Kelsey Piper

American journalist and effective altruist

Kelsey Piper
Piper in 2019
Nationality	American
Education	Stanford University (Symbolic Systems, 2016)
Occupation	Journalist
Notable work	Future Perfect

Kelsey Piper is an American journalist who is a staff writer at Vox, where she writes for the column Future Perfect, which covers a variety of topics from an effective altruism perspective. While attending Stanford University, she founded and ran the Stanford Effective Altruism student organization. Piper blogs at The Unit of Caring.^[1]

Education and career

Around 2010, while in high school, Piper developed an interest in the rationalist and effective altruism movements.^[2] She later studied at Stanford University, where she majored in Symbolic Systems.^[3] At Stanford she became a member of Giving What We Can, pledging to donate 30% of her lifetime income to charity, as well as founding the student organization Stanford Effective Altruism.^[4] After graduating from Stanford in 2016,^[3] Piper worked as the head of the writing team at Triplebyte, until she left to join Vox as a staff writer.^[5]

Future Perfect

Since 2018, Piper has written for the Vox column Future Perfect,^[6] which covers "the most critical issues of the day through the lens of effective altruism".^[7] Piper is concerned about global catastrophic risks, and treats journalism as a way to popularize these risks and advance the cause of addressing them,^[1] which is part of effective altruism's broader concern regarding the relevance of immediate action.^[8] Specifically, Piper has discussed the possibility that society is living on a historical precipice, where immediate action needs to be taken to avoid global catastrophic risks, and what implications that has for effective altruism and her own journalism.^[8]

Piper was an early responder to the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing the risk of a serious global pandemic in February 2020^[9] and recommending measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing in March of the same year.^[10]^[11] Since then, she has discussed the societal risk posed by inaccurate study preprints^[12] and analyzed the impact of the pandemic on the historical scale, deeming it one of the ten deadliest in human history.^[13]

References

^ ^a ^b Wiblin, Robert; Harris, Keiran; Hutchinson, Michelle; Piper, Kelsey (February 27, 2019). Can journalists still write about important things? (Podcast). 80,000 Hours.
^ Metz, Cade (February 13, 2021). "Silicon Valley's Safe Space". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
^ ^a ^b "Kelsey Piper, ESP Teacher". Stanford ESP. Archived from the original on February 9, 2021.
^ Zabel, Claire (February 5, 2015). "A different take on giving back". Stanford Daily.
^ "Kelsey Piper". Vox (Profile). Retrieved February 2, 2021.
^ Schmidt, Christine (October 15, 2018). "Will Vox's new section on effective altruism…well, do any good?". Nieman Journalism Lab.
^ Labenz, Nathan; Piper, Kelsey (June 25, 2020). "Kelsey Piper: Future Perfect — a year of coverage". The Centre for Effective Altruism.
^ ^a ^b Fisher, Richard (September 24, 2020). "Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?". BBC Future.
^ Masson, Gabrielle (February 6, 2020). "12th US coronavirus case confirmed in Wisconsin". Becker's Clinical Leadership and Infection Control.
^ Piper, Kelsey (March 13, 2020). "It's not overreacting to prepare for coronavirus. Here's how". Vox.
^ Miller, Johanna L. (July 17, 2020). "Patience". Physics Today. doi:10.1063/pt.6.3.20200717a. S2CID 243372332.
^ Griggs, Mary Beth (September 19, 2020). "Why it's important to look for the limitations in coronavirus studies". The Verge.
^ Palmer, Ben (January 22, 2021). "Weekend reads: The travel industry steps in to help end Covid-19". Advisory Board.