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Making Sense with Sam Harris

#44 — Being Good and Doing Good

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.629.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2016

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Oxford philosopher William MacAskill about effective altruism, moral illusions, existential risk, and other topics.

SUBSCRIBE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at samharris.org/subscribe.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

0:12.1

hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing

0:16.2

the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

0:20.7

Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed

0:26.1

to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads

0:31.2

on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.

0:35.8

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

0:46.8

Today I'm speaking to William McCaskill. Will is an associate professor in philosophy at Lincoln

0:52.6

College Oxford. He was educated at Cambridge Princeton and Oxford. He may in fact be the youngest

0:59.9

tenured professor of philosophy in the world, and he's one of the primary voices in a movement

1:06.0

in philanthropy known as effective altruism, a movement which he started with a friend.

1:12.6

And he's the co-founder of three non-profits based on effective altruist principles,

1:18.4

giving what we can, 80,000 hours, and the center for effective altruism. He's also the author of a book,

1:26.6

which I just started reading, which is really good, and the title is Doing Good Better,

1:32.3

Effective altruism, and a radical new way to make a difference. And there is no question that

1:37.7

Will is making a difference. If you don't have two hours to spend on our whole conversation,

1:43.2

which I absolutely loved, please listen to the last few minutes of this podcast so that you

1:50.1

at least know the tangible effect the conversation had on me. And now I give you Will McCaskill.

2:02.0

Well, I'm here with Will McCaskill. Will, thanks for coming on the podcast.

2:05.5

Thanks for having me. I first heard about you when you did your appearance on Tim Ferris'

2:11.0

podcast, and that was a great interview, by the way. And I'm now in the habit, sorry, Tim,

2:16.2

of poaching your podcast guests. There's a third time I've done this. I did it with

...

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