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Audio narrations from the Effective Altruism Forum, including curated posts and posts with 125+ karma.
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Manifest 2024 is a festival that we organized last weekend in Berkeley. By most accounts, it was a great success. On our feedback form, the average response to “would you recommend to a friend” was a 9.0/10. Reviewers said nice things like “one of the best weekends of my life” and “dinners and meetings and conversations with people building local cultures so achingly beautiful they feel almost like dreams” and “I’ve always found tribalism mysterious, but perhaps that was just because I hadn’t yet found my tribe.”
Arnold Brooks running a session on Aristotle's Metaphysics. More photos of Manifest here.
However, a recent post on The Guardian and review on the EA Forum highlight an uncomfortable fact: we invited a handful of controversial speakers to Manifest, whom these authors call out as “racist”. Why did we invite these folks?
First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — [...]
Outline:
(01:01) First: our sessions and guests were mostly not controversial — despite what you may have heard
(03:03) Okay, but there sure seemed to be a lot of controversial ones…
(06:03) Bringing people together with prediction markets
(07:31) Anyways, controversy bad
(08:57) Aside: Is Manifest an Effective Altruism event?
First published:
June 18th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/34pz6ni3muwPnenLS/why-so-many-racists-at-manifest
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The Arthropoda Foundation
Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won’t pay for it; and within EA, the focus is on advocacy, not research. So, welfare science needs your help.
We’re launching the Arthropoda Foundation, a fund to ensure that insect welfare science gets the essential resources it needs to provide decision-relevant answers to pressing questions. Every dollar we raise will be granted to research projects that can’t be funded any other way.
We’re in a critical moment for this work. Over the last year, field-building efforts have accelerated, setting up academic labs that can tackle key studies. However, funding for these studies is [...]
Outline:
(00:10) The Arthropoda Foundation
(01:17) Why do we need a fund?
(02:55) Team
First published:
June 14th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2NsS7gjccJAKMf4co/help-fund-insect-welfare-science
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general.
Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don’t get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If those first few years of work experience aren’t your best pick, they will still be useful as a place where you can ‘learn how to job’, save some money, and then pivot or grow from there.
The main reasons are:
- The EA job market can be grim. Securing a job at an EA organisation out of university is highly competitive, often resulting in failing to get a job, or chaotic job experiences due to the nascent nature of many EA orgs. An alternative [...]
Outline:
(01:58) What's the problem? Three failure modes of trying to get an EA job
(06:15) Maybe let the non-EA world train you
(08:50) Let's get specific. Some of my story
(11:45) Caveats
(12:58) Wrapping up
First published:
June 14th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZvXBSs9Nz3dKBKcAo/maybe-let-the-non-ea-world-train-you
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Crossposted from AI Lab Watch. Subscribe on Substack.
Introduction.
Anthropic has an unconventional governance mechanism: an independent "Long-Term Benefit Trust" elects some of its board. Anthropic sometimes emphasizes that the Trust is an experiment, but mostly points to it to argue that Anthropic will be able to promote safety and benefit-sharing over profit.[1]
But the Trust's details have not been published and some information Anthropic has shared is concerning. In particular, Anthropic's stockholders can apparently overrule, modify, or abrogate the Trust, and the details are unclear.
Anthropic has not publicly demonstrated that the Trust would be able to actually do anything that stockholders don't like.
The facts
There are three sources of public information on the Trust:
- The Long-Term Benefit Trust (Anthropic 2023)
- Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust (Morley et al. 2023)
- The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity (Vox: Matthews 2023)
They say there's [...]
Outline:
(00:53) The facts
(02:51) Conclusion
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 27th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JARcd9wKraDeuaFu5/maybe-anthropic-s-long-term-benefit-trust-is-powerless
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original by Leopold Aschenbrenner, this summary is not commissioned or endorsed by him.
Short Summary
- Extrapolating existing trends in compute, spending, algorithmic progress, and energy needs implies AGI (remote jobs being completely automatable) by ~2027.
- AGI will greatly accelerate AI research itself, leading to vastly superhuman intelligences being created ~1 year after AGI.
- Superintelligence will confer a decisive strategic advantage militarily by massively accelerating all spheres of science and technology.
- Electricity use will be a bigger bottleneck on scaling datacentres than investment, but is still doable domestically in the US by using natural gas.
- AI safety efforts in the US will be mostly irrelevant if other actors steal the model weights of an AGI. US AGI research must employ vastly better cybersecurity, to protect both model weights and algorithmic secrets.
- Aligning superhuman AI systems is a difficult technical challenge, but probably doable, and we must devote lots of [...]
Outline:
(00:12) Short Summary
(02:16) 1. From GPT-4 to AGI: Counting the OOMs
(02:23) Past AI progress
(05:37) Training data limitations
(06:41) Trend extrapolations
(07:57) The modal year of AGI is soon
(09:29) 2. From AGI to Superintelligence: the Intelligence Explosion
(09:36) The basic intelligence explosion case
(10:46) Objections and responses
(14:06) The power of superintelligence
(16:28) III The Challenges
(16:31) IIIa. Racing to the Trillion-Dollar Cluster
(20:58) IIIb. Lock Down the Labs: Security for AGI
(21:05) The power of espionage
(22:09) Securing model weights
(23:46) Protecting algorithmic insights
(24:41) Necessary steps for improved security
(26:35) IIIc. Superalignment
(29:15) IIId. The Free World Must Prevail
(32:15) 4. The Project
(34:47) 5. Parting Thoughts
(35:51) Responses to Situational Awareness
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
June 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zmRTWsYZ4ifQKrX26/summary-of-situational-awareness-the-decade-ahead
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A couple weeks ago I announced I was going to try and break the world record cycling without hands for AMF. That post also explains why I wanted to break that record. Last Friday we broke that record and raised nearly €10.000 for AMF. Here's what happened on friday. You can still donate here.
What was the old record?
Canadian Robert John Murray rode the old record of 130.29 kilometers in 5:37 hours in Calgary on June 12, 2023. His average speed was 23.2 kilometers per hour. See here the Guinness World Records page.
I managed to double the record and these were my stats.
How did the record attempt itself go?
On Friday, June 7, I started the record attempt on the closed cycling course of WV Amsterdam just after 6 am. I got up at half past four and immediately drank a [...]
First published:
June 11th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5ru7nEtC6mufuBXbk/i-doubled-the-world-record-cycling-without-hands-for-amf
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The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program will soon become the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP), our future secured by a generous $6,000,000 endowment. The CMEP Endowment Fund was established in May 2024 with a $5,000,000 gift from The Navigation Fund and a $1,000,000 gift from Polaris Ventures. We now welcome contributions from other supporters too, with deep gratitude to our founding supporters.
Since our launch in Fall 2022, the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program has stood at the forefront of academic inquiry into the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds. CMEP will continue this work, seeking to advance understanding of the consciousness, sentience, sapience, moral status, legal status, and political status of animals and AI systems via research, outreach, and field building in science, philosophy, and policy.
You can read the press release about the endowment here. Thanks to everyone who [...]
First published:
May 31st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eu5ykCAKLtPTyb8eM/announcing-a-usd6-000-000-endowment-for-nyu-mind-ethics-and
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Agreement
78 % of my donations so far have gone to the Long-Term Future Fund[1] (LTFF), which mainly supports AI safety interventions. However, I have become increasingly sceptical about the value of existential risk mitigation, and currently think the best interventions are in the area of animal welfare[2]. As a result, I realised it made sense for me to arrange a bet with someone very worried about AI in order to increase my donations to animal welfare interventions. Gregory Colbourn (Greg) was the 1st person I thought of. He said:
I think AGI [artificial general intelligence] is 0-5 years away and p(doom|AGI) is ~90%
I doubt doom in the sense of human extinction is anywhere as likely as suggested by the above. I guess the annual extinction risk over the next 10 years is 10^-7, so I proposed a bet to Greg similar to the end-of-the-world bet between [...]
Outline:
(00:07) Agreement
(03:53) Impact
(05:18) Acknowledgements
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
June 4th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GfGxaPBAMGcYjv8Xd/i-bet-greg-colbourn-10-keur-that-ai-will-not-kill-us-all-by
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Since 2017, EA Funds has been providing grants across four distinct cause areas. While there are payout reports available, there is a lack of reports detailing the outcomes of these grants, so I delved out of curiosity into the Grants Database to review some of the proposals that received funding and evaluate their outcomes.
