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Mini Blog Post 10: Seek positive externalities — Neel Nanda

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Why and how you should optimise for being a nicer person

One of the most useful concepts I’ve learned from economics is the idea of an externality: the consequences of your actions on other people. This is important because, intuitively, humans are self-centred, and it’s easy to not notice the effects your actions have on others. And it almost never feels as visceral as the costs and benefits to yourself. The canonical examples are coordination problems, like climate change. Taking a plane flight has strong benefits to me, but costs everyone on Earth a little bit, a negative externality. And a lot of the problems in the world today boil down to…

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