“Holden Karnofsky helped create two of the most influential organisations in the effective philanthropy world. So when he outlines a different perspective on career advice than the one we present at 80,000 Hours — we take it seriously…Holden prefers to focus on ‘aptitudes’ that you can build in all sorts of different roles and cause areas, which can later be applied more directly.”
“Holden Karnofsky — founder of charity evaluator GiveWell and foundation Open Philanthropy — hopes to lay out part of the worldview that’s driving the strategy and grantmaking of Open Philanthropy’s longtermist team, and encourage more people to join his efforts to positively shape humanity’s future.”
“Today’s guest, Alexander Berger, leads Open Philanthropy’s ‘Global Health and Wellbeing’ programme, where he oversees around $175 million in grants each year, and ultimately aspires to disburse billions in the most impactful ways he and his team can identify. This programme is the flagship effort representing one major effective altruist approach: try to improve the health and wellbeing of humans and animals that are alive today, in clearly identifiable ways, applying an especially analytical and empirical mindset.”
"Inspired by The Life You Can Save, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s book about ethical giving, the couple established Good Ventures in 2011 to oversee their donations and investments. … Open Philanthropy, which helps advise the group, maintains a public spreadsheet ranking US policy issues where it believes capital can have the greatest impact. Criminal justice reform and macroeconomic stabilisation policy currently top the list."
"Open Philanthropy is an effort, backed by … Cari Tuna and her husband, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, to identify the most efficient, highest bang-for-the-buck philanthropic investments possible regardless of cause area. Open Phil believes that criminal justice reform is an important area to invest in, up there with fighting global poverty or preventing mass pandemics, and that reducing mass incarceration in particular should be a high priority."
"The Open Philanthropy Project … has been one of the few grantmaking organizations in recent years with an active program in biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. That giving emerged from OPP’s longstanding concern with what it terms 'global catastrophic risks' that have the capacity to destabilize society to a degree sufficient to cause long-term harm to humanity, or even 'lead to human extinction.' While such doomsday fears once made OPP something of an odd outlier in philanthropy, they no longer seem far-fetched to anyone after the last few months of catastrophe."