#130 – Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, & mental health under pressure

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May 23, 2022

Join Will MacAskill, a philosopher from the University of Oxford and a key figure in effective altruism, as he shares insights from his upcoming book, 'What We Owe The Future.' He navigates the delicate balance between frugality and ambition in nonprofit work, especially when funding surges. Will discusses the mental health challenges and risks of burnout amidst increased responsibilities. The conversation highlights the importance of recognizing unsung heroes in activism and the need for moral considerations in philanthropy and long-term thinking.

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ANECDOTE

Book Project

Will MacAskill wrote What We Owe the Future during the pandemic.
The book project involved a large team and years of combined effort, including extensive fact-checking.

INSIGHT

Fact-Checking Importance

Fact-checking nonfiction books thoroughly is crucial, especially with rigorous standards.
Many interesting claims in MacAskill's book were cut due to being untrue.

INSIGHT

Book Themes

MacAskill's book explores population ethics, the value of the future, and technological stagnation.
It emphasizes the contingency of values and the possibility of value lock-in.

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Doing Good Better

Will MacAskill

80,000 Hours

Benjamin Todd

This book provides practical advice on career planning and decision-making, focusing on social impact and effective altruism. It challenges conventional career advice by emphasizing the importance of solving global problems and developing personal strengths. The guide is based on extensive research conducted alongside academics at Oxford University.

The Precipice

Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

Toby Ord

In this book, Toby Ord argues that humanity is in a uniquely dangerous period, which he terms 'the Precipice,' beginning with the first atomic bomb test in 1945. Ord examines various existential risks, including natural and anthropogenic threats, and estimates that there is a one in six chance of humanity suffering an existential catastrophe within the next 100 years. He advocates for a major reorientation in how we see the world and our role in it, emphasizing the need for collective action to minimize these risks and ensure a safe future for humanity. The book integrates insights from multiple disciplines, including physics, biology, earth science, computer science, history, anthropology, statistics, international relations, and moral philosophy[1][3][5].

The Genetic Lottery

Kathryn Paige Harden

Capitalism & Slavery

William Darity Jr.

Eric Williams

William, Eric Eustace, 1911-

Colin A. Palmer

In this seminal work, Eric Williams contends that slavery played a crucial role in the rise of capitalism and the British Empire. He argues that the wealth generated from the slave trade and slavery fueled British industrial development, and that racism was a consequence of slavery rather than its cause. The book refutes traditional ideas of economic and moral progress, emphasizing the economic motivations behind the abolition of slavery and highlighting the agency of the enslaved in their own liberation. Williams's study is based on extensive historical research, including parliamentary debates, merchants’ papers, and abolitionist documents, and has had a profound impact on the scholarship of slavery and capitalism[1][4][5].

What We Owe the Future

William MacAskill

In this book, William MacAskill advocates for longtermism, the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority. He argues that future people count, there could be many of them, and we can make their lives better. MacAskill discusses various threats to humanity, including climate change, AI misalignment, and pandemics, and proposes strategies to ensure civilization's survival and improve its trajectory. The book explores moral and philosophical issues surrounding longtermism, including the risks of human extinction, civilizational collapse, and technological stagnation, while offering a measured optimism about the future's potential for human flourishing[1][5][4].

Why We Sleep

Matthew Walker

This book delves into the purpose and power of sleep, explaining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Walker discusses how sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions, recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. He also explores the consequences of sleep deprivation and provides actionable steps to improve sleep quality, including ways to prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity.

Ghost Fleet

A Novel of the Next World War

August Cole

P.W. Singer

Rich Orlow

In this 2015 techno-thriller, P.W. Singer and August Cole explore a future war scenario where a post-communist China, aided by Russia, attacks the United States in the Pacific, leading to the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands. The novel highlights the reactivation of the US Navy's antiquated 'Ghost Fleet' and the rise of an insurgency by US military personnel and civilians against the Chinese occupiers. The story incorporates various advanced technologies such as electromagnetic railguns, swarm UAVs, and space-based weaponry, and includes over 400 endnotes to support its technological and geopolitical themes.

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