Cluster Thinking vs Sequence Thinking

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 arisen about how to do the most good.

Today’s guest, Alexander Berger, leads Open Philanthropy’s ‘Global Health and Wellbeing’ programme, where he oversees around $175 million in grants each year, and ultimately aspires to disburse billions in the most impactful ways he and his team can identify.

In this conversation from 2021, Alexander explains the case in favour of adopting the ‘global health and wellbeing’ mindset, while going through the arguments for the longtermist approach that he finds most and least convincing.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on July 12, 2021. Some related episodes include:

• #22 – Dr Leah Utyasheva on the non-profit that figured out how to massively cut suicide rates
• #37 – GiveWell picks top charities by estimating the unknowable. James Snowden on how they do it.
• #83 – Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons

Series produced by Keiran Harris.