This video has been adapted from the 80,000 Hours Career Guide, which you can read at 80000hours.org/rational We strongly recommend it for delving deeper into how you could have a tremendously impactful, while fulfilling, career. The guide is full of interesting and actionable information, from why you shouldn’t just “follow your passion” to why medicine and charity work aren’t always the best ways to help others. It’s full of practical tips and exercises, and at the end, you’ll have a draft of a new career plan.
A sci-tech career has more opportunities on an average to make disproportionate levels of impact on the society, although not everyone gets to have those rare chances without actively striving for them without being picky.
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.” The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.” The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!” -Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower
I'll never forget the woman who did my father's liver transplant. She had worked alongside us for years prior to it. The best outcome was that my father would live 5 years more-- he lived 10. To my family, we had 10 more years with him, and it was not only his life saved, but my family's lives bettered just by her one action. It doesn't always seem like one person can do a lot, but truly you can never know how much you'll affect another person by your actions, so I think the best thing to do is always try to impact others positively-- you don't know who it will affect and what difference it will make.
Garbage collectors save lives. Always understaffed, always overworked they clean up the mess of others. Same goes for bricklayers, roofers ect. Without any of those and a thousand other jobs none of us would enjoy the life we are living. Its a great concert and if just one part stops playing, we have a problem. So treat each other with care and respect.
Actually, no, the people who create the regulations that make us have garbage collectors and set the standards preventing bricklayers and roofers from doing faulty work are the ones who save lives. Without regulation, standards, legislation, etc., we'd have garbage collectors, but they would only be for rich people who can afford them. We'd have bricklayers and roofers, but they'd do the job as cheap as possible and people would die in building collapses. We need everyone playing their part to save lives, but we also need it done according to rules, not in ways that just make things even worse.
@@wasd____ Ok, as someone that work to pay for his studies as a garbage collector ... WTF? The bureaucrats are the worst in 90% of the time. I swear, that you could (and should) let 50% of them go and you would only notice a small difference. Next point: Even in the dark times of the middle age in Europa, garbage collection were done everywhere ... otherwise it would not benefit anyone. Then about that "as cheap as possible" ... yes, some do, most don´t. Most will give you an honest price for honest work. But then, most customers want it cheap and are not willing to pay the price of good work. I know, because while in school i helped my grandfather in the summer from time to time and he was in construction. So are some of my friends. The best example i can think if is a friends company: They are building the roofs of houses. A normal company needs 5 days, they need 2. There quality is better, they correct mistakes from the engineers on a regular bases and that is the reason those ppl request them often. But then, they take 10% more and instead of 5 man they need 2. There is this big company, that request them on as regulars and recommends them to basically everyone ... only a few take them after noticing that they take 10%. ...
5 หลายเดือนก่อน +10
@@wasd____ Customers keep suppliers from doing faulty work. There's no regulations against bad tasting food, yet most restaurants are fairly decent. Because they want to stay in business. And it's not just rich people who enjoy eating out. There's no regulations against uncomfortable shoes. Yet you can buy comfy shoes. And not just rich people wear shoes.
@ How does a buyer know what's inside the walls of a house? What if it doesn't burn down for ten or fifteen years? Do you see the problems here? Sometimes we need regulations because market failures exist.
AFIK, there is one man known to have single handedly saved the world from imminent nuclear war: Vasili Arkhipov. He was a Soviet senior officer, who was at a nuclear submarine in the pacific when they were put on the receiving end of depth charges released by the US navy. The charges were only intended to make them surface, but the crew didn’t know this. They had permission to launch the nuclear missile on board if they were attacked, and the two other officers on the sub approved they do this, but Vasili was the sole dissenter. There was no higher chain of command which might have stopped the launch. If Vasili hadn’t dissented, or if he hadn’t been on the sub that day, the weapon would have been launched.
@@PaleoalexPicturesLtd There are surprisingly many people who've been put in positions where a nuclear strike or even all out war might have seemed a likely outcome. I mean, heck the Cuban missile crisis was the reason that submarine was in that situation. Or perhaps it was another similar incident I forget exactly who it was.
@@PaleoalexPicturesLtd Petrov and Arkhipov are *known* as well as some incidents on the USA side (google «"Accidental Nuclear War: a Timeline of Close Calls" "future of life institute"» -what was surprising to me in that list, though understandable, is how many incidents happened during the Cuban missile crisis and yet only the closest call is well publicized). I doubt that other similar close call incidents (on both sides) have not occurred that have been kept secret. It has been considered axiomatic that mutually assured destruction (MAD) was a rational and effective policy. However, if a strong component of luck has been involved all along (as is likely the case), it should change the way we see MAD. This has been the thesis of former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William J. Perry, who has campaigned to publicize this threat, change perception and lobby to change it.
Imagine spending years of your life hard at work to create a simple easy and cheap solution to some horrible disease or condition, for the american health system to make it so expensive that noone gets it.
It really isn’t the health system, it’s the companies who make that cure or treatment, big pharma is the enemy, for this situation, also, America has a population of a third of a billion people, when the world is home to 8 billion, plenty of other people would still use that miracle solution.
It's unlikely that he was the first. But he led trials to figure out the best recipe, and did the political wrangling to get it recognized in the mainstream.
I think an even more important question than "How can I make a difference" is "Is what I'm doing making a positive difference?" Everyone should not focus on making the most impact by themselves but rather finding the thing they are best at and doing that thing in a way that enables others to do more good. If doing good were a competition, we would get in each other's way in trying to be "The one" who does the most good. In order to allow for the most good to be done in the world, both because of and in spite of your own actions, you need to relinquish the idea that one person deserves the credit when really they were just the last in a long line of people to make that change happen
I deliver fuel, every tank I put into the ground drives climate change... But every time a fire engine stops and fills with diesel, I became a part of their support chain. Every time a cardiologist stops for fuel, every time an ambulance does, someone being driven to chemo, every person who stops to get fuel... I made it possible. I was an invisible part of making so much good happen... Just doing my job.
