William MacAskill

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
by William MacAskill
Published 27 Jul 2015

Like laser eye surgery, this book will change how you look at the world forever.” —Uri Bram, bestselling author of Thinking Statistically “Inspiring, engrossing, and at times hilarious. I couldn’t put it down. This book will change your life.” —Nick Cooney, author of How to Be Great at Doing Good “William MacAskill shows that we can make a surprisingly large life-changing difference to those in disadvantaged parts of the world—provided that our altruistic impulses are intelligently channeled. This fascinating and clearly written book deserves wide readership: It can in itself do great good if its message is heeded.”

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Figuring out what really helps people is a challenging scientific puzzle, and these pages are full of unexpected twists—enlightening and invigorating.” —Joshua Greene, director of Harvard’s Moral Cognition Lab and author of Moral Tribes An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2015 by William MacAskill Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.

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You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA MacAskill, William. Doing good better : how effective altruism can help you make a difference / William MacAskill. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-698-19110-5 1. Altruism. 2. Helping behavior. I. Title. HM1146.M33 2015 171'.8—dc23 2015000705 While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View
by William MacAskill
Published 31 Aug 2022

A Oneworld Book First published in Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2022 This ebook edition published 2022 Published by arrangement with Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright © William MacAskill 2022 The moral right of William MacAskill to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-86154-250-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-86154-482-0 (trade paperback) eISBN 978-0-86154-251-2 Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3SR England Stay up to date with the latest books, special offers, and exclusive content from Oneworld with our newsletter Sign up on our website oneworld-publications.com

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Also by William MacAskill Doing Good Better For my parents, Mair and Robin, and their parents, Ena and Tom and Daphne and Frank, and . . . Contents PART I. THE LONG VIEW Introduction Chapter 1: The Case for Longtermism Chapter 2: You Can Shape the Course of History PART II. TRAJECTORY CHANGES Chapter 3: Moral Change Chapter 4: Value Lock-In PART III. SAFEGUARDING CIVILISATION Chapter 5: Extinction Chapter 6: Collapse Chapter 7: Stagnation PART IV. ASSESSING THE END OF THE WORLD Chapter 8: Is It Good to Make Happy People? Chapter 9: Will the Future Be Good or Bad? PART V.

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See labour force World Values Survey, 196–197, 201 world war, potential for, 116 World War II the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 126–128 German goal of global domination, 92 Germany’s forced labour, 65 Hitler’s sadistic behaviour, 219 scenarios of ideological lock-in, 97–98 scenarios of moral evolution, 70 Yan, John, 239–240 Yemen: abolition of slavery, 69–70 Yglesias, Matt, 93 Afterwards A story of a good future. For Holly William MacAskill is an associate professor in philosophy and senior research fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. He has focused his research on moral uncertainty, effective altruism, and future generations.

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity
by Martin J. Rees
Published 14 Oct 2018

Academics, moreover, have the special opportunity to influence students. Polls show, unsurprisingly, that younger people, who expect to survive most of the century, are more engaged and anxious about long-term and global issues. Student involvement in, for instance, ‘effective altruism’ campaigns is burgeoning. William MacAskill’s book Doing Good Better8 is a compelling manifesto. It reminds us that urgent and meaningful improvements to people’s lives can be achieved by well-targeted redeployment of existing resources towards developing or destitute nations. Wealthy foundations have more traction (the archetype being the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has had a massive impact, especially on children’s health)—but even they cannot match the impact that national governments could have if there were pressure from their citizens.

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Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Penguin, 2005).   7.  Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch (New York: Penguin, 2015). Books such as this are educative. It’s surely regrettable that so many of us are ignorant of the basic technologies we depend on.   8.  William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference (New York: Random House, 2016).   9.  The Future of Man (1959). INDEX Africa: information technology in, 27, 28, 83, 84; Mo Ibrahim Prize for leadership in, 28–29; papal message resonating in, 34; population trends in, 30–31; solar energy in, 49 aging.

