253 How to Do Good Better with Will MacAskill

"So much of convincing people has nothing to do with the arguments you are giving." - Will MacAskill If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/253 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 253 with Will MacAskill.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  Now, Will MacAskill raised over $400 million in donations with both his charities. So this is all about giving. He's got a new book out as well. For me, greatness is about making the maximum amount of impact in the world. And without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in this episode with Will MacAskill.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest. His name is Will MacAskill. How's it going, Will?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's going really well. Thanks so much for having me on.

• 1:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, thanks for being here, man. And you just had a book come out recently in the US called Doing Good Better. It's on effective altruism and how you can make a difference. And I'm all about making a difference. You know, I've got a book that's out right now. That's all about leaving a legacy and living a bigger and better life. So I appreciate the work you're doing. And tell me, why did you decide to write this book? You're a professor over in the UK, correct?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Professor of Philosophy at Oxford. And I started to get interested in these ideas because I'd thought about the problem of global poverty for quite a while. And I kind of thought, yeah, I really should be doing something about this, but had never really kind of acted on it. Until I started working as a fundraiser for this international charity. So I was one of those annoying people who would kind of accost you on the street. This is while I was a student. Accost you in the street and demand that you donate kind of $10 a month. And this meant that I was like thinking about global poverty all day, every day. And talking to these people who just, all they wanted to do was get out of a conversation with me. And I felt kind of angry because I felt like, yeah, I was telling them like, there's these big problems in the world. We could do something, can do so much to help.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  And yet I was just, just thinking and they'd say no, and they'd move on. And I just think, these people, they're not living up to their values. And then I thought, well, I'm not living up to my own values either. Um, you know, at the time I was planning to go into graduate school in philosophy and do these very esoteric abstract subjects that clearly weren't going to have much um of a benefit for the real world, that I was doing them because they were intellectually interesting. And so I thought, okay, I really need to start changing what I'm going to do with my life. And it was in Oxford that I met this slightly older academic called Toby. Um, and we got coffee, um, actually in a graveyard, which in Oxford doubles as like the gardens of this college. They have like parties and stuff. It's normal. It's normal if you're in Oxford.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  But uh, got a coffee and he was telling me about this commitment he made to give away most of his income over the course of his life. And I'd already heard and thought about these arguments that just given how much good money can do for the very poorest people in the world. Well, that just means you should just try and donate as much as you can because you're going to be saving, you know, hundreds of lives by doing so. Um, this is an argument that's kind of popular among ethicists and moral philosophers. But I'd never met anyone who was acting on it. Um, and yet here was this guy and it's not like he was doing it in this like really self-flagellating way, like it was this big duty of his. He was like, no, this is this amazing opportunity I have uh, to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of other people. Like, this is fantastic.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  And I was very convinced by this, so I ended up taking a, making a similar commitment to give away everything I earn above, I mean, it was twenty thousand pounds per year. It's about thirty five thousand dollars, adjusting for inflation, that's maybe about forty thousand dollars now. Everything above that per year. So this year will be about, be about half my income. Uh, but then this got this question like, okay, so I'm planning to give away quite a lot of money over the course of my life. Like, of course, my life, probably a couple of million dollars at least if I stay as an academic. And the question is then, what do I do with that? Because lots of charities, you know, there's a lot of bad stories about um attempts to help gone really badly wrong. And yeah, surely there must be something better.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  And so I started, this was back in two thousand and nine, started to do the search into which charities are most effective. What are those that really are doing the most to help other people and improve their lives by as much as possible with the money that I donate to them? And from that research, um, this kind of movement started, effective altruism. So we set up an organization called Giving What We Can that did research into this question and encouraged people to give at least ten percent of their income to those most effective charities. Um, then that started to expand out. We started to think about how can you use your time or your career as effectively as possible to make the world a better place? And then, yeah, this community, the effective altruism community really developed and became quite vibrant.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And after kind of five years later, I thought, okay, it's time like to take all these ideas and package them together so that um, a lot more people can really get um, get familiar with them as well and start implementing them into their own lives.

• 5:19Lewis Howes?

