âThinkerâ vs âDoerâ gets pretty fuzzy: âchanging lawsâ certainly involves a lot of thinking, as do ~all of the highest-impact things you might be considering âdirectly improving the worldâ. I especially have trouble seeing how you could classify Farmerâs work in Haiti as something other than an attempt to directly improve the world.
But riffing on your ânot just the people who have told others that they shouldâ, and emphasizing the âthatâ, perhaps the line is whether someoneâs primary work has been persuading other people to be more altruistic and/âor effective? In which case Iâd probably put MacAskill, Ord and Singer, and Rosling as âThinkersâ and Karnofsky, Wise, and Farmer as âDoersâ. But several of the folks in the âThinkerâ category still did substantial âDoerâ work (Roslingâs hands-on public health work in Africa, MacAskillâs co-founding 80k, Ordâs cause prioritization, Singerâs political advocacy and donations).
âThinkerâ vs âDoerâ gets pretty fuzzy: âchanging lawsâ certainly involves a lot of thinking, as do ~all of the highest-impact things you might be considering âdirectly improving the worldâ. I especially have trouble seeing how you could classify Farmerâs work in Haiti as something other than an attempt to directly improve the world.
But riffing on your ânot just the people who have told others that they shouldâ, and emphasizing the âthatâ, perhaps the line is whether someoneâs primary work has been persuading other people to be more altruistic and/âor effective? In which case Iâd probably put MacAskill, Ord and Singer, and Rosling as âThinkersâ and Karnofsky, Wise, and Farmer as âDoersâ. But several of the folks in the âThinkerâ category still did substantial âDoerâ work (Roslingâs hands-on public health work in Africa, MacAskillâs co-founding 80k, Ordâs cause prioritization, Singerâs political advocacy and donations).