William MacAskill

William MacAskill
MacAskill in 2015
Born	William David Crouch (1987-03-24) 24 March 1987 (age 37) Glasgow, Scotland
Education	Jesus College, Cambridge (BA, 2008) St Edmund Hall, Oxford (BPhil, 2010) St Anne's College, Oxford (DPhil, 2014)
Spouse	Amanda Askell ​ (divorced)​ [1]
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
Institutions	Emmanuel College, Cambridge Lincoln College, Oxford Global Priorities Institute
Thesis	Normative Uncertainty (2014)
Doctoral advisors	Krister Bykvist John Broome
Main interests	Ethics political philosophy decision theory philosophy and economics^[citation needed] utilitarianism
Notable ideas	Effective altruism longtermism
Website	williammacaskill.com

William David MacAskill (né Crouch; born 24 March 1987)^[2] is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement.^[3][4][5] He was a Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford, co-founded Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours,^[6] and is the author of Doing Good Better (2015)^[7] and What We Owe the Future (2022),^[8] and the co-author of Moral Uncertainty (2020).^[9]

Early life and education

MacAskill was born William Crouch in 1987 and grew up in Glasgow.^[1][5][10] He was educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School in Glasgow.^[11] At the age of 15, after learning about how many people were dying as a result of AIDS, he made the decision to work towards becoming wealthy and giving away half of his money.^[12] At the age of 18, MacAskill read Peter Singer's 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", which motivated his philosophical and charitable interests.^[5]

MacAskill earned his BA in philosophy at Jesus College, Cambridge in 2008 and BPhil at St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 2010. He went on to be awarded a DPhil at St Anne's College, Oxford in 2014 (spending a year as a visiting student at Princeton University), supervised by John Broome and Krister Bykvist [sv].^{[citation needed]} He then took up a junior research fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,^[13] before being elected to an associate professorship at the University of Oxford in association with a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, which he left after one year.^[14]

Career

Effective altruism

In 2009, MacAskill and fellow Oxford graduate student Toby Ord co-founded the organisation Giving What We Can to encourage people to pledge to donate 10% of their income to charities "that you sincerely believe to be among the most effective at improving the lives of others".^[1][15] He co-founded the Centre for Effective Altruism in 2011 as an umbrella organisation of Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours,^[16] which he co-founded with Benjamin Todd, to provide advice on how to use one's career to do the most good in the world.^[1] In 2018, MacAskill gave a TED talk on effective altruism at the TED conference in Vancouver.^[17]

MacAskill has worked as chair of the advisory board at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford^[18] and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research.^[19] He is an advisor to Longview Philanthropy.^[20]

He was associated with Sam Bankman-Fried for a number of years and reportedly dismissed claims that Bankman-Fried was engaging in inappropriate conduct as a "he said-she said" during an effort in 2018 to oust Bankman-Fried from control of the now-failed trading firm Alameda Research.^[21] He was a member of the FTX Future Fund, which granted $160 million to effective altruism causes in 2022, including $33 million to organizations directly connected to MacAskill.^[21] Following the bankruptcy of FTX, MacAskill and the rest of the team resigned from the fund.^[22]

In 2022, as tech magnate Elon Musk sought funding for his purchase of Twitter, MacAskill liaised between Musk and Bankman-Fried. Musk and MacAskill were previously acquainted; Musk described What We Owe the Future as "a close match for my philosophy".^[23] MacAskill contacted Musk to arrange a conversation with Bankman-Fried, describing him as "my collaborator".^[21] Ultimately, Bankman-Fried, whose corporate ventures were facing a case, United States v. Bankman-Fried, did not participate in the acquisition.^[24]

Analytic philosophy

One of the main focuses of MacAskill's research has been how one ought to make decisions under normative uncertainty; this was the topic of his DPhil thesis,^[25] as well as articles in Ethics,^[26] Mind^[27] and The Journal of Philosophy.^[28]

Books

Doing Good Better

Main article: Doing Good Better

MacAskill's first book, Doing Good Better, was published in 2015.^{[29][30][31][32]} MacAskill argues that many of the ways people think about doing good achieve very little, but that by applying data and scientific reasoning to doing good, people can have a much larger positive impact. For example, the book proposes that fair trade does very little to help the poorest farmers, that boycotting sweatshops is bad for the global poor,^[30] and that people who pursue high-income careers could do more good than charity workers by donating large portions of their wealth to effective charities, i.e. earning to give.^[32] However, in the same year the book was published, MacAskill deemphasised earning to give, saying "only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term".^[33]

What We Owe the Future

Main article: What We Owe the Future

MacAskill's second book, What We Owe the Future, makes the case for longtermism.^{[34][35][36]: 35–36} His argument has three parts: first, future people count morally as much as the people alive today; second, the future is immense because humanity may survive for a very long time; and third, the future could be very good or very bad, and our actions could make the difference. The book also discusses how bad the end of humanity would be, which depends on whether the future will be good or bad and whether it is morally good for happy people to be born—a key question in population ethics. He concludes that the future will likely be positive on balance if humanity survives.^[36]

