80,000 Hours Podcast

Will Trump be re-elected? Will North Korea give up their nuclear weapons? Will your friend turn up to dinner? Spencer Greenberg, founder of ClearerThinking.org has a process for working out such real life problems. Let’s work through one here: how likely is it that you’ll enjoy listening to this episode? The first step is to figure out your ‘prior probability’; what’s your estimate of how likely y...

Will people who think carefully about how to maximize welfare eventually converge on the same views?  The effective altruism community has spent a lot of time over the past 10 years debating how best to increase happiness and reduce suffering, and gradually narrowed in on the world’s poorest people, all animals capable of suffering, and future generations.  Yew-Kwang Ng, Professor of Economics at...

What’s the value of preventing the death of a 5-year-old child, compared to a 20-year-old, or an 80-year-old? The global health community has generally regarded the value as proportional to the number of health-adjusted life-years the person has remaining - but GiveWell, one of the world’s foremost charity evaluators, no longer uses that approach. They found that contrary to the years-remaining’ m...

Almost nobody is able to do groundbreaking physics research themselves, and by the time his brilliance was appreciated, Einstein was hardly limited by funding. But what if you could find a way to unlock the secrets of the universe like Einstein nonetheless? Today’s guest, Tanya Singh, sees herself as doing something like that every day. She’s Executive Assistant to one of her intellectual heroes w...

"You don't need permission. You don't need to be allowed to do something that's not in your job description. If you think that it's gonna make your company or your organization more successful and more efficient, you can often just go and do it." How broken is the world? How inefficient is a typical organisation? Looking at Tara Mac Aulay’s life, the answer seems to be ‘very’. At 15 she took her f...

Today's episode is a cross-post of an interview I did with The Jolly Swagmen Podcast which came out this week. I recommend regular listeners skip to 24 minutes in to avoid hearing things they already know. Later in the episode I talk about my contrarian views, utilitarianism, how 80,000 Hours has changed and will change in the future, where I think EA is performing worst, how to use social media m...

In 1991 Edwin Edwards won the Louisiana gubernatorial election. In 2001, he was found guilty of racketeering and received a 10 year invitation to Federal prison. The strange thing about that election? By 1991 Edwards was already notorious for his corruption. Actually, that’s not it. The truly strange thing is that Edwards was clearly the good guy in the race. How is that possible? His opponent was...

Joseph Stalin had a life-extension program dedicated to making himself immortal. What if he had succeeded?  According to our last guest, Bryan Caplan , there’s an 80% chance that Stalin would still be ruling Russia today. Today’s guest disagrees. Like Stalin he has eyes for his own immortality - including an insurance plan that will cover the cost of cryogenically freezing himself after he dies -...

Bryan Caplan’s claim in *The Case Against Education* is striking: education doesn’t teach people much, we use little of what we learn, and college is mostly about trying to seem smarter than other people - so the government should slash education funding. It’s a dismaying - almost profane - idea, and one people are inclined to dismiss out of hand. But having read the book, I have to admit that Bry...

The debate around the impacts of artificial intelligence often centres on ‘superintelligence’ - a general intellect that is much smarter than the best humans, in practically every field.  But according to Allan Dafoe - Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University - even if we stopped at today's AI technology and simply collected more data, built more sensors, and added more computin...

If we have a study on the impact of a social program in a particular place and time, how confident can we be that we’ll get a similar result if we study the same program again somewhere else?  Dr Eva Vivalt is a lecturer in the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University. She compiled a huge database of impact evaluations in global development - including 15,024 estimates fr...

Part 2 out now: #33 - Dr Anders Sandberg on what if we ended ageing, solar flares & the annual risk of nuclear war The universe is so vast, yet we don’t see any alien civilizations. If they exist, where are they? Oxford University’s Anders Sandberg has an original answer: they’re ‘sleeping’, and for a very compelling reason. Because of the thermodynamics of computation, the colder it gets, the...