  I love that. And so what is, so just so people know, what does effective altruism mean? And what are the, what are the core principles of it for you?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so effective altruism is about using your time and money um as effectively as possible to make the world a better place. Uh, and taking the scientific approach, so using high quality evidence and data and good, careful reasoning to ensure that you're not just making a difference, but actually making the most difference you can.

• 5:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love that.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Um, so it's about, you know, maybe you've got like really emotional, like strong motivations there, but using your ability to kind of reason to channel that so that you have the biggest impact.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  So how do we, yeah, how do we know that, you know, I'm all about service, giving back my time, my money? That's part of, that's one of the principles in my book is living a life of service. I feel like you can't live a great life without doing that as well.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 6:11Lewis Howes?

  And so how do we maximize it? Because I'm all about maximizing every ounce of energy, time, treasure, talent that we have. For our own service, but also for the service of the world. So how do we quantify that and make the most?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm really glad to hear you say that. And lots of people get interested are those who've take this kind of, you know, hacker optimizing approach to life and realize you can do the same thing with doing good. Um, yeah, so there's a whole body of kind of research from economists, health economists, development economists, on what social programs work and what don't. And then within those that work, uh, what, you know, measuring the kind of size of the impact uh, that you have. And so because the scale of global inequality is so incredibly extreme. So if you're earning above about fifty five thousand dollars um, after tax, you're in the kind of richest one percent of the world's population.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Everyone earning about twelve, above about twelve thousand dollars is in the richest kind of fifteen percent of the world's population. Whereas the poorest billion people of the, in the world are living on less than a dollar fifty per day.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  So you can do this, that's like this good kind of general argument for thinking the way that you're going to be able to do the most good is by helping the very poorest people in the world. Cause you're able to like, you know, by halving your income, even if you're on a fairly typical salary, you can, you know, double the income of like a hundred people. It's just this amazing opportunity. Um, and so then within that though, you've got to be careful because there's loads of aid programs that have, you know, not achieved very much. There are some, especially global health, where that is absolutely outstanding impacts. And these have often been studied and shown to have this really big effect. So one very simple one is just distributing bed nets to protect children against malaria. Costs about five dollars to protect two children for two years um, by providing one bed net.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And by digging into all the studies, of which there've been many, you can be pretty confident that by donating about three and a half thousand dollars, statistically speaking, you will save a life by doing this. There's some child out there who uh, you know, would have died of malaria who didn't because of your donation. And charities often throw away land figures like, cost five dollars to save a life. And normally that's hyperbole, but this is like actually our best guess about, you know, how many bed nets do you have to provide to prevent one child dying of malaria? And that's the kind of Baseline. So, you know, I'm all about people experimenting and thinking about other ways of doing good as well.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  A lot of the time, we focus on these very poor people and these kind of proven, you know, global health programs. Just because the case is so strong and maybe we can do even more good again, but that's kind of what we should compare against, I think.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. What did you notice? I'm curious, before I learn more about all this, what did you learn about when you were asking for donations as one of those, you know, street, essentially like a street beggar, you know, like a street beggar asking for money?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  What did you learn about that process with yourself? And besides the fact that, you know, people are busy and are off to do something and they're, you know, the last thing you want to do is stop and donate money to a random stranger. What did you learn about yourself? And what did you learn about how to connect with strangers about something that's really important to you?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an amazing learning experience for me, actually. I kind of wouldn't encourage anyone to do it because, yeah, it's actually a pretty bad location to sell to people. They're really not in the mood for.

• 9:44Lewis Howes?