Some of the findings were quite unexpected, particularly for the Long-Term Future Fund and the EA Infrastructure Fund.
The case involving a $100.000 grant for a video game
In July 2022, EA approved a $100,000 grant to Lone Pine Games, LLC, for developing and marketing a video game designed to explain the Stop Button Problem to the public and STEM professionals.
Outcomes from looking into Lone Pine Games, LLC:
- After almost two years, there are no online mentions of such a game being developed by this company, except for the note on the [...]
First published:
June 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7Dp9phDw28h3dbAns/review-of-past-grants-the-usd100-000-grant-for-a-video-game
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TL;DR: I donated my kidney and you can too. If that's too scary, consider blood donation, the bone marrow registry, post-mortem organ donation, or other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation).
Kidney donation sucks. It's scary, painful, disruptive, scarring. My friends and family urged me not to; words were exchanged, tears were shed. My risk of preeclampsia tripled, that of end stage renal disease multiplied by five. I had to turn down two job offers while prepping for donation.
It is easy to read philosophical arguments in favor of donation, agree with them, and put the book back on the shelf. But it is different when your friend needs a kidney: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Eighteen months ago, at 28-years-old, my friend Alan started losing weight. He developed a distinctive butterfly-shaped rash and became too weak to eat. On February [...]
First published:
May 30th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xiDKb3XvJxKiwNevJ/a-scar-worth-bearing-my-improbable-story-of-kidney-donation
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Executive Summary
Ansh, a 1-year-old Charity Entrepreneurship incubated charity, has been delivering an evidence-based, scientifically proven intervention called Kangaroo Care to low birth weight and premature babies in 2 government hospitals in India since January 2024. Ansh estimates that their programs are saving, on average, 4 lives a month per facility and a total of 98 lives per year. The cost of one life saved is approximately $2077 (current costs, not a potential estimate). Ansh is now replicating the programs in two additional hospitals, doubling their impact before the end of this year.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neonatal conditions[1] are among the top 3 causes of death worldwide[2]. This makes neonatal mortality one of the largest-scale causes of suffering and death today. In 2022, 2.3 million babies died in the first 28 days of life (i.e. the newborn/neonatal period) (World Health Organisation, 2024). Let's compare [...]
Outline:
(00:06) Executive Summary
(02:33) I. The Problem and Solution
(04:29) II. Introducing Ansh
(08:36) III. Our Impact To Date
(09:02) Baseline Neonatal Mortality
(10:49) Lives Saved
(12:56) Cost-Effectiveness
(15:36) IV. Our Plans For The Future
(16:04) (1) KC Improvements
(18:48) (2) Scale Up
(20:34) V. Acknowledgments and Partnerships
The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 29th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hTEaKau8D4Ah3NPcu/introducing-ansh-a-charity-entrepreneurship-incubated
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Epistemic Status: somewhat confident: I may have made coding mistakes. R code is here if you feel like checking.
Introduction:
In their 2022 article, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Kahneman looked to reconcile the results from two of their papers. Kahneman (2010) had reported that above a certain income level ($75,000 USD), extra income had no association with increases in individual happiness. Killingsworth (2021) suggested that it did.
Kahneman and Killingsworth (henceforth KK) claimed they had resolved this conflict by (correctly) hypothesizing that:
1) There is an unhappy minority, whose unhappiness diminishes with rising income up to a threshold, then shows no further progress (i.e., Kahnemann's leveling off);
2) In the happier majority, happiness continues to rise with income even in the high range of incomes (i.e., Kllingsworth continued log-linear finding)
(More info on this discussion can be found in Spencer Greenberg's thoroughly enjoyable blog post. Spencer [...]
Outline:
(00:18) Introduction:
(03:04) Summary of Findings
(04:07) Results
(05:07) Median Regressions
(05:21) Figure 1
(06:16) Regressions at Various Percentiles
(06:55) Figure 2
(08:38) Implications
(10:50) Table 1: Happiness at Different Percentiles (above, KK; below, me)
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 28th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A5voYMFhPkWTrGkuJ/against-a-happiness-ceiling-replicating-killingsworth-and
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
From my new blog: AI Lab Watch. All posts will be crossposted to LessWrong. Subscribe on Substack.
Many AI safety folks think that METR is close to the labs, with ongoing relationships that grant it access to models before they are deployed. This is incorrect. METR (then called ARC Evals) did pre-deployment evaluation for GPT-4 and Claude 2 in the first half of 2023, but it seems to have had no special access since then.[1] Other model evaluators also seem to have little access before deployment.
Clarification: there are many kinds of audits. This post is about model evals for dangerous capabilities. But I'm not aware of the labs using other kinds of audits to prevent extreme risks, excluding normal security/compliance audits.
Frontier AI labs' pre-deployment risk assessment should involve external model evals for dangerous capabilities.[2] External evals can improve a lab's risk assessment and—if the evaluator can publish [...]
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 26th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZPyhxiBqupZXLxLNd/ai-companies-aren-t-really-using-external-evaluators-1
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This is a link post. The report concludes that the cage-free fulfillment rate is maintaining its momentum at 89%. The producer, retailer, and manufacturer industries are some of the most cage-free forward sectors when it comes to fulfillment. Some major companies across sectors that fulfilled their commitments in 2023 (or years ahead of schedule) include Hershey (Global), Woolworths (South Africa), Famous Brands (Africa), Scandic Hotels (Europe), Monolog Coffee (Indonesia), Special Dog (Brazil), Azzuri Group (Europe), McDonald's (US), TGI Fridays (US), and The Cheesecake Factory (US).
First published:
May 24th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SG38cPw5C7wLXAeFn/89-of-cage-free-egg-commitments-with-deadlines-of-2023-or
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This is a link post. A brief overview of recent OpenAI departures (Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Daniel Kokotajlo, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, William Saunders, Ryan Lowe Cullen O'Keefe[1]). Will add other relevant media pieces below as I come across them.
Some quotes perhaps worth highlighting:
Even when the team was functioning at full capacity, that “dedicated investment” was home to a tiny fraction of OpenAI's researchers and was promised only 20 percent of its computing power — perhaps the most important resource at an AI company. Now, that computing power may be siphoned off to other OpenAI teams, and it's unclear if there’ll be much focus on avoiding catastrophic risk from future AI models.
-Jan suggesting that compute for safety may have been deprioritised even despite the 20% commitment. (Wired claims that OpenAI confirms that their "superalignment team is no more").
“I joined with substantial hope that OpenAI [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 17th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckYw5FZFrejETuyjN/articles-about-recent-openai-departures
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TL;DR It's time for an absurd challenge. On June 7th around 11:00, I'm going to (try to) break the world record for cycling without hands! 🚴🏻♂️ For more than 100km, I am raising money for the The Against Malaria Foundation (100% donated, costs covered by my company and myself) with the help of The Life You Can Save. Pledge your donation per kilometer or fixed amount here (tax deductibility possible in most countries, email me on vin@boas.co).
The full story
I'm Vin from Amsterdam, and I'm doing a world record attempt for cycling without hands for charity on the 7th of June. I am donating 100% to The Against Malaria Foundation, with the goal of saving at least one life (5.000 USD). You can participate and push me to go further by joining here.
It's going too far to say that my bike saved my life, but at [...]
First published:
May 20th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cj2Qauvc3tQRyXuBW/i-m-attempting-a-world-record-to-raise-money-for-amf
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
How well do you know the details of the Giving What We Can Pledge? A surprising number of people we’ve spoken to — including many who know a lot about effective giving — shared some or all of these pledge misconceptions.
Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.
The Giving What We Can Pledge is a public commitment to donate at least 10% of your lifetime income to the organisations that can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others. Giving 10% of your income each year is a good rule of thumb for most people, as it helps them stay on track with their lifetime pledge. However, there are certainly cases where it doesn’t make sense to give annually. Provided you continue reporting your income[1] on your personal pledge dashboard, the “Overall Progress” bar [...]
Outline:
(00:20) Misconception #1: If you sign the pledge, you have to donate at least 10% of your income each year.
