what’s the world’s most pressing problem
this question is surprisingly difficult
to answer
you’d imagine there was a ranking
somewhere where he could simply look up
the results because this question seems
to be among the most important ones we
can ask ourselves as a civilization so
it’s quite problems but how often do we
stop and ask ourselves which ones
deserve my attention and which ones
don’t
the critical importance of this question
is illustrated by the story of this man
James or Ben ski James urban ski was
head of mission for medicine so for Tiye
or Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda in
1994 the same year that the genocide
broke out in the small African nation
later Pinsky described the chaos he was
thrown into as follows quote there were
so many and they kept coming patients
were taped with the one two or three on
their foreheads one meant treat now two
meant treat within 24 hours and three
meant irretrievable the threes were
moved to the small hill by the road side
opposite the emergency room and left to
die in as much comfort as could be
mustered for them they were covered with
blankets to stay warm and given water
and whatever morphine we had the ones
were carried by a stretcher to the
emergency room and the entrance area
around it the twos were placed in groups
behind the ones I don’t envy James or
Vince key for the situation he found
himself in nobody does he couldn’t save
everybody he couldn’t help
everybody because his resources were
severely limited he didn’t have enough
time he didn’t have enough staff you
didn’t have enough medical supplies and
there were so many who needed his help
so he stopped he took a step back and
assess the situation he prioritized and
in this he’s not alone
this practice which is called triage is
common in emergency situations it’s
described in manuals for first
responders in disaster relief it’s
commonly used in emergency rooms across
the globe it’s also the reason why we
need to ask ourselves the question
what’s the most pressing problem in the
world because fundamentally we’re in a
very similar situation to James or Vince
key whether we like it or not when we
look at the world outside there’s many
things that are a lot closer to the
chaos that James or Vince key described
then we want to contemplate during our
everyday lives war famine disasters to
name just a few of the catastrophes that
still claimed the lives of tens of
thousands of people every year we also
cannot help everybody our resources are
also limited we don’t have enough time
we don’t have enough money so we also
have to stop we have to step back and
assess the situation to save as many
lives as we possibly can given the
circumstances we have to prioritize and
this might sound cold-hearted at first
but really it’s the opposite this
approach Springs from a well of deep
compassion within us
it’s the Steep compassion that led James
or Vince key to be and one in 1994 in
the first place it’s the Steep
compassion that led him to try to save
as many lives as he could and it’s this
deep compassion that leads us that leads
me to asking the question what’s the
world’s most pressing problem and when
faced with such a huge challenge with
such a big question were tempted to just
use our
judgment but that would be dangerous
we’d risk subjecting human lives to her
own very arbitrary whims because our gut
is used to do many things but it’s not
used to dealing with problems on a
global scale our answers would be skewed
by a whole array of cognitive biases our
gut things a problem is more important
because we simply hear about it more
often and in a sensationalist media
landscape that’s a very poor guide to
decision-making our gut also doesn’t
discriminate very well between large
numbers 1 million victim 1 billion
victims who cares it’s just many victims
which is clearly dangerous as a result
our gut things shark attacks are the
most dangerous thing in the world as
opposed to car accidents which the
statistics clearly don’t bear out not by
a long shot so how can we prioritize
better given that the stakes are so huge
there’s now a growing movement of young
people who have dedicated themselves to
answering this exact question
we call ourselves effective altruists
because we want to help solve these big
challenges but how do we find them how
can we decide between all of these
problems that we find in the world
effective altruists suggests we should
look at three criteria when judging
global problems scale tractability and
neglected miss when looking at scale we
have to ask ourselves how many people
are affected by this problem how
severely the reasoning is quite
straightforward we’d rather want to
solve a big problem than a small problem
the second criterion is tractability
here we ask questions such as are there
already proven solutions how costly is
it to implement them again the reasoning
is quite straightforward if there’s a
big problem but there is nothing we can
do about it why invest even more
resources and lastly there is neglected
Ness here we want to ask questions such
as how many people are already working
on solving this problem how much money
is used into the solutions that we
already
because if your people are working on a
given problem it becomes comparatively
more important that we invest our own
time and our own money into solving it
and equipped with this framework we can
again look at the question I posed at