  It's like door to door sales. It's like door to door sales, yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's similar and it really had a big impact on me. So one for sure is how much of convincing people is not, has nothing to do with the arguments that you're giving.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it's no coincidence at all that most of the people doing this, at least who last, you know, quite attractive people, and that just seems to make a really big difference in terms of how likely people are to sign up. Similarly, for me, like, the people who I get and who convince, it was very rarely because I was like firing all the statistics at them. But instead, because, you know, I just, I smiled or I reminded them of their nephew or some, or some sort of personal connection. And that made me kind of, that was a big learning experience for me, just in terms of, you know, selling things or selling ideas in general. There's really only so far, especially in a short timeframe, that

• 10:40Speaker 01

  like logical, rational, robotic arguments can take you. It's going to be more about actually kind of breaking that down and having more like this kind of, almost like friendship or connection with someone. So actually someone that you, that you trust.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  What type of connection did you say?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Just almost like a friendship, like a mini friendship. So I started to get people to stop and talk to me. I'd kind of go up to them and just kind of ask them a joke.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  And they were pretty corny jokes, but they'd often work. People would stop because they'd like, they'd want to find out where the punchline was. And then they'd be kind of disappointed that like, it wasn't that funny. But then that would be funny itself. And so that would kind of at least start this connection.

• 11:23Lewis Howes?

  Break the ice, yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Whereas if you go and you're just like, do you want to save a life? And they immediately know it's gonna, you know, feeling like a back fit, back foot. And people would often say no, and it would be kind of awkward.

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to save a life. Okay, yeah.

• 11:38Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so what got you into that in the first place? Like, why did you decide that, hey, I want to start raising money for charities? And start doing that in the first place?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was a combination of, you know, I always kind of wanted to help. I always had that kind of social conscience and it was always just a bit ad hoc though, so. I used to run these summer camps for children with disabilities. I worked at an old folks home. I once went to Ethiopia and taught in a school, did a bit of volunteerism. And then it was literally just I needed money in the summer after graduating from Cambridge before I started postgrad. So desperately needed a job and I just thought, well, I can maybe combine this with doing something worthwhile.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  But it wasn't these like pure altruistic intentions at all. I was, you know, I was doing it to get a job, but then it ended up having this really big long-term impact on me.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha. So let's go back to the book. I'm curious, what are these, these core principles of effective altruism? There's five core, four or five core principles?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  That's right. So I lay out the kind of style of thinking that effective altruists take in terms of kind of five key questions that you can ask. And the first one is, for any action, think about how many people benefit from this action and by how much? And that's to encourage people to think about. Like the outcomes that they're producing by an action.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  So like an example of this gone awry is uh when people think about charitable efficiency, they often look at overhead costs. How much is the charity spending on administration um versus how much is it spending on the program? Or maybe they ask about how much has the CEO paid as well? But this is just totally misguided because if you've got a really lousy charity that's working on some um lousy program, it's like giving away donuts or something, let's say. Um then it's just not like no matter how low your overheads are, it's just still not going to be effective.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And in contrast, maybe you need to have high overheads so that you can actually ensure that your program's being really well implemented or that you're choosing the most effective programs.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because I mean, the same point, you know, if you want to have a great leader of a charity, you're gonna have to pay them, you know?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:54Lewis Howes?

  And you don't want to underpay them to have them be thinking about how can they survive themselves when they're making such a big impact in the world. They want to be paid for their time, I'm assuming, right?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you can, if you as a charity can hire, pay your CEO, pay a higher salary to CEO so you can get better talent and therefore are doing more good for your charity.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you double the, double the donations because of it, you know?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  That's right. Then you just have a moral obligation to do that. And it's a bit of a shame that we have this often puritanical attitude to charity where the focus is on self-sacrifice rather than just actually how much of an outcome it is. Because if you can do good and also um improve your own life in the process, as I think you often can, like I often think that donating to charities actually is the great component of a meaningful life. Um you know, that's benefiting yourself is a bonus of doing good. It's not a cost.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I I mean, for me personally, feel free to let me know based on your research. Uh I don't feel like. Only serving the world and sacrificing everything that all of our wants and needs and dreams and desires is worth it to sacrifice it all. I think it's only worth it if we're able to make, if we're able to create a win-win where we are filled up every single day, where our needs are met, we're striving to get what we want, that we're fulfilled and we're also making an impact. But if it's just serving the world and we're doing a disservice to ourselves, then what's the point?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't want to be one of, you know, you don't want to be someone who's just doing this like self-sacrificial, self-flagellating thing like and focused on, you know, how can I be the what as badly off as possible of and how can I do the most good?