(02:18) Misconception #2: Only the charities on the Giving What We Can Platform count towards your pledge
(03:25) Misconception #3: The pledge is a legal document
(04:43) Misconception #4: There's no good reason to sign the pledge if you’re already donating 10% or more
(09:22) Misconception #5: There's only one pledge
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y5QKkt9PFhqvG7CEn/5-things-you-ve-got-wrong-about-the-giving-what-we-can
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The Charity Commission for England and Wales has concluded its statutory inquiry into Effective Ventures Foundation UK (EVF UK), which was originally launched in 2023 following the collapse of FTX. The full report on the inquiry can be found here, and the Commission's press release on the inquiry can be found here. The inquiry's scope was to examine:
- The extent of any risk to EVF's assets.
- The extent to which the trustees were complying with their legal obligations to protect the charity's property
- The governance and administration of the charity by the trustees.[1]
We are pleased that “the inquiry found that the trustees took appropriate steps to protect the charity's funds and complied with their legal duties acting diligently and quickly following the collapse of FTX.” The Commission's report notes the full cooperation of EVF's trustees and that they “sought to act in the charity's best interests.”
Although [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gGadLX9Dc7XPqLhZc/the-charity-commission-has-concluded-its-inquiry-into
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We’re excited to announce a new volunteer-run organisation, UK Voters For Animals, dedicated to mobilising UK voters to win key legislative changes for farmed animals. Our goal is to recruit and train voters to meet with MPs and prospective MPs to build political support for our key asks. Due to the upcoming general election, we think this is a crucial time to apply pressure on politicians.
If you want to use your political power to win change for farmed animals, sign up to get involved here. Please share with anyone who may be interested – we’re looking to find people in all 650 constituencies around the UK so no small feat!
We think people in the EA community would be a great fit for helping out with this work because they are often thoughtful, pragmatic, and impact-focused. The minimum commitment required is attending a training, and participating in [...]
First published:
May 14th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BmWuycesbhnXhmy5D/announcing-uk-voters-for-animals
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This is a quickly-written opinion piece, of what I understand about OpenAI. I first posted it to Facebook, where it had some discussion.
Some arguments that OpenAI is making, simultaneously:
- OpenAI will likely reach and own transformative AI (useful for attracting talent to work there).
- OpenAI cares a lot about safety (good for public PR and government regulations).
- OpenAI isn’t making anything dangerous and is unlikely to do so in the future (good for public PR and government regulations).
- OpenAI doesn’t need to spend many resources on safety, and implementing safe AI won’t put it at any competitive disadvantage (important for investors who own most of the company).
- Transformative AI will be incredibly valuable for all of humanity in the long term (for public PR and developers).
- People at OpenAI have thought long and hard about what will happen, and it will be fine.
- We can’t [...]
First published:
May 21st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9iLgAbu9KtpLupitk/what-s-going-on-with-openai-s-messaging
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Around the end of Feb 2024 I attended the Summit on Existential Risk and EAG: Bay Area (GCRs), during which I did 25+ one-on-ones about the needs and gaps in the EA-adjacent catastrophic risk landscape, and how they’ve changed.
The meetings were mostly with senior managers or researchers in the field who I think are worth listening to (unfortunately I can’t share names). Below is how I’d summarise the main themes in what was said.
If you have different impressions of the landscape, I’d be keen to hear them.
- There's been a big increase in the number of people working on AI safety, partly driven by a reallocation of effort (e.g. Rethink Priorities starting an AI policy think tank); and partly driven by new people entering the field after its newfound prominence.
- Allocation in the landscape seems more efficient than in the past – it's harder to identify [...]
First published:
May 6th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YDjH6ACPZq889tqeJ/updates-on-the-ea-catastrophic-risk-landscape
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Latest Draft Here
Abstract.
Here, I present GDP (per capita) forecasts of major economies until 2050. Since GDP per capita is the best generalized predictor of many important variables, such as welfare, GDP forecasts can give us a more concrete picture of what the world might look like in just 27 years. The key claim here is: even if AI does not cause transformative growth, our business-as-usual near-future is still surprisingly different from today.
Results
In recent history, we've seen unprecedented economic growth and rises in living standards.
Consider this graph:[1]
How will living standards improve as GDP per capita (GDP/cap) rises? Here, I show data that projects GDP/cap until 2050. Forecasting GDP per capita is a crucial undertaking as it strongly correlates with welfare indicators like consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. These forecasts make the future more concrete and give us a better sense [...]
Outline:
(00:39) Results
(02:45) Discussion
(05:40) Values and Culture
(09:01) Growth could be much faster
(11:49) Implications for AI
(16:57) Will growth slow?
(19:56) Methods
(22:05) Persistence of growth
(23:26) Future Research
(29:05) Appendix: Further reading
(29:09) The World in 2050
(30:55) Economics
(30:59) GDP as a proxy for welfare
(31:03) AI
(36:32) Forecasting
(36:35) Fiction
(36:38) Appendix: Causal Model Between Growth, Liberal Democracy, Human Capital, Peace, and X-Risk
(36:59) Economic Growth causes…
(37:47) Democracy causes...
(40:02) Human capital causes…
(40:44) Peace and stability causes...
The original text contained 79 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
May 6th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ubZjxQocGqeZJJXE9/gdp-per-capita-in-2050
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I am dealing with repetitive strain injury and don’t foresee being able to really respond to any comments.
I’m a little hesitant to post this, but I thought I should be vulnerable. Honestly, I'm relieved that I finally get to share my voice. I know some people may want me to discuss this privately – but that might not be helpful to me, as I know some issues have been tried to be silenced by the very people who were meant to help. And to be honest, the fear of criticizing EA is something I have disliked about EA – I’ve been behind the scenes enough to know that despite being well-intentioned, criticizing EA (especially openly) can privately get you excluded from opportunities and circles, often even silently. This is an internal battle I’ve had with EA for a while (years). Still, I thought by sharing my experiences I [...]
Outline:
(00:55) Appreciation and disillusionment
(03:30) Specific challenges
(03:33) When it has been uncomfortable for diversity and inclusion
(04:33) When it primarily became about prestige or funding
(07:13) When professional social dynamics were unhealthy
(09:46) When empathy is deprioritized and logic/consequentialism/utilitarianism becomes toxic
(13:38) Parting ways
First published:
May 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3GjstAyhH9cDeNar4/my-lament-to-ea
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This is a cross-post and you can see the original here, written in 2022. I am not the original author, but I thought it was good for more EAs to know about this.
I am posting anonymously for obvious reasons, but I am a longstanding EA who is concerned about Torres's effects on our community.
An incomplete summary
Introduction.
This post compiles evidence that Émile P. Torres, a philosophy student at Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany, has a long pattern of concerning behavior, which includes gross distortion and falsification, persistent harassment, and the creation of fake identities.
Note: Since Torres has recently claimed that they have been the target of threats from anonymous accounts, I would like to state that I condemn any threatening behavior in the strongest terms possible, and that I have never contacted Torres or posted anything about Torres other than in this Substack [...]
Outline:
(00:25) An incomplete summary
(01:16) Stalking and harassment
(01:20) Peter Boghossian
(11:48) Helen Pluckrose
(19:02) Demonstrable falsehoods and gross distortions
(19:07) “Forcible” removal
(24:04) “Researcher at CSER”
(27:30) Giving What We Can
(31:20) Brief Digression on Effective Altruism
(33:53) More falsehoods and distortions
(33:57) Hilary Greaves
(38:25) Andreas Mogensen
(41:16) Nick Beckstead
(45:29) Tyler Cowen
(48:50) Olle Häggström
(56:44) Sockpuppetry
(57:01) “Alex Williams”
(01:03:57) Conclusion
First published:
May 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yAHcPNZzx35i25xML/emile-p-torres-s-history-of-dishonesty-and-harassment
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Effective today, I’ve left Open Philanthropy and joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[1] as a Visiting Scholar. At Carnegie, I will analyze and write about topics relevant to AI risk reduction. In the short term, I will focus on (a) what AI capabilities might increase the risk of a global catastrophe; (b) how we can catch early warning signs of these capabilities; and (c) what protective measures (for example, strong information security) are important for safely handling such capabilities. This is a continuation of the work I’ve been doing over the last ~year.
I want to be explicit about why I’m leaving Open Philanthropy. It's because my work no longer involves significant involvement in grantmaking, and given that I’ve overseen grantmaking historically, it's a significant problem for there to be confusion on this point. Philanthropy comes with particular power dynamics that I’d like to move away from, and [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
April 29th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I
Imagine an alternate version of the Effective Altruism movement, whose early influences came from socialist intellectual communities such as the Fabian Society, as opposed to the rationalist diaspora. Let's name this hypothetical movement the Effective Samaritans.
