Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here, so that appropriately makes this stuff you should know. That's right. Before we get going, we want to give a little special plug to our good friend John Hodgeman and our buddy David Reese because they got a season two of their awesome animated show dick Town. Yeah as in Private Detective dick By. Yeah. I mean, it's cool enough to get one season of the show, but if you've gotten a second season and they're tossing you on f X these days, you've made it. So their show is finally made it and it's well deserved too, because it's a pretty awesome cartoon. It is, it's very funny. It is actually live now. It premiered on March three at ten pm on f x X. You can watch it on Who Lou and the whole jam here is that John and I watched the whole first season, the whole their short episodes. The whole first season was less than two hours long, which really like makes a great case. We're just streaming the whole thing and laughing a lot in one night. But it's uh, it's about two detectives, John Hunchman, John Hodgeman and David Purefoy David Reese, and uh, Hodgeman is a is a private detective. He was a former boy detective like Encyclopedia Brown type and and Dave was his, uh sort of his bugs, meaning his nemesis in high school and now is now his buddy and his sort of muscle and his driver and his and they solve cases together. And uh A season two I think is even bigger and weirder, and it's sort of Scooby Doo. It's just a lot of fun, really really fun show. Yeah, the first season they did nothing but solve children's um, which is his, and they were humiliated by that. So they they've kind of expanded now to be grown ups. They've resolved to be grown ups and they're solving grown up mysteries for grown ups now, which is really something else. So yeah, like you said, you can stream the whole first season on Hulu, and you can catch this second season on f x X. I wasn't aware of the extra X. I don't take back what I originally said. It's still big time but f x X that's right. Uh, And it is rated PG thirteen, so if you're thirteen and up you should enjoy. It's got a few swear words, adult themes here and there, but it's it's great. It's a lot of fun. Happy for Hodgman in Reese. Happy Happy Hodgeman, Happy, happy Reese. And I just like saying dick Town. Sure, it's a great name for a great show. It is. Should we talk about effective altruism? Yeah, I was gonna say, we're we're talking about that today and this one kind of I don't know if you noticed a similarity, but this one really kind of ties into that short stuff that we uh we released before the end of the year about riable giving. Did you notice I did? Although in that episode it was like we're like, yeah, you know, find a charity that speaks to you and maybe something it's local, or if you have animals, or if you had you know, a family member with cancer, and this basically says don't do any of that, right, Uh, the only way you should give is by just kind of coldly calculating what would help a human the most on planet Earth. Yes, so effective altruism is one of those movements. It's a pretty new movement. I think it really started in earnest around two thousand ten UM. And it's one of those movements that like elicits passion one way or another. It's a very polarizing idea if you just take it at its bare bones, which people love to do. And the reason why people love to take it at its bare bones, at its extremes extremes is because it is at heart of philosophical movement. Its rooted in utilitarianism, and utilitarianism is even more polarizing it has been for centuries than effective altruism is. And I think if everybody would just move past the most extreme parts of it and just kind of took effective altruism and it's at its most middle ground, where most of it seems to have accumulated and settled and where most of the work is being done, it would be really difficult to disagree with the ideas behind it. It's when you trot out Peter Singer and some of his most extreme views, or when you say, oh, it's all Silicon Valley billionaires, you know, um, when you when you just look at it like that, that's when people get all riled up and they're like, I hate it infactive altruism. If you really just kind of take it in a much more level headed way, it's actually pretty sensible and pretty great because at the end of the day, you're saving people's lives and you're figuring out how to save the most lives possible. Yeah. I think anything that has some of its roots and philosophical movements of tech bros. It's it's a hard sell for a lot of people. Uh, but let's talk about a few things that it is, which is the idea that, uh, there's a lot of good that can be done with money, and if you can provide for yourself and your own basic needs, um, you should be probably giving to charity. Uh. You can take a cold hard look at your finances by literal, strict calculations financial calculations. If you make if you were a person without kids making forty dollar a year, you are in the ninety seven point four percentile on planet Earth as far as your wealth goes. And that you might not think if make forty dollars a year and then I have taxes, and I really like people with a lot of money should give to charities. I really don't have enough to spare. The idea is that, no, you have some to spare. You can give a little bit, uh like ten of your money and still be in the top ninety six percentile and you can literally save human lives on plans. That's the big thing that they're trying to get across here, that like, the money that you're