I agree. It's important to focus on the lives being saved, not who gets the credit for saving them. If I was trying to cure some disease and another lab got there first, I would be glad that the disease was cured sooner. Making the world a better place isn't a competition.
It's great to see ORS get mentioned! It's important to remember that Nalin was also able to do what he did because he was surrounded by other researchers and doctors. Another big part of why it's saved so many lives is also because of people after him pushing for it to be recognized, and from organizations like icddr,b which kept research going and are still saving people in Bangladesh today. Even if you aren't the one to invent something, you can still have a huge impact!
Indeed Is saving lives what makes for a fulfilling life? Or is it helping to improve quality of life more important? Or even simply helping make sure quality of life doesn't backtrack That's essentially the premise of the act of preventing nuclear war "saving lives" You're not saving lives, you're stopping them from being snuffed out I'd wager being an artist is an incredibly impactful career If one can get it to pay the bills anyway Because your art can inspire others Even give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning Same with therapists and coaches The only time they "save a life" is when they stop someone from committing suicide, or going on a murder spree, or something like that But arguably, the little things they do, to improve someone's mental health and quality of life has a massive impact for that life, and the lives of those around them
The butterfly effect is all over the question of "what job saves the most lives", because we're all so interconnected. Nurses love Dr Pepper, it's easily available caffeine with a sugar free variety and tastes good even flat. If a nurse catches a possibility fatal error, how much of that was due to being more alert due to the caffeine in their system? Suddenly, a small bit of that life saved is attributed to the vending machine operator, the factory workers that made the soda, the people who harvested the ingredients, thousands of people! Not to mention the people who trained the nurse, of whom they wouldn't have known about an error to catch. It's all to say, if you're doing your job... You probably had a hand in making the lives of others better. Civilization is a group effort, and you are responsible for supporting the saving of lives or the betterment of others in some way you may never be aware of. You always matter.
Progress studies! To remind yourself that incredible human progress has been made, and that we already possess tried and true methods of solving every problem! This is constructive optimism, I think--that if the world is doomed, it is by coincidence and it doesn't negate the progress we've made thus far. The other lesson is that the tools you need to un-doom the world are in plain sight.
‘Progress’ can also create doom. Denying this is, as you put it, mere optimism. We’re filled with microplastics nowadays, 10.000 years ago we weren’t. I’m not saying we haven’t toppled certain problems with the adequate solutions, but that with each solution created new problems are generated. The invention of the car (pre)supposes the invention of the car crash, this principle will always exist. Optimism is necessary, yes, but so is pessimism, being realism the truly useful product of this synthesis.
I mean, while I agree that optimism is useful in this kind of video it end up as more of a technological utopia than an accurate search of hope, I would say that social changes are much more important than technological advances since there are evidence that the steam engine (or at least a very primitive version of it) was discovered in ANCIENT GREECE but it wasn't use do the base and superstructure conditions of that time (or in another words posible mechanical engines are useless in a system based on agricultural slavery)
I think it's also worth asking what "deaths prevented" means. Is this deaths directly prevented as a life saving action? Administering preventitive measures that avoid a far more dangerous scenario? Just being there for benign checkups that allow patients to be comfortable not pushing off health concerns until they get worse?
Most underrated channel on TH-cam! The animations are so beautiful and the topics are interisting and well made, how doesnt he have millions of subscribers???
Did you forget actually performing life saving operations? This feels like more of that effective altruism missing the forest for the trees scenario. Many of these "less impactful" jobs still have to be done for society to function, otherwise the doctors and engineers won't even have the opportunity to do anything. The work I'm doing might lead to the Dell server being assembled that ends up running the calculation that cures leukemia, or it runs the game some groundbreaking researcher uses to unwind, or it might have no impact at all other than giving me the paycheck I sometimes use to help feed homeless people. If the last one is the case then I'm fine with that, it might not be the biggest impact ever, but those people were going to be hungry and at least for one day each time they weren't.
I noticed this video a few days ago in my suggested with the old thumbnail. I didn’t click it because I wasn’t sure what it would really be about. However, when you changed it to the new thumbnail with the corgi, I realised it was a video from you guys and I clicked it immediately as I know I like your guys videos. Thought some feedback might be useful on the thumbnail.
Measuring by hours of life saved versus fatalities prevented is a major oversight in that research, not to mention minor procedures are still extremely important and can also help prevent major ones being needed (which carry risks.)
Every time you save a life, you are saving all its possible offspring, including people who will save many more lives. Seen cumulatively, the impact is immeasurable. This is true not only in saving lives, but also in improving them, small simple actions such as motivating respect, kindness, knowledge, and harmony, can lead to unexpected consequences when escalated over an entire lifetime. Your values may not make a difference to 99% of the people you interact with, but if only 1% adopt those principles and express them throughout their lives, the compound effect becomes incredibly large. So, be nice to people.
About the person who discovered blood types. Landsteiner did find three, but there are still disputes (to the best of my knowledge) that czech doctor Jan Janský discovered them earlier than him, and for bonus points, he even discovered the fourth main blood type. Not saying this is bad (it is the opposite), but you could have atleast mentioned him.
My takeaway is that all those lives doctors saved couldn't be saved without the effort of the whole medical system. The lives Petrov saved wouldn't even be at risk if we weren't so stupidly beligerent. No single life is put at risk nor saved without the intervention of the whole of society. The best way to save lives is understanding that we're not alone, we're not just individuals. The single best difference we can make is reducing our contribution to other people's suffering.
Want to save lives? Listen to people, show basic human kindness. Sometimes that's enough to save a life. And of course, vote for policies that increase mental health. Since it's one of the biggest killers. As a doctor listen to patients, and work on preventative medicine.
it is important to keep in mind that all these amazing discoveries by individual scientists were possible because of mundane work of countless other people. You can't discover blood types if you can't get to work due to lack of roads or if you are mugged and killed along the way
And in the negative category we have Ancel Keys, the Food Pyramid, and the diabetes-industrial complex that has by the same criteria, killed hundreds of millions.
