Toby Ord | |
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 Ord in 2019 | |
| Born | Toby David Godfrey Ord July 1979 (age 46) Melbourne, Australia |
| Spouse | Bernadette Young |
| Education | |
| Education | |
| Thesis | Beyond Action: Applying Consequentialism to Decision Making and Motivation (2009) |
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| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| School | Western philosophy |
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| Website | www |
Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979)[1] is an Australian philosopher. In 2009 he foundedGiving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in theeffective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible.[2]
He was a senior research fellow at Oxford University'sFuture of Humanity Institute, where his work focused onexistential risk.[3] His book on the subject,The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, was published in March 2020.[4]
Ord was born inMelbourne, Australia, in 1979.[5] He later attended theUniversity of Melbourne, where he initially studied computer science. On completing his first degree, he switched to studying philosophy to pursue his interest in ethics, later stating: "At this stage I knew that I wanted to make a large positive difference in the world and it seemed that studying ethics would help."[6]
For his graduate studies, Ord moved to theUniversity of Oxford, where he obtained aB.Phil., and aD.Phil. in philosophy. Having submitted his doctoral thesis,Beyond Action: Applying Consequentialism to Decision Making and Motivation, Ord was retained as a junior research fellow byBalliol College, Oxford.[7]
Ord held the position of research fellow at Oxford'sFuture of Humanity Institute from 2014 until 2019,[7] and senior research fellow from 2019 until the institute's shutdown[8] in 2024. Ord describes his focus as "the big picture questions facing humanity."[9] He is a trustee of the Centre for Effective Altruism[10] and of the non-profit organization80,000 Hours, researching careers that have the largest positive social impact and providing career advice based on that research.[11]
Ord's work has been primarily in moral philosophy. Inapplied ethics, he has worked on bioethics, the demands of morality, and global priority setting. He has also made contributions in global health, as an advisor to the third edition ofDisease Control Priorities Project.[12] In normative ethics, his research has focused onconsequentialism and on moral uncertainty.
Ord's current main research interest isexistential risk. His book on the topicThe Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity was published in March 2020.[4]The New Yorker characterizes Ord's research motivation as follows:[5]
A concern for existential risk seemed, to Ord, to be the next logical expansion of a broadeningmoral circle. If we can learn to value the lives of people in other places and circumstances equally to our own, then we can do the same for people situated at a different moment in time. Those future people, whose quality of life and very existence will be intimately affected by our choices today, matter as much as we do.
Ord has written papers on the viability and potentials forhypercomputation,models of computation that can provide outputs that are notTuring-computable such as a machine that could solve thehalting problem.[13]
At Oxford, Ord resolved to give a significant proportion of his income to the most cost-effective charities he could find. Following a number of enquiries from people interested in making a similar commitment, Ord decided to set up an organisation geared towards supporting like-minded donors.[14] In 2009, Ord launchedGiving What We Can, an international society whose members have each pledged to donate at least 10% of their income to the most cost-effective charities. The organisation is aligned with, and part of, theeffective altruism movement. Giving What We Can seeks not only to encourage people to give more of their money to charity but also stresses the importance of giving to the most cost-effective ones,[15] arguing that "you can often do 100x more good with your dollar by donating to the best charities."[16][17] By July 2024, Giving What We Can had grown to over 9,000 members, who have already donated $253 million to effective charities.[18]
Ord himself decided initially to cap his income at £20,000 per year, and to give away everything he earned above that to well-researched charities. A year later, he revised this figure down to £18,000.[19] This threshold rises annually with inflation.[20] As of December 2019, he had donated £106,000, or 28 percent of his income.[21] Over the course of his career, he expects his donations to total around £1 million.[22]
Ord lives in Oxford with his wife, Bernadette Young, a medical doctor.[5][23]
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