the beginning of this talk what’s the
world’s most pressing problem an
effective altruists have come up with
some priorities but you should treat
them with some caution because there’s
still some uncertainty involved the
first one they suggest is global health
let’s look at scale first according to
the w-h-o there are about five million
people in developing countries who die
from diseases that we can easily prevent
or treat illnesses such as hiv/aids
malaria tuberculosis and diarrheal
diseases and as I said we can easily
prevent or treat them and often these
interventions are incredibly cheap a bed
net that prevents malaria by keeping out
mosquitoes at night costs only five
dollars incredibly low amount if you
think about it it’s also a neglected
which is illustrated by the fact that
still every day 15,000 people die from
diseases we can easily remedy it’s also
illustrated by the fact that there’s a
whole class of diseases that affect over
a billion people worldwide which is
still known as neglected tropical
diseases the second priority that
effective altruists propose is factory
farming I think there’s a good case that
this is even more pressing let’s look at
scale according to the FAO there are
around 50 billion land animals that are
raised and slaughtered within the
factory farming system every year that’s
about 10 times the entire global human
population every year this dwarves the
scale of global health I sketched
earlier we also know the solutions quite
frankly we can convince people to reduce
their meat consumption we can make it
easier for people to become vegan we can
develop technological solutions like
clean meat so we don’t have to raise
animals for animal products anymore
but interestingly it’s even more
neglected than global health we invest
only twenty million dollars into
implementing the solutions I just
mentioned that pales in comparison to
thirty five billion we invest into
interventions dedicated to global health
now I know what you’re thinking not
everybody believes that non-human
animals deserve moral consideration but
if you’re even a little bit unsure the
current system is clearly reckless from
a risk management perspective when so
many lives when so much suffering is on
the line I think we want to err on the
side of caution
the third proposed priority are what are
commonly referred to as global
catastrophic risks what do I mean by
this think of climate change nuclear
disasters pandemics or certain risks
from artificial intelligence basically
any events or developments that threaten
not just the existence in welfare of
individuals alive right now but of
generations down the line
this makes the scale truly enormous
because future generations outnumber the
present one by a lot almost by necessity
now it’s true the solutions to these or
or less obvious are less clear than the
ones to the other problems I mentioned
earlier but also some of these are
comparatively very much neglected we
only invest about 10 million dollars
every year into ensuring the safety of
artificial intelligence a paltry amount
in the greater scheme of things at least
and yes the likelihood of some of these
occurring is quite low but again
remember the risk management perspective
it’s quite reckless because it only
takes one politician to trigger nuclear
war so again we don’t want to play with
fire but why am I telling you all of
this the problems I just a light sound
more like the jobs for governments
rather than individuals but the truth is
you can make a dent in these huge
problems
this sounds like hubris at first but I
need you to drop some of your modesty at
this point you should tell yourself yes
I will solve this huge problem this
attitude is sometimes frowned upon by
society because huge achievements are
supposed to just fall into your lap but
dedication and effort do make a
difference
and individuals even obscure ones can
change the world take Victor Stan off
for example who you might ask this
fairly unknown you create ukrainian man
he was a deputy health minister in the
soviet union and it was his lobbying
efforts that led to the adoption of the
smallpox eradication program by the
World Health Assembly in 1959 when this
goal was finally achieved in 1980 and
smallpox was eradicated the disease had
claimed over 400 million lives in the
20th century alone I would have gone on
to claim the lives of many more people
so arguably this unknown Ukrainian man
has done the most good for Humanity in
the 20th century so whenever you think I
can’t make a difference think of Victor
Stan of who’s been lost to obscurity
unfortunately now you won’t solve any of
the problems in your free time we will
all have to make it our jobs to tackle
them quite literally if you look at this
pie chart it becomes quite clear that we
spend most of our time at work at least
during our most productive years eight
point eight hours on average so unless
we can somehow Han is the second biggest
chunk which is sleep to saving lives we
will have to make do with our day jobs
if you add it all together eight point
eight hours per day five days per week
and so on you end up with around eighty
thousand hours during your lifetime that
you spend in your careers eighty
thousand hours in light of the problems
I mentioned earlier I should probably
say only eighty thousand dollars
so really need to come up with smart
ways of going about this gargantuan task
