The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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MacAskill: Charities survive without impact because donors are disconnected from beneficiaries
“In the case of the for-profit world, there's a kind of natural evolutionary mechanism. The companies that aren't able to turn a profit will eventually die. You know, the bad companies will get kind of kicked, you know, will get killed effectively, but that doe…”
MacAskill: Passion stems from mastering a subject rather than preceding it
“Passion tends to result from mastery of a subject or mastery of an area rather than vice versa.”
MacAskill: AI creates severe risk when optimizing improperly specified goals
“There's significant risks that the, you develop artificial intelligences where you haven't specified their goals properly, and they don't do what you want. You give them more power, and that results in very bad outcomes because they optimize for what they've b…”
MacAskill: Philanthropy is a last line of defense for market and democratic failures
“Philanthropy is really that, like, last line of defense, as it were, where you've both got a kind of market failing and democratic failing, and I think that applies for people in very poor countries who, you know, they don't get a vote over who's U.S. Presiden…”
MacAskill: Charitable impact varies vastly even among programs that work
“You can have the absolute best of intentions. You can be really meaning to do good. But then firstly, you can often just fail to have any sort of impact at all. But then secondly, even within those programs that work well, there's often just a vast discrepancy…”
MacAskill: The best charitable giving opportunities are decreasing over time
“And also just because the world's getting richer, there's more and more smart money in philanthropy. And in general, the best giving opportunities are going down over time.”
MacAskill: Overhead ratio is a poor metric for charity effectiveness
“The overheads ratio. The amount that a charity spends on administration costs rather than program costs. And we, for a long time, have said that that's just a really poor metric if you want to actually try and do as much good as possible. Because imagine if yo…”
MacAskill: Effective Altruism cannot rely solely on RCTs and quantification
“And in those areas, you just often don't have randomized control trials. Often you need to use, you know, less quantitative evidence, but that's okay. That doesn't rule that out. Not everything can be quantified.”
MacAskill: High-earning corporate careers often generate more impact than non-profit work
“So often you can actually have more of an impact by going into A higher earning career and donating a very significant proportion of your earnings than you can by simply working at a nonprofit.”
MacAskill: Most global problems should not be addressed through philanthropy
“In a sense, I think that most problems in the world shouldn't be addressed with philanthropy.”
MacAskill: Taxes Differ from Charity by Funding Income-Enabling Public Goods
“The taxes that you're paying is like contributing to a well-functioning society. That is precisely what allows you to make that money in the first place. And therefore, I think that's kind of very different from charity.”
MacAskill: Foreign Aid Counts as Charity, Domestic Tax Spending Does Not
“Especially from countries like Sweden and the UK, the money that they send on overseas development aid. You know, sometimes that's politically motivated, it's political gains, and different countries vary in how how much that's due with their foreign aid spend…”
MacAskill: Equal Disagreement With Smart Peers Demands Ambivalence
“If, I believe something, and I meet someone who I think is just as smart and just as well reasoned in this case as me, and they believe the opposite. Well, then I just become ambivalent, because this person's as likely to be right as I am.”
MacAskill: Radical Honesty Fails by Ignoring Language's Symbolic Meaning
“Going all out in terms of radical honesty is not appreciating the kind of symbolic aspect of language. It's just kind of, it's like somewhat too narrow, too literalist in terms of how it understands language.”
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 …”