Harvard EA blog

The Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship (PAF) recruits Harvard graduate students from across the University to form multidisciplinary teams that advise philanthropists or foundations on how to achieve the most impact with their charitable dollars in a given cause area. Although we just started last semester, we have gotten off to a good start with major donors on board as clients and a competitive application process attracting talented Fellows.

This simple statistic captures the power of the exponential growth in science that has been taking place over the past century. It is attributable to Derek de Solla Price, the father of scientometrics (i.e., the science of studying science), in his 1961 book Science Since Babylon. If science is growing exponentially, then the major technological advancements and upheavals of the past 200 years are only the tip of the iceberg.

Mercy for Animals (MFA) is a national non-profit animal protection organization that exposes farmed animal cruelty, works to eliminate the cruelest factory farming practices and promotes compassionate food choices and policies. In this interview, Education Project Coordinator Alan Darer describes MFA's philosophy, operations, and investigative findings, and shares his arguments for plant-based food consumption to reduce animal suffering.

As an active member of the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, I believe in the idea that we should do the most good for the world that we can given our limited time, energy, and resources. The movement has been gaining momentum with the publication of Doing Good Better, a new Amazon bestseller, and the start of EA Global this weekend, a series of conferences featuring luminaries such as Elon Musk and Peter Singer. EA asks us to think critically, strategically, and rationally about issues such as what global causes to prioritize, which careers will enable us to achieve the most social good, and which charities can reduce the most suffering per dollar spent.

I want you to help save a life this summer. This year, 440 of the 550 members of the class of 2016 took jobs from private firms attending EIP, myself included. The overwhelming majority of these are very well paid: $3,000 a week in the major markets. It is a telling indicator of the vast economic privileges given us. But it also affords our class one of the greatest opportunities to serve the poor and oppressed that we so often chide the system of overlooking, yet so seldom prioritize with our own time and money.

Suppose I told you about an investment that would easily generate a 60x return in a few years with very little risk.  And then I tell you that some of the world’s top economists have looked at the opportunity and agreed with me.

For people systematically chosen for being able to root out and analyze the rationality of arguments, lawyers are pitifully bad at being reasonable. Let us look, for instance, at the current theories about what to do with your law degree.