Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
    Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
    Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
    Audiobook7 hours

    Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference

    Written by William MacAskill

    Narrated by Sean Pratt

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately, we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, even our best intentions often lead to ineffective-and sometimes downright harmful-outcomes. How can we do better?

    While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it's not enough to simply do good; we must do good better.

    At the core of this philosophy are five key questions that help guide our altruistic decisions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing I can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? By applying these questions to real-life scenarios, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about doing good are misguided. For instance, he argues one can potentially save more lives by becoming a plastic surgeon rather than a heart surgeon; measuring overhead costs is an inaccurate gauge of a charity's effectiveness; and, it generally doesn't make sense for individuals to donate to disaster relief.

    MacAskill urges us to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. When we do this-when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors-we find that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2015
    ISBN9781469062563
    Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
    Author

    William MacAskill

    William MacAskill is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University. His academic work spans a breadth of fields within normative philosophy, including practical ethics, population ethics, social choice theory and decision theory. At age 28, he became the youngest tenured professor of philosophy in the world. MacAskill is the cofounder of Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, the Centre for Effective Altruism and the Oxford University-based Global Priorities Institute. He’s recognised as a World Economic Forum Young Global Shaper and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur.

    Related to Doing Good Better

    Related audiobooks

    Social Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Doing Good Better

    4/5

    122 ratings24 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      I could barely slog my way through the overly-simplistic and repetitive writing style, but what I did manage to glean was better suited towards large companies giving rather than individuals. While the ideas suggested (giving to the poorest of the world's poor) are noble, this book is little to no help to the average individual who just wants to donate money and help society.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic. Easily digestible information that is very eye opening and informative on feasible ways forward.
    • 5/5
      This book is quite an accomplishment. If this is the kind of work we can expect from the young philosopher William MacAskill for many years to come, I am greatly looking forward to reading his future books and articles as well. In this text, MacAskill engages the criticisms of "charity skeptics" and provides a helpful framework for targeting highly effective charities and measuring their outcomes. MacAskill also dispells the false belief that one person cannot make much of a difference to improve the lives of others, especially the global poor. Donating to the most effective charities, even an economically average person can do a surprising amount of good and save hundreds of lives. While not discussed at much length, MacAskill's approach seem to be broadly utilitarian - attempting to do the most good for the greatest number of people. MacAskill uses five key questions to create a framework for making decisions about where to invest our resources to do the most good. These questions are: How many people benefit, and by now much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? and What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? MacAskill strives to base his discussions on the best data and metrics currently available and acknowledges many of his own assumptions and areas where further research and exploration are needed.One of his most helpful discussions was his chapter on career choice. Many of us struggle with career choice early in life as well as throughout our lives, yet there seems to be remarkably few resources to give people advice about how to use their career to do the most good in the world. One of his organizations, 80,000 Hours, attempts to help people discern which career provide a good "fit" for them and suggests possible careers they might enjoy and be able to do lots of good in the process. He does not, however, take all aspects of one's work into consideration. When discussing careers in medicine, for example, his discussion was not particularly nuanced, since there are many specialized fields, such as psychiatry, which can have a very large impact on individuals and the greater community. Even though my direct contribution of QALYs may be modest, the ways that a psychiatrist's patients enhance the lives of others could also be factored into the calculus, making this particular doctor's impact on the world considerably higher than MacAskill's metrics would likely suggest. Even so, MacAskill has made a very important contribution to this conversation.One major concern I do have with MacAskill's approach, however, is that there was little discussion about the varying degrees of responsibility one has to do good within certain relationships, such as family, community, country, internationally, etc. For example, from a strict QALYs calculation, I would be doing "more good" by working extra hours in my job every day to earn more money to give to the best international charities than by spending those hours volunteering to coach my child's sports team and mentoring those children as they (hopefully) develop healthy teamwork skills. I could use MasAskill's framework to make some progress, such as "Is this area (coaching sports) neglected?" Coaching may not be a neglected area, but I am concerned about the ways that some very competitive adults choose serve as a coach. In this case, the "replacement factor" becomes much more important and I might say - "given the way my replacement might coach this team, it is very important that I am the one who coaches this team."In short, it seems like MacAskill assumes that we have an equal responsibility to help anyone we possibly can help. While this makes for a convenient QALYs calculus, I do not think it is an accurate picture of our actual responsibilities in life. Yet, this does not seem to be a significant topic of discussion for this book, which I why I could not give it a five-star rating. More research, analysis, and reflection is needed to better discern how we should balance our various responsibilities to our families, communities, and the world-at-large. That said, Doing Good Better is a very important contribution and will likely become a pivotal text for the Effective Altruism movement. Highly Recommended!
    • 5/5
      Highly recommend this, already interested in effective altruism and this book from one of the founders of the movement expanded my view for a more complete understanding
    • 5/5
      The Effective Altruism movement could very well be one of the most important movements of the 21st century.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely amazing book! Instructs you in how to maximize the impact of your donations; it will challenge many of your current assumptions about what types of charity improve and worsen the lives of their recipients.
    • 3/5
      MacAskill aims for something big in this book: convincing people to consider his logical argument when they are making emotional decisions.