and the most crucial insight I can share
with regard to that is the following
gain leverage when the problems are so
huge we need to leverage a lot of
resources to make a dent in them if you
tried vaccinating all children
personally $80,000 would simply not be
enough not by a long shot but what do I
mean by leverage basically anything that
multiply is your own time your own
resources in some way that makes money a
source of leverage because you can pay
other people to help you solve a problem
you find important that’s certainly what
Bill Gates did with his fortune now it
doesn’t have to be your own money you
can also leverage the money of an
institution through a political office
or through working at a big foundation a
public platform can also be considered
leverage when people listen to you you
have a lot of influence over them you
can put problems on the agenda that had
been neglected before you can convince
other people to invest their own time
and money into problems you find a
potent take this TEDx talk for example
because arguably the biggest problem in
the world is that not enough people
think in these terms about the world a
third form of leverage is research when
you find a novel solution to a
particular problem you multiply the
efforts and impact of everybody else
working on that problem take Norman
Borlaug for example he was an American
agronomist who developed high-yield
disease resistant wheat varieties they
were crucial to what’s now known as the
Green Revolution without his work
roughly a billion people would have
found themselves without food during the
1980s for this he was later awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize so research can really
be crucial and tackling some of these
huge problems but what should you do
simply put use your comparative
advantage
figure out what you’re good at what you
excel it and use it to make a big
difference in the world
somebody’s good at talking to it
convincing other people somebody else is
glad when they can step into the
laboratory and don’t have to deal with
other people and somebody else might
simply be good at you know making lots
of money and hopefully donating it to a
good cause afterwards when we want to
have a shot at solving any of these big
problems we will need all hands on deck
quite frankly luckily you won’t be alone
when you dedicate yourself to tackling
these problems you will find a whole
group a whole movement of effective
altruists working beside you and if even
a single individual can make such a big
difference the possibilities of a group
of dedicated individuals who share the
same goal are quite straight are quite
staggering so let’s start today thank
you
you
this question is surprisingly difficult
to answer
you’d imagine there was a ranking
somewhere where he could simply look up
the results because this question seems
to be among the most important ones we
can ask ourselves as a civilization so
it’s quite problems but how often do we
stop and ask ourselves which ones
deserve my attention and which ones
don’t
the critical importance of this question
is illustrated by the story of this man
James or Ben ski James urban ski was
head of mission for medicine so for Tiye
or Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda in
1994 the same year that the genocide
broke out in the small African nation
later Pinsky described the chaos he was
thrown into as follows quote there were
so many and they kept coming patients
were taped with the one two or three on
their foreheads one meant treat now two
meant treat within 24 hours and three
meant irretrievable the threes were
moved to the small hill by the road side
opposite the emergency room and left to
die in as much comfort as could be
mustered for them they were covered with
blankets to stay warm and given water
and whatever morphine we had the ones
were carried by a stretcher to the
emergency room and the entrance area
around it the twos were placed in groups
behind the ones I don’t envy James or
Vince key for the situation he found
himself in nobody does he couldn’t save
everybody he couldn’t help
everybody because his resources were
severely limited he didn’t have enough
time he didn’t have enough staff you
didn’t have enough medical supplies and
there were so many who needed his help
so he stopped he took a step back and
assess the situation he prioritized and
in this he’s not alone
this practice which is called triage is
common in emergency situations it’s
described in manuals for first
responders in disaster relief it’s
commonly used in emergency rooms across
the globe it’s also the reason why we
need to ask ourselves the question
what’s the most pressing problem in the
world because fundamentally we’re in a
very similar situation to James or Vince
key whether we like it or not when we
look at the world outside there’s many
things that are a lot closer to the
chaos that James or Vince key described
then we want to contemplate during our
everyday lives war famine disasters to
name just a few of the catastrophes that
still claimed the lives of tens of
thousands of people every year we also
cannot help everybody our resources are
also limited we don’t have enough time
we don’t have enough money so we also
have to stop we have to step back and
assess the situation to save as many
lives as we possibly can given the
circumstances we have to prioritize and
this might sound cold-hearted at first
