Kelsey Piper is an American journalist who is a staff writer at '' Vox'', where she writes for the column ''Future Perfect'', which covers a variety of topics from an effective altruism perspective. While attending Stanford University, she founded and ran the Stanford Effective Altruism student organization. Piper blogs at ''The Unit of Caring''.

Education and career

Around 2010, while in high school, Piper developed an interest in the rationalist and effective altruism movements. She later studied at Stanford University, where she majored in

Symbolic Systems Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

. At Stanford she became a member of

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- ...

, pledging to donate 30% of her lifetime income to charity, as well as founding the student organization Stanford Effective Altruism. After graduating from Stanford in 2016, Piper worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte, until she left to join ''Vox'' as a staff writer.

''Future Perfect''

Since 2018, Piper has written for the ''Vox'' column ''Future Perfect'', which covers "the most critical issues of the day through the lens of effective altruism". Piper is concerned about

global catastrophic risk A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanen ...

s, and treats journalism as a way to popularize these risks and advance the cause of addressing them, which is part of effective altruism's broader concern regarding the relevance of immediate action. Specifically, Piper has discussed the possibility that society is living on a historical precipice, where immediate action needs to be taken to avoid global catastrophic risks, and what implications that has for effective altruism and her own journalism. Piper was an early responder to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, discussing the risk of a serious global pandemic in February 2020 and recommending measures such as mask-wearing and

social distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious dis ...

in March of the same year. Since then, she has discussed the societal risk posed by inaccurate study preprints and analyzed the impact of the pandemic on the historical scale, deeming it one of the ten deadliest in human history.

References

External links

Kelsey Piper
- Piper's ''Vox'' profile *
The Unit of Caring
' - Piper's blog
Kelsey Piper: Future Perfect — a year of coverageCan journalists still write about important things?
- ''

80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours is a London-based nonprofit organisation that conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that research. It provides this advice on their website and podcast, and ...

'' podcast
Kelsey Piper on "Big picture journalism: covering the topics that matter in the long run"
- ''Rationally Speaking'' podcast
Kelsey Piper, Vox: Effective Altruist News, Memetic Immunity, Questions Social Justice Can Answer
- ''The Rhys Show'' podcast {{DEFAULTSORT:Piper, Kelsey Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American journalists American women bloggers American women columnists People from California Stanford University alumni Vox (website) people Women humanitarians American bloggers American columnists American humanitarians 21st-century American women People associated with effective altruism