What are the most important moral problems of our time? | Will MacAskill

I love some of the things he’s talking about, but I think you have to be completely selfless as Will claims to be to be the best altruist you can be, and that’s why I don’t like the idea of altruism. I read his book a while back called “Doing Good Better” and I specifically remember detesting his radical ideas of taking on jobs that pay better so I can donate more and even going into a profession I don’t like just to be more effective in my altruism. Am I too selfish to donate to things I care about ? No. But I am too selfish to direct my life based on helping other people, at the cost of my own happiness as well. But maybe Will is happy to do these things and it’s not at the cost of his happiness. Personally just not for me, and unfortunately, most humans are like this or much worse.

This joker has drunk way too much soy milk… His estrogen level Has to be right off the charts

This guy is high. Drugs are bad, okay?

These guys are all looking for what Jesus already taught

EA lost all its goodwill with SBF. Really reads as a front and a guise for sociopathy.

Man STFU all u internet do-gooders. This BS puts me to sleep

Here from Non-Trivial.

This guys needs to go to jail

Altruism is a bane. According to writer and Objectivist Ayn Rand, 'Altruism, [according to Rand], is the moral basis of collectivism and statism; indeed, she often referred to the “altruist-collectivist” or “altruist-statist” ethics, creed, or code. Rand also explored the psychology of altruism in considerable detail, in both her fiction and nonfiction writings.' (from Ayn Rand and Altruism, Part 1, and The Atlas Society.

crazy how underrated this talk is

Why is he saying nothing, repeating bill gates’ words, and talking about solving not giving any path towards nothing, but still able to make it look like its wow

Living in poverty can result in malnutrition, poor health, fewer opportunities for education and increased illness. With an estimated 783 million people living in poverty, eradicating poverty is one of the biggest global issues facing humankind.

Oh god.. all the people fawning in the comments.. I really thought people were smart enough to see this idiocy for what it is

I really like two things that he talked about and we are facing them today, he talked about global pandemic and that happened, and he talked about how the ai will be secure ، and here we are today companies work for making ai secure

well there's no point of HUMAN PROGRESS in decriminalizing homosexuality......... thats medically and morally absurd and out of nature!! thats progress in absurdism and immorality!!

Are you asking me to make sacrifices so that at some future time the poorest person will be better off than the richest one alive today?

Every living person, up to and including Jeff Bezos, is a person in need compared to the multitudes that will inhabit the earth if humanity doesn't go extinct. So we should take even more resources on credit from them, instead.

It's totally something very concerning because after this ted talk we just see Boirisk like corona pandemic which was definitely created by human interference so yaa i am ready to work on it..... 😊

Can anyone explain to me about the diminishing returns

So good and helpful

Free Roderick!

this is the average 14 year old amerikkkan on adderall

Don’t buy a used car from people who are trying to change the world.

What a liar, what a greedy liar.

Opening your talk with an unsourced claim about world GDP 150,000 years ago is a huge red flag. GDP's utility as a metric diminishes rapidly as you leave the specific contexts for which it was invented— and no, it was not invented as a measure of "power to change the world." It's utter nonsense to define a world over 100,000 years before civilization in Mesopotamia by its GDP. It's the kind of weak faux-scientific argument that should have put everyone on guard from the start, but which seems to only now be receiving scrutiny in light of MacAskill's fervent endorsement of a colossal con man.

Bill gates wannabe? No, thank you. What about existential risk of living under regime of technocrats that tell you to do this or that or think this way, not another, for the "greater good"?

An other sickopath like bill gate

An other sickopath like bill gate

Will MacAskill is a fraudster.

Smoke and mirrors his charts are out of context......the human condition is not getting better.....listen closely this guys talking utopia—deception—no ethics with out a higher power.....GOD

What the keep of bullshit. Made-up graphs about some made up future. Complete with a distraction about some bovine of treason In the beginning. Look at me I know big numbers!

Wonder how much this guy made out of the FTX scam

I thought the biggest ethical problem of the modern world was. How does the fist world enjoy their iphone with the knowledge it was made with genuine slave labor.

This man committed FRAUD

This guy recruited SBF lol. Total scam

Why does this come across as so peculiarly and deeply inauthentic? I'm left extremely disturbed by this individual, but perhaps it's just me.

