Conversations on Altruism

Join Sam Harris in this series of conversations on effective altruism and doing good.

In the first of these conversations Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill. William MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford. He was educated at Cambridge, Princeton, and Oxford. He is one of the primary voices in a movement in philanthropy known as 'effective altruism' and the cofounder of three non-profits based on effective altruist principles: Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. William is the author of Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference.

In the second conversation Sam Harris speaks with Toby Ord about preserving the long term future of humanity. They discuss moral biases with respect to distance in space and time, the psychology of effective altruism, feeling good vs. doing good, possible blindspots in consequentialism, natural vs. human-caused risk, asteroid impacts, nuclear war, pandemics, the potentially cosmic significance of human survival, the difference between bad things and the absence of good things, population ethics, Derek Parfit, the asymmetry between happiness and suffering, climate change, and other topics.

In the final conversation Sam Harris speaks with William MacAskill once again about how to do the most good in the world. They discuss the 'effective altruism' movement, choosing causes to support, the apparent tension between wealth and altruism, how best to think about generosity over the course of one's lifetime, and other topics.
Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events.
Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics-neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality-but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.