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Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work That Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back Paperback – 2 August 2016

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,226 ratings

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An up-and-coming visionary in the world of philanthropy and a cofounder of the effective altruism movement explains why most of our ideas about how to make a difference are wrong and presents a counterintuitive way for each of us to do the most good possible.

While a researcher at Oxford, William MacAskill decided to devote his study to a simple question: How can we do good better? MacAskill realized that, while most of us want to make a difference, we often decide how to do so based on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, our good intentions often lead to ineffective, sometimes downright harmful, outcomes.

As an antidote, MacAskill and his colleagues developed effective altruism--a practical, data-driven approach to doing good that allows us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists operate by asking certain key questions that force them to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. In Doing Good Better, MacAskill lays out these principles and shows that, when we use them correctly--when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors--each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.

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Review

"Beautifully written and extremely smart. Doing Good Better should be required reading for anyone interested in making the world better."--Steven D. Levitt, #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Freakonomics and When to Rob a Bank

"This is the most valuable guide to charitable giving ever published. Even readers who disagree with MacAskill's conclusions about the value of particular charitable donations will make smarter decisions by learning from his analysis."--Paul Brest, co-director, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and former president, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

"A straightforward guide to help anyone make the largest possible difference in the lives of others." --Sue Desmond-Hellman, CEO of the Gates Foundation

"We research hotels and headphones and sushi bars--but not charities. That is lunacy. And in this powerful and persuasive book, William MacAskill shows us how much we stand to gain from a little bit of thoughtfulness: The same donation could do hundreds of times more good if given to the most effective charities, rather than the least"--Dan Heath, co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive

"Effective altruism--efforts that actually help people rather than making you feel good or helping you show off--is one of the great new ideas of the twenty-first century. Doing Good Better is the definitive guide to this exciting new movement."--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

"
Doing Good Better is a superb achievement. This must-read book will lead people to change their careers, their lives, and the world, for the better."--Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, author of Animal Liberation and The Most Good You Can Do

"Doing Good Better is a must-read for anyone with both a heart and a brain. MacAskill demolishes the lazy myths of nothing-you-can-do-ism and demonstrates the power of asking the right questions. This is an important book. It's also surprisingly fun. Figuring out what really helps people is a challenging scientific puzzle, and these pages are full of unexpected twists--enlightening and invigorating."--Joshua Greene, director of Harvard's Moral Cognition Lab, author of Moral Tribes

"Humanity currently spends more money on cigarette ads than on making sure that we as a species survive this century. We've got our priorities all wrong, and we need effective altruism to right them. If you want to make a real difference on the biggest issues of our time, you need to read Doing Good Better."-- Jaan Tallinn, cofounder, Skype and Kazaa

"Doing Good Better has rare combination of strikingly original ideas, effortless clarity of delivery, and a thoroughgoing practicality that leaves the reader inspired to get out of their chair and take on the world. Humanity faces some big challenges in the 21st century; this is a much-needed manifesto for social change, and Will MacAskill is the ideal ambassador."--Eric Drexler, founder of nanotechnology and author of Engines of Creation

"MacAskill tackles a monumental question: how can we make the biggest difference for the greatest number of people? His answer is a grand vision to make giving, volunteering, spending, and working more worthwhile."--Adam Grant,
New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take

"Are you interested in giving away money more effectively? This is the very best book on how to do that." --Tyler Cowen, Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and author of Average is Over

"I wish I'd had this structure and insights twenty years ago!"--Caroline Fiennes, Director, Giving Evidence

About the Author

William MacAskill is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford and the cofounder of the nonprofit organizations Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours. These nonprofits have raised more than $400 million in lifetime-pledged donations to charity and have helped spark the effective altruism movement. MacAskill is a contributor to Quartz, the online business magazine of The Atlantic, and he and his organizations have been featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and on NPR and in a TEDx Talk. He lives in Oxford, England.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Avery Publishing Group; Reprint edition (2 August 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1592409660
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1592409662
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.49 x 1.91 x 20.27 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,226 ratings

About the author

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William MacAskill
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I'm Will MacAskill, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford. My academic research focuses on the fundamentals of effective altruism - the use of evidence and reason to help others by as much as possible with our time and money, with a particular concentration on how to act given moral uncertainty.

I am the author of Doing Good Better - Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference, and Moral Uncertainty. My latest book is What We Owe The Future.

I am the Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research, a co-founder and the President of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and I helped to create the effective altruism movement. Through Giving What We Can, CEA encourages people to commit to donate at least 10% of their income to the most effective charities. CEA also runs over 100 effective altruism local groups, hosts regular effective altruism conferences, and does research into high-impact policy and philanthropic opportunities.

I also co-founded 80,000 Hours, a YCombinator-backed non-profit that provides research and advice on how you can best make a difference through your career.

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Top reviews from Australia

  • Reviewed in Australia on 26 April 2017
    Verified Purchase
    It isn't often that we read a book that transforms our perspective of both the world and our role in it. This book empowers the reader to re-examine the ethical life choices they make, and make positive changes (no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential) to save lives and make the world a better place. Such a young and promising author! May I read this book many times and commit to many positive changes.
    Thank you William MacAskill
  • Reviewed in Australia on 9 October 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Life-changing!
  • Reviewed in Australia on 14 July 2016
    Wow there was some really interested and surprising information in here. I love the idea of knowing that my time and money can be put to truly effective uses and can actually be making not just a difference, but a great deal of difference. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone and anyone.

