[Article] “Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them” by Robert Wiblin, Benjamin Todd

The recording may not reflect the most recent changes to this article.

We advise people to work on problems that are important but neglected, and to try to increase the contribution they’re able to have.

These steps make it easier to have a big impact, but they also increase your potential to make things worse: the more important the problem, the worse it is to set it back; the more neglected an area, the more effect you have on its trajectory; and the more influence you have, the more it matters if you’re wrong.

This holds even if you’re not doing anything directly harmful and trying to be cautious — it’s easy to make things worse by accident, and indeed to make them much worse.

In some areas of life, your downsides are relatively capped. If you try to write a great novel, and no one wants to publish it, the worst thing you’ve done is waste some time.

But we’ll show that when it comes to doing good — especially in ‘fragile fields’ — there are many ways to set back the broader field, and so the downsides aren’t limited in the same way. The potential for negative impact can be as big or greater than the potential for positive.

So if you’re going to try to have an impact, and especially if you’re going to be ambitious about it, it’s very important to carefully consider how you might accidentally make things worse.

This doesn’t mean sticking to ‘sure things’ that everyone agrees with.

Narrated by the author.

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First published:
October 15th, 2018

Source:
https://80000hours.org/articles/accidental-harm