Love this video! Thought-provoking topics beautifully and adorably animated. I can't imagine how much work must've gone into it. This video needs so many more views! Let me suggest titling the video something like "How do you save the most lives?" I think that'd pique people's curiosity!
Hi RationalAnimations: You might want to lead with "How do you figure out the best job to save the world"... Many people would get excited by such a question. Who wouldn't want to see which jobs lead to the most good to save the world?
If everyone was a doctor, or a government official, society would crumble quite quickly. We need the construction workers, the agricultralists, the factory workers, and the miners. While one of them might not be able to single-handedly develop a treatment for Cholera or prevent a nuclear holocaust, we still need rooves to live under and food to eat and all of the products of daily life, and the minerals to make them. These people, though more unmeasurably, save lives as well. Society may not be able to run on only bricklayers and tractor drivers, but it certainly can't run on only academics and politicians either. We all need to be comraderous and respectful to each other, neurosurgeons and cement mixers and artists alike (yeh, even the artists!), because It's all a great balance, in which if even one block falls, the entire tower could fall.
Off the top of my head: farmers, sanitation workers (trash and sewage), and materials researchers. One example of working on a practical problem is a girl who designed a suture that changes colors in response to an infection, especially useful for people with diabetes and autoimmune conditions (and by girl I mean she was in high school at the time).
I think one other thing that people often overlooked is a lot of great wonder and innovation in the modern age if the result of team effort of hundreds or even thousands of people
...and what do you do when you actually do have an impactful purposeful work due to circumstances, but it was not what you wanted, it just happened because you couldn't say no to people and follow your own passions. how do you cope with its overwhelming pressure, how do you exist only within purpose, but without happiness? Do you let go of it or do you continue till it burns you out completely?
it made me think, if people on every field get to save lifes, it means the chances of saving a life has nothing to do with the work you do (i mean maybe emergency ambulances or smth) but like the war guy saved half the world's lifes + all the enviroment that didn't get bombed. Makes me think, like your path in life is one and random and you may get to save a life, but I bet you can just let it come to you, the opportunity might present, just follow your path, that's all you have to do (you don't even have to try to do it) then makes me think, why do you want a save a life? where does that desire come from? it's a external thing after all, for someone to die, why do you internalize it? the experience is a given to fortune, why do you want to force randomness into reality? what do you want to save? I'm not saying you can't save a life, I'm not saying you cannot help, quite the contrary, do help, do save a life, that's a great feeling to be able to help when given the chance I'd say the only life you're truly able to "save" is yor own, if saving a life means helping someone live their life to the fullest (man that makes me think we can save somebody every day!, maybe always!) man you can save yourself, every day, every moment, so go foucs on that, and broooo if you're living it to the fullest, and THEN you get to save a life, what an experience, beautiful I just wanted to ramble, felt great doing it, enjoy life guys, do help yourself to anything you want
Tbh I feel like being a doctor isn't the first choice if you want to save lives anymore. Even if doctors aren't all aware of it, "mainstream medicine" nowadays kind of needs people to be sick in order to function. Not that it's the doctors intentional fault. I'm sure we can do much better and we will be. Just what I think, if you feel I'm wrong please correct me
If any of you are wondering what type of career/specialization even determines what is effective, ineffective, and how to change it, the answer is Monitoring and Evaluation.
00:03 Significant technological and population growth in recent history 02:27 Industrial revolution reshaped society and beliefs 07:04 Hyperbolic growth suggests radical and dramatic change in the future 09:11 The possibility of fundamental changes by the end of the 21st century 13:48 Potential for explosive growth in the 21st century hinges on the development of advanced artificial intelligence (A.I.) 16:00 AGI holds the potential to automate human labor. 20:05 AI may automate nearly all human labor by 2060 22:09 Deep learning models may automate human cognition in the future 26:07 Training deep learning models for automation is uncertain but likely feasible by 2052 28:13 AGI could mark a fundamental transformation in our species.
I like how the estimates are carried out with realistic caveats, that scientific knowledge will be discovered eventually anyway and so on. That sort of reasoning is rarely added to public accounts, making popular estimates more honorary than realistic.
Well, you've sure helped put the rest of us who have to _see_ ads on everything through hell! ...Just kidding, I have a good ad-blocker and I don't watch TV or stuff like that so I probably never even see your work.
2:22 that. That is a VERY important medical procedure. Its horrible that it even can happen in the first place. And also weird... Idk im not knowleage about this. But i did play foldit, so thats one thing.
Just learned today humanity is so so close to eradicating polio. Please let us try just a little bit harder, spend 0.001% of the global GDP on this and send it the way of smallpox it'll be worth it o.o
Yet all that work is only done to artificially extend our lives as slave labourers for the western Empire, don't delude us into thinking that your people aren't helping us out of love as obviously colonizers want us alive than dead
Remember, while making a big impact is all well and good, and something to strive for; just making an impact at all can be good enough too. Due to chance alone, your small impact, can become a big one. And while you may not be making said impact today, doesn't mean it couldn't happen tomorrow. You could be have done it already, and not even realize it. How? Ever been on the receiving end of someone needing to vent? You could very well have just saved their life. For all you know, they could go on to be the person who makes a huge impact. Or maybe not. But you still helped that person that day, and it could help others in other ways, who knows. Every impact matters.
It’s ironic that a single choice made in a matter of minutes might have saved more lives than any medical discovery that probably took years to develop
I think when it comes down to it if you become obsessed about making a difference as an end in itself, you'll be disappointed often just find something that's particular suited to you and you enjoy or at least don't hate, and even minorly improves some peoples lives and you're off to great start
I would argue that "making a difference by myself" is just another version of the great man history theory, and tbh is kinda harmful since it helps promoting individualistic solutions to collective problems making our efforts to improve the world a mere ego boost
I have identified a serious issue that I want to fix, I have studied it, I have come up with multiple ways to make thing better, I have refined those ideas and now in my 40s I have some answers. But nobody will listen to me. I'm that weirdo that won't just do things as they have always been done. I have been excluded from society to such an extent that I am now homeless because of my commitment to making a difference. I have achieved nothing, and I will likely die cold and alone in the tent I am sitting in right now without anyone ever even acknowledging that the problem exists and it will continue to kill. All I can do is wait for death and hope it's not too painful as I watch things continue to get worse with no agency at all.