Top reviews from other countries

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  • Enrique Ortiz
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on why why we need to use critical thinking do good
    Reviewed in Mexico on 11 May 2023
    Verified Purchase
    With clear real-world examples, the author teaches us to question our beliefs, culture, and glamor to focus our efforts to do good that makes an impact in a world with so many needs
  • Mathieu Putz
    5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most influential books on my life I've ever read
    Reviewed in Germany on 2 February 2022
    Verified Purchase
    The book has made me viscerally excited about doing good effectively in my life. It is staggering how important it is to choose our ways of doing good wisely. As the book carefully lays out, this could make the difference between having no impact at all and saving many lives each year (or much more).
    If you care about making the world a better place, this book is for you.
  • Nancy Farran
    5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking - loved it.
    Reviewed in Canada on 22 August 2019
    Verified Purchase
    A good read if you are at all philanthropic.
  • al-m
    5.0 out of 5 stars Freakonomics for Social Impact
    Reviewed in the United States on 15 September 2018
    Verified Purchase
    “Doing Good Better” by William MacAskill is a little gem I stumbled upon almost by mistake. The book develops what could be described as a data-driven approach to measuring and maximizing your social impact, whether through donations to charities, your career, political activism or ethical consumption.
    It’s an incredibly easy and light read that, like Freakonomics, has no prerequisites whatsoever beyond high-school math. The author explains quite a few basic concepts from economics, statistics and sociology, using clear and vivid examples and not a single math formula. Granted there are many simplifications over the models actually used by researchers but as a result we, the readers, feel smarter and therefore empowered.

    With a plethora of insightful data and back-of-the-envelope calculations, MacAskill methodically rebuffs common myths, starting with the widely popular misconception that all charitable donations are ‘drops in the ocean’. The human brain, he argues, is generally bad at thinking about large numbers and probabilities, which is partially why we fail to perceive the depth of wealth inequality around the world today: all things accounted for to adjust for the cost of living in different countries, someone at the poverty line in the US - $11.000 - has more purchasing power than 85 percent of people in the world. If you are reading these lines, you are most likely already in a tiny minority of the richest people on Earth. Which is not to say that top CEOs and wall street bankers are not significantly richer than you are. In fact the figures show they probably are (no offense). But the point is, you already have an enormous potential for social impact in the world.

    Beyond this introductory analysis, MacAskill will show you among other things:
    * Why the Food and Drug Administration estimates the value of an American life at $7.9 million, and why statistics guarantee you can save a life in the developing world for about $3400
    * Why donating to disaster relief is not always the wisest decision
    * Why giving up sweatshop-produced goods in favor of domestically produced goods usually doesn’t have the result you are looking for
    But also:
    * How to offset your *entire* carbon footprint for $105 / year
    * How to choose or change your career path to have a maximum social impact
    * How to objectively compare different charities, even if they work on different problems

    The figures and specific charity recommendations from the author are great but nowhere nearly as useful as the methods and questions he provides for thinking critically and quantitatively about your impact. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and he will revolutionize charity.

    I have read many reviews of the book, including many negative ones, and found the latter to be severely lacking factual evidence to rebut all that provided by the author. They typically decry effective altruism as little more than a baseless, cold-hearted utilitarian vision of the world using false analogies that imprison them in a cage of moral paralysis, like this Guardian columnist who asks “Would you really save a large bag of cash from a burning building rather than your neighbour’s terrified child, even if you could donate that cash and save the lives of a thousand strangers?”, certainly oblivious to the fact that the analogy fails to relate in any way to a real-world problem of charitable giving.
    Others, more legitimately so in my view, will blame the author for reasoning on incomplete data and making unreasonable assumptions, failing to grasp complex systemic issues. All constructive criticism should be appreciated on a 200-page attempt at tackling such difficult questions, but to them I propose that we work together to support independent, peer-reviewed research. Improve the models. Find better data. Or fund people to do it for you. Just don’t throw the baby with the bathwater.

    Overall, “Doing Good Better” is a very ambitious book and an unapologetic, data-driven perspective on why charitable thinking desperately needs to step into the 21st century. It has a fair share of uncomfortable truths, but ultimately delivers a message of profound optimism: we don’t need to be “at the top” to have a massive, measurable impact on saving and improving lives of fellow humans. To change the world we need rationality at least as much as good intentions.
  • Luis Mota
    5.0 out of 5 stars Leitura indispensável para quem quer fazer o bem
    Reviewed in Brazil on 6 July 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Esse livro, definitivamente, mudou a minha visão de mundo, e o que eu pretendo fazer com a minha vida no futuro. Com diversos exemplos claros e bastante explicativos, o autor vai traçando como pensar de maneira mais científica quanto a como se pode ajudar o mundo, e que isso faz uma diferença enorme no impacto que a gente tem.
    O autor começa mostrando como, por exemplo, uma organização que chegou a receber o apoio da primeira dama dos Estados Unidos na verdade acabava ajudando muito pouco seus beneficiários, enquanto outra organização que decidiu investigar qual o melhor jeito de melhorar a educação na África encontrou uma solução inesperada, mas extremamente eficiente: distribuir remédios contra verminoses. Ele explica conceitos científicos como valor marginal, contrafactual e valor esperado através de exemplos, mostrando desde por que não é tão bom doar para desastres como terremotos até por que participar de política pode ser extremamente valioso. Esses conceitos são combinados para analisar situações bastante relevantes para o leitor, como qual o melhor jeito de se escolher para onde doar dinheiro, se vale a pena boicotar indústrias asiáticas que têm condições terríveis de trabalho, ou se atitudes como ser vegetariano realmente fazem diferença.
    Doing Good Better é uma excelente introdução ao movimento de altruísmo eficaz, e acaba por convencer o leitor de que é possível, para pessoas comuns, salvar dezenas de vidas e ter um impacto enorme no mundo, desde que se pense cuidadosamente sobre como fazer isso. Por fim, esse livro é uma leitura indispensável para todos que pensam seriamente em ajudar o mundo.