      *Doing Good Better* is a manifesto of sorts, aimed at launching the idea of Effective Altruism. He defines the term as "asking, 'How can I make the biggest difference I can?' and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer." (p 11)

      The first half of the book is dedicated to exploring five key questions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would happen otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? The second half of the book is about using these questions in specific ways to figure out which organizations one should contribute to, how one should live, and what types of career options one should pursue.

      His argument is very convincing, and he makes a compelling point. He might even have convinced me to rethink where I send my charitable donations. But, though he has a solid grasp of classic economics, he gives very little consideration to behavioral economics. He acknowledges that people want to give themselves to organizations that are dear to them. "If a family member died of cancer, isn't it natural to want to direct your energies to fighting cancer?" (pp 40-41) But, he argues, we shouldn't. Instead, "we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair to those whom we could have helped more." (p 42)

      In the second half of the book he argues that being a high-paid stockbroker could actually be more effective at saving lives than being a foreign aid worker, in that having more disposable income and donating large amounts of money to the right organizations (several of which he lists) does more for the world than any individual working in the trenches.

      He might be right. but there's a larger problem: Most people feel better about themselves by being face to face with the people they are helping than by writing a check and mailing it off. Most people feel more strongly about problems that affect them directly than about abstract concepts on the other side of the world.

      MacAskill acknowledges this problem, but basically believes we should just over-ride these impulses and logically evaluate all of our options. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "If you would persuade you must appeal to interest rather than intellect."

      ]Until he can figure out a way to appeal to our interest (emotional or otherwise) instead of just our intellect, MacAskill might have trouble getting Effective Altruism accepted by most of the world.
    • 4/5
      I find it hard to rate this book. It has a lot of good points, but I also find myself disagreeing with a few of their recommendations, or at least thinking that they are overlooking specific aspects.

      The general idea of "donate your money to the most effective charity in the area you are interested in" obviously has merit, and the book disabused me of some of my preconceived notions about charitable organizations. There are some truly surprising stories and anecdotes about which interventions are positive, neutral and even negative, and the differences in effectiveness of some interventions (appearantly, some actions can get you a factor of 10 to 100 more effect for the same money than other, still good, interventions in the same area).

      MacAskill also discusses if you should work in an area with high direct positive impact (like working in an effective nonprofit), or if you should get a "normal" job that pays much better and donate heavily. The idea of "earning to give" (get a job that pays twice as much as NGO work, then donate 10 % of your earnings) is interesting, but this is where my main gripe lies: It does not factor in externalities of the job you are doing. If I, hypothetically, work as a lobbyist for an arms manufacturer and try to convince governments to buy nuclear weapons from my company, then the net effect I am having on the world may be negative, even if I donate 20% of my earnings to an NGO that works in nuclear disarmament. This may be an extreme example, but there are many jobs that have hidden externalities that may lead to you having a bad impact on the world through your actions (building applications that assist judges in finding a sentence for a perpetrator may inadvertently reinforce racial biases in the criminal justice system. Working at Facebook may have you assisting in creating more effective filter bubbles. etc.)