• 15:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And I just think, yeah, exactly. But I think like, you know, helping others can and should be just like a significant part of what makes for the meaningful life.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I talk about it as like, this would be the way you're being 24/7. You should be in service. When you're walking down the street, you should smile. You should open the door for people. You should, you know, I'll buy an extra juice for someone behind me in line just because I want to do something nice. It can be called random acts of kindness. It can be just being a good human being and saying hello. You know, it doesn't have to be this, let me donate everything in my life every single day. It can just be like, this is who I am as a human being. I'm going to serve.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's actually, so there's a bunch of evidence both on how additional money actually just makes you, does weigh less to improve your happiness than people expect.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Like people radically overestimate how much additional income will make them happier. And at the same time, they totally underestimate how much kind of giving will improve their lives. So in some studies, they got people to, they gave people some money, some they told to spend it on themselves, others they told to donate. And it was the people who donated who felt much happier about themselves afterwards.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  You know, we're just hardwired to be kind of altruistic to, you know, we're social animals, maybe unless we're a proportion of people who are psychopaths or something. And and that actually just means that there's much less of a trade-off, I think, than, you know, I mean, I think like if you do want to like, If you are happy to kind of live on less yourself in order to help loads of other people, that's great. That's like, should be really applauded. Um, but a lot of the time, it's just, you know, donating a proportion of your income, even if that's a pretty significant proportion, like ten percent or more, or like choosing to have a career that you think is going to do more good. Very often, this is much less of a sacrifice than you think, actually a kind of benefit.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And at the same time, making this huge positive difference to the world, because that's the opportunity we have.

• 17:40Lewis Howes?

  I love that, yeah. What are some of the other principles you talk about?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the second is this idea of, you know, is this the most effective thing I can do? So, am I not just making a difference, but making the most difference? And this is crucial because, so, most social programs actually don't have an impact at all. So when tested rigorously, they're just actually no impact or even harmful. Um, but even among those that do have an impact, there's a huge difference in how much of an impact they can have. So, among different education programs, in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, even among those that are really great, even among those that are having a big impact, there's still a factor of a hundred between those that are merely very good and those that are very best.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Similarly, if you look at different health programs, um, where you can think about that in terms of cost to save a life, or cost to give an extra people person an extra year of healthy life. Again, you get this discrepancy of like a hundred times between programs that are merely very good and the very best ones. Like, as we said, distributing bed nets.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay. And that's, you said that's the second principle?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  That, so that's the second principle. So, uh, the third one is the idea of, is this area neglected? So, in terms of thinking about what causes to focus on, um, or where your money or your time should go, one crucial thing is, is there something that people are already kind of piling into? Um, so for example, You know, natural disasters get an awful lot of attention and obviously there should be disaster relief. The question is just how much and how much can I as an individual contribute? If it's already the case that huge amounts of funding are flowing into this.

• 19:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And so, for example, in the Japanese earthquake, the Japanese Red Cross explicitly said, you know, we're the part of the fourth richest country in the world. We have the resources to deal with this problem. Like, obviously, it's great that there's such an outpouring of sympathy, but we actually really don't need the money. Yet, five billion dollars still flows to.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  You know, in the aftermath of that. Whereas there's these ongoing natural disasters all the time. Malaria, tuberculosis, HIV AIDS, they get a lot, they get a lot less attention. And for that reason, you can have a bigger impact. Just because of diminishing returns, the less money that's already flowing into something, the more, the bigger an impact an additional dollar will have.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay, I like that.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the third principle. The fourth one is, uh, the fourth question is, what would have happened otherwise? So the difference you make in life is the difference between the good you do and what would have happened otherwise. And this plays out in a whole bunch of ways, but one way is in terms of the career that you pursue. So you might go and do something. So you might become a doctor, let's say, and think, okay, yeah, well, I'm saving lives just absolutely all the time. And just doing these kind of life-saving operations. But if so, that's not quite the right way of thinking. How much of an impact am I really making? How much of a difference am I making to the world?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Because if you went in that job, then, you know, it's not the case that all those life-saving surgeries just wouldn't be performed. You know, someone else would be in that position. They'd be doing those same sorts of operations. And so you really need to look at the difference between. What you do and what whoever would have been in your shoes would have been doing, like what would have happened otherwise. And that means that, yeah, the impact, for example, doctors make is maybe less than people might intuitively think. And then the final, um, final key question is, uh, what the, it's to address cases where the kind of potential benefits of your action are a lot more uncertain. And, uh, that, what

