Doing Good: A Conversation with William MacAskill (Episode #228)

Most people like to think of themselves as good people. Most people in first world countries have the opportunity to have a tremendous impact on other people's lives. If you earn more than $35k per year, you are in the top 1% of earners worldwide. This puts you in a great position to do good.

Our model instincts are just not attuned to that at all, they are not sensitive to the sheer scale of what an individual is able to achieve if he or she is trying to make a really positive difference in the world.

However, most people in first world countries are in this situation of opportunity to do extreme good in exchange for a relatively small sacrifice, but most don't do it, mainly due to ignorance of a tractable way in which to do it.

It seems very unintuitive because we're in a very unusual place in the world. It's only over the last couple of hundred years there's such a wild discrepancy between rich countries and poor countries where people in which countries have 100x the income of the poorest people in the world and where we have the technology to be able to change the live... See more

An individual can save (way) more than one life by directing some amount of money to the most effective charities and NGOs (which can be 100s and even 1000s times more effective in having a positive impact than the median charity). There are also other avenues for having such a high impact, such as directing your career to tackle the world's bigges... See more

Imagine you crossed by a shallow pond in which a kid was drowning. At that point in time, you are wearing your most expensive outfit (say, $5k). It is reasonable to affirm that most people in that situation would save the child from drowning, in spite of ruining their outfit, and it is clear that this would be the most ethical decision to make. We ... See more