giving is saving lives that otherwise would be crippled with disease or just not around, like they would die if you didn't give this money. And the fact that you are giving this money, those people are now living what are called quality adjusted life years, where they're living in additional healthy year or more because of that intervention that you gave your money for. And that yes, it's based on the premise that basically everyone living in the United States is rich compared to entire swaths of the rest of the world, and that basically anyone living in the United States can afford to give temper scent of their income and forego some clothes or some cars or something like that to help other people literally survive. And so right off the bat, we've reached levels of discomfort for the average person, especially the average American that like that are really tough to deal with. And so that's the first challenge that effective ultrasts have to do is kind kind of tamped down that overwhelming sense of guilt and responsibility and shame at not doing that that that people immediately kind of that crops up and people when they hear about this. Yeah, So I think maybe let's talk a little bit about the history and some of the main organizations that are tackling this and maybe through that what some of the founders describe as the core commitments. Like you said, it took hold in about two thousand and ten UH, and there's a group of organizations under what is now an umbrella organization called the Center for Effective Altruism c e A. And UH started off with philosopher's Toby Ord and Will mccaskell founding a group called Giving What we Can UH self defined as an international community of people committed to giving more and giving more effectively. A couple of years later, mccaskell and a man named Benjamin Todd founded something called eighty thousand Hours, the ideas that you might devote eighty thousand hours to a career, so when choosing a career be very thoughtful on the impact that career has for both good and evil. We'll get way more into all this, uh, and then um, there's other you know, sort of nut fringes and weird groups but just on the outskirts called The Life You Can Save and then animal charity evaluators, which we'll get into how animals figure in. Um, but let's talk a little bit. I guess about Will mccaskell and what he sees as the core what he calls the core commitments of e A. So yeah, and Will McCaskill, he's A. He's out of Oxford, and so is Toby Ord. And I first came across this chuck when I was researching the End of the World podcast, and like, I deeply admire Toby Ord on like a personal level. He actually walks the walkkey and his whole family does, like they donate a significant portion of their family income to charity and like forego all sorts of stuff, and like he's literally trying to save the world. So um, and that since I'm I'm like really kind of open to the ideas that come out of that guy's mouth. Um, and you mentioned the End of the World with Josh Clark available wherever you can find your podcast. Yes, you're wonderful heady, highly produced in part series. Thank you very much. That was nice of you. Where is the new tackle the existing existential risks of the of the universe? Yes, okay, that's I just want to make sure the right chich one and the same. And I was not doing that to set you up for a plug. I was doing it and like kind of full disclosure that I'm a little I'm probably a little less than objective at this one. Yeah, but you know, that's a great show and it's still out there just because it is, you know, a few years old now, it's very evergreen. I think it's at least in these times. Yeah, the world hasn't ended yet, so it's still ever exactly good point. So, um, but I mentioned that in part is kind of fully disclosed. Um that I think Toby we're just one of the greatest people walk in the earth right now. But also Will mccaskell, who I don't know, seems to be in lock step with Toby too, and so he's kind of one of the one of the founders of this movement. And he said that that there's um four tenants he wrote a two thousand eighteen paper. And so there's basically four tenants that formed the core of effective altruism. One is maximizing the good, which we can all pretty much get on board with, like you want to make as much good as possible for as many people as possible. The second is aligning your aligning your your ideas, your your contributions with science using like evidence based um uh well evian to to to create where you're going to put your donations to use that to guide you rather than your heart. It's a big one, so it's a tough one for people's swallow. Another one's welfare is m where by maximizing the good, you're you're improving the welfare of others. That's the definition of good in that sense of maximizing the good. And then last one is impartiality. That's as hard for for people this swallow. That's harder I think for people swallow than science alignment, um, because what you're saying, then, Chuck, is that every single person out there in the world equally deserves um your charitable contribution. Yeah. And that's a big one because I'm trying to find the number here of how much Americans give abroad. Where is that? Okay, here we go out of the um. What is it four hundred and seventy billion dollars that Americans donate? Yeah, I think, yeah, one billion dollars twenty five point nine billion of that went to went outside of America to international affairs. So it's a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money in the total pot in the