80,000 Hours

Last updated

80,000 Hours
FoundedOctober 2011;12 years ago (2011-10) [1]
Founders
Type Nonprofit organisation
FocusSocial impact research and advice
Origins Oxford, England
Area served
Worldwide
ProductFree, evidence-based career advice
Parent organization
 Effective Ventures
Website 80000hours.org

80,000 Hours is a London-based nonprofit organisation that conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that research. It provides this advice on their website and podcast, and through one-on-one advice sessions. The organisation is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, affiliated with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. [1] The organisation's name refers to the typical amount of time someone spends working over a lifetime. [2] [3]

Contents

Principles

According to 80,000 Hours, some careers aimed at doing good are far more effective than others. They evaluate problems people can focus on solving in terms of their "scale", "neglectedness", and "solvability", while career paths are rated on their potential for immediate social impact, on how well they set someone up to have an impact later on, and on personal fit with the reader. [4]

The group emphasises that the positive impact of choosing a certain occupation should be measured by the amount of additional good that is created as a result of that choice, not by the amount of good done directly. [5]

It considers indirect ways of making a difference, such as earning to give (earning a high salary in a conventional career and donating a large portion of it), as well as more direct ways, such as scientific research or shaping government policy.

The moral philosopher Peter Singer mentioned in 2013 the example of banking and finance as a potentially high impact career through such donations in his TED Talk, "The why and how of effective altruism," where he discusses the work of 80,000 Hours. [6]

Focus areas

80,000 Hours' primary focus is on advising talented graduates between the ages of 20 and 40. [7]

It advocates longtermism, the view that improving the long-term future is a moral priority, due to the large number of people who will or could exist in the future. [8] [9] Accordingly, the organisation spends significant resources considering interventions perceived to have persisting effects over time, such as preventing nuclear warfare or a particularly severe pandemic, improving relations between China and the United States, or enhancing decision-making in large organisations. [10]

Reception

80,000 Hours has recommended earning to give, the practice of pursuing a high-earning career and donating a significant portion of the income to cost-effective charities. This recommendation has been received with some skepticism. [11] Pete Mills argued in the Oxford Left Review that because the likelihood of bringing about social change is difficult to quantify, 80,000 Hours is biased toward quantifiable methods of doing good, such as earning to give. [12] Over time, 80,000 Hours has deemphasised "earning to give", in favour of alternative paths like research, advocacy or policy reform, and begun recommending work on problems that are less easily quantified. [13] [14]

Funding

The largest funder of 80,000 Hours has been Open Philanthropy backed by husband and wife Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna with $10m of cumulative donations up to 2019. [15] Other significant individual donors include Ben Delo, Luke Ding, Sam Bankman-Fried, Alex Gordon-Brown, Denise Melchin and Jaan Tallinn. Organisational funders have included the Frederick Mulder Foundation and the Effective Altruism Meta Fund. It received $50,000 from Y Combinator in 2015. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charity Navigator</span> Charity assessment organization that evaluates charitable organizations in the U.S.

Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit's financial stability, adherence to best practices for both accountability and transparency, and results reporting. It is the largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States. It does not accept any advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charity (practice)</span> Voluntary giving of help to those in need

The practice of charity, which is the voluntary provision of assistance to those in need, serves as a humanitarian act, and is unmotivated by self-interest. Various philosophies about charity exist, with frequent associations with religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Philanthropy Capital</span>

New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) is a charitable organisation based in London, United Kingdom. It describes itself as "the think tank and consultancy for the social sector." NPC aims to help charities, foundations, philanthropists, impact investors, social enterprises, corporates, and the public sector to maximise social impact in the lives of the people they serve.

GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization's budget that is spent on overhead.

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an effective altruism-associated organisation whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities. It was founded at Oxford University in 2009 by the philosopher Toby Ord, physician-in-training Bernadette Young, and fellow philosopher William MacAskill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holden Karnofsky</span> American nonprofit executive

Holden Karnofsky is an American nonprofit executive. He is a co-founder and Director of AI Strategy of the research and grantmaking organization Open Philanthropy. Karnofsky co-founded the charity evaluator GiveWell with Elie Hassenfeld in 2007 and is vice chair of its board of directors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toby Ord</span> Australian philosopher (born 1979)

Toby David Godfrey Ord is an Australian philosopher. In 2009 he founded Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the effective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible.

Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, sometimes called effective altruists, may choose careers based on the amount of good that they expect the career to achieve or donate to charities based on the goal of maximising positive impact. They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.