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by Nate Silver
Published 12 Aug 2024

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT called “rule utilitarianism”: Stephen Nathanson, “Utilitarianism, Act and Rule,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, iep.utm.edu/util-a-r. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT even their planet: Tyler Cowen and Will MacAskill, “William MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Moral Progress, and Cultural Innovation (Ep. 156),” Conversations with Tyler, July 7, 2018, conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/william-macaskill. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “gathering of forecasting nerds”: Manifest 2023, 2023, manifestconference.net. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT will irrecoverably collapse: Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, Kindle ed.

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Food, nytimes.com/2021/09/28/dining/eleven-madison-park-restaurant-review-plant-based.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT off about $30,000: Nanina Bajekal, “Inside the Growing Movement to Do the Most Good Possible,” Time, August 10, 2022, time.com/6204627/effective-altruism-longtermism-william-macaskill-interview. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT hosted by Sam Bankman-Fried: SBF was described as the host in the invitation that MacAskill emailed to me. When I later asked SBF about the choice of venue, he told me he didn’t know who had selected it, which I took to mean that someone else on his staff had.

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Kip Viscusi and Joseph E. Aldy, “The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27, no. 1 (2003): 5–76, doi.org/10.1023/A:1025598106257. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Definition of Effective Altruism”: William MacAskill, “The Definition of Effective Altruism,” in Effective Altruism, ed. Hilary Greaves and Theron Pummer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 10–28, doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198841364.003.0001. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT rationalism originally referred: Peter Markie and M.

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business
by Paul Jarvis
Published 1 Jan 2019

Newport believes that we need to be craftspeople, focused on getting better and better at how we use our skills, in order to be valuable to our company and its customers. The craftsperson mind-set keeps you focused on what you can offer the world; the passion mind-set focuses instead on what the world can offer you. Too many people assume that meaningful work or ideas are the result of passion. Research from William MacAskill of Oxford University has shown that engaging work helps you develop passion, not the other way around. This kind of work draws you in, holds your attention, and gives you a sense of flow (being absorbed in the work and losing track of time). Engaging work comprises four key components: clearly defined assignments, tasks you excel at, performance feedback, and work autonomy.

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Vallerand, “On the Psychology of Passion: In Search of What Makes People’s Lives Most Worth Living,” January 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228347175_On_the_Psychology_of_Passion_In_Search_of_What_Makes_People’s_Lives_Most_Worth_Living. 82 following your passion is fundamentally flawed: Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012), xviii. engaging work helps you develop passion: William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference (New York: Avery, 2015), 147–178. 86 not be just a job but an adventure: Jeffrey Jensen Arnett and Elizabeth Fishel, “Is 30 the New 20 for Young Adults?” AARP, Washington, D.C., November 1, 2010, http://www.aarp.org/relationships/parenting/info-10-2010/emerging_adulthood_thirtysomethings.html. 86always winners: M.

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference
by Alice Ross
Published 19 Nov 2020

As divestment campaigns lead to heightened awareness of the need for polluting companies to take climate change more seriously, this can push them to make changes to their business models, for example by investing more in renewable energy or speeding up their transition away from fossil fuels. It can be argued that the real effect of a public campaign to divest comes through bad publicity – though this is harder to quantify. Writing in the New Yorker in 2015, Oxford philosophy professor William MacAskill concluded that divestment campaigns ‘have the potential to do good, but only with caveats. To avoid the risk of misleading people, those running campaigns should be clear that the aim of divestment is to signal disapproval of certain industries, not to directly affect share price.’ Michael Barry notes that when Georgetown made its announcement about divesting from fossil fuels in February 2020, the media response was huge.

