Toby Ord

Last updated

Toby Ord
Toby Ord.jpg
Ord in 2019
Born
Toby David Godfrey Ord

July 1979 (age 44)
Melbourne, Australia
Education
SpouseBernadette Young
Era Contemporary philosophy
School Western philosophy
Institutions
Thesis Beyond Action: Applying Consequentialism to Decision Making and Motivation  (2009)
Doctoral advisors
Main interests
Notable ideas
Website www.tobyord.com

Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979) [1] 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. [2]

Contents

He was a senior research fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, where his work focused on existential risk. [3] His book on the subject, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity , was published in March 2020. [4]

Early life and education

Ord was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1979. [5] He later attended the University of Melbourne, where he initially studied computer science. On completing his first degree, he switched to studying philosophy to pursue his interest in ethics, later stating: "At this stage I knew that I wanted to make a large positive difference in the world and it seemed that studying ethics would help." [6]

For his graduate studies, Ord moved to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a B.Phil., and a D.Phil. in philosophy. Having submitted his doctoral thesis, Beyond Action: Applying Consequentialism to Decision Making and Motivation, Ord was retained as a junior research fellow by Balliol College, Oxford. [7]

Career

Ord held the position of research fellow at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute from 2014 until 2019, [7] and senior research fellow from 2019 until the institute's shutdown [8] in 2024. Ord describes his focus as "the big picture questions facing humanity." [9] He is a trustee of the Centre for Effective Altruism [10] and of the non-profit organization 80,000 Hours, researching careers that have the largest positive social impact and providing career advice based on that research. [11]

Research

Ethics

Ord's work has been primarily in moral philosophy. In applied ethics, he has worked on bioethics, the demands of morality, and global priority setting. He has also made contributions in global health, as an advisor to the third edition of Disease Control Priorities Project. [12] In normative ethics, his research has focused on consequentialism and on moral uncertainty.

Existential risk

Ord's current main research interest is existential risk. His book on the topic The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity was published in March 2020. [4] The New Yorker characterizes Ord's research motivation as follows: [5]

A concern for existential risk seemed, to Ord, to be the next logical expansion of a broadening moral circle. If we can learn to value the lives of people in other places and circumstances equally to our own, then we can do the same for people situated at a different moment in time. Those future people, whose quality of life and very existence will be intimately affected by our choices today, matter as much as we do.

Hypercomputation

Ord has written papers on the viability and potentials for hypercomputation, models of computation that can provide outputs that are not Turing-computable such as a machine that could solve the halting problem. [13]

Giving What We Can

At Oxford, Ord resolved to give a significant proportion of his income to the most cost-effective charities he could find. Following a number of enquiries from people interested in making a similar commitment, Ord decided to set up an organisation geared towards supporting like-minded donors.[ citation needed ]

In 2009, Ord launched Giving What We Can, an international society whose members have each pledged to donate at least 10% of their income to the most cost-effective charities. The organisation is aligned with, and part, of the effective altruism movement. Giving What We Can seeks not only to encourage people to give more of their money to charity but also stresses the importance of giving to the most cost-effective ones, [14] arguing that "research shows that some are up to 1,000 times as effective as others." [15] By February 2020 Giving What We Can had grown to over 4,500 members, who have pledged over $1.5 billion to charities. [16]

Ord himself decided initially to cap his income at £20,000 per year, and to give away everything he earned above that to well-researched charities. A year later, he revised this figure down to £18,000. [17] This threshold rises annually with inflation. [18] As of December 2019, he had donated £106,000, or 28 percent of his income. [19] Over the course of his career, he expects his donations to total around £1 million. [20]

Personal life

Ord lives in Oxford with his wife, Bernadette Young, a medical doctor. [5] [21]

Bibliography

Books

Journal articles (selected)

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ "Toby David Godfrey ORD personal appointments". Companies House. GOV.UK. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  2. ↑ "Hachette Book Group, Toby Ord". Hachette Book Group. 9 July 2019. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  3. ↑ "Future of Humanity Institute, Team". Future of Humanity Institute. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  4. 1 2 The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Hachette. 9 July 2019. ISBN   9780316484893. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  5. 1 2 3 Purtill, Corinne (21 November 2020). "How Close Is Humanity to the Edge?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  6. ↑ "Giving What We Can, Our Members". Giving What We Can. Archived from the original on 27 March 2012. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
  7. 1 2 "Toby Ord CV" (PDF). Retrieved 17 April 2024.
  8. ↑ "Future of Humanity Institute". web.archive.org. 17 April 2024. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
  9. ↑ "Toby Ord". Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  10. ↑ "Centre for Effective Altruism, Team". Centre for Effective Altruism. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  11. ↑ "80,000 Hours, Meet The Team". 80,000 Hours. Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  12. ↑ Hutchinson, Michelle (13 May 2014). "Toby Ord and DCP3". Giving What We Can . Retrieved 14 May 2014.
  13. ↑ "Search | arXiv e-print repository".
  14. ↑ Tina Rosenberg (5 December 2012). "Putting Charities to the Test". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 June 2014.
  15. ↑ "Giving What We Can, Recommended Charities". Giving What We Can. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
  16. ↑ "Giving What We Can". Giving What We Can. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
  17. ↑ Javier Espinoza (28 November 2011). "Small sacrifice, big return". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 22 June 2014.
  18. ↑ Luke Freeman (28 May 2021). "How much money should we donate to charity?". Giving What We Can. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  19. ↑ "This man has donated at least 10% of his salary to charity for 10 years running". Vox. Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
  20. ↑ "Toby Ord: Why I'm giving £1m to charity". BBC. 13 December 2010. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  21. ↑ Susanna Rustin (24 December 2011). "The Saturday interview: Toby Ord and Bernadette Young on the joy of giving". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2014.


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