Take a look around you. Whether that be your TV broadcasting the high inflation levels which the central bank has presented, abc.net.au (or simply just your news tab on your phone)’s brief rundown of Covid updates, and or perhaps the mess that your dog made on your carpet this morning that you needed to clean, there are always things that go on in our everyday lives which demand attention. 

Now, I want you to take a step back. Instead of focusing on what we can or can’t buy with the extra money we have, we may consider what those in second or third world countries fail to even have access to. Instead of focusing on the vaccination percentage, we may focus on biosecurity, and the implications that it may pose towards us. The point is, we have much larger rocks that are looming over our heads. But before I continue, I would like to acknowledge that this article was inspired by 80,000 hours (Benjamin Todd). If you haven’t given it a read, I really suggest it — it’s an engaging book with a conversational tone which presents a unique and helpful outlook on navigating careers, effective altruism, and just making a difference in general. 

I’m sure you could recall a time where you may have done some research, given a speech, or being curious about “curing world hunger”, or “solving global challenges” when you were younger. But ever so slowly, as more shenanigans have crept into our personal lives, naturally, these ideals start to wane. After all, these issues are massive. They’re often unrealistic. And they’re often already worked upon by so many international and national (and local) organisations and governments already. So … Why should we care? 

I like to view time as an hourglass. A giant one which leaks sand very, very slowly. But here’s the catch. Normally, we look at the hourglass from the outside. But this time, imagine you are INSIDE the hourglass. Every second that goes by, some sand falls next to you. But it’s so large that you don’t notice it. These global priorities are like cracks in the class ceiling. Do we need to seal them now? No. Will there be any consequences if we don’t in the foreseeable future? Probably not. But do they have the potential to cause a substantial degree of harm to us? Most certainly yes. In the words of Tim Urban (who gave one of the most memorable TED talks on procrastination), the sneakiest trick is when the deadlines aren’t there. And that’s exactly the case here. So whether you are 12, 21, 47, 94 or 117 (ok, maybe not the last two), you have the capacity to think ahead and make a difference — because the world needs people like you. 

80,000 hours outlines a few global priorities, including land use reform, biosecurity, climate change and more. However, the three I believe are most critical for us are global priorities research, promoting effective altruism, and risks posed by artificial intelligence (coincidentally also the highest rated). Note that these are just my personal opinions (and it’s certainly not to say that any other issue is less important).  

Let’s start with global priorities research. Put simply — how do we decide which issues we need to solve? After all, our total spending on “improving our world” is around 500 billion — and that’s nowhere near enough to combat the hundreds, even thousands of priorities we are looking towards. Currently, this is quite neglected, only receiving about 1 to 10 million dollars of funding annually. For a comparison, health in poor countries receives over 1000 times that amount. Although the method of research i.e. how this research will actually be conducted is rather ambiguous, the ultimate goal of global priority research is to improve our decision making, so that when we do choose a path to invest in, we do as much good as possible. 

This leads perfectly to the second issue — promoting effective altruism. Firstly, I would like you to take this quiz: https://80000hours.org/articles/can-you-guess/. What is it? It’s a list of 10 programs that have been done, which have all aimed to significantly improve quality of life, crime rates etc. In each case, there was either a negative, positive, or no effect on the targeted behaviours. The thing is, if you do the quiz, you’ll find out that we are TERRIBLE at judging the impacts of various policies. When I first did it a few weeks ago, I received a score of 5/10. When I did it AGAIN a few weeks later, my score did not show much of a difference. The point is, we can’t just do good. We need to do good, and then show that what we are doing is actually doing good. It’s estimated that at full potential, we could save 100 million to 1 billion years of life annually, by causing just 10-100 billion to be spent on more effective projects. 

Finally, risks of artificial intelligence. The truth is, computers are becoming smarter and smarter. And what they can do it better and better. In chess, the highest computers are rated over 3500. The highest humans are just over 2800. Computers can execute thousands of lines of code in just a second (oftentimes even less). We can’t even read all of it, or understand it. While this sounds super drastic, our risk of extinction from AI over the next 200 years exceeds 10% (i.e. we will lose control). While it does sound scary, and many solutions are extremely technical, increased awareness such as through posts like these definitely mitigates this risk. 

In the next post, I’ll expand more about how we can make a difference as both individuals and communities. If you have any opinions, please feel free to comment below.