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Will MacAskill

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137
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2015-11-22
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2015-11-22
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  1. “Yeah, so there's one that I actually helped to set up called Animal Chavity Evaluators, and that's applying the same sort of, attempting to have the same sort of level of their go and research. But if you just, if who you want to help are just animals, where should you donate? And they're a much smaller approbation than Givewell, but again, you can check them out for their sort of recommendations. In terms of if you're thinking about the environment, there I'm just less sure actually Givewell is starting to broaden their research that they do so they're working with a foundation called Good Ventures. Which is set up by Kelly Tuner and Dustin Moscovic, who's one of the Facebook co-founders.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “numbers of people, especially kids sick, and therefore they don't go to school, they earn less, they're less productive later on in life. And they're incredibly cheap to treat, so only cost about 50 cents per child. And then the final charity I recommend is give directly, which simply transfers cash directly to the poorest people in the world. You know, the very poorest people living in Kenya. And about 90% of the money that you give ends up in the mobile phone bank account of those extremely poor people, which they then can then spend on whatever way they believe is going to most benefit themselves. So it's the ultimate charity if you're really worried about white knights coming over to try and help the problems of a country they don't really understand. And the people who receive the money tend to spend it on assets like Tim Moves and livestock. That's the best place to luck if you want just incredibly”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Yeah, so if you're busy by far the best thing is just givewell.org where they just have these four top recommended charities. So they just try and find out what are the charities that doing the most good that we know of. And those charities are against malaria foundation, which distributes bed nets, saving life about three and a half thousand dollars. So the best charities often have the worst names. And so a couple are Dworm the World initiative. And the schistosomiasis control initiative, which when I first researched it five years ago, I could not pronounce. And then, which, and they deworm school children. So people don't really know about this, but over the billion people worldwide suffer from these parasitic worm infections in their guts. And they don't kill as many people as HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and so on. But they do just make huge numbers.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “And if you give me the money in your wallet, then I will come back tomorrow and give you any finite amount of happiness or money or anything you could possibly want. And Pascal's here like, no, and it's like, yeah, but look into my eyes. I'm like this kind of slightly creepy figure. You don't know that I'm not this alien or someone with superhuman powers. You can't be absolutely certain of that. So you should still buy your own logic. You should still give me this money. It kind of the thought experiment goes to show that Pascal would have to say even in cases that aren't involving kind of infinities or heaven and hell, you should still do actions that seem pretty crazy to us, like giving this mugger money on this tiny.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So that's kind of his idea. Let's pass Gal's idea from 17th century. Pascal's mugging is a slightly more updated version where Blaise Pascal is coming out of a pub and this kind of eerie figure approaches him and says, give me all the money in your wallet. And Pascal's like, no. And the mugger says, well, okay, I know you're Blaze Pascal. I know that you think that the way to make decisions is to look at the probabilities of outcomes. their values and take that all together.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “I love that we've got on to this. So Pascal's wage or this idea that you should go to church because maybe you think it's incredibly unlikely that God exists. Let's say you think it's just almost no chance, one in a billion chance or something. But the payoff's just so great because it's an infinite amount of happiness. If you take a one in a billion chance multiplied by positive infinity of happiness, well, that's still plus infinity in expectation amount of happiness that you're going to get whereas the costs of going to church just not that great. And so, you know, if you're really kind of even just out for yourself, just looking to maximize your own happiness, then you should try and believe in God and you should try and go to church just because the potential payoff is so great.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Okay, oh my god, I would love to write about Pascal's moment. That scenario is where it's the same as Pascal's wager, except without infinite amounts of value at stake. It's not about heaven or health.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “By us actually doing the research and saying, no, look, if you do this, if you give money against Miller Foundation, distribute long-lasting insecticide-fed nets with $3,500, statistically speaking, you will save a life. Huge number of trials have been conducted on this to show the efficacy of bed nets. We can answer all your questions. Then it's like, okay, this isn't just this kind of Pascal smugging situation where maybe I'll save a life, but I don't really know what's going on. Actually, I know exactly what my money is going to go and do. And it's still the child you save, you still will never know, but they become a little bit less faceless. It's a little bit more concrete what you're actually going to achieve.