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William MacAskill
William David MacAskill (; born 24 March 1987) is a Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. He is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research. MacAskill is also the co-founder of Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism and 80,000 Hours. He is the author of the 2015 book ''Doing Good Better'', the 2022 book '' What We Owe the Future'', and co-author of the 2020 book ''Moral Uncertainty.'' Early life and education MacAskill was born William Crouch in 1987, and grew up in Glasgow. MacAskill was educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School in Glasgow. 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. At the age of 18, MacAskill read Pete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated population of 635,640. Straddling the border between historic Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City Council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and is governed by Glasgow City Council. It is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Glasgow has the largest economy in Scotland and the third-highest GDP per capita of any city in the UK. Glasgow's major cultural institutions – the Burrell Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Ballet and Scottish Opera – enjoy international reputations. The city was the European Capital of Culture in 1990 and is notable for its architecture, cult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longtermism
Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts that claim to reduce existential risks to humanity. Sigal Samuel from '' Vox'' summarizes the key argument for longtermism as follows: " future people matter morally just as much as people alive today;... there may well be more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past; and... we can positively affect future peoples' lives." These three ideas taken together suggest, to those advocating longtermism, that it is the responsibility of those living now to ensure that future generations get to survive and flourish. Definition Philosopher William MacAskill defines ''longtermism'' in his book '' What We Owe the Future'' as "the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time". He distinguishes it from ''strong longtermism' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Centre For Effective Altruism
The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) is an Oxford-based charity that builds and supports the effective altruism community. It was founded in 2012 by William MacAskill and Toby Ord, both philosophers at the University of Oxford. CEA is part of Effective Ventures, a federation of projects working to have a large positive impact in the world. History CEA’s founding was prompted by the need to set up an umbrella organization under which Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours could be incorporated. In late 2011, the members of those two organizations met to discuss how this new entity should be named, and the name “Centre for Effective Altruism” was adopted. At the time, the movement that would later be called “ effective altruism” did not yet have a standard name—terms common back then included “optimal philanthropy” and “rational altruism”—and this was the first time the term “effective altruism” was used in its current sense. CEA was registered as a chari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is an effective altruism-associated organisation whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities. It was founded at Oxford University in 2009 by the philosopher Toby Ord, physician-in-training Bernadette Young (Ord's wife), and fellow philosopher William MacAskill. History Giving What We Can was founded as a giving society in 2009 by Toby Ord, an ethics researcher at Oxford, his wife Bernadette Young, a physician in training at the time, and fellow ethicist William MacAskill with the goal of encouraging people to give 10% of their income on a regular basis to alleviate world poverty. This is similar to zakat in Islam and '' Ma'aser kesafim'' (giving 10% of income) in Jewish tradition but Ord said there was no religious motivation behind it. Ord cited writings from Peter Singer and Thomas Pogge about one's moral duty to give to the poor as inspiration for starting the organisation, and personally planned to give away ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor = The Lord Patten of Barnes , vice_chancellor = Louise Richardson , students = 24,515 (2019) , undergrad = 11,955 , postgrad = 12,010 , other = 541 (2017) , city = Oxford , country = England , coordinates = , campus_type = University town , athletics_affiliations = Blue (university sport) , logo_size = 250px , website = , logo = University of Oxford.svg , colours = Oxford Blue , faculty = 6,995 (2020) , academic_affiliations = , The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Effective Altruism
Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, called , often choose careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves while donating to charities based on maximising impact. The movement developed during the 2000s, and the name was coined in 2011. Prominent philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. Several books and many articles about the movement have since been published, and the Effective Altruism Global conference has been held since 2013. As of 2022, several billion dollars have been committed to effective altruist causes. Popular cause priorities within effective altruism include global health and development, social inequality, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future. Ef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Author
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created''." Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work, i.e. the author. If more than one person created the work (i.e., multiple authors), then a case of joint authorship takes place. The copyright laws are have minor differences in various jurisdictions across the United States. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of 'original works of authorship.'" Legal significance of authorship Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, rcertain other intellectual works" gives rights to this person, the owner of the copyright, especially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (6th century BCE).. In the classical sense, a philosopher was someone who lived according to a certain way of life, focusing upon resolving existential questions about the human condition; it was not necessary that they discoursed upon theories or commented upon authors. Those who most arduously committed themselves to this lifestyle would have been considered ''philosophers''. In a modern sense, a philosopher is an intellectual who contributes to one or more branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, social theory, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. A philosopher may also be someone who has worked in the humanities or other sciences whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toby Ord
Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979) is an Australian philosopher. He founded Giving What We Can in 2009, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the effective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible. He is a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, where his work is focused on existential risk. His book on the subject ''The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity'' was published in March 2020. Early life and education Ord was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1979. He later attended the University of Melbourne, where he initially studied computer science. On completing his first degree, he switched to studying philosophy to pursue his interest in ethics, later stating: "At this stage I knew that I wanted to make a large positive difference in the world and it s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Parfit rose to prominence in 1971 with the publication of his first paper, "Personal Identity". His first book, '' Reasons and Persons'' (1984), has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s. His second book, '' On What Matters'' (2011), was widely circulated and discussed for many years before its publication. For his entire academic career, Parfit worked at Oxford University, where he was an Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the time of his death. He was also a visiting professor of philosophy at Harvard University, New York University, and Rutgers University. He was awarded the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize "for his groundbreaking contribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularity, secular, utilitarianism, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book ''Animal Liberation (book), Animal Liberation'' (1975), in which he argues in favour of veganism, and his essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality", in which he argues in favour of donating to help the global poor. For most of his career, he was a preference utilitarianism, preference utilitarian, but he stated in ''The Point of View of the Universe'' (2014), coauthored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, that he had become a Utilitarianism#Higher and lower pleasures, hedonistic utilitarian. On two occasions, Singer served as chair of the philosophy department at Monash University, where he founded its Centre for Human Bioethics. In 1996 he stood unsucces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described ''utility'' as: That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... rto prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered. Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all sentient beings equally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
