New website on careers for optimal philanthropy

post by lukeprog · 2011-11-22T20:06:10.340Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 8 comments

80,000 hours (eightythousand.org) is a new website associated with High Impact Careers, a Giving What We Can-associated effort to inform the public about "professional philanthropy" and the fact that you can do more good as a banker or entrepreneur than as an aid worker. It recently got some BBC press, and there's a neat new video.

Related to efficient charity and optimal philanthropy. Also see scope insensitivity.

8 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by rjshade · 2011-11-23T14:05:01.346Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Just wanted to make something clear: 80,000 Hours is the rebranded High Impact Careers. Same team, same message -- new name.

We'd really appreciate any comments or criticisms from the LessWrong community as there seems to be a significant overlap of interests such as those linked to in the main post.

Disclaimer: I'm on the web team for 80,000 Hours.

Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov
comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2011-11-23T14:13:43.166Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The introductory video needs a better audio recording (both sound quality and voice acting).

Replies from: Grognor
comment by Grognor · 2011-11-24T01:35:56.555Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This for sure. Also has too many long silences.

comment by nebulous · 2011-11-23T06:33:36.495Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is the linked website right about banking being the optimal career path for professional philanthropy or is there a more efficient method of moving resources to charities? I'm especially curious since I'll choose my degree soon.

Replies from: lukeprog
comment by lukeprog · 2011-11-23T09:38:37.383Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You may wish to request a Skyped career counseling session from Carl Shulman, one of the experts behind High Impact Careers.

Replies from: nebulous
comment by nebulous · 2011-11-25T03:56:02.999Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I've briefly tried to find a way to contact Shulman and failed. Is there a known way to contact him? Possibly useful information: I would prefer an IRC session over Skype. I've already followed the posted link, googled his name, googled his name with the word contact, looked at eightythousand.org' s contact page, and googled his name while restricting the search to eightythousand.org.

Replies from: arundelo
comment by arundelo · 2011-11-25T04:51:26.028Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Have you used Less Wrong's "Send message" functionality?

(Edit: It's a button in the upper right corner of the page you get when you click someone's username.)

Replies from: nebulous
comment by nebulous · 2011-11-25T22:07:18.028Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thank you. I had assumed that Less Wrong had no private messaging when the envelope icon near the top right corner of the interface took me to the reply to my first comment.