New website on careers for optimal philanthropy

8 Post author: lukeprog 22 November 2011 08:06PM

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.

Comments (8)

Comment author: rjshade 23 November 2011 02:05:01PM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 November 2011 02:13:43PM 2 points [-]

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

Comment author: Grognor 24 November 2011 01:35:56AM 1 point [-]

This for sure. Also has too many long silences.

Comment author: nebulous 23 November 2011 06:33:36AM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: lukeprog 23 November 2011 09:38:37AM 7 points [-]

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

Comment author: nebulous 25 November 2011 03:56:02AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: arundelo 25 November 2011 04:51:26AM *  2 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: nebulous 25 November 2011 10:07:18PM 0 points [-]

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.