Earning to give involves deliberately pursuing a high-earning career for the purpose of donating a significant portion of earned income, typically because of a desire to do effective altruism. Advocates of earning to give contend that maximizing the amount one can donate to charity is an important consideration for individuals when deciding what career to pursue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William MacAskill</span> Scottish philosopher and ethicist (born 1987)

William David MacAskill is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an associate professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. He co-founded Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours, and is the author of Doing Good Better (2015) and What We Owe the Future (2022), and the co-author of Moral Uncertainty (2020).

<i>Doing Good Better</i> 2015 book about effective altruism by William MacAskill

Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference is a 2015 book by William MacAskill that serves as a primer on the effective altruism movement that seeks to do the most good. It is published by Random House and was released on July 28, 2015.

Jim Greenbaum is a former telecom entrepreneur who made a fortune through his telecom company Access Long Distance, and then switched to full-time philanthropy through his foundation, the Greenbaum Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Founders Pledge</span> English charitable non-profit

Founders Pledge is a London-based charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs commit to donate a portion of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. Inspired by effective altruism, the mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centre for Effective Altruism</span> Non-profit effective altruist organization

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is an Oxford-based organisation that builds and supports the effective altruism community. It was founded in 2012 by William MacAskill and Toby Ord, both philosophers at the University of Oxford. CEA is part of Effective Ventures, a federation of projects working to have a large positive impact in the world.

Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current chief executive officer is Alexander Berger, and its main funders are Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin says that their wealth, worth $11 billion, is "pooled up around us right now, but it belongs to the world. We intend not to have much when we die."

Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), formerly known as Effective Animal Activism (EAA), is a US-based charity evaluator and effective altruism-focused nonprofit founded in 2012. ACE evaluates animal charities and compares the effectiveness of their different campaigns and strategies. The organization makes charity recommendations to donors once a year. Its stated purpose is finding and promoting the most effective ways to help animals.

Charity assessment is the process of analysis of the goodness of a non-profit organization in financial terms. Historically, charity evaluators have focused on the question of how much of contributed funds are used for the purpose(s) claimed by the charity, while more recently some evaluators have placed an emphasis on the cost effectiveness of charities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Longtermism</span> Philosophical view which prioritises the long-term future

Longtermism is the ethical view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts that claim to reduce existential risks to humanity.

<i>What We Owe the Future</i> 2022 book about longtermism by William MacAskill

What We Owe the Future is a 2022 book by the Scottish philosopher and ethicist William MacAskill, an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. It advocates for effective altruism and the philosophy of longtermism, which MacAskill defines as "the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychological barriers to effective altruism</span> Area of study

In the philosophy of effective altruism, an altruistic act such as charitable giving is considered more effective, or cost-effective, if it uses a set of resources to do more good per unit of resource than other options, with the goal of trying to do the most good. Following this definition of effectiveness, researchers in psychology and related fields have identified psychological barriers to effective altruism that can cause people to choose less effective options when they engage in altruistic activities such as charitable giving. These barriers can include evolutionary influences as well as motivational and epistemic obstacles.

References

  1. 1 2 "Our Mission and History". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
  2. ↑ "FAQ". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on 1 November 2012. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  3. ↑ "Impact investing: the big business of small donors". Euromoney. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  4. ↑ "Research". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
  5. ↑ Sebastian Farquhar. "The replaceability effect: working in unethical industries part 1" . Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  6. ↑ Peter Singer. "The why and how of effective altruism" . Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  7. ↑ Todd, Benjamin (November 2019). "Advice on how to read our advice: Our advice is aimed at a particular audience". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  8. ↑ Todd, Benjamin (October 2017). "If you want to do good, here's why future generations should be your focus". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on 24 October 2017. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  9. ↑ MacAskill, William (5 August 2022). "Opinion | The Case for Longtermism". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 15 September 2022.
  10. ↑ "Our current list of the most important world problems". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on 27 June 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  11. ↑ Srinivasan, A. (24 September 2015). "Stop the Robot Apocalypse: the New Utilitarians". London Review of Books. 37 (18): 3–6. ISSN   0260-9592.
  12. ↑ Mills, Pete (May 2012). "The Ethical Careers Debate". The Oxford Left Review (7): 4–9. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
  13. ↑ "80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term - 80,000 Hours". 80,000 Hours. 6 July 2015. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  14. ↑ "A list of the most urgent global issues". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  15. ↑ "Our donors". 80,000 Hours. Retrieved 4 December 2022.
  16. ↑ "Want To Make An Impact With Your Work? Try Some Advice From 80,000 Hours". TechCrunch. 4 August 2015. Retrieved 31 October 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.