but really it’s the opposite this
approach Springs from a well of deep
compassion within us
it’s the Steep compassion that led James
or Vince key to be and one in 1994 in
the first place it’s the Steep
compassion that led him to try to save
as many lives as he could and it’s this
deep compassion that leads us that leads
me to asking the question what’s the
world’s most pressing problem and when
faced with such a huge challenge with
such a big question were tempted to just
use our
judgment but that would be dangerous
we’d risk subjecting human lives to her
own very arbitrary whims because our gut
is used to do many things but it’s not
used to dealing with problems on a
global scale our answers would be skewed
by a whole array of cognitive biases our
gut things a problem is more important
because we simply hear about it more
often and in a sensationalist media
landscape that’s a very poor guide to
decision-making our gut also doesn’t
discriminate very well between large
numbers 1 million victim 1 billion
victims who cares it’s just many victims
which is clearly dangerous as a result
our gut things shark attacks are the
most dangerous thing in the world as
opposed to car accidents which the
statistics clearly don’t bear out not by
a long shot so how can we prioritize
better given that the stakes are so huge
there’s now a growing movement of young
people who have dedicated themselves to
answering this exact question
we call ourselves effective altruists
because we want to help solve these big
challenges but how do we find them how
can we decide between all of these
problems that we find in the world
effective altruists suggests we should
look at three criteria when judging
global problems scale tractability and
neglected miss when looking at scale we
have to ask ourselves how many people
are affected by this problem how
severely the reasoning is quite
straightforward we’d rather want to
solve a big problem than a small problem
the second criterion is tractability
here we ask questions such as are there
already proven solutions how costly is
it to implement them again the reasoning
is quite straightforward if there’s a
big problem but there is nothing we can
do about it why invest even more
resources and lastly there is neglected
Ness here we want to ask questions such
as how many people are already working
on solving this problem how much money
is used into the solutions that we
already
because if your people are working on a
given problem it becomes comparatively
more important that we invest our own
time and our own money into solving it
and equipped with this framework we can
again look at the question I posed at
the beginning of this talk what’s the
world’s most pressing problem an
effective altruists have come up with
some priorities but you should treat
them with some caution because there’s
still some uncertainty involved the
first one they suggest is global health
let’s look at scale first according to
the w-h-o there are about five million
people in developing countries who die
from diseases that we can easily prevent
or treat illnesses such as hiv/aids
malaria tuberculosis and diarrheal
diseases and as I said we can easily
prevent or treat them and often these
interventions are incredibly cheap a bed
net that prevents malaria by keeping out
mosquitoes at night costs only five
dollars incredibly low amount if you
think about it it’s also a neglected
which is illustrated by the fact that
still every day 15,000 people die from
diseases we can easily remedy it’s also
illustrated by the fact that there’s a
whole class of diseases that affect over
a billion people worldwide which is
still known as neglected tropical
diseases the second priority that
effective altruists propose is factory
farming I think there’s a good case that
this is even more pressing let’s look at
scale according to the FAO there are
around 50 billion land animals that are
raised and slaughtered within the
factory farming system every year that’s
about 10 times the entire global human
population every year this dwarves the
scale of global health I sketched
earlier we also know the solutions quite
frankly we can convince people to reduce
their meat consumption we can make it
easier for people to become vegan we can
develop technological solutions like
clean meat so we don’t have to raise
animals for animal products anymore
but interestingly it’s even more
neglected than global health we invest
only twenty million dollars into
implementing the solutions I just
mentioned that pales in comparison to
thirty five billion we invest into
interventions dedicated to global health
now I know what you’re thinking not
everybody believes that non-human
animals deserve moral consideration but
if you’re even a little bit unsure the
current system is clearly reckless from
a risk management perspective when so
many lives when so much suffering is on
the line I think we want to err on the
side of caution
the third proposed priority are what are
commonly referred to as global
catastrophic risks what do I mean by
this think of climate change nuclear
disasters pandemics or certain risks
from artificial intelligence basically
any events or developments that threaten
not just the existence in welfare of
individuals alive right now but of
generations down the line
this makes the scale truly enormous
because future generations outnumber the