• 21:30Speaker 01

  they should ask, what's the probability of success? And just how good would success be if I were to pursue this thing? Because a lot of the book focuses on these more easy to quantify, measurable, concrete things like distributing bed nets, or I also talk about deworming schoolchildren, which is curing children with parasitic worms that live in their gut costs only about fifty cents per child. Again, it's extremely effective thing. But you might think, okay, well, what about kind of campaigning for political change or doing basic research? Or something where it's a lot less clear whether you're actually going to have an impact at all. But if you did have a big win, then it would just be absolutely huge for the world. And you can take that, um, you can still try

• 22:13Speaker 01

  and at least make a comparison between that and these more easy to quantify things by looking at what's the probability of this paying off? And if it did pay off, how good that would that be? And then you can multiply that together. And that's economists call that expected value. And if the expected value is greater than the value that you're gonna generate by doing the more concrete thing, yeah, then you should go after that lower, lower probability chance of a big win.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay. Is there, is there ever a wrong way to give in your mind?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I think so. Um, I mean, I think there's probably quite a few wrong, wrong ways to give. I think a lot of people give, uh, in order to get just to a grandise themselves. So building the new wing, a new wing of an opera, so they get something named after themselves, I think is like, um, I think a lot of people just give unreflectively. And I think that's, you know, it's still admirable. It should be like. Encourage that people are willing to put their money to help others. But I'd really like people to just have a bit more thought. So like actually less than 10% of people when you ask them. Say that they did any research at all or any thinking before choosing where to donate. And I'd much rather people think, no, actually, this is like, you know, it's a pretty big decision.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Um, it is actually life and death for people on the other side of the world, like depending on where you're choosing to give. And so, you know, if I actually want to use my life to have this kind of, like you say, legacy or lasting impact. Um, I should really be putting thought into where I'm giving this money. In the same way as if I was buying purchases for myself, I'd be reading Amazon reviews. Or I'd be on the wire cutter or other things in order to ensure that I was gonna, gonna buy the product that was gonna be best. I think we should think just the same way when it comes to charity.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, you know, I've, I've heard different sides of the story here for people that donate uh money to causes. And, you know, usually when you donate online or something, you can have the option to put your name or not put your name and be uh anonymous, right? And I've heard a lot of people that will tell stories of, you know, some rich individual or rich family that donates millions of dollars a year, but they never put their name, they never want anyone to know, it's an anonymous donor. And then I hear stories from other people that say, uh, you know, I put my name on every donation I put, not to brag about myself, not to get recognition,

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  but to be a symbol of inspiration for other people to say, hey, if he's doing it or she's doing it, then I should do it too. It's kind of like a confirmation that while this person's doing that, they're not trying to get the recognition, but their name is on this, like, that's social proof saying that I should do it too. What do you think is the best approach to donating money?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, so I'm kind of fairly strongly inclined towards the latter, so. Again, I kind of worry that we've got this kind of biblical inhabitants of, you know, give your money, but you don't want to show off at all.

• 25:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Whereas again, I, you know, I'm concerned by what's the outcome gonna be.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And so like with giving what we can, we've got.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Uh, kind of one thousand three hundred members now, these are people who are committing to give at least ten percent. Um, and it's all public for basically everyone. They kind of write their name on the website. And so that means it's not just a donation. It's also a statement. Kind of says, yeah, look, we're kind of one thousand three hundred people. That's not that many people um compared to the world. Yet together, we've been able to commit um close to half a billion dollars in lifetime pledge donations. So that's like, whoa, actually, that's a real statement and does make you think, well, maybe I should do this too. And, you know, if you can get one other person to make a similar commitment, then you've just doubled your life's impact. So that's really important. And I think, I think ultimately it's worth kind of risking, uh,

• 26:04Speaker 01

  you know, maybe like having some people put out or calling you sanctimonious or something for that potential impact.

