Interlude 2: Podcast episode on Effective Altruism

I was recently a guest on the Not Overthinking podcast, run by Ali & Taimur Abdaal. I gave an introduction to the ideas on Effective Altruism (previously mentioned in ‘What Altruism Means to Me’). I’m very excited about this episode, EA ideas are a pretty big part of my life, and I like how it came out!

Effective Altruism is all about figuring out how to improve the world as effectively as possible, and then actually doing it. To me, this feels like the natural application to altruism of rationality, life-optimisation, agency and all the other stuff I already talk about on this blog, and I tried to flesh out that link. If you enjoy my writing, I expect you’d also enjoy listening to this!

Key points covered:

• The key ideas of Effective Altruism, why it’s essential to prioritise effectiveness when doing good, and tools for thinking about impact

• You don’t have to be a saint to do good: How to sustainably prioritise doing good. Especially if, like me, you care much more about doing good on an intellectual level than an emotional level

• General career advice, why altruism should be a major factor in career plans, and what to do about this

• Random tangents, like how I’ve optimised my ability to have close friendships and emotional bonds, and how to actually come up with life goals in the first place

Find here, or on your favourite podcast player (Podcast is Not Overthinking, episode is How can we optimise for a meaningful life?)

(If you’ve just come to this blog via this episode, welcome, and apologies for a post that’s clearly not interesting to you! I have a bunch of other essays that I expect to be much more novel. Subscribe here for new posts, and look at top posts for suggestions on where to start)