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Questions and Answers, Part 2

In this week Will MacAskill and Matt Wage discuss effective altruism and career choice.

Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.

Visualiser le programme de cours

Enseigné par

Peter Singer
Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics

Transcription

[BLANK_AUDIO]

>> I'm wondering as a, PhD.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Philosophy at Oxford, I would imagine, are,

designing to go into finance yourself, what your plan.

>> [SOUND] Hm.

Okay.

So, question is, what, what are your plans will, are you, you planning to

go into finance yourself, or you going on with your career in philosophy at Oxford.

>> yeah, that's an absolutely great question.

So I am giving as much as I can away or approximately

having around about 20,000 pounds, that's $30,000 and that will be about

a million and a half pounds over the course of my life,

but it's still nothing compared to what I could do in finance.

So why don't I do that?

And it was something I seriously considered.

But there is a kind of further consideration.

So, at the moment I'm now talking to about 300 young people who

are all thinking about whether to pursue what sort of career they can pursue.

If I convience just one other person to do this instead

of me Well that's my life's work, that's my entire impact.

>> [LAUGH].

>> If I can convince many people then I'm having like the impact over and over

again and similarly with Matt, he's going to donate,

he's going to save hundreds of lives through his donations.

I expect him to save even more through the people who he convinces to do the same

as him and so and that's all things considered,

where I think I can have the most impact.

>> So, so then why, obviously we can't universalize this or else we'd have 300

PhD philosophy doctorate, but why then shouldn't we all go into education?

>> Mm-hm.

>> Yeah, [CROSSTALK] that's the thing.

>> So, so why shouldn't everybody follow your routine

in other words, and try to spread this idea?

Yeah, no another great question and again I'm keen to enterprise is not

necessarily the best career path it's just a good way to begin thinking about things.

And if you can be, so you end up with a coordination problem basically.

So, and we have this, this general movement is called effective outsourcing.

And we have this problem where we got many people who want to do most good.

And you need some people in order to earn to pay for the salaries of other

people to convince more people to pay for the sal, to earn to give and so on.

you might worry about this regress issue never actually.

Achieving anything ultimately, but it does mean that you've no longer got to

think about where can just I as an individual do the most good.

If it was just one person you were thinking about, maybe

earning to give would be the best, but you've gotta think now

compared with all the other people who are also trying

to do the most good, where is my comparative advantage?

And that actually means to follow your passion or more accurately

do what you're comparatively best at, those come back into the picture.

So it'll mean that for some of you earnings it will be the best

thing to do, you can spread ideas in cost effectiveness more with the money.

But for other people yeah, being able to influence others

to do similar things or even better things can be the

most high impact thing you can do and it's going to

end up just being determined on a case by case basis.

Okay, I saw a hand in the balcony.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Matt, are you going to, work less hard, for, the money given

that you're not spending it on yourself, that you're giving hal-, or half

of it anyway, that you're, giving away, does that mean that you'll be,

less successful in the, competitive financial

area where people do work, extremely hard.

Yeah, I think that is a real worry.

>> I think you're ok.

>> I think that is a real worry.

I, I mean one thing is I, I get real excited about like,

I like always curricular like I can't save like this many lives, right?

And I get pumped.

>> [LAUGH].

So like, I sort of do want to have more money to like, give it away.

But I do, I do agree that like, you know, it

does make it like, less of an incentive to like, work hard.

I guess part of, part of the, part of the

reason that I don't give more, is for this reason.

A lot of people say like, oh, if you really believe

these arguments, why don't you give like, 90%, right, you'd still

be like, very wealthy, by world standards, and I think, like

Well, it's going to make it more likely that I burn out.

I'm going to, like, be less excited about working hard.

You know?

Sort of all these things will be, like, a much bigger deal.

So I've sort of, I've given myself the 50% threshold.

And said, like, you can spend the rest of the money on whatever you want.

You know?

Go blow it.

And then

>> So you still have an incentive to raise your, raise your income.

>> That's right.

>> Because at least 50 cents in every dollar you

get, you're going to be able to spend on yourself.

>> Yep.

Also, the 50% number isn't totally arbitrary.

Because there's this weird tax rule which is you can only give like, the first 50%

you give is tax free but then after that, you have to give with after tax money.

Which is weird but.

There was a second hand in the gallery, yeah.

>> For I guess the biggest question I have.

>> The suggestion is that if everybody listens to you, then

we'll have a brain drain, all the most intelligent going into finance.

So I guess in, in the case Matt, we, we lost

a philosophy graduate, possible likely

philosophy professor because Matt was doing.

Philosophy before and could have got into good graduate schools and I

guess we, we'll lose people from other areas is, is that a problem?

>> Yeah, so, if only I were that persuasive

the, and that's a serious point, so if everyone were to

>> [LAUGH].

>> So, I'm now able to talk to the entire

United States and maybe I gi, I'd give a slightly different

message because if everyone were to go into finance then yeah,

exactly, there'd be no one to go into the non-profit sector.

There'd also be no one to fly planes or harvest

crops or do any of the other things that necessarily.

But the argument isn't merely go into finance.

It's to do what you think does the most good, and where at the moment, given that

idealistic young people tend to go into the

non profit sector, and not to earn to give.

That means the difference that you are having on

the margin is much greater by going in to finance.

If it gets to the stage where half of all

financiers are giving very large amounts of money then the argument

to kind of where the impact falls might be very different

because you have a comparatively bigger difference in the non-profit sector.

The wage difference would also be much smaller

and have comparatively less difference in the financial sector.

So in that sense, the argument's self collecting.

>> [COUGH].

>> And I'm sure you'd like to thank both of our guests for [SOUND]

>> Thank you.

[SOUND]

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