• 26:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I I look at it like, what if everyone was uh anonymous, right? What if everyone, no one put their name on a donation and just like, oh, we collected a million dollars this year in donations from we don't know who. Or or everyone said not to put their name on it. It's like, how is that inspiring? And then everyone who shows up to like the gala or whatever is all anonymous, right? But uh you don't know who donated. I just think it's kind of silly. I mean, I think there's like a a dance and an art and how to do it, and you really need to come from a loving, humble, grateful place of service. Um, but I think it's important. The more I'm talking about it, I'm just convincing myself that it's it's good to put your name on it, I guess.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think for sure there are some people out there who, you know, these multi billionaires or very rich people who are literally only doing charity in order to build a new network or get kind of prestige and so on. And I think it's right that we should be calling out those people.

• 27:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  But that doesn't mean we, none of us, you know, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't take like pride in doing good. And it doesn't mean be, shouldn't be trying to like encourage others to do the same.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's uh, I think people are gonna know if you do it for the right reasons or not. But I think either way, if you're supporting and giving back, that's still a great deed. Um, even if you're benefiting and it should, you know, it's okay if you're benefiting from the network or from the prestige, I guess. It's okay, um, as long as you're wanting to serve first. If it's an extra benefit, then then it shouldn't be bad, right?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly the right way of thinking about it.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is like the right approach? Let's just say the, you know, if you're an American listening, there's people from all over the world listening, but let's just say you're an American with an average household income, you know, kind of standard lifestyle right now. What would you say is like the best approach for how much time you should give? Let's, let's say you're already being in service on a daily basis. You're a very loving human being, you're giving back to your community just by being in the world. When you walk around town, but how much time should people give specifically to giving back? How much money do you think they should give back? And is there any other kind of criteria for time, money, their talent? Should they be giving back their resources?

• 28:28Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is like a good amount or number? Kind of like on average, if people are doing that, I feel like that they're, they're also pursuing their dreams and doing what they need to have a great life and take care of themselves, have a good family life, have fun in life, but also they're giving back in a maximum amount way.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, great. So a couple of things. So one is that I think it's actually just a lot harder to have a really big impact through kind of volunteering your time, just on the kind of, you know, the spare hours you've got. And that's for a couple of reasons. So one is just that I think the biggest ways to have an impact are benefiting the poorest people in the world. And for them, like, you know, additional volunteer hours, you know, it's easier to kind of volunteer in the local community. Also though, just being a volunteer like costs charities as well as benefits them because it requires management and so on and overheads. And actually anecdotally, I know of some charities that they only take volunteer, they think of volunteers as a kind of short-term cost, but a potential long-term benefit

• 29:28Speaker 01

  because those volunteers tend to donate to them. And so it's actually because they're more likely to donate, they take those volunteers. So I think there are some good opportunities, but I think it's hard to like directly volunteer for the charity to have a really big impact. With your donations, I mean, the standard that I promote is 10%. And that often seems like quite a lot to people, but I think there's a couple of ways of kind of mitigating that. So one is especially if you're going to make a kind of commitment like this earlier on in life. Then you never need to go backwards in terms of your income. You can just say, okay, well, as my income rises, I'll give a kind of larger percentage until I hit this 10%.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  And that means that, you know, I never feel like I've, you know, lost out or taken a step back. And then the other thing is just, I think people do underestimate or overestimate the benefits of income and underestimate the benefits of giving. And so average American gives about 2%, but I'd love to see 10% becoming this kind of social standard. And then the final thing is, I'd love to see, you know, people thinking about their whole careers as well as kind of more like an ethical choice. Because at the moment, I think people think, you know, people don't even think about it as just something that's important for the world in terms of what career they pursue.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  I mean, sometimes people do, but often they don't. And I'd love to think of, to see a kind of social norm change where people start thinking of making a difference as one of these obvious like things that go into a career decision in the same way that, you know, your salary or your location is when you're choosing a career. And I think partly that doesn't happen just because people don't really know what that involves, the way, different ways you can have an impact. And that's, so I set up this other charity, 80,000 Hours, that provides advice on this. Its aim is just to help people make those decisions so that they can pursue whatever career will enable them to have a much bigger social impact.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious now, you know, it sounds like making the maximum amount of impact we can possibly is essentially working with third world countries. What do you say to people that say, well, there's a lot of bad things happening, you know, I live in Los Angeles, so let's just use this as an example.

