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Can one person make a difference? | The 80,000 Hours career guide (2023 edition)
- Anticipates that while some conventional approaches to doing good yield limited results, other paths enable individuals to achieve extraordinary impact, with specific analysis planned to show that most life expectancy gains in the last century stemmed from non-medical factors like nutrition and sanitation.
- Projects that health gains in developed nations follow a curve dropping off rapidly above 100 doctors per 100,000 people and becoming nearly flat beyond 150 per 100,000, implying additional doctors in wealthy countries will deliver less significant and certain results.
- Estimates that a typical doctor in rich nations like the US or UK will likely not have a huge impact compared to other careers, projecting that almost any college graduate can save more lives through alternative paths.
- Plans to quantify high-impact historical figures, calculating that Dr. David Nyland's five-month acceleration of oral rehydration therapy saved approximately 500,000 lives, with the therapy itself saving over 50 million lives to date.
- Projects that Karl Landstein's discovery of blood groups likely saved tens of millions of lives, while Stanislav Petrov's actions in 1983 are conservatively estimated to have saved one billion lives, an underestimate of a potential catastrophe involving billions of deaths and the end of civilization.
- Expects that Petrov's impact likely dwarfs that of other historical figures, noting that preventing nuclear catastrophe could have long-run effects vastly more important than immediate life-saving metrics.
- Defines social impact as the number of people helped multiplied by the degree of improvement over the long term, projecting that individuals can increase this metric by helping more people, helping more deeply, or extending the duration of benefits.
- Plans to cover strategies for increasing the probability of entering the highest-impact careers, which are anticipated to not be the most obvious, and to explain how college graduates can make a significant impact in various jobs.
- Anticipates that improving government decision-making may lack short-term quantifiable results but is expected to solve numerous problems over the long term, alongside a discussion on job selection to fulfill potential for impact.
- Indicates plans to share stories of high-impact historical figures including Alan Turing, Viktor Zhdanov, Roger Bacon, and Galileo, while also analyzing the scientific method as a prerequisite for major technological breakthroughs like the Industrial Revolution.