not pave the road to hell i ask effective altruism evangelist professor of philosophy at oxford university william mccaskill. william macaskill professor off the last of the at oxford university and the co-founder of the center of for effective altruism it's really great to have you with us today welcome to our show was. great to be here thank you for inviting me on so all right so the movement here associated with this called sect of altruism i mean the very notion of this active altruism makes me wonder can altruism be in the affective or even harmful and in what cases yes i think suddenly isn't very often as ineffective or even harmful so there are many attempts where people try and do some out of good but actually end up. achieving very little or just achieving far less than they could have done so for example if so that i'm in the united states called scared straight takes juvenile delinquents and shows them around prisons in order to scare 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

to pave the road to hell i ask effective altruism evangelist professor of philosophy at oxford university william mccaskill. william macaskill professor philosophy at oxford university and the co-founder of the center of for effective altruism it's really great to have you with us today welcome to our show was. great to be here thank you for inviting me so all right so the movement here associated with is called a sect of altruism i mean the very notion of this active altruism makes me wonder can altruism bathe in affective or even harmful and in what cases yes i think suddenly. very often is ineffective or even harmful so there are many attempts where people try and do some out of good but actually end up. achieving very little or just achieving far less than they could have done so for example if so that i'm in the united states called scared straight takes juvenile delinquents and shows them around prisons in order to scare them out 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 teenager

and we're talking to al trist evangelists professor of philosophy at oxford university william at mccaskey well just recently i spoke to a loss of for i'm sure you know him and he actually tells me that charity work while it is ing some lives somewhat basically perpetuates the system that makes this live miserable in the 1st place right so as if we're like guided by the principle of effectiveness it is in the end it seems much more effective for me to join let's say a political organization that would tackle inequality or other fault so the system instead of giving to charities that it will only fix the symptoms but not the illness do you know what i mean or not that it's really being snotty isn't yet. so i think the key thing here is to say that you just can direct charitable money towards fixing the root talking rather than just the symptoms so this has a long history. even i coul marks when writing does capital he was funded by as a tangle acting as a philanthropist marx wouldn't have been able to do the work he did whether or not that's on top a contribution and so similarly if you're

prince william congratulating oxford university vaccine researchers. >> huge, huge congratulations tond your teams. >> reporter: for now, only able to speak with them remotely. and there's no sugar coating it. europe has had a very difficult time with coronavirus in recent months. the world health organization says 28% of global infections happen here, 26% of deaths. get this for a statistic, every 17 seconds in europe someone dies from covid-19. the very, very difficult question now is how much to ease restrictions for the holidays. the fact is the lockdowns have simply hit the pause button. what we know from bitter experience with the coronavirus, as soon as you begin to relax again the virus begins to spread again. keir simmons, nbc news, london. >>> that's keir simmons reporting. >>> a new cdc report says the real number of covid cases in the united states could be eight times higher than what's being reported. nbc's gabe gutierrez has more. >> happy thanksgiving. >> reporter: for many families it was a thanksgiving they never envisioned, dinner to go. >> we just had to do somethi

prince william congratulating oxford university vaccine researchers. >> huge, huge congratulations toter: for now only able to speak with them remotely. >> keir, these latest restrictions you just outlined in your report, do we know how effective they were in europe? >> reporter: well, listen, there's no sugar coating the pill the reality is, craig, that here things are very difficult. the world health organization says europe has 28% of the infections, 26% of deaths. get this, the world health organization says somebody dies of covid in europe every 17 seconds. effectively what the lockdown you've seen in many of the major economies here has done has hit the pause button what we know through bitter experience with coronavirus is as soon as you release, the virus begins to spread again the incredibly difficult decision as we head toward the winter holidays is how much do you unlock and how much will you have to lock down again when we get past that time it's so tricky, craig. >> all right keir simmons for us there in london keir, thank you. keir pointed out one every 17 seconds there'