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Who's only vaguely heard about this stuff, to think, oh, yeah, well, if you just donate, doesn't all the money get wasted? Because it's true that in very many cases, the money is squandered, the money is wasted, there's no impact.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “And then secondly, I think the reason we don't give is just because a lot of psychological biases. So I remember when I was thinking about this, I just thought, well, I just don't want to be a sucker. You know, everyone else is getting ahead of being very ambitious. I was ambitious myself. I don't want to be holding myself back by spending all this time on nonprofit stuff and giving my money away and going behind falling behind my peers. Whereas we've built up this community, the effect of altruism community, where everyone's kind of self-reinforcing. You get really praised for doing more good or doing it more effectively. And it's this really warm welcoming. It's kind of new peer group, a new part of your identity. And I think that can really help overcome a lot of the reservations that people have. And then I think the final thing is just in terms of the impact people have. So obviously there's a huge debate about how effective aid is. And I think it's reasonable for someone who's”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the way Peter presents this is just, yeah, you're this asshole if you don't do this. And then people are like, well, fuck you. And that's just kind of, I mean, it's a kind of natural human reaction, whereas actually most people really want to do good with their lives. If you could be that person rescuing that lounding child, or if you could knock down the door to a burning building and save someone from inside, you'd feel like hero. You'd feel great about yourself. And actually, that's the situation we're in. Within this situation, we can do huge amount of good at little cost yourself, maybe even actually given the psychological. So it's actually this amazing opportunity we have.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Yeah, and so actually it is kind of indicative because Peter Singer was making these arguments since the early 70s, really, and there wasn't that much uptake of them until Toby ordered another academic at Oxford, and I set up giving what we can. That was in 2009. And we were saying, okay, give 10%. And yeah, I think there were a number of changes. So one is just that we emphasize this concrete number 10%. And some people go further than that. Some people give 50%. I'm aiming to give away most of what I earn over the course of my life. So that was one thing. Second was presenting it as just this amazing opportunity rather than this moral obligation. Yes.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “And he was immensely influential, sold millions of books and caused a large number of people to really change their lives, including myself.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Your income donating that away to charities that will help improve lives or save lives among the poorest people in the world, where he argues that if you are walking past a shallow pond and a child was downing in that pond and you could run in and save the child and it would ruin your expensive suit that you were wearing in it cost you a couple of thousand dollars as a result, you'd obviously go and do that. You'd be in technical terms an asshole if you didn't. He doesn't say that. That's my interpretation of the argument. But if so, then what's the difference between that and the life that you can save in Malawi right now by distributing insecticide-devated bed nets to save the child from malaria? And he argues there isn't a difference.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “I was going to ask you Yeah, he's a big influence, both in terms of my thought and in terms of how I'm approaching my life, the decisions I'm making, in terms of my own career. Has two really big important arguments. One is for the moral importance of non-human animals and treating them much better than we treat them as we do at the moment. And then also the importance of fighting global poverty, especially for us and rich countries using a here we argued it should be most of”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “And it argues a whole number of things, but two of the big things are one is The idea that there isn't really a continuing self over time. So the difference, there's nothing kind of fundamental distinct between Will McCaskill, age 28 and Will McCaskill age 70 versus Will McCaskill age 28 and Tim Ferris right now. There's only a kind of matter of degree between those things. And that has a whole number of implications. And actually, interestingly, it's actually quite similar to Big Slain and Buddhist thought. And apparently his book has been used as a text in certain Buddhist temples. They chant to it. Didn't realize this for like 30 years or something.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “He is one and he's now 70. And he wrote a book called Reasons and Persons, which I think is one of the most important books written in the 20th century.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “It's crazy. So known as the hardest exam in the world. But it gives you seven years of funding and you can do whatever you want in those seven years.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “It's intense The way you get into Old Sales College and Andreas achieved this as well is you have to sit 15 hours of exams and you have to answer questions that can be on any topic like is China overrated? Why democracy? How many people should there be? And then the final three-hour exam is just on a single word.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “under ethical uncertainty. It's like you've got all these different ethical viewpoints and they're like different voters. And if you want to be able to make a decision between them in light of that kind of uncertainty, you can treat them as like voters and you can use those same kind of technical apparatus that have been developed in economics and apply it to that case of ethical uncertainty.