present one by a lot almost by necessity
now it’s true the solutions to these or
or less obvious are less clear than the
ones to the other problems I mentioned
earlier but also some of these are
comparatively very much neglected we
only invest about 10 million dollars
every year into ensuring the safety of
artificial intelligence a paltry amount
in the greater scheme of things at least
and yes the likelihood of some of these
occurring is quite low but again
remember the risk management perspective
it’s quite reckless because it only
takes one politician to trigger nuclear
war so again we don’t want to play with
fire but why am I telling you all of
this the problems I just a light sound
more like the jobs for governments
rather than individuals but the truth is
you can make a dent in these huge
problems
this sounds like hubris at first but I
need you to drop some of your modesty at
this point you should tell yourself yes
I will solve this huge problem this
attitude is sometimes frowned upon by
society because huge achievements are
supposed to just fall into your lap but
dedication and effort do make a
difference
and individuals even obscure ones can
change the world take Victor Stan off
for example who you might ask this
fairly unknown you create ukrainian man
he was a deputy health minister in the
soviet union and it was his lobbying
efforts that led to the adoption of the
smallpox eradication program by the
World Health Assembly in 1959 when this
goal was finally achieved in 1980 and
smallpox was eradicated the disease had
claimed over 400 million lives in the
20th century alone I would have gone on
to claim the lives of many more people
so arguably this unknown Ukrainian man
has done the most good for Humanity in
the 20th century so whenever you think I
can’t make a difference think of Victor
Stan of who’s been lost to obscurity
unfortunately now you won’t solve any of
the problems in your free time we will
all have to make it our jobs to tackle
them quite literally if you look at this
pie chart it becomes quite clear that we
spend most of our time at work at least
during our most productive years eight
point eight hours on average so unless
we can somehow Han is the second biggest
chunk which is sleep to saving lives we
will have to make do with our day jobs
if you add it all together eight point
eight hours per day five days per week
and so on you end up with around eighty
thousand hours during your lifetime that
you spend in your careers eighty
thousand hours in light of the problems
I mentioned earlier I should probably
say only eighty thousand dollars
so really need to come up with smart
ways of going about this gargantuan task
and the most crucial insight I can share
with regard to that is the following
gain leverage when the problems are so
huge we need to leverage a lot of
resources to make a dent in them if you
tried vaccinating all children
personally $80,000 would simply not be
enough not by a long shot but what do I
mean by leverage basically anything that
multiply is your own time your own
resources in some way that makes money a
source of leverage because you can pay
other people to help you solve a problem
you find important that’s certainly what
Bill Gates did with his fortune now it
doesn’t have to be your own money you
can also leverage the money of an
institution through a political office
or through working at a big foundation a
public platform can also be considered
leverage when people listen to you you
have a lot of influence over them you
can put problems on the agenda that had
been neglected before you can convince
other people to invest their own time
and money into problems you find a
potent take this TEDx talk for example
because arguably the biggest problem in
the world is that not enough people
think in these terms about the world a
third form of leverage is research when
you find a novel solution to a
particular problem you multiply the
efforts and impact of everybody else
working on that problem take Norman
Borlaug for example he was an American
agronomist who developed high-yield
disease resistant wheat varieties they
were crucial to what’s now known as the
Green Revolution without his work
roughly a billion people would have
found themselves without food during the
1980s for this he was later awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize so research can really
be crucial and tackling some of these
huge problems but what should you do
simply put use your comparative
advantage
figure out what you’re good at what you
excel it and use it to make a big
difference in the world
somebody’s good at talking to it
convincing other people somebody else is
glad when they can step into the
laboratory and don’t have to deal with
other people and somebody else might
simply be good at you know making lots
of money and hopefully donating it to a
good cause afterwards when we want to
have a shot at solving any of these big
problems we will need all hands on deck
quite frankly luckily you won’t be alone
when you dedicate yourself to tackling
these problems you will find a whole
group a whole movement of effective
altruists working beside you and if even
a single individual can make such a big
difference the possibilities of a group
of dedicated individuals who share the
same goal are quite straight are quite
staggering so let’s start today thank
you
you
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