Very interesting video. The last time I tried to use 80,000 hours I found them very geared towards folks just getting into the working world, or perhaps figuring out their post-secondary education for the first time. Which is great for the young, but perhaps not so great for those with established careers seeking change. :)
Even if your career does not really save lives, you can. By stopping at traffic accidents. By talking to your friends. By just beeing nice in general. It's not allways easy, but we can try. So others might try themselfs.
The biggest impact on our future have no doctors or scientist, but politicians. This means, that a politician careen may be the best choice for one who want to save millions of lives, or at least avoid millions of deaths.
I think education can be very impactful. The people who taught all these amazing people, the people who invented or developed the schools of thought they used in order to develop their solutions. Those people might be just as important. And if one educational advancement by one person can be traced as having a significant role in all 3 cases then it is technically more impactful.
I really love the content of your videos, but I think that the sound effects are a bit distracting (too loud, a bit too hectic and too much), which makes it harder to focus on the voice
I'm curious how many "lives" are saved by an individual's blood donation Like Regardless of career, how many lives can be saved by one person donating blood as often as they can for 50 years? Do they save at least one life? Do they save more than doctors do? At least, according to the calculations used in this video Little things like that are what i wonder about Not what career is the most impactful But how to optimize everything else outside of your career, the things that don't take much time, energy or thought away from your personal life and goals, to maximize your "passive" impact
I`m a doctor and i`m gonna check out this study but i don`t believe that stat at all, we save a lot more lives than that, because you have to count all the preventive care we do, when we prescribe diabetes medication for instance, or who works in emergency care and intubates a patient who is about to die of respiratory failure, when you treat a pneumonia patient that without treatment would die, surgeons who operate appendicitis, etc... there are just too many interventions that save lives, for it to be just 50 people. But i do believe that more doctors don`t necessarily mean better health outcomes.
I'd be curious to see how Quality of Life improves with further doctors - not just death rates. And how things like Life Quality work into these calculations generally. This is all invaluable and fascinating but I'm not sure high-impact should only be reserved for life/death rates.
If you think about it they are about 15 basic human needs. If you focus on gathering making or distributing these you can have a massive impact. So all in all you have 45 problems that will forever needed to solve.
More (generalist) physicians aren't as needed in most developed countries, but there's not many that couldn't find productive work for more specialists, nurses (of all sorts), and trauma surgeons.
For the people watching this video, if you want to help by far saving the by astronomical magnitudes most lives from endless suffering to otherwise be subjected to, make sure to help educate and outreach about the urgently necessary prevention of physical deep outer space exploration of other planets! The reason is that according to evolutionary biologists, wild animals in pre-historic nature mainly suffered, for billions of years and quintillions of animals at a time, amounting to about octillions of animals, and microbial interplanetary or interstellar irreversible forward contamination can recklessly kick-start entire grim evolution of life processes if people dare to unilaterally play god. And even if only permanent microbial deep biospheres happen to evolve on other planets, they themselves become additional sources from which natural microbial panspermia processes (e.g. by asteroids knocking microbe-infested rocks out to space as ejecta over millions of years) can spread totally outside of our control. With discipline we can do far better. And even if biospheres were to be good, they can go a million different ways and the window between best and worst versions is gargantuan and any random accidental contamination would lead to abysmal versions with certainty, and so humanity by all means must have discipline and hold itself back from this risk. It's the utmost highest priority macro-ethical issue for the 21st century and nothing else comes even close.
This video has been adapted from the 80,000 Hours Career Guide, which you can read at 80000hours.org/rational
We strongly recommend it for delving deeper into how you could have a tremendously impactful, while fulfilling, career.
The guide is full of interesting and actionable information, from why you shouldn’t just “follow your passion” to why medicine and charity work aren’t always the best ways to help others. It’s full of practical tips and exercises, and at the end, you’ll have a draft of a new career plan.
No wonder!
i will read this, but also you have COOKED with this vid
A sci-tech career has more opportunities on an average to make disproportionate levels of impact on the society, although not everyone gets to have those rare chances without actively striving for them without being picky.
@@draggador Personally affecting a few ordinary people is better than affecting society as a whole.
Petro has been mewing
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!” -Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower
I first heard this in Scott Alexander's Unsong
starfish usually lose the appenages that are touched.
"Today, on missing the point and looking like a dumbass while trying to be smart" @@lurifaks92
@@lurifaks92 that is bullshit.
this comment is somewhat amusing
I'll never forget the woman who did my father's liver transplant. She had worked alongside us for years prior to it. The best outcome was that my father would live 5 years more-- he lived 10. To my family, we had 10 more years with him, and it was not only his life saved, but my family's lives bettered just by her one action. It doesn't always seem like one person can do a lot, but truly you can never know how much you'll affect another person by your actions, so I think the best thing to do is always try to impact others positively-- you don't know who it will affect and what difference it will make.
Garbage collectors save lives.
Always understaffed, always overworked they clean up the mess of others.
Same goes for bricklayers, roofers ect. Without any of those and a thousand other jobs none of us would enjoy the life we are living. Its a great concert and if just one part stops playing, we have a problem. So treat each other with care and respect.
Actually, no, the people who create the regulations that make us have garbage collectors and set the standards preventing bricklayers and roofers from doing faulty work are the ones who save lives. Without regulation, standards, legislation, etc., we'd have garbage collectors, but they would only be for rich people who can afford them. We'd have bricklayers and roofers, but they'd do the job as cheap as possible and people would die in building collapses.
We need everyone playing their part to save lives, but we also need it done according to rules, not in ways that just make things even worse.
thats just every job dawg
@@wasd____ Ok, as someone that work to pay for his studies as a garbage collector ... WTF? The bureaucrats are the worst in 90% of the time. I swear, that you could (and should) let 50% of them go and you would only notice a small difference.
