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Choosing the Most Effective Career Path — According to William MacAskill
I have recently written about the movement known as “effective altruism.” I have benefited from the movement but I have some problems with it as well. I will get into those below.
Some of the benefits, however, come from their focus on doing well in your career in order to do more good in the world. This motivation provides some useful meaning in a materialistic world that promises happiness after working ourselves to death. The American Dream, they say.
EA proponents argue that we should instead look at highly preventable and cost-effective causes in order to do the most good. And if we have a career that allows us to allocate more time to that, the better.
William MacAskill is arguably among the most important moral philosophers of our time. He is an associate professor at the University of Oxford and held a position as a research fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford. He is mainly known for founding two meta-charities, 80,000 Hours & Giving What We Can. Alongside Princeton University professor, Peter Singer, he is known to have popularized Effective Altruism.
In one of MacAskill’s TED talks, he outlines some ways we can be effective in our career paths. I thought the talk was interesting enough to sketch out the general ideas…
