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The Best Book I've Ever Read about Morality

2022-08-16 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali, William MacAskill · recording, 12:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Work and career (also: Books and reading, Goals, purpose and life design, Money and investing) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, AI

In a Book Club episode on William MacAskill's What We Owe the Future, which he calls the most impactful book he has read, Ali goes through its three points: future people matter, we may live at one of the most important times in history, and individuals can help the future go well through their careers and giving.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: What We Owe the Future, Will MacAskill and the three key points

  • ★★★ Ali calls What We Owe the Future by moral philosopher William MacAskill the single most impactful book he has ever read. — 00:00:00
  • ★ William MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and helped create the effective altruism movement, which uses reason and evidence to find the best ways to help others. — 00:00:00 · University of Oxford
  • ★★ William MacAskill's ideas changed Ali's life: in 2019 he took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate 10% of his income every year to cost-effective charities. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Ali says the core argument of What We Owe the Future is that we should be concerned about people who will live in the future and take their interests seriously. — 00:00:29
  • ★ Ali discusses What We Owe the Future in an episode of Book Club, his ongoing series distilling highlights and summaries of his favourite books. — 00:00:29 · Book Club · first in: 2021-12-09, The Book That Changed My Financial Life 🤑
  • ★★ Ali, following What We Owe the Future, says Homo sapiens has existed for about 300,000 years and farmed for about 10,000; a typical mammalian species lasts about a million years, which would leave humans another 700,000. — 00:00:58

00:01:04 — The future is big and future people matter

  • ★★★ If the future goes well, Ali says, humanity could last many millions or billions of years, so people alive now are probably among the first 1% of humans and 99% are yet to be born. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ William MacAskill argues that future people matter: harms and benefits to people a hundred or a thousand years from now count, because distance in time matters no more than distance in space. — 00:02:20
  • ★★ William MacAskill says the mere fact that someone will exist at a later date does not change their moral status: preventing a future genocide matters as much as preventing one now. — 00:02:48
  • ★★★ Ali concludes that we should care about the lives of people born in the future, and because 99% of humanity is not yet born, our actions now could affect their lives for better or worse. — 00:03:17

00:03:35 — We might be living at one of the most important times in human history

  • ★★★ The second point of What We Owe the Future, Ali says, is that we might be living at one of the most important times in all of human history. (hedged) — 00:03:35
  • ★★ Ali says world economic output took off with the Industrial Revolution: in the last 250 or so years humanity made unprecedented progress, including, in the last 50 to 60 years, the capacity to destroy itself. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ William MacAskill says the atomic bomb had about 1,000 times the destructive power of conventional weapons. — 00:03:47
  • ★★★ William MacAskill finds engineered pandemics the scariest risk: a virus deliberately engineered to be destructive, with the fatality rate of Ebola and the infectiousness of measles, could make pandemics much worse. — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Ali says fast-evolving technologies such as biotechnology, bioweapons and artificial intelligence could, if misused or badly developed, cause very bad problems for humanity and even its extinction. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Ali argues that if even a tiny share of people are unhinged and technology makes bioweapons ever easier to develop, humanity has a real problem that could change the course of civilisation unless something is done. — 00:05:46
  • ★★ Ali recommends The Precipice by Toby Ord, a great book on other risks to humanity, including moral value lock-in. — 00:05:46
  • ★★ Ali calls What We Owe the Future a surprisingly cheerful and optimistic book about what we can do about these risks. — 00:06:15

00:06:39 — We can do something to ensure the future goes well: careers and 80,000 Hours

  • ★★ The third point of What We Owe the Future: individuals can help the future go well; Ali compares it to preparing for a risky expedition into uncharted territory with the right clothing, maps and water purification tablets. — 00:06:39
  • ★★★ The first thing you can do, Ali says following What We Owe the Future, is choose your career so that it has maximum impact. — 00:07:14
  • ★★ Ali says most experts see a risk that artificial intelligence could eclipse human intelligence in the next 50 to 100 years, with unknown consequences. — 00:07:14
    • a number in question (doubtful): "somewhere between 10 and 50" — check against the recording
  • ★★★ Ali says that as of 2020 about 40,000 people worked on making AI more powerful, amid an AI arms race between the US, Russia and China, while only around 300 researched how to make AI safer. — 00:07:43 · United States
  • ★★ Ali suggests that a computer scientist, engineer, software developer or mathematician looking for impactful work could have a huge impact by shifting their career towards reducing the risk that AI destroys us. — 00:08:24
  • ★★ A doctor has a lot of impact saving one life at a time, Ali says, but can have a potentially far larger impact by working in pandemic prevention research. — 00:08:24
  • ★★★ Ali recommends 80,000 Hours, a London-based nonprofit co-founded by William MacAskill, whose free resources help people find careers that maximise their impact while staying fulfilled. — 00:08:53 · London
  • ★★ Ali recommends 80,000 Hours' newsletter on impactful careers and its free one-to-one career advice call. — 00:09:22
  • ★★ Ali has had one of 80,000 Hours' free career calls and found it fantastic; the service is free because the nonprofit is funded by effective altruism funds such as Open Philanthropy. — 00:09:52
  • ★ 80,000 Hours is named for the hours of a career: a 40-hour week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. — 00:09:52

00:10:21 — Spreading the ideas and donating to effective, underfunded causes

  • ★★ By spreading the ideas of What We Owe the Future, Ali hopes to get more people interested in the long term, which means more impact through his YouTube channel. — 00:10:21
  • ★★★ Ali recommends donating to more effective causes, for example by taking the Giving What We Can pledge to give 10% of your income every year, which he and many others do. — 00:10:21
  • ★★★ Ali says causes that can affect both the present day and the long-term future, such as AI safety and pandemic prevention, are very underfunded. — 00:10:50
  • ★★ Ali recommends GiveWell, a nonprofit charity evaluator that analyses the cost-effectiveness of charities, so you can give to funds or charities that do the most good. — 00:10:50

00:11:19 — Why read the book, and the full podcast conversation with Will MacAskill

  • ★★★ Ali calls What We Owe the Future very readable and says it completely changed how he sees the world and its problems, as if his brain had a software level-up. — 00:11:19
  • ★★ Ali had a three-hour conversation with William MacAskill on his podcast, where they discuss the ideas in more detail, along with being a philosophy professor and productivity hacks. — 00:11:19 · Deep Dive

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 80,000 Hours · What We Owe the Future · William MacAskill

Also: People: Toby Ord

Projects: Book Club · Deep Dive

Works: The Precipice

Organizations: GiveWell · Giving What We Can · Open Philanthropy · University of Oxford

Concepts: AI safety · artificial intelligence · effective altruism · pandemic prevention

Places: China · London · Russia · United States

Also centred on What We Owe the Future: 15 Incredible Books to Read in 2026

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