80,000 Hours Podcast
#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, & mental health under pressure
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Balancing frugality with ambition is essential for maximizing impact in nonprofit organizations.
- Prioritizing mental health and self-care is crucial to prevent burnout and sustain productivity.
- Positive impacts on individuals' lives can result from meaningful interactions and mentorship opportunities.
- Navigating the pressure of influencing decisions demands a thoughtful and strategic approach to mentorship and leadership.
- Efficient initiatives like the Lead Exposure Elimination Project showcase immediate and significant positive impact in addressing critical health issues.
Deep dives
Impact of 80,000 Hours Podcast Episodes
The 80,000 Hours podcast impacts listeners by offering valuable insights into a range of important topics. With various episodes exploring issues like effective altruism and long-term planning, the podcast fosters critical thinking and potentially inspires listeners to reevaluate their perspectives and choices.
Balancing Work and Self-Care
The importance of maintaining a balance between work and self-care is highlighted as essential for overall well-being. Prioritizing mental health and taking time off are emphasized as crucial strategies to prevent burnout and sustain productivity, showcasing the significance of personal well-being alongside professional pursuits.
Celebrating Positive Influences
Acknowledging the positive impacts on individuals' lives as a result of conversations and writings, such as career changes and personal development, reinforces the significance of meaningful interactions. The ability to positively impact others by sharing insights and guidance underscores the value of fostering constructive relationships and mentorship opportunities.
Managing Pressure of Influence
Navigating the pressure and responsibility that come with influencing others' decisions and careers requires a balanced approach. Understanding the impact one's actions can have on a broader scale involves being mindful of the implications of guidance and advice offered to others, emphasizing the need for a thoughtful and strategic approach to mentorship and leadership.
Lead Exposure Elimination Project Success
The Lead Exposure Elimination Project, spearheaded by Clare Donaldson, successfully lobbied the Malabi government to eliminate lead paint due to high lead concentrations found in multiple types of paints. This initiative, incubated at a charity organization, showcased an efficient approach by addressing health and brain development issues caused by lead exposure. The project's simplicity in conducting tests and influencing government action highlighted its immediate and significant positive impact.
Shrimp Welfare and Innovations
The Shrimp Welfare Project, pioneered by Andres, focuses on improving shrimp farming practices to enhance animal welfare and reduce suffering. Addressing the neglect in crustacean care within animal welfare discussions, the project aims to institute cost-effective improvements in shrimp farming methods that benefit both the welfare of the shrimp and the economic viability for farmers. The project's novel approach highlights the importance of exploring neglected areas in animal welfare advocacy.
Culture of Ambition in Effective Altruism
Effective Altruism's evolving landscape, as discussed in the podcast, emphasizes the need for a culture of ambition among individuals striving to make a significant impact. Encouraging high-risk, high-reward approaches grounded in strategic thinking, the episode underscores the importance of pursuing ambitious projects with potential for substantial positive outcomes. Embracing innovative initiatives like mega projects while maintaining ethical standards and promoting world-view diversity are key aspects highlighted in fostering a culture of ambition within the effective altruism community.
Challenges in Funding Decision-Making
The podcast episode delves into the complexities of funding decision-making processes, particularly in assessing grant applications and evaluating impactful projects. The narrative showcases the strategic considerations and practical challenges involved in identifying high-potential initiatives, handling large volumes of applications, and balancing risk-taking with ensuring tangible positive outcomes. The emphasis on maintaining a balance between strategic vision, impact assessment, and operational execution underscores the nuanced dynamics inherent in funding allocations for projects aimed at creating tangible societal benefits.
The Importance of Criticism and Movement Building in Effective Altruism
Criticism plays a crucial role in Effective Altruism, highlighting the need to balance feedback on existing ideas with new perspectives. The podcast underscores the significance of encouraging critical discussions without hindering career progress, emphasizing the value of diverse viewpoints to advance altruistic initiatives.