Like the EA movement of today, they believe in doing as much good as possible, whatever this means. They began by evaluating existing charities, reading every RCT to find the very best ways of helping.
But many effective samaritans were starting to wonder. Is this randomista approach really the most prudent? After all, Scandinavia didn’t become wealthy and equitable through marginal charity. Societal transformation comes from uprooting oppressive power structures.
The Scandinavian societal model which lifted the working class, brought weekends, universal suffrage, maternity leave, education, and universal healthcare can be traced back all the way to 1870's where the union and social democratic movements got their start.
In many developing countries [...]
Outline:
(00:03) I
(05:39) II
(10:19) III
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
April 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PKotuzY8yzGSNKRpH/priors-and-prejudice
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The last ten years have witnessed rapid advances in the science of animal cognition and behavior. Striking results have hinted at surprisingly rich inner lives in a wide range of animals, driving renewed debate about animal consciousness.
To highlight these advances, the NYU Mind, Ethics and Policy Program and NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program co-hosted a conference on the emerging science of animal consciousness on Friday April 19 at New York University. This conference also served as the launch event for The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness.
This short statement, signed by leading scientists who research a wide range of taxa, holds that all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (including cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects) have a realistic chance of being conscious, and that their welfare merits consideration.
We now welcome signatures from others as well. If you have relevant [...]
First published:
April 21st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pqkf5N7LkHfd7rRBf/announcing-the-new-york-declaration-on-animal-consciousness
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Disclaimer: While I criticize several EA critics in this article, I am myself on the EA-skeptical side of things (especially on AI risk).
Introduction.
I am a proud critic of effective altruism, and in particular a critic of AI existential risk, but I have to admit that a lot of the critcism of EA is hostile, or lazy, and is extremely unlikely to convince a believer.
Take this recent Leif Weinar time article as an example. I liked a few of the object level critiques, but many of the points were twisted, and the overall point was hopelessly muddled (are they trying to say that voluntourism is the solution here?). As people have noted, the piece was needlessly hostile to EA (and incredibly hostile to Will Macaskill in particular). And he's far from the only prominent hater. Emille Torres views EA as a threat to humanity. Timnit Gebru sees [...]
Outline:
(02:21) No door to door atheists
(04:51) What went wrong here?
(08:40) Motivation gaps in AI x-risk
(10:59) EA gap analysis
(15:12) Counter-motivations
(25:49) You can’t rely on ingroup criticism
(29:10) How to respond to motivation gaps
First published:
April 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CfBNdStftKGc863o6/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism-is-hostile-and-lazy
Linkpost URL:
https://titotal.substack.com/p/motivation-gaps-why-so-much-ea-criticism
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
- In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job.
- First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low.
-
In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses. Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized
-
Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that.
- While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings.
- In the latter case, if you take the [...]
- While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings.
Outline:
(00:42) Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized
(02:07) Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized
(03:42) I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school
(06:13) I live frugally and donate
(08:06) I have been disappointed in my ability to find a job that would allow me to donate more
(09:52) Its okay
(10:24) Additional reading
First published:
April 16th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G9ocwYA2LpLqC4vmq/how-good-it-is-to-donate-and-how-hard-it-is-to-get-a-job
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Attend his talk if he's giving one By Jacob Trefethen
Scientific conferences are great even if you’re an outsider to the field. That's common advice for students, and there are useful guides written on how to get the most out of conferences you're new to. But I suspect people at all career stages could benefit from hearing the advice again – people with adjacent research experience in industry or academia, or who have started organisations before, or who have an inkling something exciting lurks around the corner.
In other words, I wish people reminded me to go to conferences as an outsider more often. I seem to re-learn their value with wonder every one I attend. So here is a post for you, future Jacob.
Often scientific fields host annual conferences that have been running for a decade, or many decades. People grumble about the schedule and the snacks. Jetlag [...]
Outline:
(02:15) To the best of my understanding, I only have one life to live
(05:21) But Im an outsider to the field!
(07:04) List of 41 conferences
First published:
April 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n8APGKhs8Dut9vXGJ/conferences-are-great-for-scientific-entrepreneurs
Linkpost URL:
https://blog.jacobtrefethen.com/conferences/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The two podcasts where I discuss FTX are now out:
- Making Sense with Sam Harris
- Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The Sam Harris podcast is more aimed at a general audience; the Spencer Greenberg podcast is more aimed at people already familiar with EA. (I’ve also done another podcast with Chris Anderson from TED that will come out next month, but FTX is a fairly small part of that conversation.)
In this post, I’ll gather together some things I talk about across these podcasts — this includes updates and lessons, and responses to some questions that have been raised on the Forum recently. I’d recommend listening to the podcasts first, but these comments can be read on their own, too. I cover a variety of different topics, so I’ll cover each topic in separate comments underneath this post.
First published:
April 18th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A2vBJGEbKDpuKveHk/personal-reflections-on-ftx
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Anders Sandberg has written a “final report” released simultaneously with the announcement of FHI's closure. The abstract and an excerpt follow.
Normally manifestos are written first, and then hopefully stimulate actors to implement their vision. This document is the reverse: an epitaph summarizing what the Future of Humanity Institute was, what we did and why, what we learned, and what we think comes next. It can be seen as an oral history of FHI from some of its members. It will not be unbiased, nor complete, but hopefully a useful historical source. I have received input from other people who worked at FHI, but it is my perspective and others would no doubt place somewhat different emphasis on the various strands of FHI work.
What we did well
One of the most important insights from the successes of FHI is to have a long-term perspective on one's research. While [...]
Outline:
(00:57) What we did well
(03:48) Where we failed
(05:06) So, you want to start another FHI?
First published:
April 17th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uK27pds7J36asqJPt/future-of-humanity-institute-2005-2024-final-report
Linkpost URL:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ml8d3ubi3ippxs4yon63n/FHI-Final-Report.pdf?rlkey=2c94czhgagy27d9don7pvbc26&dl=0
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Author: Sam Hilton, AIM Director of Research
In March 2021 I received an odd letter. It was from a guy I didn't know, David Quarrey, the UK's National Security Advisor. The letter thanked me for providing external expertise to the UK government's Integrated Review, which had been published that morning. It turns out that the Integrated Review has made a public commitment to "review our approach to risk assessment" ... "including how we account for interdependencies, cascading and compound risks". This is something I'd been advocating for over the previous few months by writing a policy paper and engaging with politicians and civil servants. It's hard to know how much my input changed government policy but I couldn’t find much evidence of others advocating for this. I had set myself a 10-year goal to "have played a role in making the UK a leader in long-term resilience to extreme [...]
First published:
April 2nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RmZWjTLNTg4hby7pz/aim-s-new-guide-to-launching-a-high-impact-non-profit-policy
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In the aftermath of SBF's convinction, there have been a few posts trying to make sense of FTX. Some people are trying to figure out what happened, and some people are interested in trying to find clever defenses.
I'm in a much more boring position: I am confident SBF is the fraud the world believes him to be. I hope this post can provide reasoning transparency on why I think this, and perhaps serve as an easy link for others who feel similarly but don't want to get bogged down in a point-by-point.
Posted anonymously as some protection against future employers Googling [1].
I have divided this post into a summary of the major crimes and my basis for believing they occurred, an 'FAQ' dealing with some common misapprehensions I've seen on this forum and elsewhere, and an appendix explaining some crypto exchange basics / jargon for those [...]
Outline:
(00:56) Crimes
(00:59) Misappropriation of Funds
(01:51) Detail
(14:47) Lying to lenders
(17:21) Lying to FTXs investors
(18:28) Lying to Banks
(19:02) Detail
(21:53) Bribing a Chinese official
(23:55) Falsified revenue
(25:07) Falsified Insurance Fund
(26:20) FAQ
(26:23) Didnt SBF only know about the hole in June 2022?
(30:16) Didnt customers know their funds might be lent out?
(32:37) Werent FTX and Alameda total messes? Intent matters; isnt it possible that this all got lost in the chaos?
(35:13) Isnt FTX going to make all Customers whole? So there wasnt ever a hole?
