Doing Good Badly? Philosophical Issues Related to Effective Altruism (D. Phil Thesis)
I’ve now passed the D. Phil. In the (unlikely) event anyone wants to read it, it can be found here. Here’s the abstract:
“Suppose you want to do as much good as possible. What should you do? According to members of the effective altruism […]
On Measuring and Maximising What Matters | EAGxAustralia
The footage from my talk at EAGxAustralia. Here’s the abstract:
Effective altruists want to do as much good as possible. But how should we measure how much good different outcomes do? So far, effective altruists have tended to use income and standardised health metrics […]
How Many Lives is Notre Dame Worth?
Co-written with Peter Singer. This is cross-posted from Project Syndicate, where it originally appeared.
PRINCETON – Just a little more than 24 hours after the fire that seriously damaged Notre-Dame de Paris, donations to rebuild the 850-year-old cathedral had passed €1 billion ($1.1 billion). […]
Cause profile: mental health
[This was originally posted on the EA forum]
I argue that mental illness may be one of the world’s most pressing problems.
Here is a summary of the key points:
- Not only does mental illness seem to cause […]
Ineffective Entrepreneurship: Post-Mortem Of Hippo, The Happiness App That Never Quite Was
60 word summary: I spent two and half years trying to start a startup I thought might do lots of good. It failed. I explain what happened, how it went wrong and try to set out some relevant lessons for others. Main lesson: be prepared for the fact […]
Armageddon, who’s it bad for, anyway?
First published as part of the Huffington Post’s Apocalypse series.
How bad is the end of the world? It’s well, the end of the world, isn’t it? It’s in the name. How could anything be worse than the end to everything?
But is the end of the world that bad? Let’s […]
The Moral Urgency Of Mental Health
Co-written with Peter Singer. This is cross-posted from Project Syndicate, where it original appeared.
If we can prevent great suffering at no cost to ourselves, we ought to do so. That principle is widely accepted and difficult to dispute. Yet Western governments are neglecting an opportunity to […]
The Philanthropist’s Paradox
Many people interested in effective charity worry about whether it’s better to give now or invest and give later. I’ve realised there is an additional worry for people who (like me) are sceptical of the value of the far future. Roughly, it looks like you’re rationally committed to investing your […]
A taxonomy of happiness interventions
Abstract: If we want to maximise happiness we should establish what the full range of options are first and then pick the best ones. As no comprehensive list of options seems to exist I take a first pass at creating one in this chapter. This provides a check-list to ensure we […]
