Sorry for the length. In a few paragraphs there's a reader's guide so you can skip around. I have tried to put the most valuable stuff up first. Consider only reading the introduction. Starting from every moment, there are choices you could make. Lots of different choices, spreading out into trees…

Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives Aug 28, 2007 One of the most critical things a startup founder must do is develop a top-notch executive team . This is a topic that could fill a whole book, but in this post I will provide specific guidelines on how to hire, manage, promote,…

We all want to find a dream job that’s enjoyable and meaningful, but what does that actually mean? Some people imagine that the answer involves discovering their passion through a flash of insight, while others think that the key elements of their dream job are that it be easy and highly paid. We’ve…

People are working harder and harder to clean up otherwise avoidable messes they created by making poor initial decisions. There are many reasons we’re making poor decisions and failing to learn from them. Under the heading, Sources of Stupidity in an article entitled Smart Decisions we wrote about…

Utilitarianism is the view (roughly) that we ought to act so that we maximize happiness or welfare, and minimize suffering. I think of myself as quite utilitarian in my moral outlook. I have pretty utilitarian intuitions when it comes to policy-level decisions, and I think that utilitarianism has a…

Mendelsund / Munday T hese should be boom times for sex. The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” is at an all-time high. New cases of HIV are at an all-time low. Most women can—at last—get birth control for free, and the morning-after pill without a…

Entrepreneurs need to be prepared in pitching their startup companies to a venture capitalist by anticipating the questions they will receive. The failure to have thoughtful and reasonable answers to VC questions will decrease the likelihood of the company getting funded. The following is a list of…

TL;DR version: Mental illness is probably much worse than poverty or physical illness. Interventions which change how people think - i.e. reduce mental illness and increase happiness - may be more cost-effective ways of increasing happiness than AMF or Give Directly. I outline some new opportunities…

The traditional 9–5 workday is poorly structured for high productivity. Perhaps when most work was physical labor, but not in the knowledge working world we now live in. Although this may be obvious based on people’s mediocre performance, addiction to stimulants, lack of engagement, and the fact…

Eric Paley Contributor Eric Paley is a managing partner at Founder Collective . More posts by this contributor Redefining dilution When venture capital becomes vanity capital Venture capital should come with a warning label. In our experience, VC kills more startups than slow customer adoption,…

Today, as part of the UNSW Grand Challenge on Inequality, we release a study entitled A Climate Dividend for Australians that offers a practical solution to the twin problems of climate change and energy affordability. It’s a serious, market-based approach to address climate change through a carbon…

Over the last year or two, I’ve gone down some intellectual rabbit holes that led me to some pretty unusual beliefs. Here are some of my favorites of these beliefs. They mostly fall into two categories: weird things about my overall perspective on the multiverse and how to relate to it, and…

TL;DR I argue effective altruists can and should use happiness surveys to determine cost-effectiveness and show how doing this generates some different charity recommendations from those given by GiveWell. Abstract: I argue that, despite some long-standing doubts, happiness can be measured through…

This list is preliminary. We wanted to publish our existing thoughts on what to do with each skill, but can easily see ourselves changing our minds over the coming years. You can read about our general process and what career paths we recommend in our full article. Sometimes, however, it’s possible…

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” ― M. Scott Peck *** The Basics The sense that we are not being listened to is one of the most frustrating feelings imaginable. Toddlers scream about it, teenagers move out, couples split up, companies breakdown. One of the…

2 Jun 2015 It’s all too easy to let a false understanding of something replace your actual understanding. Sometimes this is an oversimplification, but it can also take the form of an over complication . I have an illuminating story: Years ago, when I was young and foolish, I found myself in a…

I wonder how many times I’ll say this. This will be my last Bayes’ theorem post. At this point a careful reader should be able to extract most of the following post from the past few, but it is definitely worth spelling out in detail here. We’ve been covering how academics have used Bayes’ theorem…

Guidelines on depicting poverty Context In Autumn 2015, the Giving What We Can Cambridge chapter organised an event described as a "poverty simulation.” Many found the content and presentation of the event disrespectful. We thought it was important to learn from what had happened, to start a…

24 Jul 2014 Growth mindset is a thing. You can read lots more about it elsewhere, including Mindset by Carol Dweck , which has a 4.5 star rating with >500 reviews. I’m not here to explain in-depth what it is or why it matters. Enough people have done that. I’m here to show you how to do it— applied…