(35:47) FTX cashed out customers at bankruptcy prices
(36:32) The assets those customers money had bought did well
(37:12) Had FTX stayed afloat, things would be very different
(38:58) Appendix
(39:02) How crypto exchanges work
(39:06) Spot Trading
(40:54) Margin Trading
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
April 11th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyN8M6zh6pnh8fmjR/understanding-ftx-s-crimes
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Thanks to Eli Lifland, Molly Hickman, Değer Turan, and Evan Miyazono for reviewing drafts of this post. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Summary:
- Forecasters produce reasons and models that are often more valuable than the final forecasts
- Most of this value is being lost due to the historical practice & incentives of forecasting, and the difficulty of crowds to “adversarially collaborate”
- FutureSearch is a forecasting system with legible reasons and models at its core (examples at the end)
The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning
Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes:
There has been a great deal of research on what criteria must be met for forecasting aggregations to be useful, and as Karger, Atanasov, and Tetlock argue, predictions of events such as the arrival of AGI [...]
Outline:
(00:40) The Curious Case of the Missing Reasoning
(05:06) Those Who Seek Rationales, And Those Who Do Not
(07:21) So What Do Elite Forecasters Actually Know?
(10:30) The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting
(11:51) Facts: Cite Your Sources
(12:07) Reasons: So You Think You Can Persuade With Words
(14:25) Models: So You Think You Can Model the World
(17:56) There Is No Microeconomics of AGI
(19:39) 700 AI questions you say? Aren’t We In the Age of AI Forecasters?
(21:33) Towards “Towards Rationality Engines”
(23:10) Sample Forecasts With Reasons and Models
First published:
April 2nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qMP7LcCBFBEtuA3kL/the-rationale-shaped-hole-at-the-heart-of-forecasting
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Here in the UK, the government is consulting on mandatory animal welfare labelling (closing 7 May 2024). People may wish to respond if they want to express their support or share thoughts and evidence that could shape the outcomes.
I think such labelling has the potential to significantly improve animal welfare, not just through changing individual choices but by encouraging companies to stop selling the lowest welfare tiers entirely, and through raising labelling standards over time. Higher standards will probably also mean higher prices, lower consumption and 'fairer' competition with alternative proteins. What happens in the UK may also influence future reforms in the EU and elsewhere.
To summarise the proposals:
- Mandatory labelling would apply to chicken, eggs and pig products (with the suggestion that beef, lamb and dairy could follow later)
- At least initially, this would not apply to restaurants etc., but to food from retailers like [...]
First published:
March 29th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/h5Syjytgbg7fL6CJ5/uk-moves-toward-mandatory-animal-welfare-labelling
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Is anyone in the world being paid to do an independent investigation of how EA handled Sam Bankman-Fried, with respect to "did we screw up" and "is there stuff we should do differently going forward"?
Last I heard, literally nobody was doing this and at least some EA leaders were mostly just hoping that SBF gets memoryholed — but maybe I'm out of the loop?
My understanding is that Effective Ventures completed a narrow investigation into this topic in mid-2023, purely looking at legal risk to EV and not at all trying to do a general postmortem for EA or any group of EAs. Is that correct, and have things changed since then?
I saw that Will MacAskill is planning to appear on some podcasts soon to speak about SBF, which seems like great news to mee. If I recall correctly, Will previously said that he was going to [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PAG3DJtoZeGtz488f/why-hasn-t-ea-done-an-sbf-investigation-and-postmortem
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
A brief and belated update: When I resigned from the board of EV US last year, I was planning on writing about that decision. But I ultimately decided against doing that for a variety of reasons, including that it was very costly to me, and I believed it wouldn’t make a difference. However, I want to make it clear that I resigned last year due to significant disagreements with the board of EV and EA leadership, particularly concerning their actions leading up to and after the FTX crisis.
While I certainly support the boards’ decision to pay back the FTX estate, spin out the projects as separate organizations, and essentially disband EV, I continue to be worried that the EA community is not on track to learn the relevant lessons from its relationship with FTX. Two things that I think would help (though I am not planning to work [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
April 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dtHZqi4fSQKor6TYY/quick-update-on-leaving-the-board-of-ev
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Following the success of Draft Amnesty Week, the Forum team have decided to take things a bit further.
April 2nd 2024 will be Mandatory Amnesty Day (aka MAD).
At 09:00 UTC, all draft posts on your Forum account will be posted live on the Forum.
All the posts in this section on your profile page deserve to be seen. If you have used our Google Docs import feature, all posts we detect on your Google account will also be posted.
Shrek is now the de facto mascot of Draft Amnesty. If, for some reason, you have objections, please get in touch with the Forum team here.
We look forward to seeing all your draft posts!
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/72cKFaXd2B7Bis2kv/announcing-mandatory-draft-amnesty-day-april-2nd
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Impactful Animal Advocacy is thrilled to announce that after careful consideration and complex moral calculations, we have decided to rebrand to Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy.
Why shrimp, you ask? Well, we've crunched the numbers and determined that improving the welfare of shrimp is one of the highest-impact opportunities in the animal advocacy space.
Source: https://foodimpacts.org/
In light of this strong evidence, Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy will be laser-focusing all of our efforts and resources on ending the suffering of our shrimpy friends.
This includes revamping our programs to focus on our new mission. You'll soon be able to sign up for our revised Shrimpactful Animal Advocacy newsletter, attend our upcoming "Shrimp-osium" events, visit our Shrimp Hub resource center, and join our Shrimp Slack community to connect with fellow Shrimpactful Advocates.
We call on all other organizations to join us in this:
- Mercy for Animals → Mercy for [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ed5Jiuk3sCYTXHfFD/announcement-we-are-rebranding-to-shrimpactful-animal
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
(aka "surely we have enough Jews here that at least one person finds this funny")
MISHNA: Rabbi Ord says that the three permissible cause areas are global health and development, animal welfare, and long-termism. Why are these the three permissible cause areas? Because any charity outside of these cause areas is a violation of bal tashchit, the prohibition against wasting resources.
GEMARA: And why not four categories, because global health and development are two separate categories? Rabbi bar bar Hana answers: Is not global health valuable only because it later leads to development? Therefore, consider them the same category.
Rav Yehuda objects. He tells the story of a student who asked Rabbi Yohanan why there should not be a fourth category, meta-effective-altruism. Rabbi Yohanan answered: this is covered under long-termism, because it pays off in the long-term when the meta-charity causes effective altruists to have more resources. But if [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/363kggkFJHz5ys5T7/excerpts-from-the-ea-talmud
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
It's been at least a few months since the last proper EA scandals, and we're now desperately trying to squeeze headlines out of the past ones.
On the contrary, a few scandals have been wrapped up:
- SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison
- The investigation regarding Owen Cotton-Barratt presented its findings
- Whytham Abbey is being sold
Indeed, even OpenPhil's involvement in the Whytham Abbey sale shows they're now less willing to fund new scandals.
Therefore it seems to me that EA is now neither funding- nor talent-constrained, but rather scandal-constrained.
This cannot go on. We've all become accustomed to a neverending stream od scandals, and if that stream dwindles, we might find ourselves bored to death - or worse, the world might stop talking about EA all the time.
I therefore raise a few ideas for discussion - feel free to add your own:
- EA Funds [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F47vckGK5kHZirtGS/ea-is-now-scandal-constrained
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), an effective altruism (EA) project which recently spun out of Effective Ventures (EV) is spinning out of the newly established Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).
The current CEO of CEA (the Centre for Effective Altruism), Zach Robinson, CEO of CEA and Effective Ventures (CEOCEV), will be taking the position of Chief Executive Administrator (CEA) for CEA (CEA), as the venture spins out of CEA (CEA).
The cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) for this new effective venture suggested that this venture will be high-EV (see: EA). CEA's CEA's CEA ventures that the new spun-out CEA venture's effectiveness is cost-effective in every available scenario (CEAS).
CEA's new strategy, See EA will take effect:
- See: Gain a better understanding of where the community is, who is part of it and where it could go
- EA: Effective altruism. No need to complicate things.
To provide some clarity on [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WgneAKfjRJkYsTs3p/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-spinning-out-of-the
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Hillary Clinton, who is still alive
I'm proud and excited to announce the founding of my new startup, Open Asteroid Impact, where we redirect asteroids towards Earth for the benefit of humanity. Our mission is to have as high an impact as possible.
Below, I've copied over the one-pager I've sent potential investors and early employees:
Name: Open Asteroid Impact
Launch Date: April 1 2024
Website: openasteroidimpact.org
Mission: To have as high an impact as possible
Pitch: We are an asteroid mining company. When most people think about asteroid mining, they think of getting all the mining equipment to space and carefully mining and refining ore in space, before bringing the ore back down in a controlled landing. But humanity has zero experience in Zero-G mining in the vacuum of space. This is obviously very inefficient. Instead, it's much [...]
