How to Make a Difference in the World

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This episode of very bad wizard is brought to you once again by one of our favorite sponsors of all time, give well dot org. Givewell spends over 30 thousand hours each year researching charitable organizations and only recommends a few of the highest impact, evidence backed charities they've found. And over 110 thousand donors of you givewell to donate more than one billion dollars, one billion dollars,. whil crazin, rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save, will save tens of thousands of lives and improve the lives of millions more.

David and Tamler find themselves unable to attach rational meaning to a single act in their entire lives. Let’s say we publish more articles and books. What then? What about our kids? They’re going off to college. Why? What for? We think about the future of the podcast. Let’s say we get bought out by Spotify and become more famous than Joe Rogan, Dolly Parton, and even Yoel Inbar -- more famous than all the podcasters in the world. So what?

And we can find absolutely no reply.

Plus, we take a test to determine whether we can we tell an AI apart from an analytic philosopher. When should we start getting scared of what AIs are gonna do to us, or what we’re doing to them?

*Note: the main segment is on the first half of Tolstoy’s great memoir "A Confession," but you don’t need to be familiar with the text to appreciate the discussion for this one.