Next point: Even in the dark times of the middle age in Europa, garbage collection were done everywhere ... otherwise it would not benefit anyone.
Then about that "as cheap as possible" ... yes, some do, most don´t. Most will give you an honest price for honest work. But then, most customers want it cheap and are not willing to pay the price of good work. I know, because while in school i helped my grandfather in the summer from time to time and he was in construction. So are some of my friends. The best example i can think if is a friends company: They are building the roofs of houses. A normal company needs 5 days, they need 2. There quality is better, they correct mistakes from the engineers on a regular bases and that is the reason those ppl request them often. But then, they take 10% more and instead of 5 man they need 2. There is this big company, that request them on as regulars and recommends them to basically everyone ... only a few take them after noticing that they take 10%. ...
@@wasd____ Customers keep suppliers from doing faulty work.
There's no regulations against bad tasting food, yet most restaurants are fairly decent. Because they want to stay in business. And it's not just rich people who enjoy eating out.
There's no regulations against uncomfortable shoes. Yet you can buy comfy shoes. And not just rich people wear shoes.
@ How does a buyer know what's inside the walls of a house? What if it doesn't burn down for ten or fifteen years? Do you see the problems here? Sometimes we need regulations because market failures exist.
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world...
i was thinking exactly that
What about the wrong man in the right place?
In real life, it's more commonly the right man in the right place though
So wake, Mr Freeman, wake up and smell the ashes
@@Cappuccino_Rabbit+up
AFIK, there is one man known to have single handedly saved the world from imminent nuclear war: Vasili Arkhipov. He was a Soviet senior officer, who was at a nuclear submarine in the pacific when they were put on the receiving end of depth charges released by the US navy. The charges were only intended to make them surface, but the crew didn’t know this. They had permission to launch the nuclear missile on board if they were attacked, and the two other officers on the sub approved they do this, but Vasili was the sole dissenter. There was no higher chain of command which might have stopped the launch. If Vasili hadn’t dissented, or if he hadn’t been on the sub that day, the weapon would have been launched.
Yes, probably the only one with Petrov
he is a legend
True
@@PaleoalexPicturesLtd
There are surprisingly many people who've been put in positions where a nuclear strike or even all out war might have seemed a likely outcome.
I mean, heck the Cuban missile crisis was the reason that submarine was in that situation. Or perhaps it was another similar incident I forget exactly who it was.
@@PaleoalexPicturesLtd Petrov and Arkhipov are *known* as well as some incidents on the USA side (google «"Accidental Nuclear War: a Timeline of Close Calls" "future of life institute"» -what was surprising to me in that list, though understandable, is how many incidents happened during the Cuban missile crisis and yet only the closest call is well publicized).
I doubt that other similar close call incidents (on both sides) have not occurred that have been kept secret. It has been considered axiomatic that mutually assured destruction (MAD) was a rational and effective policy. However, if a strong component of luck has been involved all along (as is likely the case), it should change the way we see MAD. This has been the thesis of former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William J. Perry, who has campaigned to publicize this threat, change perception and lobby to change it.
Imagine spending years of your life hard at work to create a simple easy and cheap solution to some horrible disease or condition, for the american health system to make it so expensive that noone gets it.
Insulin
It really isn’t the health system, it’s the companies who make that cure or treatment, big pharma is the enemy, for this situation, also, America has a population of a third of a billion people, when the world is home to 8 billion, plenty of other people would still use that miracle solution.
Is there a way to change that?
Dr Nalin was the first guy to say:" Did you try drinking it? " and saving so many lives is so funny to me.
It's unlikely that he was the first. But he led trials to figure out the best recipe, and did the political wrangling to get it recognized in the mainstream.
I’m gonna start drinking the rest of the liquids out of IV bags from hospitals to see if I can become famous too
@@MaxJ.ProfessionalLilGuyI think you’ll be famous for the least intact stomach.
@@MaxJ.ProfessionalLilGuyHow'd it go?
I think an even more important question than "How can I make a difference" is "Is what I'm doing making a positive difference?" Everyone should not focus on making the most impact by themselves but rather finding the thing they are best at and doing that thing in a way that enables others to do more good. If doing good were a competition, we would get in each other's way in trying to be "The one" who does the most good. In order to allow for the most good to be done in the world, both because of and in spite of your own actions, you need to relinquish the idea that one person deserves the credit when really they were just the last in a long line of people to make that change happen
I deliver fuel, every tank I put into the ground drives climate change... But every time a fire engine stops and fills with diesel, I became a part of their support chain. Every time a cardiologist stops for fuel, every time an ambulance does, someone being driven to chemo, every person who stops to get fuel... I made it possible. I was an invisible part of making so much good happen... Just doing my job.
You should focus on doing whatever you feel like doing. There is no correct way to live.
I agree. It's important to focus on the lives being saved, not who gets the credit for saving them. If I was trying to cure some disease and another lab got there first, I would be glad that the disease was cured sooner. Making the world a better place isn't a competition.
It's great to see ORS get mentioned! It's important to remember that Nalin was also able to do what he did because he was surrounded by other researchers and doctors. Another big part of why it's saved so many lives is also because of people after him pushing for it to be recognized, and from organizations like icddr,b which kept research going and are still saving people in Bangladesh today. Even if you aren't the one to invent something, you can still have a huge impact!
Absolutely amazed by the quality of animation in your videos, it’s so incredibly high effort.
furries
Thank you to all who have saved many, or even just one. lets pay things forward so we can keep saving others from a early grave.
What if you don't want to help the world. I don't really feel like it.
The frontier of medicine is not saving lives these days, but bringing people comfort and enabling them to recover as quickly as possible.
Indeed
Is saving lives what makes for a fulfilling life?
Or is it helping to improve quality of life more important?