The idea for e A is is to sort of shatter your way of thinking about, you know, trying to help the your the people in your city, or the people in your state or your country, and to look at every human life is having equal value. Yes, and not even human life, but every life. Yeah, they include animals too, like you mentioned before, and we'll get into a little more um. But the key is that if every single person living on earth is equally important, then and you're trying to maximize the help you can you can do if from a from a strict e A perspective, you're wasting your money if you're donating that money, if you're an American, if you're donating it in America, because just by virtue of the value of a dollar, it can do exponentially more good. One dollar can in other like developing poverty stricken areas of the world, then it can here in the United States. So that right there sets up for critics of that of a like to point out that, well, wait a minute, wait amut, are you saying that we shouldn't donate locally here at home, That we shouldn't save the animals and the animal shelter, That we shouldn't donate to your local food pantry, That you shouldn't donate to your church. And if you really back at effective altruists into a corner, they would say, look, just speaking of maximizing your impact and everybody around the world is equally important. No, you shouldn't be doing any of those things, and you certainly shouldn't be donating any money to your local museum or symphony or something like that. Yeah, And they say that with their their head down and they're kind of drawing on the floor with your foot. They're saying like, yeah, that's kind of what we're saying. That's right, yes, And that's really tough for people swallow. There's like it's just this huge jagged pill that they're asking people swallow. But if you can step back from it, What they're ultimately saying is, look, man, you want to do the most good with your charitable donations, here's how to do it. You want to sit aside, you want to feel good about it, or really do the good exactly. And that's what they're doing. That's the whole basis of effective altruism. Is they're saying, set like you're all of your charitable giving is for you. You're doing it for yourself, that's why you give. This takes that out of the equation and says, now you're giving to genuinely help somebody else. All right, I think that's a great beginning. Maybe let's take a break now that everyone knows what this is and everyone is is choking on their coffee because they just donated to their local neighbor organization. Uh. And we'll come back and talk about some of the other uh philosophical founders right after this. George So a couple of people we should mention really quickly because they're gonna come up as far as organizations we did not mention GiveWell yet. Uh. They were founded in two thousand seven. They're a big part of the e a movement by Facebook co founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife. Is it carry or Carrie Tuna. I'm going with Cary. I think so it's c A r I. Uh So they have partnered up UM to create open philanthropy, UM phil and philanthropy. It sounds weird. I wanted to say philanthropy LOO too early in the episode for that. Uh So they're they're big donors and big believers in the cause UM. And then another person you mentioned is well, first of all, you mentioned utilitarians, uh, in this philosophical movement UM, they were developed by and then we've talked about Jeremy Jeremy Bentham before and John Stewart Mill. But the idea that people should do what causes the most happiness and relieves the most suffering. And the other guy you mentioned that uh sort of controversial, I guess you could say is Peter Singer. Uh. He is an author and a philosopher and a and a ted talker who who kind of UM became I don't know about famous, because a lot of people don't know any modern philosophers, but in these circles became famous from an idea thought experiment in V two from his essay Famine, Affluence and morality, which is, you're going to work. You just bought some really expensive, great new shoes. You see a kid drowning in a shallow pond. Do you wait in there and ruin those new shoes and rescue the kid and make you late for work? And you know, people, if asked would say, well, of course you do. You're not gonna let that kid drown. So that the flip to that is, well, that's happening every day all over the world, and you're essentially saving your new shoes by letting these kids die. Yeah, you're you're you're buying those new shoes rather than donating that money to save a child's life. It's morally speaking, it's the exact same thing. And in the in the essay I wrote it last night, it's really good. Do you want to feel like a total piece of garbage for not doing enough in the world. Um. He basically goes on to destroy any argument about, well, that's a kid that you see in a pond. You're you're actually physically saving that kid. He's like, well, it's so easy to donate to help a child on the other side of the world, right now, that for all intents and purposes, it's as easy as going into a pond to say. These days it is easier. You don't even have to get wet. You're just calling your credit card basically, you know. Um, So, so he just destroys like any argument you could possibly have. And he is an extremist utilitarian philosopher, and that he's basically saying, not just that giving money to the point where you are just above the level of poverty the as the people you're giving, like really cutting into your your luxuries to help