Welcome to Effective Altruism Lagos

The Career Series

Hi guys,

Glad you’re here.

For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be exploring the 80,000 Hour guide on finding “a fulfilling career that does good.”

As i’ve shared in a previous email:

It’s a moment of reflection for all of us. For some, the best decision may be to switch careers, for some it may be to Japa to earn and contribute towards doing good, for some it may be a good time to go back to school. 

The goal will be to adapt those concepts to our local context so people can find it more useful, and hopefully find the inspiration to do more.

Why is the local context important?

Effective Altruism is a global movement spun from the University of Oxford. Yes, the utilitarian framework is global. But, if you look closely, the context is local. Very local to the context of an industrialised economy, with little to zero cognisance of the structural barriers that a low productivity society poses to doing good on the scale that matters.

Also, let’s say there’s a 2x epistemic distance between a standard high-income industrialised society and a standard low-income, low-productivity society. Let’s also say there’s a 2x epistemic distance between Oxford University and The United Kingdom. I’ll hazard that the epistemic distance between Oxford University and your average low-income, low-productivity society will not map linearly. It’ll be orders of magnitude higher at n(2x) or something. :)

So, let’s do this!

Ronke.