Or even simply helping make sure quality of life doesn't backtrack
That's essentially the premise of the act of preventing nuclear war "saving lives"
You're not saving lives, you're stopping them from being snuffed out
I'd wager being an artist is an incredibly impactful career
If one can get it to pay the bills anyway
Because your art can inspire others
Even give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning
Same with therapists and coaches
The only time they "save a life" is when they stop someone from committing suicide, or going on a murder spree, or something like that
But arguably, the little things they do, to improve someone's mental health and quality of life has a massive impact for that life, and the lives of those around them
I really feel like more upgrades are made in cosmetic surgery than anything else. We've lost focus.
The butterfly effect is all over the question of "what job saves the most lives", because we're all so interconnected. Nurses love Dr Pepper, it's easily available caffeine with a sugar free variety and tastes good even flat. If a nurse catches a possibility fatal error, how much of that was due to being more alert due to the caffeine in their system? Suddenly, a small bit of that life saved is attributed to the vending machine operator, the factory workers that made the soda, the people who harvested the ingredients, thousands of people! Not to mention the people who trained the nurse, of whom they wouldn't have known about an error to catch.
It's all to say, if you're doing your job... You probably had a hand in making the lives of others better. Civilization is a group effort, and you are responsible for supporting the saving of lives or the betterment of others in some way you may never be aware of. You always matter.
So true.
True
Progress studies! To remind yourself that incredible human progress has been made, and that we already possess tried and true methods of solving every problem!
This is constructive optimism, I think--that if the world is doomed, it is by coincidence and it doesn't negate the progress we've made thus far. The other lesson is that the tools you need to un-doom the world are in plain sight.
‘Progress’ can also create doom. Denying this is, as you put it, mere optimism. We’re filled with microplastics nowadays, 10.000 years ago we weren’t. I’m not saying we haven’t toppled certain problems with the adequate solutions, but that with each solution created new problems are generated. The invention of the car (pre)supposes the invention of the car crash, this principle will always exist. Optimism is necessary, yes, but so is pessimism, being realism the truly useful product of this synthesis.
I mean, while I agree that optimism is useful in this kind of video it end up as more of a technological utopia than an accurate search of hope, I would say that social changes are much more important than technological advances since there are evidence that the steam engine (or at least a very primitive version of it) was discovered in ANCIENT GREECE but it wasn't use do the base and superstructure conditions of that time (or in another words posible mechanical engines are useless in a system based on agricultural slavery)
I’m currently expelling solid waste, and it is not diarrhea
I am currently not expelling waste and am currently dying
I am currently being a currency
I am currently asking for proof
Coomin' the chunkies
Is the funny eyeball man?
I think it's also worth asking what "deaths prevented" means. Is this deaths directly prevented as a life saving action? Administering preventitive measures that avoid a far more dangerous scenario? Just being there for benign checkups that allow patients to be comfortable not pushing off health concerns until they get worse?
Most underrated channel on TH-cam! The animations are so beautiful and the topics are interisting and well made, how doesnt he have millions of subscribers???
Perfect thing to watch while eating lunch!
6:06 I love the dry humor.
Did you forget actually performing life saving operations?
This feels like more of that effective altruism missing the forest for the trees scenario. Many of these "less impactful" jobs still have to be done for society to function, otherwise the doctors and engineers won't even have the opportunity to do anything.
The work I'm doing might lead to the Dell server being assembled that ends up running the calculation that cures leukemia, or it runs the game some groundbreaking researcher uses to unwind, or it might have no impact at all other than giving me the paycheck I sometimes use to help feed homeless people.
If the last one is the case then I'm fine with that, it might not be the biggest impact ever, but those people were going to be hungry and at least for one day each time they weren't.
The distortion on the projector whenever they walk in front is crazy attention to detail
I noticed this video a few days ago in my suggested with the old thumbnail. I didn’t click it because I wasn’t sure what it would really be about.
However, when you changed it to the new thumbnail with the corgi, I realised it was a video from you guys and I clicked it immediately as I know I like your guys videos.
Thought some feedback might be useful on the thumbnail.
If you don't think you will make a difference, consider: Which raindrop do you blame for the flood?
Measuring by hours of life saved versus fatalities prevented is a major oversight in that research, not to mention minor procedures are still extremely important and can also help prevent major ones being needed (which carry risks.)
Every time you save a life, you are saving all its possible offspring, including people who will save many more lives. Seen cumulatively, the impact is immeasurable. This is true not only in saving lives, but also in improving them, small simple actions such as motivating respect, kindness, knowledge, and harmony, can lead to unexpected consequences when escalated over an entire lifetime. Your values may not make a difference to 99% of the people you interact with, but if only 1% adopt those principles and express them throughout their lives, the compound effect becomes incredibly large. So, be nice to people.
That is one smooth transition to the sponsorship 😂
Wow amazing video thanks!
About the person who discovered blood types. Landsteiner did find three, but there are still disputes (to the best of my knowledge) that czech doctor Jan Janský discovered them earlier than him, and for bonus points, he even discovered the fourth main blood type. Not saying this is bad (it is the opposite), but you could have atleast mentioned him.
as a czech person, I agree
The animation is top-notch, bravo!
My takeaway is that all those lives doctors saved couldn't be saved without the effort of the whole medical system. The lives Petrov saved wouldn't even be at risk if we weren't so stupidly beligerent. No single life is put at risk nor saved without the intervention of the whole of society. The best way to save lives is understanding that we're not alone, we're not just individuals. The single best difference we can make is reducing our contribution to other people's suffering.
Thank you for making these and inspiring us to be better and make a difference!
Want to save lives?
Listen to people, show basic human kindness. Sometimes that's enough to save a life.
And of course, vote for policies that increase mental health. Since it's one of the biggest killers.
As a doctor listen to patients, and work on preventative medicine.
A British soldier saving a life of German soldier in world war I:
😭
Nah 💀
The animation is so good
it is important to keep in mind that all these amazing discoveries by individual scientists were possible because of mundane work of countless other people. You can't discover blood types if you can't get to work due to lack of roads or if you are mugged and killed along the way
The people creates the heros not that the heros creates the people
Bro forgot about the guy who discovered polio vaccine.