other people. Not only is that a good thing if you do that, it's actually not doing that is a morally bad thing. It's morally wrong to not do that. So he will really turn like the the hot plate up under you. Um, and it just really make you feel uncomfortable. But he's saying like like, this is my philosophical argument, and it's pretty sound if you hear me out, and if you hear him out, it is pretty sound. Um. The problem is he's a utilitarian philosopher and a very strict one too, And so um, there's a lot of like you can take that stuff to the nth degree, to some really terrible extremes, um to where it's it becomes so anti sentimental that, um, it actually can be nauseating sometimes, Like, strictly speaking, under your utilitarian view, this one's often trotted out. It is morally good to murder one person to harvest their organs to save the lives of five other people with the the murdered person's organs. Technically speaking in the utilitarian lens, that's that's maximizing the good in the world. The thing is is, like, if that's what you're focusing on, and you're equating effective altruisms desire to get the most bang for your donation buck to murdering somebody to harvest their organs to save five people, you've just completely lost your way. Sure you can, you can win an argument against utilitarianism in that respect, but the fact that it's leveled and trained on on these on this movement, this charitable philanthropy movement, is totally unfair, even though yes, it is pretty much part and parcel with utilitarianism. Yeah, the singer is a guy who I think is one of his philosophies is the journey of life, and that interrupting a life before it has goals or after it's accomplished goals is Okay. Uh so he you know, if you mentioned his name, there are a lot of people will will point to this idea that he says things like it's okay to kill a disabled baby right after they're born in some cases, especially if it will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy and productive life, or an older person who has already accomplished those goals, and the idea being that the disabled baby doesn't have goals yet. Uh, you know, that's obviously some controversial stuff. Then he's a hard liner and doubles down on this, but it again to to sort of throw that in that has nothing to do with effective altruism. No, he wrote that paper Famine, Affluence and Morality, which basically provides the general contours of the effective altruist movement. But it's not like he's just the leading heartbeat of the movement or anything like that. That's not their bible or anything like that. No, And unfortunately he's an easy target that people can like point to because the effective altruist movement has kind of taken some of his ideas and they're like, oh, yeah, you like singer, Well, what about singers arguing about this. It's like that has nothing to do with effect of altruism. He makes a really good, easy, easily obtained straw man that people like to pick on. That's right. Uh. Let's talk about numbers a little bit. We mentioned that in the United States, uh, four seventy one billion dollars was donated in UM. About three and twenty four of that came from individuals, which is amazing. You know, those corporate guys are really pulling their way. Yeah, no kidding, Uh, individuals, and that boils down to about a thousand dollars per person uh in the USA, which is not that much money if you think about it. And out of that, there are a couple of UM pledges that e A endorses. One called Giving what we Can, which is promising to give away ten percent of your lifetime income, and then another one called the Founder's Pledge, where if you're a startup founder, you promised to give away a percentage of your eventual proceeds. Uh. And then there's also try Giving, which is a temporary pledge to donate. And you know, it's only about twelve years old. Only about eight to ten people have taken these pledges so far, right, UM, which is still I mean, that's a decent amount of people, especially considering that most of the people involved in this movement are UM high earning, UM extremely educated people who are probably like ten percent of their income is going to add up to quite a bit over the course of their careers. And that's the thing they're saying, I'm going to give this ten percent a year for my career. And the reason why they really kind of targeted careers. Um, that's part of eighty thousand hours. Eighty thousand hours is this idea that we spent about eighty thousand hours working. So if you took that eighty thousand hours and figured out how to direct your energy the most effectively towards saving the world, um, you can really do some good just by the virtue of having to have this career to support yourself. And so there's a couple of ways to do it. One is to have a job that you make as much money as you possibly can at and then you donate as much as you comfortably can, and then maybe even then some say ten percent or some people donate. There's a NASA engineer named Brian Ottens who is profiled in The Washington Post who said he specifically got the most stressful, high earning job he could handle. Um in order to give away. I think a quarter of is of his income, right, And that's great. That's one way to do it. But another way to do it is to say, Okay, actually, I'm I'm going to figure out something that I really love, but I'm going to adjust it so that it's going to have the most impact possible. Yeah. I think it's interesting, Like there are two ways to think about it. The first one that you were talking about, they