• 31:52Lewis Howes?

  So what about people who would say, well, I live in Los Angeles and, you know, two miles away, there's a lot of crime and homelessness and this and that. Should I be neglecting my community to serve a community that I don't even know?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Yeah. So I think. Again, there's a couple of things to say. So um one thing when I kind of recommend people giving to, you know, the very poorest people in the world, it's often not actually saying like, because these people have even worse problems like, I actually think that for the people who are really the least privileged members of um uh the US like, homeless or suffering from mental health and substance abuse, their lives are just actually really pretty bad.

• 32:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  The question is just on like, how tractable a problem is this and how neglected is it? So the US spends about two trillion dollars a year on um kind of welfare um payments in order to like try and, you know, help the poor in that own country. And that's, you know, say, tens of millions of people. Total overseas development spending is only two hundred and fifty billion dollars, so a tenth as much. And that's to try and improve the lives of two billion people.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  And that like a really big difference in terms of how many resources are already being allocated to help these different problems. And so again, it's this question of not just kind of who's the most in need, but um how much of an impact am I actually going to make kind of on the margin? Yeah, with respect to kind of, you know, should we be helping our own communities versus internationally? I feel like it's a kind of double jeopardy thing if we think we should privilege the our home communities where these people have been unlucky to be born into this country with without like inhabited wealth, without good institutions where they can be economically productive. And then we're going to say, oh, and then also you don't get our help because we're going to benefit the people who are close to us, who are

• 33:44Speaker 01

  comparatively kind of much better off. Uh and so that is something I'd really like encourage people to kind of think about and appreciate. And um especially because, you know, if you happen to go to one of these places and get to know the people, you know, you'd find you'd feel exactly the same kind of bonds of loyalty.

• 34:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  And it seems kind of arbitrary if it's the mere fact that you've kind of never been there doesn't, you know, means that you don't have, you know. Like obligations or reasons to help them.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  When someone is going to support a charity or nonprofit, uh, you know, I'm on the board of a, a, a organization called Pencils of Promise that builds schools for kids around the world. And um, I support Charity Water as well and a few other organizations here in the U S. When, when someone is looking to donate or they find an attraction to an organization, what do you think are like the, the key things that you would want them to look for? Maybe they don't have time to research too much, but like here are the two or three things that you should look out at. And if they, they meet these criteria, then cool, it's probably a good donation. Obviously there's probably no perfect charity. So what are those two or three things? And then also, what are the two or three organizations that you think are doing an incredible job and making the maximum impact?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, fantastic. So um, in terms of the questions, I think divide it into three. So one is the program that the charity works on. So is it working within a cause that's very important, um, that's potentially tractable? You can make progress on it and at least comparatively neglected. Does the charity have evidence behind um, the program that it's implementing? Um, you know, has it kind of looked at research? And then is it doing kind of self-evaluation as it's going along? Is it trying to conduct like high quality studies in order to ensure that it's actually having the impact it's aiming to do? The second is then like, think about the kind of operational ability of the organization.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Is it being led with people who have like, you know, great experience and background? Is it led by leaders in the field? Is the organization very transparent about um, what it's doing, including the mistakes it's making? Because nonprofits go off and get away with, you know, not having to be very transparent, but any organizations can be making mistakes. And if it's being open about that, that's actually a really good sign. And then the third question, which is often overlooked, is just what's this charity actually going to do with additional money? So you might have gotten a sense of, okay, how much, what it's done with money that's spent in the past, but maybe it's just, you know, actually got, received an awful lot of donations recently and additional money that you're going to give to it isn't going to have that