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
by Toby Ord
Published 24 Mar 2020

So in these other senses, our lives may matter more now, but these other senses are compatible with the kind of temporal neutrality I endorse. 25 This has been suggested by J. J. C. Smart (1984, pp. 64–5) and G. E. Moore (1903, § 93). 26 New generations will have new risks that they can help reduce, but only we can reduce the risks being posed now and in coming decades. 27 The name was coined by William MacAskill and myself. The ideas build on those of our colleagues Nick Beckstead (2013) and Nick Bostrom (2002b, 2003). MacAskill is currently working on a major book exploring these ideas. 28 We will see in Appendix E that as well as safeguarding humanity, there are other general ways our acts could have a sustained influence on the longterm future. 29 On a discount rate of 0.1% per annum (low by economists’ standards), the intervening million years make suffering in one million years more than 10434 times as important as the same amount of suffering in two million years. 30 One could cash this out in different ways depending on one’s theory of value.

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It is even possible to have situations where we might be best off with actions that pose their own immediate risk if they make up for it in how much they lower longterm risk. Potential examples include developing advanced artificial intelligence or centralizing control of global security. 7 The name was suggested by William MacAskill, who has also explored the need for such a process and how it might work. Nick Bostrom (2013, p. 24) expressed a closely related idea: “Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey.

The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
by Peter Singer
Published 1 Jan 2015

On other occasions Ord has quoted the figure for preventing blindness. 7. Geoghegen, “Why I’m Giving £1m to Charity”; email from Toby Ord to the author, July 2014. By 2014 inflation had pushed the £18,000 back up to nearly £20,000. 8. http://www.givingwhatwecan.org (October 25, 2014). 9. http://80000hours.org/about-us. 10. William MacAskill, “The History of the Term ‘Effective Altruism,”’ March 10, 2014, http://www.effective-altruism.com/the-history-of-the-term-effective-altruism/. 11. http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/AboutUs/ImpactReport.aspx. Chapter 3. Living Modestly to Give More 1. Julia Wise, “It Doesn’t Have to Be Hard,” March 11, 2013, http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/03/it-doesnt-have-to-be-hard.html. 2.

Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better
by Rob Reich
Published 20 Nov 2018

In recent years Singer has made efforts to popularize his view, e.g., The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2010); The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). For another philosopher’s defense of effective altruism, see William MacAskill, Doing Good Better (New York: Gotham Books, 2015). 13. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2000); Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); Theda Skocpol and Morris Fiorina, eds., Civic Engagement in American Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999); Nancy Rosenblum and Robert Post, eds., Civil Society and Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka, eds., Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Mark Warren, Democracy and Association (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Victor M.

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America
by Garrett Neiman
Published 19 Jun 2023

Robert Muggah and Sameh Wahba, “How Reducing Inequality Will Make Our Cities Safer,” Sustainable Cities (blog), World Bank, March 2, 2022, https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/how-reducing-inequality-will-make-our-cities-safer. 25. “Marcus Aurelius Quotes,” BrainyQuote, accessed September 18, 2022, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/marcus_aurelius_106264. 26. Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, in The Essential Thomas Paine, ed. John Dos Passos (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2008), 167. 27. William MacAskill, “Effective Altruism: Introduction,” Essays in Philosophy 18, no. 1 (2017): 1–5, https://doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1580. 28. “About GiveDirectly,” GiveDirectly, accessed September 18, 2022, https://www.givedirectly.org/about/. 29. “GiveDirectly,” GiveWell, accessed September 18, 2022, https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly. 30.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

Galston, “Is Seeing Still Believing? The Deepfake Challenge to Truth in Politics,” Brookings, Jan. 8, 2020, www.brookings.edu/​research/​is-seeing-still-believing-the-deepfake-challenge-to-truth-in-politics. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT First discovered in China Figure taken from William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View (London: Oneworld, 2022), 112, who cites a variety of sources, although acknowledges none are certain about this number. See also H. C. Kung et al., “Influenza in China in 1977: Recurrence of Influenza Virus A Subtype H1N1,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 56, no. 6 (1978), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2395678/pdf/bullwho00443-0095.pdf.