Ehhh everyone knows abt him tho these are more rare stories
And in the negative category we have Ancel Keys, the Food Pyramid, and the diabetes-industrial complex that has by the same criteria, killed hundreds of millions.
Love this video! Thought-provoking topics beautifully and adorably animated. I can't imagine how much work must've gone into it.
This video needs so many more views! Let me suggest titling the video something like "How do you save the most lives?" I think that'd pique people's curiosity!
Amazing video and animation. Please keep up the good work and introduce us to great subject such as this one ❤
This was an amazing video and i really appreciated watching it❤
I love this channel so much
Hi RationalAnimations: You might want to lead with "How do you figure out the best job to save the world"... Many people would get excited by such a question. Who wouldn't want to see which jobs lead to the most good to save the world?
If everyone was a doctor, or a government official, society would crumble quite quickly. We need the construction workers, the agricultralists, the factory workers, and the miners. While one of them might not be able to single-handedly develop a treatment for Cholera or prevent a nuclear holocaust, we still need rooves to live under and food to eat and all of the products of daily life, and the minerals to make them. These people, though more unmeasurably, save lives as well. Society may not be able to run on only bricklayers and tractor drivers, but it certainly can't run on only academics and politicians either. We all need to be comraderous and respectful to each other, neurosurgeons and cement mixers and artists alike (yeh, even the artists!), because It's all a great balance, in which if even one block falls, the entire tower could fall.
I dunno if that's exactly true but I love the idea.
Amazing video as always! ❤
wow... thank you for making my day!
Off the top of my head: farmers, sanitation workers (trash and sewage), and materials researchers.
One example of working on a practical problem is a girl who designed a suture that changes colors in response to an infection, especially useful for people with diabetes and autoimmune conditions (and by girl I mean she was in high school at the time).
Thank you Petrov for keeping a cool head ... I'd hate to have missed my WHAM phase in 1984!
Holy crap the animation in these videos keeps getting better
I think one other thing that people often overlooked is a lot of great wonder and innovation in the modern age if the result of team effort of hundreds or even thousands of people
I’m excited for John Greene to be on this list some day for continued work on trying to make TB care more accessible.
Really good video! But what about Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin?
Great timing on the video, thanks very much rational team!
Wow!!! I watched the whole video just 'cause the animation is so smooth.
...and what do you do when you actually do have an impactful purposeful work due to circumstances, but it was not what you wanted, it just happened because you couldn't say no to people and follow your own passions. how do you cope with its overwhelming pressure, how do you exist only within purpose, but without happiness? Do you let go of it or do you continue till it burns you out completely?
Just do the best you can in your career and constantly think about how you could improve your work or help the others
it made me think, if people on every field get to save lifes, it means the chances of saving a life has nothing to do with the work you do (i mean maybe emergency ambulances or smth) but like the war guy saved half the world's lifes + all the enviroment that didn't get bombed.
Makes me think, like your path in life is one and random and you may get to save a life, but I bet you can just let it come to you, the opportunity might present, just follow your path, that's all you have to do (you don't even have to try to do it)
then makes me think, why do you want a save a life? where does that desire come from? it's a external thing after all, for someone to die, why do you internalize it? the experience is a given to fortune, why do you want to force randomness into reality? what do you want to save?
I'm not saying you can't save a life, I'm not saying you cannot help, quite the contrary, do help, do save a life, that's a great feeling to be able to help when given the chance
I'd say the only life you're truly able to "save" is yor own, if saving a life means helping someone live their life to the fullest (man that makes me think we can save somebody every day!, maybe always!) man you can save yourself, every day, every moment, so go foucs on that, and broooo if you're living it to the fullest, and THEN you get to save a life, what an experience, beautiful
I just wanted to ramble, felt great doing it, enjoy life guys, do help yourself to anything you want
9:25 We saw it in the Game Theory video on Game Theory, that also cited another video on Game Theory that mentioned him :D
Tbh I feel like being a doctor isn't the first choice if you want to save lives anymore. Even if doctors aren't all aware of it, "mainstream medicine" nowadays kind of needs people to be sick in order to function. Not that it's the doctors intentional fault. I'm sure we can do much better and we will be. Just what I think, if you feel I'm wrong please correct me
Excellent!
If any of you are wondering what type of career/specialization even determines what is effective, ineffective, and how to change it, the answer is Monitoring and Evaluation.
“ we’ll start with doctors and end with nuclear war”
That's western Empire in a nutshell
About half of the current worlds population owe their lives to Fritz Haber's process to synthesize ammonia.
00:03 Significant technological and population growth in recent history
02:27 Industrial revolution reshaped society and beliefs
07:04 Hyperbolic growth suggests radical and dramatic change in the future
09:11 The possibility of fundamental changes by the end of the 21st century
13:48 Potential for explosive growth in the 21st century hinges on the development of advanced artificial intelligence (A.I.)
16:00 AGI holds the potential to automate human labor.
20:05 AI may automate nearly all human labor by 2060
22:09 Deep learning models may automate human cognition in the future
26:07 Training deep learning models for automation is uncertain but likely feasible by 2052
28:13 AGI could mark a fundamental transformation in our species.
Save the cheerleader, save the world. Amazing vídeo!
I like how the estimates are carried out with realistic caveats, that scientific knowledge will be discovered eventually anyway and so on. That sort of reasoning is rarely added to public accounts, making popular estimates more honorary than realistic.
Classic rational animations video right here.
The music in this was great. I was actually dancing through my tasks while listening/watching
I chose selling ads as my career of highest possible impact.
Boy, I sure hope I’m right about there not being a hell.
Well, you've sure helped put the rest of us who have to _see_ ads on everything through hell!
...Just kidding, I have a good ad-blocker and I don't watch TV or stuff like that so I probably never even see your work.
2:22 that.
That is a VERY important medical procedure.
Its horrible that it even can happen in the first place.
And also weird...
Idk im not knowleage about this. But i did play foldit, so thats one thing.
Thank you for so much informational high quality content
Also, every small decision compounds. You'd be surprised of how just being kind will improve and even save lives down the line.
