'Effective Altruism: An Introduction' is a collection of ten top episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast specifically selected to help listeners quickly get up to speed on the school of thought known as effective altruism.Here the host of the show

One: Holden Karnofsky on times philanthropy transformed the world & Open Phil's plan to do the same

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 36m

The Green Revolution averted mass famine during the 20th century. The contraceptive pill gave women unprecedented freedom in planning their own lives. Both are widely recognised as scientific breakthroughs that transformed the world. But few kn

Two: Dr Toby Ord on why the long-term future matters more than anything else & what to do about it

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 10m

Of all the people whose well-being we should care about, only a small fraction are alive today. The rest are members of future generations who are yet to exist. Whether they’ll be born into a world that is flourishing or disintegrating – and in

Three: Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 53m

The effective altruist research community tries to identify the highest impact things people can do to improve the world. Unsurprisingly, given the difficulty of such a massive and open-ended project, very different schools of thought have aris

Five: Prof Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster

Apr 12th, 2021 1h 52m

Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to

Six: Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 56m

Imagine that humanity has two possible futures ahead of it: Either we’re going to have a huge future like that, in which trillions of people ultimately exist, or we’re going to wipe ourselves out quite soon, thereby ensuring that only around 10

Four: Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 17m

Will SpaceX land people on Mars in the next decade? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner?Spencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems.In th

Five: 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

Apr 12th, 2021 3h 51m

Will artificial intelligence transform the world gradually, or explosively? Could an advanced AI that doesn’t share human goals still have moral value? Which decade should we expect human labour to become obsolete? Paul Christiano — researcher

Seven: Prof Tetlock on why accurate forecasting matters for everything, and how you can do it better

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 17m

Have you ever been infuriated by a doctor's unwillingness to give you an honest, probabilistic estimate about what to expect? Or a lawyer who won't tell you the chances you'll win your case?Their behaviour is so frustrating because accurately p

Eight: Prof Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 48m

The barista gives you your coffee and change, and you walk away from the busy line. But you suddenly realise she gave you $1 less than she should have. Do you brush your way past the people now waiting, or just accept this as a dollar you’re ne

Nine: Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 57m

The 80,000 Hours Podcast is about “the world’s most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them”, and in this episode we tackle that question in the most direct way possible. In 2019 we published a summary of all our key ide

Nine: Dr David Denkenberger on how to feed all 8 billion people through an asteroid/nuclear winter

Apr 12th, 2021 2h 57m

If an asteroid impact or nuclear winter blocked the sun for years, our inability to grow food would result in billions dying of starvation, right? According to Dr David Denkenberger, co-author of Feeding Everyone No Matter What: no. If he's to

Ten: Benjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it

Apr 12th, 2021 1h 22m

Is effective altruism just about donating money to fight poverty? Does it include a moral obligation to give? How do you talk about it to people who've never heard of it? In this conversation from 2020, Arden Koehler and 80,000 Hours CEO Ben To

What's next

Apr 12th, 2021 2m 52s

Now you've finished Effective Altruism: An Introduction, here's what we suggest you do next.And if you’ve listened to this series and found the ideas resonated with you, our one-on-one team might be able to help you apply them to your career. W

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