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth
by Robin Hanson
Published 31 Mar 2016

Acknowledgments For their comments, I thank Paul Christiano, Peter Twieg, Katja Grace, Carl Shulman, Tyler Cowen, Fabio Rojas, Bonnie Hanson, Luke Muehlhauser, Nikola Danaylov, Bryan Caplan, Michael Abramowicz, Gaverick Matheny, Paul Crowley, Peter McCluskey, Sam Wilson, Chris Hibbert, Thomas Hanson, Daniel Houser, Kaj Sotala, Rong Rong, David Friedman, Michael LaTorra, Ben Goertzel, Steve Omohundro, David Levy, Jim Miller, Mike Halsall, Peggy Jackson, Jan-Erik Strasser, Robert Lecnik, Andrew Hanson, Shannon Friedman, Karl Mattingly, Ken Kittlitz, Teresa Hartnett, Giulio Prisco, David Pearce, Stephen Van Sickle, David Brin, Chris Yung, Adam Gurri, Matthew Graves, Dave Lindbergh, Scott Aaronson, Gary Drescher, Robert Koslover, Don Hanson, Michael Raimondi, William MacAskill, Eli Dourado, David McFadzean, Bruce Brewington, Marc Ringuette, Daniel Miessler, Keith Henson, Garett Jones, Alex Tabarrok, Lee Corbin, Norman Hardy, Charles Zheng, Stuart Armstrong, Vernor Vinge, Ted Goertzel, Mark Lillibridge, Michael Chwe, Olle Häggström, Jaan Tallinn, Joshua Fox, Chris Hallquist, Joshua Fox, Kevin Simler, Eric Falkenstein, Lotta Moberg, Ute Shaw, Matt Franklin, Nick Beckstead, Robyn Weaving, François Rideau, Eloise Rosen, Peter Voss, Scott Sumner, Phil Goetz, Robert Rush, Donald Prell, Olivia Gonzalez, Bradley Andrews, Keith Adams, Agustin Lebron, Karl Wiberg, Thomas Malone, Will Gordon, Philip Maymin, Henrik Jonsson, Mark Bahner, Adam Lapidus, Tom McKendree, Evelyn Mitchell, Jacek Stopa, Scott Leibrand, Paul Ralley, Anders Sandberg, Eli Lehrer, Michael Klein, Lumifer, Joy Buchanan, Miles Brundage, Harry Beck, Michael Price, Tim Freeman, Vladimir M., David Wolf, Randall Pickett, Zack Davis, Tom Bell, Harry Hawk, Adam Kolber, Dean Menk, Randall Mayes, Karen Maloney, Brian Tomasik, Ramez Naam, John Clark, Robert de Neufville, Richard Bruns, Keith Mansfield, Gordon Worley, Giedrius, Peter Garretson, Christopher Burger, Nithya Sambasivam, Zachary Weinersmith, Luke Somers, Barbara Belle, Jake Selinger, Geoffrey Miller, Arthur Breitman, Martin Wooster, Daniel Boese, Oge Nnadi, Joseph Mela, Diego Caleiro, Daniel Lemire, Emily Perry, Jess Riedel, Jon Perry, Eli Tyre, Daniel Erasmus, Emmanuel Saadia, Erik Brynjolfsson, Anamaria Berea, Niko Zinovii, Matthew Farrell, Diana Fleischman, and Douglas Barrett.

Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023

“If you agree it’s important for a democracy, then I thought it was worth making an investment in it.” One person who was eager to be in the deal was Sam Bankman-Fried, the soon-to-be-disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who believed that Twitter could be rebuilt on the blockchain. He claimed to be a supporter of effective altruism, and the founder of that movement, William MacAskill, texted Musk to try to arrange a meeting. So did Michael Grimes, Musk’s primary banker at Morgan Stanley, who was working to put together the financing. “I’m backlogged with a mountain of critical work matters,” Musk texted Grimes. “ls this urgent?” Grimes replied that Bankman-Fried “would do the engineering for social media blockchain integration” and put $5 billion in the deal.