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Yeah, so it was the same subject as well. And this is all quite distinct from my effective altruism stuff. But it was the same subject. And in particular, I saw there was this analogy between that sort of decision and the bunch of work that had been done in economics. So again, this is something where you can make a lot of progress by doing research. It's just by combining two different fields because the number of combinations of fields is as far, far greater than the number of fields themselves. And so I argue that this problem was kind of like the problem of voting. So in just the same way as there's this problem of like, if you've got all these people with different preferences, how do you kind of aggregate that into one social preference or one will of the people as it were? And there's just a ton of work done on that in economics that's really interesting and often quite technical. And I said that was kind of the same as the decision.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Was what the PhD was on. And in particular, I argued that even if you're unsure about your values, you should treat that uncertainty in the same way as if you're unsure about matters of fact or what's going to happen. So in the same way as if you wouldn't speed round a blind corner if there was some risk of a child playing in the street, even if you thought there was probably no one there, you still wouldn't want to risk it in the same way if you think, well, maybe something's wrong. I think it probably isn't, but there's a risk. And if it was, it would be very wrong. I think you should take that same course of action. You should again kind of play safe, as it were.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “So a dissertation was about ethical uncertainty. So if you're unsure about What you ought to do, so maybe you think, okay, well, I think it's okay to eat meat, but I'm unsure about that. There are these vegetarians around and they have these arguments and so on. And you're like, well, I don't quite know what to do. How should you act in light of that? How should you take uncertainty into account? And this was quite a strategic choice of topic as well because almost it's like a very important topic, but almost nothing has been written about it. I could read everything that had been written on it in about two weeks. where there's many people choose to pursue PhDs on something that's already had a huge amount of work done. And so that was the”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “From the outset of starting a PhD thinking, okay, well, philosophy is incredibly competitive. If I do want to do this as a career, then I've really got to know what's actually expected of you, like on what basis are you going to get hired as a professor? And the answer is weirdly disconnected from what you typically do as a grad student, at least in philosophy, people basically judge you on the quality of your best five or ten thousand words of work, whereas your dissertation is kind of 80,000 words or something. And so if you want to really do well, then it's just about making that highest quality stuff as good as possible and then trying to get it published in the very best journals. So it's really about optimizing for your kind of peak output rather than just being this kind of big journalist.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “In the philosophy department, that's right. So we've ended up having a very similar career trajectory. And I've been a zombie and eaten his brains at every stage of the way. But then in terms of the big inflection points, I think really came, I mean, both through It was only when I moved to Oxford to do my post-clad work that I started to get a lot more serious about this. Also realizing getting funding to do philosophy postgrad is pretty hard, but then realizing a lot of scholarships out there that most people have never heard of and that actually don't therefore extend it by a little bit more than other people do. Through a combination of, I think, eight different scholarships in the end. And so doing that. And then the big thing was just”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “Yeah, so I think there was a lot less effective as an undergrad. I was still kind of trying to discover what How to do things effectively. And they made some big mistakes. I remember trying to train myself to only sleep four hours a night. And that was a disaster. That was the worst years of my life. Then I realized like, no, actually sleeping well and exercising well was really important in terms of having good performance. One thing I realized as an undergrad was just that you can just make so much progress just by finding someone smarter than you and learning from them. And that's exactly what I did. Someone who's now a close friend of mine just knew absolutely everything. And so I'd spend hours just talking to him. So he's Andreas Morganson. He also got a professorship at Oxford.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “contribute to what they're really trying to do, which is come up with new ideas, new arguments, and really put that forward. And so I think I've been just a lot more proactive and kind of goal-oriented in terms of the approach I take to my work.