{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"80,000 Hours Podcast","title":"#38 - Yew-Kwang Ng on anticipating effective altruism decades ago & how to make a much happier world","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":7170,"description":"Will people who think carefully about how to maximize welfare eventually converge on the same views?\r\n\r\nThe effective altruism community has spent a lot of time over the past 10 years debating how best to increase happiness and reduce suffering, and gradually narrowed in on the world’s poorest people, all animals capable of suffering, and future generations.\r\n\r\nYew-Kwang Ng, Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, was independently working on this exact question since the 70s. Many of his conclusions have ended up foreshadowing what is now conventional wisdom within effective altruism - though other views he holds remain controversial or little-known.\r\n\r\nFor instance, he thinks we ought to explore increasing pleasure via direct brain stimulation, and that genetic engineering may be an important tool for increasing happiness in the future.\r\n\r\nHis work has suggested that the welfare of most wild animals is on balance negative and he thinks that in the future this is a problem humanity might work to solve. Yet he thinks that greatly improved conditions for farm animals could eventually justify eating meat.\r\n\r\nHe has spent most of his life advocating for the view that happiness, broadly construed, is the only intrinsically valuable thing.\r\n\r\nIf it’s true that careful researchers will converge as Prof Ng believes, these ideas may prove as prescient as his other, now widely accepted, opinions.\r\n\r\nLink to our summary and appreciation of Kwang’s top publications and insights throughout a lifetime of research.\r\n\r\nKwang has led an exceptional life. While in high school he was drawn to physics, mathematics, and philosophy, yet he chose to study economics because of his dream: to establish communism in an independent Malaya.\r\n\r\nBut events in the Soviet Union and China, in addition to his burgeoning knowledge and academic appreciation of economics, would change his views about the practicability of communism. He would soon complete his...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/VO1STE7hN95RRg9QdLo4soV2VhhbR9PF5ZZlRhDYcwE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQxNDAyLzE2ODM1/NDQ1NDAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}