call it earning to give. And you know, the idea that you if you are capable of getting like a really high paying job in like the oil industry, with the idea that you're going to give most that a way in the earning to give philosophy side of things, they're saying, yeah, go do that. It doesn't have to be a socially beneficial job. Make the most money you can and give it away. Uh, don't go get the job of the nonprofit because there are tons of people that will go and get that job at the nonprofit like that that someone will fill that position. UM eights doesn't. Uh, they say that that's not the best way. There's is more. The second when you mentioned, which is don't take a job that causes a lot of harm. Being happy is part of being productive, and you don't have to go grind it out at a job you hate just because you make a lot of money, so you can give it away, like make yourself happy. Don't take a job that causes harm. Do a job where you have uh a talent. Um policy making is one field media. I would argue that we have a job where you know, we didn't know, but it turns out we have a talent for doing this, and we can leverage our voice. Uh, and we occasionally do to point out things that we think make a difference in the world and to mobilize people. Um, that's not the goal of our show, but we can dabble in that, which is which is great. Uh. That's not what we intended going into it. But I think we woke up one day and found that we had a lot of years, so we could we could throw in episodes. I think that lead to good Yeah, I agreed, which means we can shave a little off of that ten percent we're morally obligated to donate every year, right, so um, A good example of that of like figuring out how to direct your career path more toward improving the world. UM. On the I guess the eighty thousand hours site, they profile the woman who wanted to become a doctor, and she did some research and said, um, well this is cool, but most doctors in Australia treat Australians who are you know, relatively very well off and very healthy. And so instead she decided that she wanted to go into a different field of medicine. I think she went into like epidemiology and figured out how to get how to direct her her interest in medicine towards getting vaccines out to market faster to get them through the clinical trial process. And so she's not going to get to be a doctor, but she's gonna get to focus on medicine and she's going to get to have the satisfaction that she's improving the world demonstrably through her job. And she might not donate a die with that. I suspect she's probably going to, because she's on the eighty thou hours website. UM. But even if she didn't, she's still figuring out how to use evidence UM to make evidence based decisions to maximize the eights she's going to spend in her career to make the world a better place. Right because one of the ideas of e A and a lot of you know, the the charity Navigator and charity watched like good websites that we endorsed, uh that we're not poopooing at all. But um, they tend to focus a lot on you know, how much goes to overhead, how much goes to the programs, which is which is good. But e A is like, now, what we want to see our data and literal scientific data measurables on how much return you're getting for that dollar. And some charities do this and are a little more open about it, but they basically say, you know, every charity should say here's how much your dollar, uh, here's how far your dollar goes and exactly what it does. And the charities of the West said, come on really nervously when they're asked that, when they're told that they should be doing that, because they just don't. Part of the reason why this is very expensive to run. Um, what if effective altruists like to use is the gold standard random control trials where basically, um, you know what UX testing is user experience testing for like a website. So there's a B testing where you've got some people who are using your website and they're getting one banner AD and the B testers are getting a totally different banner AD, and you just see which gets the most clicks. It's basically that, but for a charity, for the work that the charity is carrying out, some group gets malaria nets, another group doesn't, and then you study which group had the best outcome, and then you could say, oh, well, these malaria nets increased these um these uh life adjusted years by you know, thirty percent, which means that it comes out to um, you know, point five life adjusted years UM per dollar compared to you know, point to life adjusted years for the control group. Ergo, we want to put our money into these groups that distribute malaria nets in Africa because they are demonstrably saving more lives than groups that don't. Like they want data like that, and you just don't get that with most charities. The good thing is that they're pushing charities to do that, because if you do care about that kind of thing, then then if you can come up with that kind of evidence, you can get these effective ultrus dollars and there's a lot of dollars coming from that group, even though it is relatively small. Yeah, it is interesting because you know, in that example, if you were to just say on your website, uh, people with with malaria nets fair better dot dot dot duh, right, Like everyone knows that, but they really want to have that to drill down and have that measurable where they can point to a number and say that, you know this, this is the actual result. We all know malaria nets help. But maybe if people I mean maybe they