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “Really thinking about what your goals are and understanding how is it best to achieve those goals, which seems like that's pretty common sense. You'd think everyone would do that, but actually most people don't. Most people spend, for example, years and years kind of slogging away just from their dissertation, their PhD, even though that's normally read by about four people in the world, rather than focusing, say, on publishing really good articles, which are read by much more people and more important in terms of doing well in a career. And then the second aspect is just absolutely a ruthless application of the 80-20 rule, which obviously you talk about in your book, but just the idea that of the stuff that you do, most people do, almost all the value comes from a very small number of activities. And again, I think a lot of people in academia use a lot of the time used up with busy work. So they attend conferences, like seminars, they do a lot of reading that doesn't ultimately”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “Yeah, so I definitely think it's not because I'm the smartest person. I'm very confident I'm not. I know lots of people who have exceptionally high IQs around these places. And also not, I think, because I put in the most number of hours because I do so much other stuff as well. But I think the two things are just, one is actually kind of understanding kind of...”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Yeah, so I mean, I think funding Disaster Relief, it should happen for sure when there's a massive crisis like the Haitian earthquake. Money should be going to it and a lot of money, in fact. But then the question is, what should you as an individual donor do? And natural disasters, because they get so much press coverage and so much media attention, they're massively overfunded compared to what I'd call ongoing natural disasters like the 400,000 people who die of malaria every year, but that gets far less media coverage. And in fact, even in the case of the Japanese earthquake, the Japanese Red Cross issued a statement saying, we do not want any money, we do not need money with a fourth richest country in the world. We have resources to deal with this problem, but yet they still got $5 billion in donations, which was about the same as got allocated to Haiti, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “Yeah, that's exactly right. So you've got to look at what program the charity is implementing as well. And there's absolutely huge differences. So three quarters of social programs when put to the test using tiles are found to have no effect at all. They just don't actually improve people's lives. Some are even actively harmful. But then among the ones that are good that do make a difference, there's still a vast discrepancy. The best one's a hundred of times as good as merely ones that just do some amount of good.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “Yeah, there were really big differences. So, Charity Navigator focuses just on the financials and just on the aspects of the charity itself, where one core part of it is how much does the charity spend on overheads? What's the percentage spent on administration? But that's not a great methodic because imagine you've got some really lousy program. You're giving away donuts to Hungary police officers or something, something that's not going to do very much good. And instead, but you've got this amazingly low overhead. You're spending almost nothing on administration. Well, you're still going to be a lousy charity. You can't make a lousy charity good by having a very low overhead.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “Generally, not a good idea. But yet we're happy to do that when it comes to charities. We're happy to spend our money to try and help others, but without ever actually doing the research to work out what's going to actually have the biggest impact. And there are evaluators now like Givewell.org that are doing the search for us so that we can actually follow their recommendations because it does take quite a bit of time.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “So yeah, I think the biggest mistake of all is just not really thinking or doing any research about where you're donating. So, I mean, imagine if someone came up to you in the street and told you about this company that they'd set up or that they were representing and that you should really invest in this company and they tell you about how good ape the company is. And then ask you right there on the street, well, are you going to make an investment?”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “So the key is that we take a kind of scientific approach to doing good. So that's using high quality evidence, really good data, thinking about the outcomes that actions do, rather than just what sort of really sexy intervention or what makes you feel good, but actually what's helping people the most. And drawing on years of research now, as well as using careful, reflective, self-critical reasoning in order to work out what those things aren't just making a difference, but are making the most difference.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “So depending on whether I want to be low key or not, I'll tell them I'm Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, but I'm also one of the co-founders of the Effective Altruism Movement, where that's a community of people who are dedicated to using their time and money as effectively as possible to make the world a better place. And to that end, I co-founded a couple of non-profits giving what we can, which encourages people to give at least 10% of the income to the most effective charities, and 80,000 hours named after the number of hours you typically work in your life, which is about giving advice to people to ensure that if they want to pursue a career with a big app impact, they can do as much good as they can.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “Yeah, it's a really big thing, actually. So almost all your teaching goes on in college. You live there, you eat there, most of your friends are there while you're a student at the university. And actually all the colleges predate the university. So that's really the core of your life at Oxford. And then you get examined and go to lectures at the university itself.”

    2015-11-22 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #120: Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT