hello, welcome to sophie, good visionaries, me sophie shepherd, times of uncertainty. empathy is our moral compass and outwards is our way through . but how to make sure that our good intentions do not pay the road to how i ask effective altruism evangelist. professor of philosophy said oxford university, william mcgasey william mac asking professor of philosophy at oxford university and the co founder of the center for effective altruism. surely, great to have you with us today. welcome to our show, which is great feed here. thank you for inviting me on so. alright, so the movement here are associated with is called effective outer ism, i mean the very notion of the vaccine altruism makes me wonder, can altruism be ineffective or even harmful? and what cases? yes, so i think sadly, isn't very often is ineffective or even harmful. so there are many attempts where

people find, do some of good actually end up achieving very little or just achieving far less than they could have done. so for example, a program in the united states called scared spate, takes juvenile link once and shows them round cousins in order to scan them out of a life of crime. but this has been studied many times over and actually it turns out that this program increases the rates of criminal activity among those teenagers in the years following the program. so this is actually an example of an activity that's actively harmful, not just ineffective, but most of the time things do some amount of good is just the very best things we can focus on time and money on. do an enormous amount to improve the wealth. let's talk about the inefficient ways to quench my desire to do something altruistic. like i read an example in one of your interviews, a cherry that for instance,

sends books to africa for kids to learn with. but there's no teachers there. so the books aren't really making much difference, so your money sort of wasted, give me other causes that are ineffective enough to be donating too. if i spend money on for instance alzheimer's research, is it like money will spend? is it effective? so i mean, something like funding out same as the search or funding treatment for illnesses that effects some of which is countries in the world. neither good things do that making the world better. but the question is, are they the most effective things you can be doing? and i think generally not. and the reason being that illnesses the effects people in which comes the as well as all ready an enormous amount of money and resources going towards those causes. so that includes, you know, many important issues like outside of cancer and so on. but when we look at the course, people in the world, you know, those living on less than

a couple of dollars per day. well, they don't have a very, very most basic life saving, you know, medical treatments. so a long lasting insecticides me to bed net costs just for dollars to children for 2 years. and statistically speaking, you'll save a life there for just a few $1000.00. that's incredibly cheap, whereas if you're trying to save a life another country, then via you know, some of these other causes you'll, you wouldn't be spending more like millions of dollars to save a life. altruism as traditionally defined as unselfish behavior for the benefit of the others. but it's no secret like doing good for others. it actually makes you feel good, right? and give you the sense of fulfillment. self respect that you often look for. do you agree that altruism has an element of egoism to it? i mean, even them, in this case, the desire to just feel very good about one's self, the reason for as being altruistic. well,

i think we should divorce the idea about to as in some unselfish behavior, if i can help lots of people and then also get benefit from it myself. that's a bonus. that's another good thing. that's not a reason against doing that thing. and in fact, i and others in the effect helps us some community. you often make no quite significant decisions like to donate 10 percent of incomes or more. we often feel good about this. you know, it's other wording way to live a life. and that's something we should feel good about, i think because if you feel good about acting elsewhere stickly, well that's great, was gonna motivate you to do even more over a long time. about a 3rd of all the nations in the united states, for instance, goes to religious organizations. and i found that very interesting how effective is a church as a charitable organization is giving to a church in your opinion of the fact of donation? well, i think many people give to the church not on the grounds of their pure effectiveness

for doing it for some other reason. perhaps, you know, market loyalty to a community that part of if you want to look at these organizations in terms of their effect, you know, i think often you can just do a lot better. so. ready these kind of large church based organizations, even when they're focused on the right cause areas like including allies of the course. people in the world doesn't very hard to know exactly what the money is being used for what change they're making that wouldn't otherwise happens. whereas we have some organisations likely against malaria foundation that provides bed net though we know saves life save lives for thousands of thousands of dollars. and given the, there are these organizations, well, we should target money towards them rather than taking this much more kind of broad shotgun approach that church based organizations typically take what given a charity is so very widespread and part of the culture in the united states. but

much less if i say europe, for instance, or i don't know in china. why is that? why do you think are americans more soft than other nations? whereas is coming from? i think there's a couple of reasons. one is just the effects of christianity. so, united states among which country use has a much larger adherence to the christian faith, certainly than european cultures. and then the 2nd, i think, is a history and culture of social problems being a matter of, you know, tackling social problems, being a matter of individual action rather than state action. so in europe there's a larger role for state, or at least that's how it's perceived. and so people naturally think, well, the right way of helping those who are poor, those via my taxes sweaters in the u. s. it's more likely to be via flex be and then kind of, as you said,

just touch base donations are enormous part of giving simply a, giving back to one's alma mater, the university you graduated from. and that account, so large proportion of it to like i told you before, the interview. i'm also going to board of trustees for a hospice charity fund. can i consider myself an effective archer? is i wonder what you think of that? yes. so i think the question you should ask yourself is, how did i come to engage in this sort of activity? was it that i really just stood back and thought, what of all the problems that the world faces? what are those, you know, the biggest in scale, yet the most neglected yet, but i think i can make the selection on and then chose, you know, that organization on the basis of thinking, yes, this is where they, we think i can make the biggest difference. alternatively, wasn't just, you know, an opportunity that kind of oppose. and i think it is the case that in general, if you're trying to aim to benefit the poor people, well,

the very poor people in the world are those. and the point of countries about was an n middle income with a chicken face. and so that's why i tend to think that the most effective organizations lie if where it's on a benefit people live today. so in one of your books you propose is really interesting, ethical test. when you have a burning house in front of you with 2 rooms in one room, there is a child and another one, there's a picasso. and of course, if the choice was up to me, i would save the child because i think that any human life is priceless. but if we look in the standpoint of effective altruism, you'd say it's better to say that the castle, because then he can sell to because though, and save millions more lives around you is effective altruism, more about calculus rather than emotional intentions. so i think it felt was, it was about both emotions and calculating. so you an emotional impulse that you

get when you see say a child, something that's extremely important. and that motivates you to do good. but we need to use reason in order to guide our motivations. we need to use our kind of more logical pop up names. and so in this experiment that giles peter's so slaves, us on a directed towards me, the, you know, it was a thought experiment. it's a philosophical idea, not necessarily something that tied into by the world, but the thought was, well, if you can say someone who's like and some of you or die, or this more in direct means, save painting that you can then save, you know, thousands of other lives, well my response is that the way we should think about that is just is about just as this child in the store experiment right there in front of you in this burning building, you can save. well, also just thousands of children around the world and $5000000.00 the children and

the world. you could potentially save it where it's like when the situation of being facing a burning building just all the time. and that's why ability to use money in the light ways is so important. and that leaves the conclusion of the the will. where does the calculus actually start? because when i compare the bang, my bach and i keep analyzing things through the prism of effective out through them, you know, i could come up to the conclusion. the one i heard from many politicians in africa that actually aid in general is a, is a really bad thing and a long term because it, because it's free free stuff and free stuff kills industries and actually it creates dependencies. so for efficiency sake, i shouldn't be contributing to any charities, let's say that send stuff to africa or should i? yes. so i think the issue of aids and the cases where it can be actively harmful. i think it's really important. we need to think about it,

and it's true that many govern government aid programs in the past. have, you know, sometimes on damage helping to pop up, in fact, come up dictatorships and so on. but it's to have you asked about, i think the 1st is if we look at global health spending, this is just been enormously beneficial. eradication small cox said something like 60000000 lives. if we look at malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, diseases, feasible, drastically down and global health spending has a big part of that. i don't know of any serious academic who disputes that and then the 2nd is looking at a money that's going to non governmental organizations, father and government to government organizations. so the literature that's critical of a spending that's normally focused on government to government spending 1000 via non profits. and so i think even if you are actively skeptical of the value of aid in general, that doesn't mean that these, that the best nonprofits that you can be funding on doing an enormous amount of

goods. and in fact, we have positive evidence for thinking. so they are doing just a huge amount to me, please elias of the poor people in the world. well, hello. otherwise, let's say i give money to charity and it saves kindle drive in a poor country, right? but i have no control over what these children are going to do with their life. like my donation did not address ethnic hatred or unemployment. it only saved lives . and the kids who are, say, they grew up in the same sort of messy environment that their parents did become angry at their neighbors, go fighting a war, etc. how's the world a better place? thanks to my donation in this type of article scenario. yes, i think there's 2 ways in which the world's better those are the so so one is just that, i think even among the poorest people in the worlds and even though you know, by saving lives, you're not the best thing. all of the problems at once, and in such things impossible,

these people still have good lives on balance. they're happy to lay exist and the world is better for their contribution to it. and so one thing is you just, i'm actually benefiting them. you also benefits in their family who don't have more than the loss of the child dying young. but then secondly, i think that also comes speaking to the long run disparity of that country. so these issues like ethnic segmentation and unemployment and other issues, they tend to go away as a country gets richer, more developed and your, you know, make them just a little different than well to a big you know, what's a big country, a big project. and so you're helping to get these countries to higher living standards early on. and along with that, these are the top dissipated small. well, we're going to take a short break right now where we're back. we'll continue talking to professor of philosophy at oxford university and the co founder were center of effective altruism william mc. ask,

he'll stay with us. ah, the ah me. what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy foundation, let it be an arms race is on often very dramatic development. only personally,

i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very political time. time to sit down and talk or military mission against dam. we'll conclude on august 31st, the one who did a good to us all the quote unquote, a young girl who i really improved so much. you got to do something that company is something the cut over the what was i think that was really good quote. things alicia very good. this was the right weapon against the right and the local. no, no, no bombarding from but it was filled out through z o o z

the, the signing of the us to all about agreement. and i laid the groundwork for the road ahead toward a lasting peace in afghanistan. and i know that i'm a dunaway and who's the and we're talking to our tourist evangelist. professor of philosophy at oxford university, william mc asked guilt will. just recently i spoke to philosophy for i'm sure you know, he logic and he actually tells me the charity work while eating some lives. some what basically perpetuates the system that makes his life miserable in the 1st

place, right? so as if we're like, guided by the principal effectiveness, it is in the end, it seems much more effective for me to join, let's say, a political organization that will tackle inequality or other fuel. so the system instead of giving to charity that it will only fix the symptoms, but not the illness. do you know what i mean? that's really be. yeah. so i think the crucial thing here is to say that you can direct charitable money towards fixing the problems rather than just the symptoms. so this has a long history. even i call marks. when writing does capital, he was funded by says the angles acting as a flint best marks wouldn't have been able to do the work he did well, not for that philanthropic contribution. and so similarly, if you're looking at some of the big problems in the world, well, activists, you know, obviously they need people to help. but they also needs money for the running costs to organize,

to buy pamphlets and so on. and so if you're more worried by the systemic issues facing the world and including mixing, or you can fund organizations like the center for global development, that's helping to get you know, fair to say deals for wealth when companies or many other organizations that tackling requests problems in the world, so i think it is important not to generalize across all of france be it's very big tent. what the fact of our tourism line of reasoning calls upon is to treat a charitable donation as an investment, right. and to put the money where the most return on investment will occur. but with some causes, i mean it's tricky to calculate the return may mean if i donate to my local symphony, right? it's not as effective as donating to slick and tied anti party n g o, but then again, maybe having a symphony around is just as good as helping a 3rd world country kid somewhere so far away. how do we measure the level of goodness so many areas which are just very hard to get meaningful

quantitative comparisons on. and we have a general framework for looking at causes where it's harder to get to slice numbers, which we call the importance neglecting this flexibility framework. where you look at a problem, you look at her biggest problem, let's the importance of it. how neglected is it? how much money is already flowing towards this? and her tractable is that how much kind of progress can we be making? and all things being up, all things being equal. you want to look at the biggest problems that you get a being very neglected. so i think i've seen for level health and development, i think it's true for. ready animal welfare, i think it's 2 for issues that might impact civilization such as extensive risks. but then the other thing that you can do is also just create what you might call back of the envelope calculation. so just actually start looking at, okay,

if i found the symphony, how much money, if i give them, let's say, $10000.00, what will actually happen as a result? and how plausible is it that this could be compatible to saving several children's lives? i think if you did this calculation you it, well, we find that maybe you can help a few more people go and see simply it's going to be hard to make the claim that while that is as important in terms of its contribution to her human, well being and flourishing as settle, lifesavers, you know, we're talking about doing good and using charitable donations as an example. and when we talk about its active altruism and you explain it everywhere. what you really mean by altruism is basically giving money, right? but is doing good is autism really just about the money? i mean, sometimes it seems that you are present holding the notion of altruism into the choice of child to donate to is that really all there is to it get yeah, it's

a great question. i think this is an important misunderstanding is effect about wisdom. so way back in 2011, i actually co founded an organization called 80000 hours, which technically work over the course of your life. and it advises people on what careers they can pursue if they want to have the biggest difference . so how can you use your time to good love and just your money? and in fact, most people in the effect of community are choosing to do good primarily by the time, by working in the search a policy, often non profits, but often can a merely giving money. so often with these issues is you know, somewhat easier to think about them in terms of charity or flood speed. and that's certainly where we've had a huge amount of success as a movement. but i just absolutely agree. that's what you can do with your money on

the small part of the question, what you can of had to do most good in general. yeah, i just came out with a book. it's called the future is now and together with my guests in this book, we're actually discuss that this new post cobit reality and we all come to a conclusion that in order to navigate this times of uncertainty, you need certain qualities like up to billy and emotional intelligence and empathy and was wondering what do you think, what about you, do you expect people to actually become more empathic and therefore maybe more altruistic now that we're all into deep mass together? i think it is the case that when those global crises, people do tend to band together, you get greater kind of community funding and that's something that's really good, really positive. and in this particular case, i hope we each but what, right lessons, where we appreciate just how bad this is been how we want this to never

happen again. and that could be even worse. and i think we should be worried about in the coming decades, the possibility of even worse. and then next again, including when we looked technology like the to create new pathogens, not just natural pandemic, but manmade pandemic as well. this is something should be off the table as an option feed manatee, and i hope we can respond in that way and i think you're right, you know, greater levels, them see this and then it has caused, can they be nature and help us ensure that we take the actions one day and like you can take the covert situation. for instance, as an example is wearing a mass guests and, and social this to say, actually more effective than donating a ventilator to a hospital because there's only so much you can buy like one to you. ok if you really want really rich 100. but if you, where a mosque you're really saving far more people from getting infected than if you

were to buy ventilators for the hospital. so what's, what's more effective here in terms of altruism? yes, good question. i mean, i think the thing is you can do both, so wearing a mask of social distancing is just something one can do in addition to any donations the choose to make. but then secondly, again, when we're thinking about importance, the greatness, flexibility, code 19 no issue it's, you know, will kill, has killed over the 1000000 people will kill probably 1000000 small. and it's extremely non neglected to the most well known issue in the world at the moment and enormous amounts of funding, tens of millions of dollars going towards it. and so it seems relatively unlikely that unless you're very well informed and unless you have, you know, an unusually good opportunity in front of you, it's unlikely that an individual plans best in my view could do an enormous amount

to improve the situation. now the thing that would be more neglected more i'm saying is fun. that sounds like john hop consent for health security based in the us, which would be thing to design policy such that we're not we learn the lessons and in the future don't allow such terrible pants and extra you know, presently we're face was so many challenges at one, so we have the climate change, decline, biodiversity, growing inequality, extremism being just like most obvious ones. but there are so many more and you say getting priorities right? is of our importance. so which problem in your opinion should be the center of focus right now. so the general way i was thinking about is how clarity in my view is that we should look for one of those issues that most impact the very

long run without thinking about centuries or thousands of years hence. and that's because feature generations matter just in the same way the present generally matters and the features just so long, so big. so if there's anything we can do that affects the very long run, that's an enormous importance. and then there are 2 issues, i think really stand out there. one is that esco's, you know, even worse and alex, the sort of thing. so, and then really in pedal civilization, the in particular might come from development of mind may pathogens perhaps it was autism. and then the 2nd is development now to say, and where artificial intelligence is advancing that rapidly. and i think could bring about a point where a single group would be his able to get much greater power over others. and kind of look in the values of ideology, and that could be very bad for the very long, but well, let's like

a whole new big topic that i would like to discuss with you separately in a separate program. but all that interest. interesting thought, i want to wrap up our top. it's been great speaking to thanks for sharing your thoughts. thanks. yeah. everything. well, thank you so much and hope to speak to thank you. like the ah ah ah, mark the market function you would like to get some idea of who shots miller definition was

it or no, no hold you john got that. i've got that limit and i wanted them off. you're gonna be skip that. you go to the left, me about the less about i get up there for us. let me look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except when the shorter the conflict with the 1st law show your identification. we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. the point obviously is to break truck rather than fear take on various jobs

with the artificial intelligence we'll summoning a demon a robot must protect its own existence with existence. americans love, fine. ah, this was the fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large, understood the bargain. you get a home and then you will rebel, right, as the things don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. be really interesting to dial back and think about no longer deeper history of what housings meant in the united states. not just that

old question of the american dream, but the bigger question of who the dream has been for the with our top headlines are not the 170 dead, nearly 200 injured the aftermath of a terror. the fact that chicago, that more crowds of people about guns on foreigners would come together waiting for evacuation the witness of an explosion who was standing just 10 meters away from its.