The animations are looking great:D
Why was blood group C renamed to O?
Just learned today humanity is so so close to eradicating polio. Please let us try just a little bit harder, spend 0.001% of the global GDP on this and send it the way of smallpox it'll be worth it o.o
Yet all that work is only done to artificially extend our lives as slave labourers for the western Empire, don't delude us into thinking that your people aren't helping us out of love as obviously colonizers want us alive than dead
Remember, while making a big impact is all well and good, and something to strive for; just making an impact at all can be good enough too. Due to chance alone, your small impact, can become a big one.
And while you may not be making said impact today, doesn't mean it couldn't happen tomorrow. You could be have done it already, and not even realize it. How?
Ever been on the receiving end of someone needing to vent? You could very well have just saved their life. For all you know, they could go on to be the person who makes a huge impact. Or maybe not. But you still helped that person that day, and it could help others in other ways, who knows.
Every impact matters.
It’s ironic that a single choice made in a matter of minutes might have saved more lives than any medical discovery that probably took years to develop
Mic quality is wild
‘The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.’
I think when it comes down to it if you become obsessed about making a difference as an end in itself, you'll be disappointed often just find something that's particular suited to you and you enjoy or at least don't hate, and even minorly improves some peoples lives and you're off to great start
I would argue that "making a difference by myself" is just another version of the great man history theory, and tbh is kinda harmful since it helps promoting individualistic solutions to collective problems making our efforts to improve the world a mere ego boost
I have identified a serious issue that I want to fix, I have studied it, I have come up with multiple ways to make thing better, I have refined those ideas and now in my 40s I have some answers. But nobody will listen to me. I'm that weirdo that won't just do things as they have always been done. I have been excluded from society to such an extent that I am now homeless because of my commitment to making a difference. I have achieved nothing, and I will likely die cold and alone in the tent I am sitting in right now without anyone ever even acknowledging that the problem exists and it will continue to kill. All I can do is wait for death and hope it's not too painful as I watch things continue to get worse with no agency at all.
Very interesting video. The last time I tried to use 80,000 hours I found them very geared towards folks just getting into the working world, or perhaps figuring out their post-secondary education for the first time. Which is great for the young, but perhaps not so great for those with established careers seeking change. :)
Adorable animation! You've earned my sub!
Even if your career does not really save lives, you can. By stopping at traffic accidents. By talking to your friends. By just beeing nice in general.
It's not allways easy, but we can try. So others might try themselfs.
The biggest impact on our future have no doctors or scientist, but politicians. This means, that a politician careen may be the best choice for one who want to save millions of lives, or at least avoid millions of deaths.
OH MY GOD I THOUGHT THIS WAS TED ED
So which problem are ya viewers planning to solve?
Suffering lol
I'm currently in Technical AI Safety Research, and this reminded me why I'm here.
I think education can be very impactful. The people who taught all these amazing people, the people who invented or developed the schools of thought they used in order to develop their solutions. Those people might be just as important. And if one educational advancement by one person can be traced as having a significant role in all 3 cases then it is technically more impactful.
Naysayers: "One person can't change the world"
Stanoff: "Hold my beer"
I really love the content of your videos, but I think that the sound effects are a bit distracting (too loud, a bit too hectic and too much), which makes it harder to focus on the voice
I'm curious how many "lives" are saved by an individual's blood donation
Like
Regardless of career, how many lives can be saved by one person donating blood as often as they can for 50 years?
Do they save at least one life?
Do they save more than doctors do? At least, according to the calculations used in this video
Little things like that are what i wonder about
Not what career is the most impactful
But how to optimize everything else outside of your career, the things that don't take much time, energy or thought away from your personal life and goals, to maximize your "passive" impact
10 percent of the survey region is responsible for 90 for percent of the results.
Pretty much for every population type and result group
Your characters in these videos are so cute
Hi, first here, great video, instant like
Damnit it should've been me not you
I`m a doctor and i`m gonna check out this study but i don`t believe that stat at all, we save a lot more lives than that, because you have to count all the preventive care we do, when we prescribe diabetes medication for instance, or who works in emergency care and intubates a patient who is about to die of respiratory failure, when you treat a pneumonia patient that without treatment would die, surgeons who operate appendicitis, etc...
there are just too many interventions that save lives, for it to be just 50 people.
But i do believe that more doctors don`t necessarily mean better health outcomes.
Did this get shadowbanned?
I'd be curious to see how Quality of Life improves with further doctors - not just death rates. And how things like Life Quality work into these calculations generally. This is all invaluable and fascinating but I'm not sure high-impact should only be reserved for life/death rates.
If you think about it they are about 15 basic human needs. If you focus on gathering making or distributing these you can have a massive impact. So all in all you have 45 problems that will forever needed to solve.
More (generalist) physicians aren't as needed in most developed countries, but there's not many that couldn't find productive work for more specialists, nurses (of all sorts), and trauma surgeons.
For the people watching this video, if you want to help by far saving the by astronomical magnitudes most lives from endless suffering to otherwise be subjected to, make sure to help educate and outreach about the urgently necessary prevention of physical deep outer space exploration of other planets! The reason is that according to evolutionary biologists, wild animals in pre-historic nature mainly suffered, for billions of years and quintillions of animals at a time, amounting to about octillions of animals, and microbial interplanetary or interstellar irreversible forward contamination can recklessly kick-start entire grim evolution of life processes if people dare to unilaterally play god. And even if only permanent microbial deep biospheres happen to evolve on other planets, they themselves become additional sources from which natural microbial panspermia processes (e.g. by asteroids knocking microbe-infested rocks out to space as ejecta over millions of years) can spread totally outside of our control. With discipline we can do far better. And even if biospheres were to be good, they can go a million different ways and the window between best and worst versions is gargantuan and any random accidental contamination would lead to abysmal versions with certainty, and so humanity by all means must have discipline and hold itself back from this risk. It's the utmost highest priority macro-ethical issue for the 21st century and nothing else comes even close.