First published:
April 1st, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RHGfmJfj3jvLw2mq4/introducing-open-asteroid-impact
Linkpost URL:
https://openasteroidimpact.org/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Like many organizations, Open Philanthropy has had multiple founding moments. Depending on how you count, we will be either seven, ten, or thirteen years old this year. Regardless of when you start the clock, it's possible that we’ve changed more in the last two years than over our full prior history. We’ve more than doubled the size of our team (to ~110), nearly doubled our annual giving (to >$750M), and added five new program areas.
As our track record and volume of giving have grown, we are seeing more of our impact in the world. Across our focus areas, our funding played a (sometimes modest) role in some of 2023's most important developments:
- We were among the supporters of the clinical trials that led to the World Health Organization (WHO) officially recommending the R21 malaria vaccine. This is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, which expects it [...]
First published:
March 27th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/couP8n3BTrpFA5YDJ/open-philanthropy-our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024-1
Linkpost URL:
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The Wytham Abbey Project is closing. After input from the Abbey's major donors, the EV board took a decision to sell the property. This project's runway will run out at the end of April. After this time, the project will cease operations, and EV UK will oversee the sale of the property. The Wytham Abbey team have been good custodians of the venue during the time they ran this project, and EV UK will continue to look after this property as we prepare to sell. The proceeds of the sale, after the cost of sale is covered, will be allocated to high-impact charities.
A statement from the Wytham Project can be found here.
First published:
March 25th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yggjKEeehsnmMYnZd/announcement-on-the-future-of-wytham-abbey
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post was partly inspired by, and shares some themes with, this Joe Carlsmith post. My post (unsurprisingly) expresses fewer concepts with less clarity and resonance, but is hopefully of some value regardless.
Content warning: description of animal death.
I live in a small, one-bedroom flat in central London. Sometime in the summer of 2023, I started noticing moths around my flat.
I didn’t pay much attention to it, since they seemed pretty harmless: they obviously weren’t food moths, since they were localised in my bedroom, and they didn’t seem to be chewing holes in any of my clothes — months went by and no holes appeared. [1] The larvae only seemed to be in my carpet.
Eventually, their numbers started increasing, so I decided to do something about it.
I Googled humane and nonlethal ways to deal with moth infestations, but found nothing. There were lots of sources [...]
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
March 25th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ax5PwjqtrunQJgjsA/killing-the-moths
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I've been writing a few posts critical of EA over at my blog. They might be of interest to people here:
- Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism
- Alternative Visions of Effective Altruism
- Auftragstaktik
- Hurdles of using forecasting as a tool for making sense of AI progress
- Brief thoughts on CEA's stewardship of the EA Forum
- Why are we not harder, better, faster, stronger?
- ...and there are a few smaller pieces on my blog as well.
I appreciate comments and perspectives anywhere, but prefer them over at the individual posts at my blog, since I have a large number of disagreements with the EA Forum's approach to moderation, curation, aesthetics or cost-effectiveness.
First published:
March 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/coWvsGuJPyiqBdrhC/unflattering-aspects-of-effective-altruism
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
- Satisfaction with the EA community
- Reported satisfaction, from 1 (Very dissatisfied) to 10 (Very satisfied), in December 2023/January 2024 was lower than when we last measured it shortly after the FTX crisis at the end of 2022 (6.77 vs. 6.99, respectively).
- However, December 2023/January 2024 satisfaction ratings were higher than what people recalled their satisfaction being “shortly after the FTX collapse” (and their recalled level of satisfaction was lower than what we measured their satisfaction as being at the end of 2022).
- We think it's plausible that satisfaction reached a nadir at some point later than December 2022, but may have improved since that point, while still being lower than pre-FTX.
- Reasons for dissatisfaction with EA:
- A number of factors were cited a similar number of times by respondents as Very important reasons for dissatisfaction, among those who provided a reason: Cause prioritization (22%), Leadership (20%), Justice, Equity, Inclusion and [...]
Outline:
(04:15) Community satisfaction over time
(08:12) Reasons for dissatisfaction with the EA community
(13:07) Changes in EA engagement
(14:00) Changes in EA-related behaviors
(15:57) Perception of issues in the EA community
(16:14) Leadership vacuum
(16:46) Desire for more community change following FTX
(17:13) Trust in EA-related organizations
(18:53) Appendix
(18:56) Effect sizes for satisfaction over time
(20:12) Email vs non-email referrers
(21:30) Acknowledgments
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
March 20th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aF6nh4LW6sSbgMLzL/updates-on-community-health-survey-results
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
TLDR: we think the limiting factor for new charities has shifted from founder talent to early stage funding being the top limiting factor.
We have historically written about limiting factors and how they affect our thinking about the highest impact areas. For new charities, over the past 4-5 years, fairly consistently, the limiting factor has been people; specifically, the fairly rare founder profile that we look for and think has the best chance at founding a field-leading charity. However, we think over the last 12 months this picture has changed in some important ways:
- Firstly, we have started founding more charities: After founding ~5 charities a year in 2021 and 2022 we founded 8 charities in 2023 and we think there are good odds we will be able to found ~10-12 charities in 2024. This is a pretty large change. We have not changed our standards for [...]
First published:
March 19th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AXhC4JhWFfsjBB4CA/the-current-limiting-factor-for-new-charities
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I've written before about trying to bring US private foundations into EA as major funders. I got some helpful feedback and haven't really pursued it further. I study US private foundations as a researcher and recently conducted a qualitative data collection of staff at 20 very large US private foundations ($100m+ assets). The subject of the study isn't directly EA related (focused mostly on how they use accounting/effectiveness information and accountability), but it got me thinking a lot!
Some interesting observations that I am going to explore further, in future forum posts (if y'all think it's interesting) and future research papers:
- Trust-based philanthropy (TBP), a funder movement that's only been around since 2020, has had a HUGE impact on very large private foundations. All 20 indicated that they had already/were in the process of integrating TBP into their grantmaking. I can't emphasize enough how influential TBP has been. [...]
First published:
March 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Pnv6PRyeCPZknsbEw/the-lack-of-ea-in-us-private-foundations
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This is a draft amnesty post.
Summary.
- It seems plausible that fetuses can suffer from 12 weeks of age, and quite reasonable that then can suffer from 24 weeks of age.
- Some late-term abortion procedures seem that they might cause a fetus excruciating suffering.
- Over 35,000 of these procedures occur each year in the US alone.
- Further research would be desired on interventions to reduce this suffering, such as mandating fetal anesthesia for late-term abortions.
Background
Most people agree that a fetus has the capacity to suffer at some point. If a fetus has the capacity to suffer, then we ought to reduce that suffering when possible. Fetal anesthesia is standard practice for fetal surgery,[1] but I am unaware of it ever being used during late-term abortions. If the fetus can suffer, these procedures likely cause the fetus extreme pain.
I think the cultural environment EAs usually [...]
Outline:
(00:40) Background
(01:28) Surgical Abortion Procedures
(01:34) LI (Labor Induction)
(02:18) DandE (Dilation and Evacuation)
(02:38) When Can a Fetus Suffer?
(03:46) Scale in US and UK
(03:50) 2021 UK
(04:05) 2020 USA
(05:02) Interventions
The original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
March 17th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vhKZ7hyzmcrWuBwDL/the-scale-of-fetal-suffering-in-late-term-abortions
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I like Open Phil's worldview diversification. But I don't think their current roster of worldviews does a good job of justifying their current practice. In this post, I'll suggest a reconceptualization that may seem radical in theory but is conservative in practice. Something along these lines strikes me as necessary to justify giving substantial support to paradigmatic Global Health & Development charities in the face of competition from both Longtermist/x-risk and Animal Welfare competitor causes.
Current Orthodoxy
I take it that Open Philanthropy's current "cause buckets" or candidate worldviews are typically conceived of as follows:
- neartermist - incl. animal welfare
- neartermist - human-only
- longtermism / x-risk
We're told that how to weigh these cause areas against each other "hinge[s] on very debatable, uncertain questions." (True enough!) But my impression is that EAs often take the relevant questions to be something like, should we be speciesist? and should we [...]
