Everything William MacAskill said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
MacAskill: Saving a child's life with bed nets costs under $10,000
“For example, by buying bed nets and distributing them to those who need them just for the, you know, single digit thousands of dollars, statistically speaking, you can save a child's life.”
MacAskill pledges over half of his lifetime earnings to charity
“I thought about how much money I needed to live on over the course of my life, and I decided, even as an academic, where I'm not going to earn as much as perhaps I could have done, I'm still going to earn much more than I need to be happy, and so what I did wa…”
MacAskill: Donating to nascent causes compounds faster than market returns
“Because often money that you donate compounds in just the same way that you return on investment if you save the money can compound. In particular, if you're investing in a small growing area often the rate of growth of that cause area can be far greater than …”
MacAskill: Some recent graduates donate roughly $1M annually through high-earning careers
“And I know a number of people who've chosen to do this, and actually just some of whom are just a few years out of college and already are able to donate on the order of a million dollars per year.”
MacAskill: Most people's passions lie in hyper-competitive fields like arts and sports
“When you look at what people are actually passionate about, the vast majority tend to be passionate about things where it's extremely hard to have a promising career. So that's the arts, that's music, that's sport, and that's not a coincidence.”
MacAskill: Proportional Income Increases Deliver Equal Welfare Value Across Income Levels
“So in general if you can increase someone's income by the same percentage, that's worth about the same, no matter how much someone's income is.”
MacAskill: Open Philanthropy is the model foundation for strategic giving
“And I just think this is the model foundation. Again, extremely transparent in terms of how they're choosing causes. Being extremely strategic in what cause areas they choose to focus on.”
MacAskill: Effective Altruism strongly promotes policy and research careers
“Money's only one, but we're very strongly encouraging people to pursue careers in policy and research and working for non-profits too.”
MacAskill: Typical rich-country earners make ~100x the poorest 700M people globally
“People on a typical income in, you know, a rich country, they're earning something like a hundred times the amount that the poorest seven hundred million people in the world have.”
MacAskill: Personal Operating Rule Is Trying Never to Tell a Lie
“In general, I, Have a principle of just trying never to lie. I know that's different, however, from radical honesty”
William MacAskill
the Knowledge Project 1