      The second point I found hard to stomach was the argument for buying products produced in sweat shops. Appearantly, sweatshops are considered a good intermediate step for a country on the way to becoming an industrialized nation. In fact, factories in europe had sweatshop-like conditions for many decades. So, economists argue that sweatshops are actually good for the countries they are situated in. Additionally, sweatshop jobs are actually considered the *good jobs* in many of these countries, as the alternatives are even worse. So, (or so the authors argue), stopping to buy sweatshop-produced items and buying products that are produced in the US, Germany, France etc. will actually harm the people you try to help.

      The argument the authors gives against buying from producers that have their factories in sweatshop countries but pay better wages is that only a small percentage of the price hike this means for you will end up actually reaching the people that are producing them. The same is appearantly true for fair trade products (I did not fact check this, but the book does give sources for all of these claims), where fair trade producers are sometimes even paid less than the people producing non-fair products. The author argues that this means you are better off buying the cheaper products from non-fair production, and then (crucially) donating the difference to an effective NGO, where the same amount of money will do more good.

      Again, I am not sure what I think about this approach. I have a few problems with these 100% statistics-based approaches: First off, they make it easy to rationalize objectionable behaviour on the grounds that "the money will do more good somewhere else." Second, they seem to imply a centralization of funding - if everyone started working on the basis of this book, we would have very few, very effective, very well funded NGOs. But we would also lose other NGOs that do different interventions that may not be as effective directly, but provide other benefits. It may even be that combining the two interventions would have an effect larger than the sum of its parts, but the second intervention will never be funded, as it is not as effective on its own as the first. It also serves as a "barrier to entry" for new ideas that may be even more effective.

      Third and lastly, the book focuses on areas and interventions where the effects are reasonably easy to measure. I am donating to political NGOs, whose effect is hard to quantify, and I am not sure where they would fall in the system. How do you evaluate teaching children about data protection? Is teaching 1000 children about IT Security more or less important than invalidating an unconstitutional surveillance law before the surpreme court? It kind of falls through the cracks, which makes it hard to justify donating to these organizations under the rules of effective altruism. However, I believe that these kinds of NGOs are critical to maintaining a society that is actually worth living in - or, to overstate it: Is it worth saving thousands of africans from malaria if that only means they are around to be subjugated by a newly fascist state, which could have been prevented if political NGOs had been funded properly?

