My guest today William McCaskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University.

He's been a pioneer in the effective altruism movement, and his most recent work argues

that humanity should be thinking long-term as to make choices today.

What's long-term in McCaskill's view?

100 years?

No.

He means a thousand years, a hundred thousand years, or even a one million year perspective.

If I can prevent a genocide for certain in a thousand years' time or eleven thousand

years' time, well, both equally bad if they're going to inflict the same amount of harm.

The mere location in time does not matter.

Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levin.

I've had more than 80 guests on this podcast, but not a single philosopher, and that's not

entirely by accident.

I generally don't have much in common with philosophers.

They tend to focus on big, complicated questions.

I like little questions that I can wrap my head around.

They view the world through a lens of morality, whereas I'm much more comfortable thinking

like an economist where the focus is efficiency, and they often use big words that I only

half know the meaning of.

From what I know about Wil McCaskill, he's not that kind of a philosopher.

So let's see how it goes.

So will do you remember how I came to blurb your book doing good better?

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