4 ms·

Doesn't the author also add in the average additional years lived without disability (5 years, according to his source, which is adjusted to 2.5 years in terms

Doesn't the author also add in the average additional years lived without disability (5 years, according to his source, which is adjusted to 2.5 years in terms of lifespan)? Sure, we all live a lot better lived with access to medicine, but the larger part of the improvement comes from improved access to nutrition and sanitation. Besides, even if you disagree with the methodology (which they already admit is a back of the envelope calculation that is likely to be only accurate to an order of magnitude, I don't think the idea in itself, to identify the best way an individual can contribute to humanity as a whole is a bad idea.

acqq 11y ago
Trying to estimate the impact one can make is OK thing to do, but I comment here just the article and how I see it. So I've now moved to the part 3 of the article, let's see the conclusion: "I think my 17-year-old self would find that pretty galling. He’d signed up to medicine to save loads of lives, and he’d find it a bit of a downer to see this his entire medical career would likely do as much good as a £10 000 donation to the right charity. But that would be the wrong way of looking at things: instead, he should see that saving 17 lives is a vast amount of good, and being able to do 30 times more good on top of that is awesome." Well... sounds a bit better. But the whole series still looks more like an excuse for somebody to forgo his medical career (also from the Part 3): "If I become willing to work as a doctor, then I increase the supply of doctors. If more people are willing to be doctors, then the NHS can slightly decrease the wages for doctors (1). If the wages are slightly lower, the budget can be used to hire slightly more doctors. How this all balances out is studied by economists. If the labour market for doctors is in equilibrium, then increasing the supply of doctors by one doctor, will probably increase the number of doctors by about 0.6 (2)." I'd like to know if the article author really grew up to be a doctor or if he's now some activist in some charity instead. Take a look at what the site suggests as the "right careers" for impact after I've filled the "career guide": 1) Management consulting (for skill-building & earning to give) 2) Foundation grantmaker 3) Think tank research 4) Economics PhD Well if the guys who end up on this position only know to count megadeaths and QALYs before, I really doubt they will even understand what they decide about. But they'll surely have some impact, if it's a good impact it's fully another question.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  > I'd like to know if the article author really grew up to be a doctor or if he's now some activist in some charity instead. He's a practicing doctor at Churchill Hospital in Oxford. http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/ To the best of my knowledge, he continues to support 80,000 Hours.
  - acqq 11y ago
    It seems to me that he now more advocates https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/saving-the-world-and-healing-the-sick/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/saving-the-world-and-healin... and that he has spent short time with 80,000 Hours. It seems he was really still a student as he wrote there. I hope he'll blog more about his experiences as he grows up.
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      Giving What We Can and 80k Hours are very closely connected organizations with different missions. They shared office space at Oxford University.
- lars512 11y ago
  Another article lists the author, Gregory Lewis, as a practicing MD in the UK. So he didn't forgo his medical career. Probably he was already well into it by the time he went through these numbers. https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-should-you-study-medicine-probably-not/ https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-sho... As for impact, the entire site is about advising people on how to have the greatest impact, which they calculate using economic arguments. That's how they come up with those careers which they think will contribute the most. What are your concerns about they way they're doing it?

acqq 11y ago

Trying to estimate the impact one can make is OK thing to do, but I comment here just the article and how I see it. So I've now moved to the part 3 of the article, let's see the conclusion: "I think my 17-year-old self would find that pretty galling. He’d signed up to medicine to save loads of lives, and he’d find it a bit of a downer to see this his entire medical career would likely do as much good as a £10 000 donation to the right charity. But that would be the wrong way of looking at things: instead, he should see that saving 17 lives is a vast amount of good, and being able to do 30 times more good on top of that is awesome." Well... sounds a bit better. But the whole series still looks more like an excuse for somebody to forgo his medical career (also from the Part 3): "If I become willing to work as a doctor, then I increase the supply of doctors. If more people are willing to be doctors, then the NHS can slightly decrease the wages for doctors (1). If the wages are slightly lower, the budget can be used to hire slightly more doctors. How this all balances out is studied by economists. If the labour market for doctors is in equilibrium, then increasing the supply of doctors by one doctor, will probably increase the number of doctors by about 0.6 (2)." I'd like to know if the article author really grew up to be a doctor or if he's now some activist in some charity instead. Take a look at what the site suggests as the "right careers" for impact after I've filled the "career guide": 1) Management consulting (for skill-building & earning to give) 2) Foundation grantmaker 3) Think tank research 4) Economics PhD Well if the guys who end up on this position only know to count megadeaths and QALYs before, I really doubt they will even understand what they decide about. But they'll surely have some impact, if it's a good impact it's fully another question.

jessriedel 11y ago
> I'd like to know if the article author really grew up to be a doctor or if he's now some activist in some charity instead. He's a practicing doctor at Churchill Hospital in Oxford. http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/ To the best of my knowledge, he continues to support 80,000 Hours.
- acqq 11y ago
  It seems to me that he now more advocates https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/saving-the-world-and-healing-the-sick/ http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/saving-the-world-and-healin... and that he has spent short time with 80,000 Hours. It seems he was really still a student as he wrote there. I hope he'll blog more about his experiences as he grows up.
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    Giving What We Can and 80k Hours are very closely connected organizations with different missions. They shared office space at Oxford University.
lars512 11y ago
Another article lists the author, Gregory Lewis, as a practicing MD in the UK. So he didn't forgo his medical career. Probably he was already well into it by the time he went through these numbers. https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-should-you-study-medicine-probably-not/ https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-sho... As for impact, the entire site is about advising people on how to have the greatest impact, which they calculate using economic arguments. That's how they come up with those careers which they think will contribute the most. What are your concerns about they way they're doing it?