Personal life

MacAskill (born Crouch) argued that men should consider changing their last names when they get married. He and his now ex-wife, Amanda Askell, changed their last name to "MacAskill", her maternal grandmother's maiden name.^[37] MacAskill and his former wife authored articles together on topics of ethical debate^[38][39] before their separation in 2015 and later divorce.^[1]

MacAskill has experienced both anxiety and depression. As of 2022, he lives in Oxford.^[1] Out of concern for animal welfare, he is vegetarian.^[10][40]

References

1. Bajekal, Naina (10 August 2022). "Want to Do More Good? This Movement Might Have the Answer". Time. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
2. "Centre for Effective Altruism". Companies House. GOV.UK. Director's details changed for William David Crouch on 5 November 2013.
3. Thompson, Derek (15 June 2015). "The Greatest Good". The Atlantic. ISSN 1072-7825. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
4. Diver, Tony (1 March 2017). "While the papers whine about Oxbridge debauchery, student altruism gets ignored". The Telegraph. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
5. Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (8 August 2022). "The Reluctant Prophet of Effective Altruism". The New Yorker. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
6. Quaade, Sebastian (5 April 2018). "An Interview with William MacAskill, Founding Member of Effective Altruism". The Politic. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
7. MacAskill, William (2015). Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference. London: Guardian Faber. ISBN 978-1-78335-049-0. OCLC 920597471.
8. MacAskill, William (6 December 2021). What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill. Basic Books. ISBN 9781541618633. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
9. MacAskill, William; Bykvist, Krister; Ord, Toby (2020). Moral Uncertainty (PDF). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-872227-4.
10. Tett, Gillian (9 September 2022). "Philosopher William MacAskill: 'The world is a darker place than it was just five years ago'". Financial Times. Retrieved 26 January 2023.
11. Morrison, Hamish (15 August 2022). "William MacAskill: Effective altruism philosopher backs Scottish independence". The National. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
12. Anthony, Andrew (21 August 2022). "William MacAskill: 'There are 80 trillion people yet to come. They need us to start protecting them'". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
13. "New People" (PDF). Oxford Philosophy. 2015. p. 7. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
14. "Members: The Senior Common Room 2015–16" (PDF). Lincoln College Record 2015–16. 2016. p. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 April 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
15. "Our pledge". Giving What We Can. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
16. "What's bad about being good?". News. University of St Andrews. 20 September 2017. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
17. MacAskill, William (April 2018). What are the most important moral problems of our time? (video). TED.
18. "People". Global Priorities Institute. Archived from the original on 23 June 2022. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
19. "Three Sentences That Could Change the World — and Your Life". The New York Times. 9 August 2022. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
20. "People". Longview Philanthropy. Retrieved 28 August 2022.
21. Alter, Charlotte (15 March 2023). "Exclusive: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed". Time. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
22. "Sam Bankman-Fried's 'Effective Altruism' Team Resigns Amid FTX Meltdown". Gizmodo. 11 November 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
23. Kulish, Nicholas (8 October 2022). "How a Scottish Moral Philosopher Got Elon Musk's Number". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 May 2024.
24. "How a Scottish Moral Philosopher Got Elon Musk's Number". New York Times. 8 October 2022. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
25. MacAskill, William (2014). Normative Uncertainty (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford.
26. MacAskill, William (1 April 2013). "The Infectiousness of Nihilism". Ethics. 123 (3): 508–520. doi:10.1086/669564. ISSN 0014-1704. S2CID 143796585.
27. MacAskill, William (October 2016). "Normative Uncertainty as a Voting Problem". Mind. 125 (500): 967–1004. doi:10.1093/mind/fzv169. ISSN 0026-4423.
28. MacAskill, William (2016). "Smokers, Psychos, and Decision-Theoretic Uncertainty". The Journal of Philosophy. 113 (9): 425–445. doi:10.5840/jphil2016113929. ISSN 0022-362X.
29. Srinivasan, Amia (24 September 2015). "Stop the Robot Apocalypse". London Review of Books. pp. 3–6. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
30. Shariatmadari, David (20 August 2015). "Doing Good Better by William MacAskill review – if you read this book, you'll change the charities you donate to". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
31. Cowen, Tyler (14 August 2015). "Effective Altruism: Where Charity and Rationality Meet". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
32. "Effective Altruism: A Better Way to Lead an Ethical Life". Intelligence Squared. 4 December 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
33. "80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term". 80,000 Hours. 6 July 2015. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
34. Burkeman, Oliver (25 August 2022). "What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill review – a thrilling prescription for humanity". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 12 May 2024.
35. "What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill — our obligation to the unborn billions". Financial Times. Retrieved 12 May 2024.
36. MacAskill, William (2022). What We Owe the Future. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-1862-6.
37. MacAskill, William (5 March 2013). "Men Should Consider Changing Their Last Names When They Get Married". The Atlantic. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
38. MacAskill, Amanda; MacAskill, William (9 September 2015). "To truly end animal suffering, the most ethical choice is to kill wild predators (especially Cecil the lion)". Quartz. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
39. MacAskill, William; MacAskill, Amanda (19 November 2015). "The truth about animal charities, cats and dogs". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
40. MacAskill, William (2022). "How to Act". What we owe the future. Basic Books. p. 309. ISBN 978-1-5416-1863-3.

External links

• Official website