think it speaks to people more. Um, it certainly speaks to them, but I guess they think it would speak to the masses if if because these things cost money. I mean, that's one of the criticisms of these randomized controlled trials. It is that there is sort of expensive and like maybe that money should be used to do to actually donate instead of doing these trials. But they must think it speaks to people to have actual data like that. Well, it speaks to them because the way that you figure out how to maximize your money is to have data to look at to decide rather than your heart. It makes sense these are techies because they're all about that data very much so, and there's some problems with that, with relying on that. There's some criticisms, I should say, but it's problems to One is that there's a lot of stuff that you can't quite quantify in terms like that. Like if you're saying, like, no, I want to see how many lives saved your your work is doing per dollar, um, well, then the you know, the High Museum is going to be like, um, zero, we're saving zero lives. But that doesn't mean that they're not enriching or improving lives through through the donations that they're receiving this art museum, you know what I mean. Um. Livia, who helps us with this article, gives an example. She's saying, like, you couldn't really do a randomized controlled trial for the nineteen sixty three March on Washington that helps solidify the civil rights movement, um, and yet it'd be really hard to argue that that didn't have any major like effects on the world. So that's a that's a big that's a big argument. Then the other thing is that sometimes these randomized controlled trials, like you can hold it one year and then in one part of the world and go to another part of the world the next year. And it's what should be the same is just not the same. And so if you're basing all of your charitable giving on these things, they better be um, reproducible or else what are you doing? Yeah, I mean this. You get why this is such a divisive thing and why it's such a hard sell to people because people give with their hearts generally, Uh, they give to causes they find personal to them, Like I mentioned earlier, a family member with cancer, or a family member with m S or just you know, name anything. Generally people like have a personal connection somehow which makes them want to give. And that's sort of the heart of philanthropy has always been the heart. Uh. And it's a it's a tough sell for e A to say, is I'm sorry, you have to cut that, cut that out of there. Um. You know, it's a very subjective thing to what constitutes a problem, even um when it comes to the animal thing, like when when people give for animal charities, they're generally giving to you know, dogs and cats and stuff like that. Um. These these great organizations that do great work here in America. But the concentration if from the e A. Perspective are factory farmed animals, and that one percent of charitable spending in the US goes to the suffering of farmed animals, and that's what we should be concentrating on because of the massive, massive scale. Again, to try and do the most good, you would look at like where the most animals, and sadly they're on farms. Yeah, I mean just from sheer numbers. Um, you can make a you can make a case utilitarian speaking that your money would be better off spent improving the lives of cows that we're going to be slaughtered for beef, that will still eventually be slaughtered for beef, but you can improve their welfare during their lifetimes and that technically is maximizing, um, the impact of your dollar by reducing suffering just because there's so many cows awaiting slaughter in the world, humans that are dying in Africa back. Yeah, that's a tough sell. And I think this is where like, this is where it makes sense to just kind of like maintain a certain amount of common sense where it's like, yeah, man, like if you really want to maximize your money, go look at the e A sites. Go check out eighty thousand hours, um, like like get into this and actually do that. But there's no one who's saying, like, but if you give one dollar to that, to that local symphony that you love, you're a sucker, you're a chump, you're an idiot. Nobody's saying that. And so maybe it doesn't have to be all or nothing one way or the other, which seems to be the push in the poll, and I think the issue here, Yeah, we should read directly from Will mccaskell um. He defends uh e A and he says this effective altruism makes no claims about what obligations of benevolence one has. Uh nor does e A claim that all ways of helping others are morally permissible as long as they help others the most. Indeed, there's a strong community norm against promoting or engaging in activities that cause harm. So they flat out say, like the whole murder someone to harvest their organs, like, we're not down with that, that's not what we're about. Please stop mentioning Peter Singer, right, yeah, and he says it doesn't require that I always sacrifice my own interest for the good of others, And that's actually very contradictory of Peter Singers. Um. Essay, he says, no, you're morally obligated to do that, and if you don't, it's morally bad. They're saying like, no, let's let's all just be reasonable. You're like, yeah, we're philosophers, but you know we can also like think like normal human beings too, And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to take this kind of philosophical view um, based in science, based in evidence, and try to direct money to get the biggest