research: Interview with Dan Greene
Blog post

2014

October

Should you wait to make a difference? (First published)
Article
Check with your gut, but don’t go with it (First published)
Article

September

Why and how to earn to give (First published)
Article
How to do high impact research (First published)
Article
To find work you love, don’t (always) follow your passion (First published)
Article

August

Job satisfaction research
Article

February

In which career can you make the most difference?
Blog post

January

Interview with leading HIV vaccine researcher – Prof. Sir Andrew McMichael
Blog post

2013

December

A comparison of medical research and earning to give
Blog post
Economics PhD the only one worth getting?
Blog post

November

Career Opportunities for Economics PhDs
Blog post

October

Why I’m doing a PhD
Blog post
The value of economics PhDs: A conversation with Robin Hanson
Blog post

July

Looking for a seriously high impact job using your managerial skills?
Blog post
The Future of Humanity Institute is hiring a high-impact project manager
Blog post

April

Is most research a waste?
Blog post

February

Bringing it all together: high impact research management
Blog post
Vegetarian Research
Blog post

January

How to make a difference in research: An interview with Nick Bostrom
Blog post
Should you go into research? – part 2
Blog post

2012

December

3 Ways to Advance Science
Blog post
How to choose a research topic: An interview with Anders Sandberg
Blog post

October

Open Source Technology: A Career in Engineering
Blog post
How to do important research
Blog post

September

How to be a high impact philosopher, part II
Blog post

August

Should you go into research? – part 1
Blog post

July

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

May

How to be a high impact philosopher
Blog post

2011

November

High Impact Science
Blog post

Filter by content type:
All109
Podcasts58
Blog posts37
Key articles9
Career reviews3
Problem profiles2

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We're affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.

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80,000 Hours is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1149828) and a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398).

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© 2021 – all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.

80,000 Hours is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a registered charity in England and Wales (Charity Number 1149828) and a registered 501(c)(3) Exempt Organization in the USA (EIN 47-1988398).

Please contact us to suggest ideas, improvements, or corrections.

We do our best to provide useful information, but how you use the information is up to you. We don’t take responsibility for any loss that results from the use of information on the site. Please consult our full legal disclaimer and privacy policy.

© 2021 – all rights reserved. Please contact us if you wish to redistribute, translate, or adapt this work.