• 36:24Speaker 01

  same level of impact as been had in the past. So for example, it's hard to fund, you can't really fund polio eradication now, not because polio vaccination isn't incredibly effective, it is, but just because Gates is already in there, any additional attempts there is just not going to have a really big impact. And then in terms of the charities that I'd really recommend very highly, so one is the Against Malaria Foundation, distributes bed nets, costs five dollars per bed net, about three and a half thousand dollars will save a life. Two, so sadly, the best charities often have the worst names, so I apologize in advance. The two deworming charities called Deworm the World, and then this is a really bad

• 37:06Speaker 01

  one, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, or SCI, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. And they run programs that on mass distribute deworming drugs to cure children of these parasitic worms that prevent them from going to school and then in later life. You know, there've been long run studies showing that this leads to increased productivity, increased earnings later in life. And then the final charity is called GiveDirectly, and this is great if you think, if you're particularly skeptical of white knights thinking that they can do loads of good to help others in poorer countries, it just simply transfers cash to the poorest people in the world.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Typically transfers about one year's income to people who are not really living below that poverty line. And you might worry, well, how's this money going to be spent and so on? But this is actually one of the most evidence-based programs there is. And it turns out that what people tend, people tend to spend money pretty well, actually. Typically, they invest it in assets. So that means buying livestock or buying a tin roof rather than a thatch roof, because a thatch roof you have to replace every couple of years, whereas a tin roof lasts for much longer. And so it's actually, they get these incredible returns on investment, something like 14% return per year, much better than you could get investing in a bank and. The US, the UK.

• 38:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, that's this very simple program that's really been blowing up as well. So those are the four I recommend.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  I love it. Well, I want to, I want to ask you two final questions. Before I do, where can we go to learn more about this book and get access to this?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Great. So learn more and sign up to the newsletter as well at effective altruism.com. And there you can check out the book. If you sign up to the newsletter, you'll get a free chapter. Advising you and having a big impact through your career based on another search of 80,000 hours. But that's effective altruism.com.

• 39:09Lewis Howes?

  Love that.

• 39:11Lewis Howes?

  Question that I ask, these two final questions I ask everyone at the end of my podcast. The first one is the three truths question. So if, if your book was gone and all the work you've done has, had been gone. And you got to leave one final piece of paper behind. That was the three truths that you've learned from everything you've done in your life. And this was your final message to the world. What would the three truths be for you that you've learned about life?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  That's a terrific question.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  So I think the first would be.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  If you're earning above about $30,000 per year. Then you're in the richest couple of percent of the world's population. And that gives you this incredible ability to do good.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Number two would be.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  By spending your money wisely, donating to charities recommended by give well.org. You have the power to save a person's life every single year of your life. And then the third would be you have 80,000 hours of working life. Even just spend of, yeah, 80,000 hours working in your life. Even just spending 5% of that time trying to work out how you should spend the rest is. Two, working at years of life. This is a huge decision and you should be spending a lot more time than you probably are. In order to work out how you can use your time as effectively as possible.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Well, before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Will, for the service you're outing to the world and how you're constantly working and researching and diving in and creating this type of content and information so that people like myself and everyone listening can learn how they can make a maximum impact on the world. So I want to acknowledge you for all the hard work you're doing and I appreciate everything you're up to.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Thanks so much. I mean, it's a pleasure.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And the, the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Uh, I feel like I'm obliged to give a definition, but I think this definition, but I'd define greatness as the difference you make to the world. So that's how many people, uh, how many people's lives have you touched and by how much have you improved their lives, both now and in the long run into the future?

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  Will MacAskill, thanks so much for coming on, my friend. I appreciate it.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Great. Thanks so much for having me.

• 41:52Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed this. It's weartrim.com, W E A R T R I M dot com. And your clothing for men, I'm telling you, I just need to wear them all the time. So if you have a nice function, a nice event, that's also casual, check out the website. You'll see what I'm talking about when you go to weartrim.com greatness 20. So check it out at weartrim.com. Thank you, guys, again, so much. We got the podcast in the top 30 in the world last week. So thank you, guys, for supporting, for listening, for subscribing, for leaving a review. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.