Evidence-Based Charity and Moral Psychology

You're listening to the Michael Shermer Show. What's the new project? And by the way, it's nice to see a egghead. actually doing something in the world. Well, you know, that's the thing.

I I c my PhD is in philosophy. So I came from, you know, definitely egghead, but not necessarily a a a a a field that's focused on doing stuff in in in the world. And there's been this migration over time where I started out as a philosopher and thought, gosh, you know, a better understanding of, you know, how we got to be the way we are and how our brains work could not only help us do better philosophy, but also that, you know, some of the ideas coming from philosophy could help us understand our own minds, brains better. And that's where I kind of the first 10, 15 years of my career was looking at moral dilemmas, trolley problems, and looking at how that worked in people's brains.

And that was kind of bringing philosophy in some ways a step closer to, to to reality. And then in the last five to ten years, I've, you know, have this feeling that The the world needs all all all all of the ideas it can get and we've learned a lot about human nature and human morality and is there something that I and and my collaborators can do to take some of what we've learned and and and and and try to to to make a positive impact? And so that that's where we're giving multiplier was sort of the the first kind of applied project to to to make it out into the world. And um yeah, I can I can I can tell you a little bit about kind of how it got started, the relief research leading up to it.

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