Changing the World

course schedule

a description of this course can be found here

** marks optional readings

I. Introduction

• The question of the course

  • no readings

• Circles of concern

  • Appiah, What will the future condemn us for?

  • Singer, The drowning child and the expanding circle

  • Soares, See the dark world

• With great power…

  • MacAskill, Doing Good Better, chapter 1

  • Hillebrandt, Median GDP per capita

  • Ord, Global poverty & the demands of morality

  • ** How rich am I calculator

  • ** Lichtenberg, Negative duties and the new harms

• An open mindset

  • Manley, Reason Better chapter 2

  • ** Manley, Reason Better chapter 1

II. Meet the world

• What most lives are like

  • Rosling, Factfulness, chapter 1 & chapter 6

  • go to Dollar Street and "visit" some of the homes

  • ** Roser, Mortality in the past and Ritchie et. al. Population growth

• Bad but better

  • Rosling, Factfulness, chapters 2 & 7

  • Walsh, The doomers are wrong

  • ** Matthews, Why the news is so negative and what to do

  • ** Robertson et. al., Negativity drives online news consumption

  • ** Rosling, Factfulness, chapter 4

• The coming century

  • Wallace-Wells, Beyond catastrophe

  • Ritchie, Are we the last generation, or the first sustainable one?

  • ** Ritchie et. al., Population growth

  • ** Carbon Brief, Impacts of climate change

  • ** Climate Action Tracker, The thermometer

III. Hearts & minds

• Guiding the heart

  • Bloom, Empathy and its discontents

  • Soares, Fighting for something

• Scope neglect

  • Slovic, The more who die, the less we care

  • Soares, On caring 

  • Tzvetkova, Not all deaths are equal

  • Rosling, Factfulness, chapter 5

• Measuring problems

  • MacAskill, Doing Good Better, chapter 2

  • Roser, Causes of death globally 

  • IHME’s disease burden tool

  • ** selection from OPHI & UNDP 2020 Charting Pathways

IV. Extreme poverty

• Aid & policy effectiveness

  • Poor Economics, forward & chapter 1

  • Doing Good Better, intro & chapter 3

  • * 80,000 Hours: The good, the bad, and the ineffective

• Diseases of poverty

  • from One is too many (Johns Hopkins)

  • Dattani et. al., Diarrheal diseases

  • Poor Economics, chapter 3

  • ** Dattani et. al., Why didn't we get a malaria vaccine sooner?

• Malnutrition & poison

  • Ritchie & Roser, Micronutrient deficiency

  • CGD, A call to action to end childhood lead poisoning

  • ** Poor Economics, chapter 2 

  • ** Matthews, Nearly half the world’s kids…

  • ** Rethink Priorities, Global lead exposure report

• Gender disparity and labor barriers

  • Hoijmakers, Women's empowerment cause area

  • Clemens, Don't close the golden door

  • * Clemens, Economics and emigration

V. Everywhere problems

• Air pollution & climate change

  • Wallace-Wells, Ten million a year

  • Halstead, Climate change report

  • * Ritchie & Roser, Air pollution

• Lifestyle, mental health, and aging

  • Snowden et al, Mental health report, up to pg 20

  • van Dam et. al. Lifestyle factors & mortality

  • Farrelly, Why aging research? 

• Factory farms: animal welfare

  • Animal welfare cause area report

  • Huemer, The conscience of a human being

  • excerpts from The illogic of the larder

• Factory farms: other issues

  • Anomaly, What's wrong with factory farming?

  • Standing in livestock's long shadow 

• Global catastrophic risk

  • Halstead, Safeguarding the Future Executive Summary

  • Biotechnology ; Nuclear Weapons; Artificial intelligence

VI. How can we do the most good?

• Measuring Effectiveness

  • MacAskill, Doing Good Better, ch. 4 & 5

• Lifestyle vs. collective action

  • MacAskill, Doing Good Better, ch. 8

  • Halstead, Climate and lifestyle report

  • Jagers et. al., On the preconditions for large scale collective action

  • ** Wagner, Cold, hard economics

• Careers, part 1

  • Todd et al., 80,000 Hours, chapters 1 & 2

• Careers, part 2

  • Todd et al. 80,000 Hours, chapters 6 & 7

  • Christiano & Niemand, Stop raising awareness already

  • Starr, Don't feed the zombies

  • ** this interview

• Careers, part 3

  • Working at Effective Non-Profits

  • Working as a Congressional Staffer (Links to an external site.)

  • Christian and Niemand, The Science of What Makes People Care