https://samharris.org/podcasts/being-good-and-doing-good/
In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Oxford philosopher William MacAskill about effective altruism, moral illusions, existential risk, and other topics.
William MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was educated at Cambridge, Princeton, and Oxford. He is one of the primary voices in a movement in philanthropy known as “effective altruism” and the cofounder of three non-profits based on effective altruist principles: Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. William is the author of Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference.
I really enjoyed this conversation between Sam and William, especially the parts of the discussion where they explore some of the areas where our moral intuitions fail us. This is most salient for me when they talk about how we’re hardwired to privilege the needs of our in-group, driven by empathy, and how a more consistent view of morality introduces different – and counterintuitive – ways of framing some ethical problems.
A lot of the conversation reminds me of Paul Bloom’s Against empathy: The case for rational compassion, which advocates for similar positions with respect to how we value the needs of others, and how our commitment to empathy could break down in some circumstances.