A researcher is working on creating a new virus – one more dangerous than any that exist naturally. They believe they’re being as careful as possible. After all, if things go wrong, their own life and that of their colleagues will be in danger. But if an accident is capable of triggering a global pandemic – hundreds of millions of lives might be at risk. How much additional care will the researche...

How about this for a movie idea: a main character has to prevent a new contagious strain of Ebola spreading around the world. She’s the best of the best. So good in fact, that her work on early detection systems contains the strain at its source. Ten minutes into the movie, we see the results of her work – nothing happens. Life goes on as usual. She continues to be amazingly competent, and nothing...

First, decide on the type of animal. Next, pick the cell type. Then take a small, painless biopsy, and put the cells in a solution that makes them feel like they’re still in the body. Once the cells are in this comfortable state, they'll proliferate. One cell becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, and so on. Continue until you have enough cells to make a burger, a nugget, a sausage, or...

On February 2, 1685, England’s King Charles II was struck by a sudden illness. Fortunately his physicians were the best of the best. To reassure the public they kept them abreast of the King’s treatment regimen. King Charles was made to swallow a toxic metal; had blistering agents applied to his scalp; had pigeon droppings attached to his feet; was prodded with a red-hot poker; given forty drops o...

How honest should we be? How helpful? How friendly? If our society claims to value honesty, for instance, but in reality accepts an awful lot of lying – should we go along with those lax standards? Or, should we attempt to set a new norm for ourselves? Dr Stefan Schubert, a researcher at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at Oxford University, has been modelling this in the context of the effecti...

Want to help steer the 21st century’s most transformative technology? First complete an undergrad degree in computer science and mathematics. Prioritize harder courses over easier ones. Publish at least one paper before you apply for a PhD. Find a supervisor who’ll have a lot of time for you. Go to the top conferences and meet your future colleagues. And finally, get yourself hired. That’s Dr Jan...

How people kill themselves varies enormously depending on which means are most easily available. In the United States, suicide by firearm stands out. In Hong Kong, where most people live in high rise buildings, jumping from a height is more common. And in some countries in Asia and Africa with many poor agricultural communities, the leading means is drinking pesticide.  There’s a good chance you’v...

The Green Revolution averted mass famine during the 20th century. The contraceptive pill gave women unprecedented freedom in planning their own lives. Both are widely recognised as scientific breakthroughs that transformed the world. But few know that those breakthroughs only happened when they did because of a philanthropist willing to take a risky bet on a new idea. Today’s guest, Holden Karnofs...

Before the US Civil War, it was easier for the North to morally oppose slavery. Why? Because unlike the South they weren’t profiting much from its existence. The fight for abolition was partly won because many no longer saw themselves as having a selfish stake in its continuation. Bruce Friedrich, executive director of The Good Food Institute (GFI), thinks the same may be true in the fight against...

Rogue elements within a state’s security forces enrich dozens of kilograms of uranium. It’s then assembled into a crude nuclear bomb. The bomb is transported on a civilian aircraft to Washington D.C, and loaded onto a delivery truck. The truck is driven by an American citizen midway between the White House and the Capitol Building. The driver casually steps out of the vehicle, and detonates the we...

Ofir Reich started out doing math in the military, before spending 8 years in tech startups - but then made a sharp turn to become a data scientist focussed on helping the global poor. At UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action he helps prevent tax evasion by identifying fake companies in India, enable Afghanistan to pay its teachers electronically, and raise yields for Ethiopian farmers...

Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no place in civil society, that it was okay to kill illegitimate children, and that there was a ranking in the moral worth of different races. Throughout history we’ve consistently believed, as common se...

In the 40s and 50s neoliberalism was a fringe movement within economics. But by the 80s it had become a dominant school of thought in public policy, and achieved major policy changes across the English speaking world. How did this happen?  In part because its leaders invested heavily in training academics to study and develop their ideas. Whether you think neoliberalism was good or bad, its histor...