Patient Philanthropy and Strategic Grantmaking
The discussion delves into the concept of patient philanthropy, contrasting immediate grantmaking with long-term strategies for impactful giving. The podcast debates the timing and scale of grants, questioning the effectiveness of rapidly disbursing funds versus accumulating assets for more substantial future grants. It also raises concerns about maximizing philanthropic impact through strategic decision-making and potential pitfalls of persisting with conservative giving practices.
Imagine you lead a nonprofit that operates on a shoestring budget. Staff are paid minimum wage, lunch is bread and hummus, and you're all bunched up on a few tables in a basement office.
But over a few years, your cause attracts some major new donors. Your funding jumps a thousandfold, from $100,000 a year to $100,000,000 a year. You're the same group of people committed to making sacrifices for the cause — but these days, rather than cutting costs, the right thing to do seems to be to spend serious money and get things done ASAP.
You suddenly have the opportunity to make more progress than ever before, but as well as excitement about this, you have worries about the impacts that large amounts of funding can have.
This is roughly the situation faced by today's guest Will MacAskill — University of Oxford philosopher, author of the forthcoming book What We Owe The Future, and founding figure in the effective altruism movement.
Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.
Years ago, Will pledged to give away more than 50% of his income over his life, and was already donating 10% back when he was a student with next to no income. Since then, the coalition he founded has been super successful at attracting the interest of donors who collectively want to give away billions in the way Will and his colleagues were proposing.
While surely a huge success, it brings with it risks that he's never had to consider before:
• Will and his colleagues might try to spend a lot of money trying to get more things done more quickly — but actually just waste it.
• Being seen as profligate could strike onlookers as selfish and disreputable.
• Folks might start pretending to agree with their agenda just to get grants.
• People working on nearby issues that are less flush with funding may end up resentful.
• People might lose their focus on helping others as they get seduced by the prospect of earning a nice living.
• Mediocre projects might find it too easy to get funding, even when the people involved would be better off radically changing their strategy, or shutting down and launching something else entirely.
But all these 'risks of commission' have to be weighed against 'risk of omission': the failure to achieve all you could have if you'd been truly ambitious.
People looking askance at you for paying high salaries to attract the staff you want is unpleasant.
But failing to prevent the next pandemic because you didn't have the necessary medical experts on your grantmaking team is worse than unpleasant — it's a true disaster. Yet few will complain, because they'll never know what might have been if you'd only set frugality aside.
Will aims to strike a sensible balance between these competing errors, which he has taken to calling judicious ambition. In today's episode, Rob and Will discuss the above as well as:
• Will humanity likely converge on good values as we get more educated and invest more in moral philosophy — or are the things we care about actually quite arbitrary and contingent?
• Why are so many nonfiction books full of factual errors?
• How does Will avoid anxiety and depression with more responsibility on his shoulders than ever?
• What does Will disagree with his colleagues on?
• Should we focus on existential risks more or less the same way, whether we care about future generations or not?
• Are potatoes one of the most important technologies ever developed?
• And plenty more.
Chapters:
- Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
- The interview begins (00:02:41)
- What We Owe The Future preview (00:09:23)
- Longtermism vs. x-risk (00:25:39)
- How is Will doing? (00:33:16)
- Having a life outside of work (00:46:45)
- Underappreciated people in the effective altruism community (00:52:48)
- A culture of ambition within effective altruism (00:59:50)
- Massively scalable projects (01:11:40)
- Downsides and risks from the increase in funding (01:14:13)
- Barriers to ambition (01:28:47)
- The Future Fund (01:38:04)
- Patient philanthropy (01:52:50)
- Will’s disagreements with Sam Bankman-Fried and Nick Beckstead (01:56:42)
- Astronomical risks of suffering (s-risks) (02:00:02)
- Will’s future plans (02:02:41)
- What is it with Will and potatoes? (02:08:40)
Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
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