Why I'm Not a Negative Utilitarian Toby Ord Introduction I have been surprised to see that some of my friends and acquaintances in the effective altruism community identify as Negative Utilitarians. Negative Utilitarianism (NU) is treated as a non-starter in mainstream philosophical circles, and to…

Scholarship is an important virtue of rationality, but it can be costly. Its major costs are time and effort . Thus, if you can reduce the time and effort required for scholarship - if you can learn to do scholarship more efficiently - then scholarship will be worth your effort more often than it…

Summary We were two people who got a short-term EA community building grant from CEA to work on EA Denmark part-time (Sebastian Schmidt and Philip Porter). In the following, I (Sebastian) will share the lessons we learned which I hope will be of value to other local group leaders and EA grantees…

Table of Contents 1 What do we mean by “working at effective altruist organisations”? 1.1 What roles are there? 2 Why is working at an EA organisation high impact? 2.1 Track record of success 2.2 Work on some of the most urgent problems 2.3 Flexibility to change problem areas 2.4 High-leverage…

Habits vs. Workflows September 11th, 2018 · 8 comments Productive Pondering As I transition from the slow freedom of summer to the constrained energy of fall, my thoughts have been gravitating back towards nuts and bolts productivity issues. One topic that keeps catching my attention is the…

“Straw Dogs is an attack on the unthinking beliefs of thinking people.” — John Gray *** We like to think that the tide of history is an inexorable march from barbarity to civilization, with humans “progressing” from one stage to the next through a gradual process of enlightenment. Modern humanists…

With so much content competing for attention on the Internet, do you ever wonder if your content stands a chance? According to the journal Science , we have to process five times more information today than in 1986. Our readers are overwhelmed . You probably are too. So how can you make your next…

Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours February 15th, 2008 · 181 comments My Schedule Should Be Terrible… I should have an overwhelming, Malox-guzzling, stress-saturated schedule. Here’s why: I’m a graduate student in a demanding program.…

People sometimes talk about “improving decision making” as a way to improve the world - if we could find ways to overcome the various ‘biases’ and ‘irrationalities’ that people are prone to, we’d be better able to solve some of the world’s most important problems. I think that there’s promise here,…

Today we are witnessing an irrepressible and admirable pushback against the specters of ‘cultural relativism’ and moral ‘nihilism.’ On the Right, thinkers such as Patrick Deneen and Jordan Peterson have responded to an increasingly cynical postmodern culture by arguing for a return to traditionalist…

Intuitively, everyone realizes that they should read to some extent. I’ve never heard someone say “I don’t think I should read more,” but I’ve heard “I should read more” a lot more than I’ve heard “I read a lot.” But so few people take the time to read more. Last year, I read somewhere north of 100…

F ive hundred years ago cartographers believed California was an island. Doctors believed that slicing your arm open and bleeding everywhere could cure disease. Scientists believed fire was made out of something called phlogiston. Women believed rubbing dog urine on their face had anti-aging…

In this series, we have invited philosophers to write about what they consider to be the greatest moral challenge of our time, and how we should address it. It would be easy to conclude that there’s a deficit of morality in the world today. That if only people were more motivated to behave…

Why do humans drink? To the person waiting at the bar on a hot summer evening, the answer seems simple: drinking is a pleasure and a relief. To the public health official reading the latest reports of alcohol’s societal ruin, the answer might seem frustrating. Why would anyone drink, if it’s so bad…

S uccess is often the first step toward disaster. The idea of progress is often the enemy of actual progress. I recently met a guy who, despite having a massively successful business, an awesome lifestyle, a happy relationship , and a great network of friends, told me with a straight face, that he…

The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. Illustration by Gérard DuBois In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In…

The 8 Things The Happiest People Do Every Day University of California professor Sonja Lyubomirsky details the things research shows the happiest people have in common. They devote a great amount of time to their family and friends, nurturing and enjoying those relationships. They are comfortable…

Part 4: The only thing that matters Jun 25, 2007 This post is all about the only thing that matters for a new startup. But first, some theory: If you look at a broad cross-section of startups -- say, 30 or 40 or more; enough to screen out the pure flukes and look for patterns -- two obvious facts…

What’s the point of sending all children to school if they can’t get jobs when they graduate?Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP How can we alleviate extreme poverty? It’s the question that underpins the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), and almost all development projects. Because poverty almost…

Share 87 379 Shares I have been compensated by Dillons to write this article, however all frozen food hacks and opinions remain my own. How many freezers do you have, or is that too personal a question? I am almost ashamed to admit that we have four freezers in this house. We have our regular…

Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . Watch how this essay was written . February 2009 One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learnedfrom Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happythan to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently toa…