This post lays out our progress, since last year, on identifying potential focus areas for our work on global catastrophic risks. SummaryNote: this section is similar to the introduction of our previous post on U.S. policy. The overall approach of our work has evolved similarly in the two areas. Last year, we set a “stretch…
The GiveWell Blog
All Global catastrophic risks Posts
The moral value of the far future
A popular idea in the effective altruism community is the idea that most of the people we can help (with our giving, our work, etc.) are people who haven’t been born yet. By working to lower global catastrophic risks, speed economic development and technological innovation, and generally improve people’s resources, capabilities, and values, we may…
Potential global catastrophic risk focus areas
Updated Sept. 12, 2014 to change “GiveWell Labs” to “Open Philanthropy Project,” in line with our August 2014 announcement.Throughout the post, “we” refers to GiveWell and Good Ventures, who work as partners on the Open Philanthropy Project. This post draws substantially on our recent updates on our investigation of policy-oriented philanthropy, including using much of the same…
Empowerment and catastrophic risk
In previous posts, I have: Laid out the view that in general, further economic development and general human empowerment are likely to be substantially net positive, and are likely to lead to improvement on many dimensions in unexpected ways. Listed possible global catastrophic risks that provide a potential counterpoint to this view, while also noting…
Possible global catastrophic risks
I previously discussed our view that in general, further economic development and general human empowerment are likely to be substantially net positive, and are likely to lead to improvement on many dimensions in unexpected ways. In my view, the most worrying counterpoint to this view is the possibility of global catastrophic risks. Broadly speaking, while…