      I will say this: The book made me think, and I will reevaluate my donations. However, I do not think I will massively change the current donations I have set up (although I may end up adding a few new organizations that will also receive money from me). If you are altruistically minded, I would recommend reading this book, but reading it with a critical eye, and making up your own mind what you want to incorporate into your own strategies (like donating to the best-in-class charities), and what you may want to leave on the table (like working at am arms manufacturer to be able to fund a peace-loving NGO). Four stars for starting the debate in my head.
    • 3/5
      Short & sweet. Lots of numbers talk may make you zone out. But it's numbers that I'm glad someone out there is crunching. I found it to be extremely valuable information for deciding on charities to donate to. It seems it would also be a great resource for someone trying to decide on a career; alas, that's a ship that has long since sailed for me. Very well researched with copious endnotes.
    • 1/5
      If you are a tycoon who has amassed billions through rapacious capitalist practices and are looking for an equally effective means of maximizing your philanthropic endeavours, then the advice and guidance in this book may be just the ticket. If you think the difference been one good action and another good action is that one of them must be “gooder”, then this book will affirm your intuition. And if your primary goal is the gooderest actions you can accomplish either individually or by subcontracting, ideally in a cash poor but resource rich needful environment, then applying the “scientifically-based” methods of charitable action evaluation espoused in this volume will definitely meet your needs.The standard criticism of crude utilitarianism was that we, poor mortals, are insufficiently well-informed to determine the action that will lead to maximization of the good (or happiness, or utility, or pleasure) in all but the most trivial of cases. William MacAskill appears to believe that his application of the “scientific” techniques of economics, statistical analysis, and the information gathering readily available via the Internet somehow overcomes this constraint. Well meaning nonsense, of course. This, despite the obvious truth that if you are disbursing substantial wealth gleaned either through personal greed or taxation, it makes sense to do your research first. But don’t confuse the practicalities of policy with the aspects of an action that make it “good” in the first place. Go ahead and help that blind man cross the street. Don’t let anyone tell you that you “ought” to have rather donated the cash that you could have earned in the time you took to perform that act to a charity providing mosquito nets in Africa.I know my head shaking and ridicule will have very little impact on those who are already convinced that calculations are likely to lead to wise choices and good actions. Just be aware that moral philosophers consider this to be an essentially contested field, with a fair number of them arguing that actions are incommensurable. It’s not just a case of apples and oranges, sometimes it’s apples and bananas.Better to donate the money you would have spent on this book to a charity providing mosquito nets in Africa.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating book about the inner workings (or not) of charities and how money can be given, spent and used to better society.
    • 5/5
      A very fast read. It is also very clearly written, and well-organized. The arguments are supported both by statistics and anecdotes, and these are well-balanced. The statistics are never dry and the anecdotes are always to the point, never overwhelming or repetitive. The author maintains a consistent rational perspective. Most of the information wasn't new to me, but reading it in one place still had an impact. And some of the examples I did find novel. For example, MacAskill tries to quantify the benefit of voting, and argues that it can be quite large based on the probability of your vote being the deciding one. He also gives statistics on how spending more on FairTrade certified coffee is an extremely ineffective way of helping poor coffee farmers. He argues that carbon offsets make considerable sense. The book focuses on health and poverty in the developing world, arguing that some well-placed contributions can have 100x the impact of less-targeted interventions. There is only fairly perfunctory consideration of other causes---climate change gets a chapter, other causes get only a few paragraphs. I feel like one flaw of the book is that it neglects secondary effects, for example the effect of reducing poverty on climate change. Another flaw is that it neglects the human need for feedback. The author himself says that his life was changed by volunteering in Ethiopia and seeing extreme poverty up close. But then he advocates fairly strongly for entering a career in which you can earn as much money as possible in order to give it away. For most people, I do not think this is a sustainable choice. He acknowledges this as a possible issue, but doesn't fully address it, concluding that "the experience of seeing what effective donations can achieve can be immensely rewarding." But the most effective charities, for which he advocates, e.g., giving to charities that will disburse cash to poor families in Africa, do not give the donor any direct feedback at all.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted and expected to like this book, but ultimately I really didn't.The basic premise seems solid enough: when trying to make a difference in the world, we should take a rational, evidence-based approach to determine what will have the biggest impact. This is something that I can get behind pretty fully when it comes to choosing a charity. For the most part, it turns out that our money goes farther when it's donated to health-related causes in very poor countries; even if we personally care a lot about, say, education, donating to a charity like Deworm the World Initiative can make more of a difference by making children healthy and therefore more able to attend school than donating textbooks directly.But what happens if you take this coldly rational approach to extremes, and start applying it to every aspect of your life? It turns out that, instead of choosing a career where you can make a difference directly, you might well have more of an impact by choosing the highest-paying career possible, and then donating that money to effective charities. Instead of doing volunteer work in your community, you might well have more of an impact by working overtime to earn still more money that you can donate to charities helping the most impoverished people in Africa.This seems perfectly reasonable in one way, but perfectly horrible in another way. Is the ideal world really one in which all the best and brightest work 80-hour weeks in hedge fund companies, doing work they don't even believe in, just so they can have the greatest possible impact by giving away money indirectly to people across the world whom they'll never meet? That sounds like a pretty awful existence to me. It wasn't immediately obvious what the problem was, but reading a review on GoodReads led me to an idea of what was missing here: any sense of community. I think there's ultimately more to life than making the largest quantitative difference, and it involves some sense of investment in the people around you.The author acknowledges all this to some extent, discussing the risk of losing your own values and becoming disillusioned if you spend all your time surrounded by colleagues who prioritize earning money above all else. But he blithely dismisses the concern by citing the examples of a few people like Bill Gates who have become very wealthy while still being devoted to philanthropy. It may be telling that the author himself doesn't practice what he preaches: he himself is a professor at Oxford, not an investment banker.Again, I think he makes a lot of valuable points, especially when focusing on the early-career stage. He emphasizes the value of developing skills and career capital at the start, rather than going directly out of college to do low-skilled admin work at a non-profit. And I think that's valuable advice; investing some time in yourself can allow you to make more of a difference later on. But there's a difference between that and focusing exclusively on making the most money possible.One of my favourite sections of the book was actually the one where he talked about the research on job satisfaction; it's not actually following your passion that leads to the most happiness, but instead whether the job has five other factors: independence, sense of completion, variety, feedback, and contribution. (As a side note, looking at these factors made it clear why I'm so much happier teaching than working exclusively on my dissertation.) Pursuing a career solely for the salary would fail on the "contribution" metric, and I'm not convinced that you could compensate for that with the knowledge that your money was making more of a difference indirectly.One of my least-favourite sections of the book, and the one that caused me to put it down for six months in the middle, came when he abandoned his evidence-based framework and started making the case for his personal pet cause. He had spent the first half of the book telling us that we shouldn't try to help people in North America because our money can go farther helping people in Africa, that we shouldn't focus on education because we can have more of an impact by focusing on health (with the impact measured in QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years), and so on. And then suddenly he was talking about animal rights, and how we could have more of an impact with our $100 by donating to an organization that would convince someone else to become a vegetarian than we would by becoming vegetarians ourselves (the author is a vegetarian). The hypocrisy was pretty unbearable: there was no mention of how we could justify donating $100 to convince someone to become a vegetarian, when that money could instead be going to the Deworm the World Initiative or one of the other highly-recommended organizations focused on human health in the developing world.And that brings me to the final problem with the book: for all its evidence-based veneer, the major decisions ultimately come down to subjective value judgements. The final section talks about how to choose a cause, and the author rates the magnitude of various issues on a scale from 1-4. Extreme poverty is a 3; US criminal justice reform is a 1; catastrophic global climate change is a 2-4, "depending on value judgements" (i.e., whether you think there's any value in continuing the existence of human civilization far into the future). Factory farming is "up to 3, depending on value judgements". In other words, the reader is ultimately invited to dismiss all data and decide for themselves what issues are most important. And that sort of defeats the whole purpose of the book.This book still has a lot going for it. It's certainly thought-provoking, and the author makes a lot of interesting points. I finished it a couple of days ago and am nowhere near done engaging with the ideas that it raises. But it's also a fairly dry read, and one that ultimately doesn't reflect a vision of the world that I can support. I want to do more in life than earn a lot of money to help people I'll never meet, and I hope the people around me will choose to be more active agents of change as well.
    • 5/5
      Having experienced the nonprofit sector as both an employee and a volunteer, I have seen far too many examples of ineffective (if noble and heartfelt) efforts to solve a variety of issues. This book raises excellent questions about our activities and efforts, putting it all in a larger context that brings a new and welcome, if occasionally painful, perspective to our work. Bravo for the courage to ask the questions, and help us do the same.
    • 4/5
      A utilitarian philosophical treatise on how to donate to charity most effectively. Sort of an outcomes based analysis for every man. Author has five key questions he uses as a framework for making decisions about where to invest to do the most good. How many people benefit, and by now much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? and What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? It will be interesting to watch and see how these ideas are received in the philanthropic community.
    • 4/5
      I received this book for free from the publisher. The book is very clear and straightforward. The author lays out the arguments in favor of systematically thinking through decisions and the frameworks you can use to do so. I found it to be a valuable explanation of why we should think more about how we give and help others.
    • 4/5
      It is sometimes difficult to know what we can do to help make the world a better place. This book not only talks about ways to evaluate charitable organizations in ways people don't normally think of, but it also talks about how your career choice can help you make a difference. It definitely has some food for thought.
    • 5/5
      I started reading this book expecting to learn how to be more effective in helping others and I did, but I also discovered some amazing career advice that I didn't even know I needed to hear. If you are interested in making a difference in the world, you should read this book.
    • 4/5
      *I received a complimentary copy of this book from Gotham Books in exchange for my honest review. Doing good for others. There is a sense of joy when we help others. Seeing someone who needs aid and then coming to their aid is one of the things that make us human. We should not enjoy seeing others suffer so there is part of us that would like to alleviate that suffering. In Doing Good Better, Dr. MacAskill points to this altruistic sensation as a way to make a difference. Yet, some go about attempting to make a difference but do so poorly. They may give to a charity that spends much more on overhead and compensation than it does for the cause it promotes. Other charities are effective at using their funds but promote a cause that is very ineffective at solving the observed problem. Dr. MacAskill goes into some detail on how to accurately determine which causes are effective and which causes are not. He shows that often times people will select a charity based on a "watchdog" rating but fail to seek further information on the charity. A rating is not bad but it only rates on certain criteria, most often financial distribution. For example, let us say that a charity might give 90% of its charitable donations to help dental problems in a third-world country and not to compensation for management. That is a very financially proper means of operating. However, what if 90% of the donations are going to dental problems that arise due to poor water conditions? If the water condition improved, the dental problems would lessen. If the example given, Dr. MacAskill's analysis would not give that charity a great rating because they could have a greater impact were the charity to look deeper; the effectiveness is not as powerful as it could be. While my example is quite simple, hopefully the point is made. Thus, this book really challenges the reader to seek means of making a difference that effectively makes a difference. Some of the text may be hard to read in terms of its message but it is a message worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Does not address charitable giving to environmental causesThis is not a typical book review because I only got one-half-way through this book before I realized that the economics of Effective Altruism does not discuss the concept of donations to environmental causes. It is a set of principles that appear to be very useful for the large majority of charitable donors who give money to help improve human life and reduce human suffering in the near term. However, Effective Altruism appears to be blind to giving guidance on how best to choose to donate to environmental causes, i.e. causes that indirectly improve human life in the long term through providing funds to protect the planet’s ecosystem, i.e., it’s plants, animals, land, water, and atmosphere.I’m not trying to convince anybody about the logic or correctness of donating to environmental causes as opposed to human causes; everyone has the right to his or her own reasoned moral decisions. This review is not about this choice. It is about informing those very few readers who are interested in environmental charities, that this book will not be useful to them. Reading this book opened my eyes. I had no idea how few of us there were. It caused me to do a little research. I found out that environmental donors like me are part of only a very small minority. According to the agency Giving USA, only 2% of charitable donors give to protect the planet’s ecosystem, i.e., its plants, animals, land, water, and atmosphere. By protecting the environment, I assume these donors, like me, believe they are helping to improve human health and life everywhere…of course, one has to think of these gains in the long term. That’s a big part of why there is such a divide on this issue. Humans are naturally wired to be short-term thinkers. Only a very small number of us are naturally wired to be long-term thinkers. For some reason, I’ve been that way ever since I was a child. But even for me, long-term thinking takes considerable effort and can be emotionally challenging when it comes to decisions about charitable giving in a world filled with acute human suffering. Humankind on this planet will not survive if natural systems are allowed to fail, and that is the focus of my charitable interest: trying to keep natural ecosystems healthy in order to keep humankind protected in the long term. I’m very happy that the 98% are out there are trying to alleviate human suffering in the short term; I hope they are happy that the other 2% of us are out there trying to help the environment for the long term. Together we are trying to make a better world for all. Let’s hope we are successful.If any readers know of any books that give guidance on environmental charitable giving, please respond in the comments.
    • 4/5
      "Doing Good Better" is what would happen if Nate Silver suddenly decided to enact the Gospel of Wealth for the twenty-first century.This isn't necessarily a criticism. It's only an observation, one that maybe gets to the potential scope of the book. It's not that most of it is objectionable, or even—so far as I could tell—wildly incorrect. It's that the potential audience is self-limiting to people who want to be altruistic, but also efficient, who haven't already figured out that expected value functions for development theory just as well as it does for the stock market. It doesn't seem to be an infinitely scaleable group; MacAskill's book seems to be one of those rare texts that have no perfect audience waiting to embrace the argument and the author.With that said, it's likely that almost any interested reader will walk away from the book having gained insight, perspective, or advice on the question of effective altruism. Those who hadn't thought of the quality of their charity—if they can get past the fairly blunt assumption that the author provides about the inherent misguidedness of that approach—will find a clear and readable introduction to concept of doing more good with the same resources. Those who once avoided charity as unavoidably risky and unproven will find evidence for the importance of contributing to some, if not all, causes. And those who were introduced to effective altruism either through previous publications or common sense will find a clear and pointed analysis of current organizations and causes that meet the movement's stringent goals.I can't imagine that it will gain much traction among philosophy or economics departments, as the theory and policy are too intertwined to meet the standards of academic analysis. It's probably going to take the development and policy worlds by storm, though. Easy to read, full of ideas, plenty of easily digestible statistics and graphs—there were moments when I had trouble remembering that I wasn't reading one of the new TED talks in printed form. The argument could be made—and was made to me, while I was reading—that to succeed in his stated intent, the author should have taken the time to mollify people who are charitable in part for the happiness and satisfaction such good works bring. But this isn't that book; it's not meant to assuage the guilt of the developed world or soothe hipsters. It's meant to get things done, and introduce readers to a small but growing movement in a way that is effective and memorable. Could it do with considerably less pushing of the author's side business in career advice, and more analysis of potential beneficiaries? Probably. Could the theory be more clearly delineated and the evidence somewhat better integrated? Of course. But if the goal was to get the word out and impact the world through publicity and ideas, rather than just money and labor, if recent reviews and articles are any indication, it seems as if MacAskill has succeeded.
    • 3/5
      Its the everyday things that can help us lead better lives. These changes sure can shape a better person through tips that also alter a persons style of living. The little habits or attitudes that can over time take affect for a better person and better society.
    • 5/5
      Most readers will likely find fault with some aspect of the argument put forth by William MacAskill in his book "Doing Good Better." And that is the prime value of the book. MacAskill, cofounder of the effective altruism movement, challenges the accepted wisdom about how to make a difference through one’s career, volunteering, and giving. He advocates taking a scientific approach to determining the effectiveness of efforts aimed at alleviating social ills. By applying precise measurements, MacAskill questions the efficacy of donating to disaster relief, buying fair-trade products, or boycotting clothing made in sweatshops. He provides a process based on answering five questions to use whenever considering how to allocate one’s time and treasure to addressing societal problems. "Doing Good Better" is sure to get readers thinking more deeply about their altruistic endeavors, and that is the value of the book, whether or not you agree with the author’s specific conclusions.
    • 4/5
      The author attempts to analyze different approaches that the average person can take to make the world the better place with an emphasis on being as efficient and effective as possible. Charities which have high overheads are problematic, but he advises examining their approaches and philosophies quite closely as well- is it more effective to send books to the poor in Africa or to spend money on de-worming children there; studies actually show that the latter is far more effective in improving childhood education. He has a bias against acting locally, believing that everyone in the Developed World is rich compared to nearly anyone in the Developing World; and I have a problem with this: improving the lives of the people in your city or state is important too, and there are differing levels of effectiveness on the local level that I wish he had examined. A bizarre example is how he manages to "prove" that becoming a doctor only allows you to save one or two lives during your entire career (statistically?); duh, talk to any doctor and you will find the contrary; his argument that somebody else would have become a doctor in your place, therefore you aren't contributing much to society by becoming a doctor yourself is preposterous. He advocates instead that people go for jobs where they can make lots of money in order to donate it (earning to give), however I think that most high-paying professions bring you money through unethical means (and he addresses this a little bit). Nonetheless, I appreciated many of his arguments and analyses, and I learned a lot about international development and how to approach giving and helping those less fortunate.