Effective Altruism: An Introduction – 80,000 Hours (April 2021) Three: Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways
02:53:44
Huge Tractable Gains In Present-Day Health
- Alexander Berger argues global health and wellbeing targets huge, cheaply preventable suffering that can be reduced with known interventions.
- He highlights measurable wins like insecticide-treated bed nets and large-scale poverty reduction as highly cost-effective.
Name Matters: Frame Positive Goals
- Berger and Rob discuss renaming 'near‑termism' to 'global health and wellbeing' to reflect positive aims rather than just contrast to longtermism.
- The term centres on maximizing present health and welfare while retaining learning and measurability.
Cluster Thinking Over Fragile Calculations
- Berger frames 'cluster thinking' as weighting many outside views and heuristics over long, fragile chains of multiplication.
- He argues this epistemic modesty makes one prefer robust, iterated interventions with feedback rather than single, fragile gambles.
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Introduction
00:00 • 2min
What's Next for Open Philanthropy?
02:21 • 2min
Is It an Open Fill?
04:41 • 2min
How Did You Get Involved So Wellly?
06:49 • 2min
What Do You Think We Should Call Near Termism?
09:16 • 3min
Is It Better to Help People Earlier Than Later?
11:57 • 3min
Is It a Matter of Degree Rather Than Kind?
14:29 • 2min
Cluster Thinking and Expected Value
16:09 • 2min
Cluster Thinking vs Sequence Thinking
17:56 • 2min
Global Health and Well Being
19:52 • 2min
The Biggest Grants in Malaria and Insecticide Resistance
21:45 • 2min
The Hit Space Approach to Global Health and Well Being
23:32 • 2min
Is There a Difference Between Scientific Research and Policy?
25:26 • 2min
Long Termism vs Health and Well Being
27:21 • 3min
Is Long Termism a Thick Versus Thin Concept?
30:21 • 2min
I Think the 80 Thousand Hours Community Isn't All That Interested in It at the Moment.
32:22 • 2min
Long Termism and Bioris
34:25 • 2min
Long Termism and Pandemics
36:42 • 2min
Arguments for Long Termism Versus Globe Health and Well Being
38:16 • 2min
Is Longtramism a Good Career Path?
40:27 • 2min
Are You Trying to Improve Socitl Judgment or Just Making People Healthier?
41:59 • 2min
Is It Better to Have People Be Richer and More Informed About the World?
44:04 • 2min
Is It Possible to Improve Decision Making in the Long Term?
46:10 • 2min
Is Instrumental Rationality in Foreign Affairs Correlated With Peace?
47:59 • 2min
Longtimism and the Longton Future
50:12 • 3min
The Impact of Compounding Growth
53:21 • 2min
Is Technology Having a Big Impact on the Long Term?
55:02 • 2min
Global Gd P Growth
56:36 • 2min
I'd Like to See More Engagement With Long Termism
58:21 • 3min
The Utilitarianism of the Future
01:00:53 • 3min
Is There a Difference Between Positive and Negative?
01:04:21 • 2min
I Think I'm on Extremely Uncertain Ground
01:05:59 • 2min
You Got to Leave the House
01:08:29 • 4min
How Much Feedback Do You Get From Your Projects?
01:12:11 • 3min
The Feedback Loop Case for Long Termism
01:14:49 • 3min
Long Termisms
01:17:35 • 2min
The Importance of Diversification in Open Fills
01:19:55 • 2min
I'm Not Ready to Accept That as a Destroying Argument
01:22:19 • 2min
World View Diversification
01:23:58 • 4min
YO, I'm Like an Unwearder.
01:27:34 • 2min
Arguments in Favor of Colitical Health and Well Being
01:29:56 • 3min
The Long Trimmist View
01:33:07 • 3min
Is It Possible to Lack Integrity?
01:36:31 • 2min
Learning From Experience in Philanthropy
01:38:58 • 3min
Detecting Asperoids
01:41:30 • 2min
I'm Going to Train a Language Model to Reliably Not Swear
01:43:36 • 2min
Long Termism
01:45:10 • 3min
The Future Is Coming Quite Soon, but What Can We Do About It?
01:48:00 • 4min
Is Climate Change More Likely to Make the Future Go Better?
01:52:01 • 2min
Is the World Predictable?
01:54:04 • 2min
How Much Should Open Fill or the Effect of Altruism Community Allocate?
01:56:33 • 2min
Is There a Difference Between Grant Making and Career Planning?
01:58:49 • 3min
Using Science and Politics and Other Methods to Get Leverage
02:01:31 • 3min
Altruism Is a Good Idea
02:04:53 • 3min
Bed Nets for Cash Transfers
02:07:25 • 3min
Openfield's First New Causeri in a Long Time?
02:09:55 • 2min
Air Pollution in India
02:11:30 • 3min
Do You Think the Epollution Is a Problem?
02:14:27 • 2min
How to Stop Smoking?
02:16:04 • 2min
Global Aid Advocacy
02:18:12 • 2min
Why Doesn't Open Fill Fund More Work on Mental Health?
02:20:26 • 2min
Is Mental Health Going to Be Competitive With Cop Charities Yet?
02:22:00 • 4min
What's the Best Thing About the Global Health and Well Being Programme?
02:25:50 • 3min
Is the Expected Value of Science and Policy Grants Evaluated?
02:28:45 • 2min
Are You Trying to Get More Funding for Macor Economic Stabilization?
02:30:20 • 2min
Donate Your Kidney to a Total Stranger
02:32:02 • 2min
The Risk of Kidney Donation Is Like One in a Thousand
02:33:54 • 2min
Do You Think That's Dangerous?
02:35:52 • 3min
Don't Work to Make Money to Save a Life
02:38:29 • 4min
The State Payments for People Who Don't Ae Ies Words
02:42:00 • 3min
The Only Thing Worse Than an Offer You Can't Refuse
02:45:21 • 2min
I've Been Astonished by People's Feelings on This One
02:47:18 • 3min
The First Word, Impact of the Job
02:50:34 • 2min
The 80 Thousand Hours Podcast - Episode 22
02:52:09 • 2min
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.