impact. Um. Yeah, like you said, can we stop? Can we stop bringing up Peter Singer place? How about we take another break and uh, we'll talk a little bit about geez, what else long termism and e A s impact right after the case. So, long termism is part of the e A movement, and this is the idea of hey, let's not just think about helping people now. If we really want to maximize impact to help the most people, which is at the core of our mission statement, we need to think about the future because there will be a lot more people in the future to save and uh, and so long termism is really where your dollar is going to go the most if you think about like deep into the future even yeah, um, like if if humanity just kind of hangs around planet Earth for another billion or so years, which is entirely possible, if we can make it through the great filter, uh um uh, there will be like quadrillions of human lives left to come. And a lot of philosophers who think about this kind of thing kind of make the make the case, or can make the case if they want to, that their lives are probably going to be vastly more um enjoyable than ours, just from the technology available and not having to work, and all sorts of great stuff that's going to come along, and so technically, just by virtue of the fact that there's so many more of them, we should technically be sacrificing our own stuff now for the benefit of these generations and generations and generations of humans become that vastly out number the total number of humans who have ever lived, like a hundred eight billion humans have ever lived. We're talking quadrillions of humans left to come. That very much devetails with the um the kind of discomfort you can elicit from somebody who says that your money is better spent relieving the suffering of cattle awaiting slaughter than it is saving children's lives in Africa, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And they're not just talking about climate change and like obviously that kind of existential risk. They dabble in AI and stuff like that. And I know that we don't need to go down that rabbit hole. You should listen to the End of the World with Josh Clark, the AI episode. But I mean, it's all about that, but it does have to do with that kind of stuff. It's not just like we need to save the planet so it's around in a billion years. Uh, you know, they tackle like all kinds of existential risk basically, Yeah, and they dedicate like a lot of these guys are dedicating their careers to figuring out how to avoid existential risk because they've decided that that is the greatest threat to the future that would cut out any possibility of those quadrillions of lives. So that's what the that's literally why they have dedicated themselves to thinking about and alleviating these risks, because they're trying to save the future of the human race. Because they've decided that that is the best way to maximize their careers for the most good, which is just astounding if you stop and think about what they're actually doing in real life. Uh, we mentioned the kind of money that's even though it's a UM, not a huge movement so far. I think we said like somewhereround eight thousand people of maybe these pledges, I think overall. Uh. The co founder of eighty thousand Hours, Benjamin Todd says about forty six billion dollars is committed to e a going forward UM. Like you said, a lot. You know, it's because of there are a lot of rich people and tech people that are backing this thing. So a lot of that money comes from people like Duskin Moskovitz and uh, Cary Tuna and Sam bankman Fried of he's a cryptocurrency guy, so a lot of that money comes from them. But they're they're trying to just raise awareness to get more and more regular people on board that you know, if they have you know, two thousand dollars or three thousand dollars to give a year, they're saying, I think they estimate that three to four five bucks is like the amount of money it takes to save a human life and to give them additional quality years. Yeah, so if you cough up that much and you directed toward one of the charities that they've identified is the most effective. UM through their sites through like give well is a place to go look for for charities like that that have been vetted by effective ultras. You're literally saving the life of a child every year. It's like you're saving a child from drowning in a pond every single year, just and all you're doing is ruining your new shoes or you know, it's interesting new shoes, but yeah, you're you're ruining you're really nice vacation that year, right because you you know, you sent this one thing. I don't know where it came from, but the the idea of someone running into a burning building and pulling a child out or a kid out of a pond, they're they're written in the newspaper as a hero. But you can you can do that. You can save a kid a year or more every year for the rest of your life. Um, it's a little less dramatic. You're not gonna have a newspaper, You're not gonna be above the fold. It's you know what I'm saying, But uh, that's I mean that has the a is like all about it is the antithesis of that antithesis. Yeah, I like you know what I mean, it's it's no frills version of antithesis. The thing is too is also I mean, it's still very relative. Likes is is relatively a very large amount or so so size amount or not much amount, depending on how much you you make. And again, nobody in the effective ultraist movement is saying that you should personally sacrifice unless you really want to, unless you're driven