I heard this young man speak around 2015, and read one of his books shortly after: 'Doing Good Better'. His philosophy (a rather grand term for his idea, I'm afraid) is, as I read it, pretty thin stuff. I clicked on to see if there was any hint of more developed insight but it seems not.

It's OK to be super-rich, he suggests, so long as you're giving back via charity. Not so strong on fair systems of taxation, or paying taxes generally, or better governance, or how reducing inequality might actually unleash a whole host of other benefits.

Not necessarily insincere, but ultimately rather shallow stuff.

I recommend reading Gideon Lewis-Kraus' article in the New Yorker for a balanced perspective on the effective altruism movement and MacAskill as it's most visible leader. Even as an EA member, it was quite eye opening. The majority of us are, quite frankly, bonkers. We must be careful about the human tendency for philosophical fanaticism, in any community. Here's a taster from the article:

"Longtermism also led to some bizarre conclusions. Depending on the probabilities one attaches to this or that outcome, something like a .0001-per-cent reduction in over-all existential risk might be worth more than the effort to save a billion people today."

Wow. This is creepy given the state of the world four years later. While the eugenists work overtime to bring humanity to heel—or cull the herd, while the climate engineers pump the world full of toxins in a vane attempt to hubristically micromanage the biosphere, where the military industrial dragon slaughters millions—to hoard billions, while pumping vast quantities of carbon and toxins into the environment, while democracy is being terminated globally to protect soulless-elitist financial rogues from criticism, while mobster capitalism abstracts all of humanity, and all of nature, to facilitate extraction for “profit”… What the F are you taking about? Virtue signaling elites will not solve any of these problems--they created them.

oh yes, the framework and the driving force behind SBF's FTX. At least sounds great on paper.

William MacAskill, your EA philosophy is horribly misguided with an approach of amassing power and then figuring out what to do with it. Yeah, maybe Sam mislead you. But you were a buffoon for being as idealistic as you are. Individuals are driven by greed and that's where EA fails. Because EA is driven by individual, selfish greed. The hunger to amass money remains in this case and money always distorts our actions and interactions.

This is all a giant ponzi, and I am going to prove it.

Morals lol Most people don't have morals nowadays.

I disagree strongly: According to the current trend, humans in the future will have a longer life expectancy and a lower reproduction rate. So whatever we do today is to benefit the future wealthy billionaires who live forever. It's what I called "temporal slavery".

he said “The global pandemic” not “A global pandemic”

I'm impressed with human progress but where are the graphs for species extinction, plastics pollution, overfishing, forest destruction, insect numbers, ocean dead zones, etc etc.

There is nothing new here except presentation -his pitch is perfect for the age of internet billionaires and middle class affluent who like to feel about guilty about their affluence. He'll be an academic superstar but not is not a philosopher in any serious sense. His talk is all about broad bush self improvement - a message we love, that we can progress to a better world .

Longermism is a utilitarianism Wolf in sheep's clothing... If you want humanity to be optimized in the direction of the Star Trek Borg "people", well I guess it's for you 👎🏾 Zero stars - do not recommend.

I'm kinda just a few minutes into this, but the part on factory farming being a neglected concern really got me thinking about something much deeper and much more existential: our lack of appreciation for life as a whole seems like a pretty neglected priority.

It's easy and understandable to get hung up on the importance of human life and well being, but it seems unlikely humans are going to last forever. I think it's of utmost importance to keep the flame of life going without regards to our own species.

It's easy to be selfish and human centric, but I'd like to think that if aliens found us they would value us as intelligent lifeforms or just lifeforms in general. I'd like to think we'd do the same if we expanded into the stars.

I hope that doesn't come off as pretentious and morally self-righteous as I kinda felt typing it.

Love any of you that read this either way

I have just been reading George Marshall's book called 'Don't Even Think About It'. I highly recommend it. It is essentially about how to communucate effectively about climate change, but it also applies to talks such as this The book includes information and evidence about why this type of presentation, which is dependent on communicating arguments via a series of graphs is not an effective form of communication for most audiences. I suggest that anyone who is relying on the type of presentation given here reads the book carefully and implements the advice. One thing is to understand know what is important (as the presenter here clearly does). Knowing how to push the buttons of your audience is another thing.