#930 - Will MacAskill

Joe Rogan (0:00)

We got to figure out a way to make it so we just have a one button thing, where everything syncs up with one button. Is that possible one day?

SPEAKER_2 (0:08)

Maybe.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

We're live.

Right now we're live? We're live, live. How are you, sir?

Will MacAskill (0:14)

Yeah, I'm not too bad.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Welcome. Thanks for coming, man. Appreciate it.

Will MacAskill (0:16)

Yeah, no worries. Thanks so much for having me.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Sam Harris is going to be with us, but he flaked out last minute. He's a busy man.

Will MacAskill (0:21)

Yeah, he's a busy man.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

So, I'm interested to talk to you about a bunch of things, but one of the big ones is this idea of effective altruism. And this is something that you really promote to the point, I don't know if this is true, but I read this about you, that everything that you make over $36,000 a year, you donate?

Will MacAskill (0:39)

Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so everything above, technically, it's everything above 20,000 pounds from 2009 Oxford. So, just for inflation, cost of living changes and stuff, but that's about $36,000.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

So, you've just sort of decided that, which is, by the way, the 1% for the whole world.

Will MacAskill (0:59)

Yeah, not quite. About 2%, yeah. I'll be in the top, still be in the top 2%, even despite giving the money.

Joe Rogan (1:04)

I thought it was $34,000. I think $34,000 puts you in the top 1%.

Will MacAskill (1:07)

I think it's $55,000 in the top 1%.

Joe Rogan (1:10)

Maybe since Trump's been in office.

Will MacAskill (1:12)

Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan (1:14)

But it's a, it's, you know, what you're doing is, if that's really the case, that's a very charitable thing.

Will MacAskill (1:20)

Yeah, and it's also, I mean, it's most of my income over the course of my life, like especially as an academic, you're not going to earn tons, though since the effect of altruism blew up, you end up getting things like speaking fees and, you know, and I give all that away as well. So it's going to end up probably being like the large majority of income over the course of my life.

Joe Rogan (1:39)

Do you ever like want to buy something and be like, shit, if I wasn't so goddamn generous, I'd be able to get this.

Will MacAskill (1:44)

You know, I never do. I like basically never think that, yeah. I think like this, like, I feel like in contemporary society, we just get bombarded with marketing stuff all the time, saying like, oh, you really need this thing if you're going to have a good life.

And I think like in almost every case, that's just not true. I think the psychological evidence just shows that once you're above a certain level of income, additional money just has a very small impact on your happiness. And in my own case, like, the things that make me happy are like being surrounded by friends. That's for the gym membership. That's like $40 a month or something. It's not very much. I can afford that.

Being able to work and, you know, what I really am passionate about and I already have that. So my life is just so good in so many ways. And I feel like there's so much of a focus on money and how money is the key to happiness. And it's just, I think it's just all bullshit basically.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

Well, it's definitely some bullshit in it. And I see that a lot in my neighborhood because I live where white people go to breed.

And they go to breed and they sit down and they just talk about things. They talk about Range Rovers and certain watches and certain purses and shoes. And it becomes this constant...

Will MacAskill (3:00)

The amazing thing is just how you adapt. So it's called the hedonic treadmill. The richer you are, the richer you need to be.

Joe Rogan (3:05)

Oh yeah.

Will MacAskill (3:06)

So I was once part of a conversation. I was going to give a talk and I was going to a family and I was on the kind of, on a private jet in fact.

And the conversation was discussion of different private jets and which private jets are better than so on. This other person has this really nice private jet. And it just means that like, at no stage do you ever lose the like, oh I could just have this nicer thing.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

No, because you can get to the point where you want a jumbo jet like one of those Qantas Airbuses and deck that out like a house. Yeah, I mean I'm sure that one of those Richard Branson type characters probably has something like that.