Highlights: #204 – Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism

Election forecaster Nate Silver gives his takes on: how effective altruism could be better, the stark tradeoffs we faced with COVID, whether the 13 Keys to the White House is "junk science," how to tell whose election predictions are better, and if venture capitalists really take risks.

This is a selection of highlights from episode #204 of The 80,000 Hours Podcast: Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism. These aren't necessarily the most important, or even most entertaining parts of the interview — so if you enjoy this, we strongly recommend checking out the full episode.

And if you're finding these highlights episodes valuable, please let us know by emailing podcast@80000hours.org.

Highlights:

• Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
• Is anyone doing better at "doing good better"? (00:00:29)
• Is effective altruism too big to succeed? (00:02:19)
• The stark tradeoffs we faced with COVID (00:06:02)
• The 13 Keys to the White House (00:07:53)
• Can we tell whose election predictions are better? (00:11:40)
• Do venture capitalists really take risks? (00:16:29)

Highlights put together by Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong