Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference Audiobook (Free)

Most of us need to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we consider worthy, choose professions we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy items we believe make the world an improved place. Regrettably, we often bottom these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. Because of this, 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 find about Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism MIGHT HELP You Make a Difference out which career allows him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He found that much of the prospect of change was being squandered by lack of information, poor data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his co-workers created effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each folks to produce a tremendous difference no matter our resources. Effective altruists believe that it’s not more than enough to simply do good; we must do great better.

At the core of this school of thought 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 could do? Is definitely this area neglected? What could have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how great would success end up being? By applying these queries to real-life situations, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about performing great are misguided. For instance, he argues you can potentially save even more lives by learning to be a plastic surgeon rather than heart cosmetic surgeon; measuring over head costs is an inaccurate gauge of the charity’s efficiency; and, it generally doesn’t make sense for individuals to donate to disaster relief.

MacAskill urges us to believe differently, reserve biases, and make use of evidence and careful reasoning instead of act in impulse. Whenever we do this-when we apply the head and the center to each of our altruistic endeavors-we find that each of us has the power to perform an astonishing amount of good.