Calculating the Potential Impact of a Career or Business Idea

In our quest to find ways to maximize our positive impact on society, I’ve developed a Python script that helps us calculate the potential societal utility of a career or business idea.

The script asks for the number of people potentially impacted per year by the new idea, and the total number of opportunities per year for both the current (“baseline”) and potential new career or business.

Here’s the Python code:

def calculate_utility(num_people_impacted, total_opportunities):
    if total_opportunities > 0:
        utility = num_people_impacted / total_opportunities
    else:
        print("Error: Number of opportunities must be greater than 0.")
        utility = None
    return utility

def calculate_utility_delta(new_utility, baseline_utility):
    utility_delta = new_utility - baseline_utility
    return utility_delta

def calculate_total_potential_increase(utility_delta, num_people):
    total_potential_increase = utility_delta * num_people
    return total_potential_increase

# Input data for the baseline and potential career/business
baseline_people_impacted = int(input("Enter the number of people impacted per year in your current or baseline career/business: "))
baseline_opportunities = int(input("Enter the total number of opportunities per year in your current or baseline career/business: "))

potential_people_impacted = int(input("Enter the number of people you could potentially impact per year in the new career/business: "))
potential_opportunities = int(input("Enter the total number of opportunities per year in the new career/business: "))

# Calculate utilities
baseline_utility = calculate_utility(baseline_people_impacted, baseline_opportunities)
potential_utility = calculate_utility(potential_people_impacted, potential_opportunities)

# Calculate utility delta
utility_delta = calculate_utility_delta(potential_utility, baseline_utility)

# Calculate total potential increase in utility
total_potential_increase = calculate_total_potential_increase(utility_delta, potential_people_impacted)

print(f"The total potential increase in usefulness to society of the new career/business idea is: {total_potential_increase}")

With this script, we can estimate the increase in usefulness to society if we were to switch from our current career or business to the new idea. Of course, this is a simple script based on basic assumptions, so its outputs should be interpreted accordingly. Real-life decision-making would likely require more detailed and sophisticated modeling, taking into account a range of additional factors.