Outline:
(00:35) Current Orthodoxy
(01:17) The Problem
(02:43) A Proposed Solution
(04:26) Implications
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
March 18th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dmEwQZSbPsYhFay2G/ea-worldviews-need-rethinking
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In 2022, Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) led the charge in Banding Together to Ban Octopus Farming. In 2024, we are ecstatic to see these efforts come to fruition in Washington State.
This landmark achievement underscores our collective commitment to rejecting the introduction of additional animals into the seafood system and positions Washington State as a true pioneer in aquatic animal welfare legislation. In light of this success, ALI is joining forces with various organizations to advocate for similar bans across the United States and utilizing these monumental examples as leverage in continuous European endeavors.
2022
Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) and members of the Aquatic Animal Alliance (AAA) comment on the Environmental Impact of Nueva Pescanova before the Government of the Canary Islands: General Directorate of Fisheries and the General Directorate for the Fight against Climate Change and the Environment.
Allowing this industrial octopus farm to operate [...]
Outline:
(00:45) 2022
(01:44) 2023
(03:37) 2024
(04:50) March 14, 2024
First published:
March 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AD8QchabkrygXkdgm/we-did-it-victory-for-octopus-in-washington-state
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Maternal Health Initiative (MHI) was founded out of Charity Entrepreneurship (AIM)'s 2022 Incubation Program and has since piloted two interventions integrating postpartum (post-birth) contraceptive counselling into routine care appointments in Ghana. We concluded this pilot work in December 2023.
A stronger understanding of the context and impact of postpartum family planning work, on the back of our pilot results, has led us to conclude that our intervention is not among the most cost-effective interventions available. We’ve therefore decided to shut down and redirect our funding to other organisations.
This article summarises MHI's work, our assessment of the value of postpartum family planning programming, and our decision to shut down MHI as an organisation in light of our results. We also share some lessons learned. An in-depth report expanding on the same themes is available on our website.
We encourage you to skip to the sections that are [...]
Outline:
(01:40) Why we chose to pursue postpartum family planning
(01:45) Why family planning?
(02:28) Why postpartum (post-birth)?
(03:49) MHI: An overview of our work
(06:16) Pilot: Design
(08:54) Pilot: Results
(08:58) Sample Population
(09:36) Implementation
(10:19) Changes in Contraceptive Uptake
(11:13) Conclusions From Our Pilot Results
(13:13) Why We No Longer Believe Postpartum Family Planning Is Among The Most Cost-Effective Interventions
(13:35) Evidence of Limited Effects on Unintended Pregnancies
(16:06) The Prevalence and Impact of Postpartum Insusceptibility
(17:07) Short-Spaced Pregnancies
(17:48) Theory of Change
(18:14) Other Factors
(18:28) Broader Thoughts on Family Planning
(18:45) Concerns
(20:43) Reasons We Still Believe In The Importance Of Family Planning Work
(22:53) Choosing to Shut Down
(23:43) Considering a Pivot
(26:47) Proceeding to Shut Down
(27:38) Lessons
(33:39) Conclusions
First published:
March 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MWSwSXNmsSBaEKtKw/maternal-health-initiative-is-shutting-down
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
by Anemone Franz and Tessa Alexanian
80,000 Hours ranks preventing catastrophic pandemics as one of the most pressing problems in the world, and we have advised many of our readers to work in biosecurity to have high-impact careers.
But biosecurity is a complex field, and while the threat is undoubtedly large, there's a lot of disagreement about how best to conceptualise and mitigate the risks. We wanted to get a better sense of how the people thinking about these threats every day perceive the risks.
So we decided to talk to more than a dozen biosecurity experts to better understand their views.
To make them feel comfortable speaking candidly, we granted the experts we spoke to anonymity. Sometimes disagreements in this space can get contentious, and certainly many of the experts we spoke to disagree with one another. We don’t endorse every position they’ve articulated below.
We think, though [...]
Outline:
(02:47) Expert 1: Failures of imagination and appeals to authority
(04:54) Expert 2: Exaggerating small-scale risks and Western chauvinism
(06:32) Expert 3: Useless reports and the world beyond effective altruism
(07:09) Expert 4: Overconfidence in threat models
(08:05) Expert 5: Interventions that don’t address the largest threats
(09:01) Expert 6: Over-reliance on past experience and overconfidence about the future
(10:59) Expert 7: Resistance from governments and antagonising expert communities
(13:50) Expert 8: Preparing for the “Big One” looks like preparing for the smaller ones
(14:31) Expert 9: ChatGPT is not dangerous
(16:52) Expert 10: The barriers to bioweapons are not that high
(18:24) Expert 11: We don’t need silver bullets
(18:57) Expert 12: Three failure modes
(19:32) Expert 13: Groupthink and failing to be scope sensitive
(20:47) Expert 14: COVID-19 does not equal biological weapons
First published:
February 29th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NGFkW4Qxww9jGESrk/what-are-the-biggest-misconceptions-about-biosecurity-and
Linkpost URL:
https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-misconceptions-about-biosecurity/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This might be one of the best pieces of introductory content to the concepts of effective giving that GWWC has produced in recent years!
I hit the streets of London to engage with everyday people about their views on charity, giving back, and where they thought they stood on the global income scale.
This video was made to engage people with some of the core concepts of income inequality and charity effectiveness in the hope of getting more people interested in giving effectively.
If you enjoy it - I'd really appreciate a like, comment or share on YouTube to help us reach more people!
There's a blog post and transcript of the video available too.
Big thanks to Suzy Sheperd for directing and editing this project and to Julian Jamison and Habiba Banu for being interviewed!
First published:
March 13th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tX2MqRfZtz7TqYCQi/new-video-you-re-richer-than-you-realise
Linkpost URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekIRVhbpiQw
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Authors of linked report: Josh Rosenberg, Ezra Karger, Avital Morris, Molly Hickman, Rose Hadshar, Zachary Jacobs, Philip Tetlock[1]
Today, the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) released “Roots of Disagreement on AI Risk: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Adversarial Collaboration,” which discusses the results of an adversarial collaboration focused on forecasting risks from AI.
In this post, we provide a brief overview of the methods, findings, and directions for further research. For much more analysis and discussion, see the full report: https://forecastingresearch.org/s/AIcollaboration.pdf
Abstract.
We brought together generalist forecasters and domain experts (n=22) who disagreed about the risk AI poses to humanity in the next century. The “concerned” participants (all of whom were domain experts) predicted a 20% chance of an AI-caused existential catastrophe by 2100, while the “skeptical” group (mainly “superforecasters”) predicted a 0.12% chance. Participants worked together to find the strongest near-term cruxes: forecasting questions resolving by 2030 that [...]
Outline:
(02:13) Extended Executive Summary
(02:44) Methods
(03:53) Results: What drives (and doesn’t drive) disagreement over AI risk
(04:32) Hypothesis #1 - Disagreements about AI risk persist due to lack of engagement among participants, low quality of participants, or because the skeptic and concerned groups did not understand each others arguments
(05:11) Hypothesis #2 - Disagreements about AI risk are explained by different short-term expectations (e.g. about AI capabilities, AI policy, or other factors that could be observed by 2030)
(07:53) Hypothesis #3 - Disagreements about AI risk are explained by different long-term expectations
(10:35) Hypothesis #4 - These groups have fundamental worldview disagreements that go beyond the discussion about AI
(11:31) Results: Forecasting methodology
(12:15) Broader scientific implications
(13:09) Directions for further research
The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
March 11th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/orhjaZ3AJMHzDzckZ/results-from-an-adversarial-collaboration-on-ai-risk-fri
Linkpost URL:
https://forecastingresearch.org/s/AIcollaboration.pdf
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Topic of the post: I list potential things to work on other than keeping AI under human control.
Motivation
The EA community has long been worried about AI safety. Most of the efforts going into AI safety are focused on making sure humans are able to control AI. Regardless of whether we succeed at this, I think there's a lot of additional value on the line.
First of all, if we succeed at keeping AI under human control, there are still a lot of things that can go wrong. My perception is that this has recently gotten more attention, for example here, here, here, and at least indirectly here (I haven’t read all these posts. and have chosen them to illustrate that others have made this point purely based on how easily I could find them). Why controlling AI doesn’t solve everything is not the main topic of this [...]