to. But you're not morally required to personally sacrifice to cough up that fort when it means you're you're not going to be able to eat for a week, or you're not gonna be able to have a place to live. Like, nobody's saying that, and nobody's being flipping about the the idea that isn't that much. What they're saying is can literally save a child's life. And if you stop and look at your life and think that you could come up with that, you could donate it to a certain place that will go save a child's life in real life. That's that's what they're saying. Yeah, this, uh, this, this would be a hard sell to Emily, what I'm thinking about our our charity conversation we have every year, and I'm trying to imagine myself saying, what if we don't give to the local animal shelter and neighbor in need like we usually do, and instead we do this. She would just be like, uh, I see what you're saying, but but no, get get out of my face with that. But I mean you could be like, well, how about we do both? You know exactly? So I think I think that's the thing. That's my take on it, Like we support co ED, and like that's I have no qualms about supporting COD even after doing all this research and understanding effective altruism even more, no qualms whatsoever. I'm sure that that money could be directed better to help other people in other parts of the world. I still think it's money well spent and it's helping people, and I'm I'm very happy with that. I think that's great. And then I don't have any guilt or shame about that at all. And because what you're saying at that point, like with co ED, it is an organization dedicated to helping children in a in a not very well off country live better and longer live, so like it essentially is effective altruism in a way, except effective altruism is like no, no, no no, no no. The data says that this one is look at the numbers. It's point this, this, this better, and goes further like they really it's a it's a numbers in a data game that makes it tough for a lot of people to swallow. I think, yeah, it's anti sentimentalism basically in the service of saving the most lives possible. I know, it's it's it's interesting, and it doesn't surprise me that it has its roots in and philosophy because it is really a philosophical sort of uh head scratcher at the end of the day. Yeah, for sure, it's pretty interesting stuff and it really is. I think it's I think it's fascinating. Yeah. So there's I mean, there's a lot more to read, both criticisms and um, you know, pro e a stuff, And seriously, you could do worse than than reading um, Peter Singer's essay what is it called Famine Affluence, Famine Affluence and Morality. It's like sixteen pages. It's a really quick read. Um, it's really good, So read that too, and just see what you think, see what you think about yourself too, and maybe take some time and examine you know, um, if you could give to some of these charities, or if you're not giving to charity at all, seriously, do spend some time and see where you could make that change. Uh. And since I said make that change and Chuck said yeah, that means, of course it's time for a listener mail. This is follow up to albinism. I knew we would have someone who has albinism to write in. I'm glad we did. And then we had listeners out there. And this is from Brett. Hey, guys, a longtime listener. I have albinism, so I thought i'd throw in my perspective. First off, I know you were struggling to decide how to describe it albino or albinism. My preference is using the term albinism like you guys did, as to me, it denotes a condition while saying if someone or something is albino, it feels like you're delegating them to a different species. Being called albino always used to bug me growing up, and that was usually because they were kids were trying to get a rise out of me. Fortunately, I was a big kid, so it never really escalated to physical bullying. Like I like this idea. Uh, like the kid with albinism who's like huge and someone says something, They're like, excuse me, what did you just say? I didn't say anything. Being a child of the seventies and eighties, like you're like you guys, it was pretty rough at times. On the physical side, my eyes are very light sensitive. Uh, they're blue. Where Again, while growing up, some of the kids would keep asking me why my eyes were closed it was bright. Uh. And of course the low vision comes into play as well. I'm considered legally blind, as pretty much every other person with albinism I have met has the same issue. There were ways to adjust in school, and ways they could assist me with large print books, magnifiers, binoculars, or the teachers simply letting me look at their slides afterward and have more time with them. Uh. Yeah, that's great. As for how people with albinism are portrayed in TV and movies, I don't think being portrayed as a hitman or even someone with magical powers bug me as much as the fact that I know that it was fake because it would be really hard to be a hitman with a kind of eyesight that we have. I love that so practical. Uh And Brett had a lot of other great things to say, but that is from Brett and a long time listener. Thanks a lot, Brett, that was great. Glad you rode in, And uh, yeah, thanks a lot. If you want to be like Brett and get in touch with us and say, hey, you guys are pretty good, or hey you guys could have done a lot better, or hey I'm mad at you guys, or whatever you want to say, we would love to hear from you. We can take it all and you can address it all to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.