Outline:
(00:14) Motivation
(04:03) Other works and where this list fits in
(05:44) The list
(05:47) Making AI-powered humanity wiser, making AIs wiser
(06:35) More detailed definition
(08:15) Preparing AIs for reasoning about philosophically complex topics with high stakes
(09:25) Improve epistemics during an early AI period
(10:35) Metacognition for areas where it is better for you to avoid information
(13:26) Improve decision theoretical reasoning and anthropic beliefs
(17:34) Compatibility of earth-originating AI with other intelligent life
(19:16) More detailed definition
(20:55) How to make progress on this
(24:46) Surrogate goals and other Safe Pareto improvements
(25:54) More detailed definition
(27:28) How to make progress on this
(28:39) AI personality profiling and avoiding the worst AI personality traits
(30:20) How to make progress on this
(31:46) Avoiding harm from how we train AIs: Niceness, near miss, and sign flip
(32:10) More detailed definition
(35:07) How to make progress on this
(37:55) Reducing human malevolence
(38:32) How to make progress on this
(39:14) Hot take: I want more surveys
(40:35) Acknowledgements
First published:
March 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wE7KPnjZHBjxLKNno/ai-things-that-are-perhaps-as-important-as-human-controlled
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.
How factory farmers block progress — and what we can do about it
Most people agree that farmed animals deserve better legal protections: 84% of Europeans, 61-80% of Americans, 70% of Brazilians, 51-66% of Chinese, and 52% of Indians agree with some version of that statement. Yet almost all farmed animals globally still lack even the most basic protections.
America has about five times more vegetarians than farmers — and many more omnivores who care about farm animals. Yet the farmers wield much more political power. Fully 89% of Europeans think it's important that animals not be kept in individual cages. Yet the European Commission just implicitly sided with the 8% who don’t by shelving [...]
First published:
February 28th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BvXkG3PLfdmvoECFb/this-is-why-we-can-t-have-nice-laws
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post shares our journey in starting an Effective Altruism (EA) charity/project focused on Mediterranean fish welfare, the challenges we faced, our key learnings, and the reasons behind our decision to conclude the project. Actual research results are published in a Literature review and article.
Key points
The key points of this post are summarized as follows:
- We launched a project with the goal of enhancing fish welfare in Mediterranean aquaculture.
- We chose to limit our project to gathering information and decided against continuing our advocacy efforts after our initial six months.
- Our strategy, which focused on farmer-friendly outreach, was not effective in engaging farmers.
- The rationale behind our decision is the recognition that existing organizations are already performing excellent work, and we believe that funders should support these established organizations instead of starting a new one.
- The support and resources from the Effective Altruism (EA) and [...]
Outline:
(00:24) Key points
(01:41) Personal/Project background
(02:52) Why work on Mediterranean fish welfare?
(06:46) Project plans and initial work
(10:32) Initial work
(13:12) Farmer outreach
(19:52) Wrapping up the project
(21:33) Other takeaways from starting a project
(23:48) Resources for launching a new charity
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
February 26th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z59wybc56FCAysrAe/how-we-started-our-own-ea-charity-and-why-we-decided-to-wrap
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Epistemic status: the stories here are all as true as possible from memory, but my memory is so so.
An AI made this This is going to be big
It's late Summer 2017. I am on a walk in the Mendip Hills. It's warm and sunny and the air feels fresh. With me are around 20 other people from the Effective Altruism London community. We’ve travelled west for a retreat to discuss how to help others more effectively with our donations and careers. As we cross cow field after cow field, I get talking to one of the people from the group I don’t know yet. He seems smart, and cheerful. He tells me that he is an AI researcher at Google DeepMind. He explains how he is thinking about how to make sure that any powerful AI system actually does what we want it to. I ask him if [...]
Outline:
(00:16) This is going to be big
(01:21) This is going to be bad
(02:44) It's a long way off though
(03:50) This is fine
(05:10) It's probably something else in your life
(06:15) No-one in my org puts money in their pension
(07:16) Doom-vibes
(08:45) Maths might help
(10:28) A problem shared is…
(12:36) Hope
First published:
February 16th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YScdhSQBhkxpfcF3t/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their-pension
Linkpost URL:
https://seekingtobejolly.substack.com/p/no-one-in-my-org-puts-money-in-their
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Open Philanthropy strives to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. To find the best opportunities to help others, we rely heavily on scientific and social scientific research.
In some cases, we would find it helpful to have more research in order to evaluate a particular grant or cause area. Below, we’ve listed a set of social scientific questions for which we are actively seeking more evidence.[1] We believe the answers to these questions have the potential to impact our grantmaking. (See also our list of research topics for animal welfare.)
If you know of any research that touches on these questions, we would welcome hearing from you. At this point, we are not actively making grants to further investigate these questions. It is possible we may do so in the future, though, so if you plan to research any of these, please [...]
Outline:
(00:59) Land Use Reform
(05:53) Health
(15:39) Migration
(17:21) Education
(19:27) Science and Metascience
(29:18) Global Development
(31:26) Other
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
February 15th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3Y7c7MXf3BzgruTWv/social-science-research-we-d-like-to-see-on-global-health
Linkpost URL:
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/social-science-research-topics-for-global-health-and-wellbeing/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Google cofounder Larry Page thinks superintelligent AI is “just the next step in evolution.” In fact, Page, who's worth about $120 billion, has reportedly argued that efforts to prevent AI-driven extinction and protect human consciousness are “speciesist” and “sentimental nonsense.”
In July, former Google DeepMind senior scientist Richard Sutton — one of the pioneers of reinforcement learning, a major subfield of AI — said that the technology “could displace us from existence,” and that “we should not resist succession.” In a 2015 talk, Sutton said, suppose “everything fails” and AI “kill[s] us all”; he asked, “Is it so bad that humans are not the final form of intelligent life in the universe?”
This is how I begin the cover story for Jacobin's winter issue on AI. Some very influential people openly welcome an AI-driven future, even if humans aren’t part of it.
Whether you're new to the topic [...]
First published:
February 12th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pRAjLTQxWJJkygWwK/my-cover-story-in-jacobin-on-ai-capitalism-and-the-x-risk
Linkpost URL:
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/can-humanity-survive-ai
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
A friend sent me on a lovely trip down memory lane last week. She forwarded me an email chain from 12 years ago in which we all pretended we left the EA community, and explained why. We were partly thinking through what might cause us to drift in order that we could do something to make that less likely, and partly joking around. It was a really nice reminder of how uncertain things felt back then, and how far we’ve come.
Although the emails hadn’t led us to take any specific actions, almost everyone on the thread was still devoting their time to helping others as much as they can. We’re also, for the most part, still supporting each other in doing so. Of the 10 or so people on there, for example, Niel Bowerman is now my boss - CEO of 80k. Will MacAskill and Toby Ord [...]
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
February 12th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zEMvHK9Qa4pczWbJg/on-being-an-ea-for-decades
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
A lot of great projects have started in informal ways: a startup in someone's garage, or a scrappy project run by volunteers. Sometimes people jump into these and are happy they did so.
But I’ve also seen people caught off-guard by arrangements that weren’t what they expected, especially early in their careers. I’ve been there, when I was a new graduate interning at a religious center that came with room, board, and $200 a month. I remember my horror when my dentist checkup cost most of a month's income, or when I found out that my nine-month internship came with zero vacation days. It was an overall positive experience for me (after we worked out the vacation thing), but it's better to go in clear-eyed.
First, I’ve listed a bunch of things to consider. These are drawn from several different situations I’ve heard about, both inside and outside EA. [...]
Outline:
(01:11) Things to consider
(08:06) Advice from a few EAs
First published:
February 12th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RXFcmrf7E5fLhb43e/things-to-check-about-a-job-or-internship
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary
$8003.98 Charity Entrepreneurship
$5000 Insect Institute
$5000 Shrimp Welfare Project
$5000 Rethink Priorities
$5000 Animal Ethics
$1000 Wild Animal Initiative
Background
I think it's good to keep track of and explain donations. It creates a record to get better over time and gives others insights into how you donate.
I officially made $45000 in 2023. I earned some investment income from some other sources though this is hard to quantify. I also had some savings from previous years so don’t come away from this thinking that I gave such a substantial portion of my income. That said, I am still giving away a significant portion of my income this year. I think this is a good thing and hopefully, I can serve as an example to others to give away a significant portion of their income, even if it isn’t that high.
In total, I am giving [...]
First published:
February 11th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EkKYqeAy3ArupKuYn/my-donations-2023-marcus-abramovitch
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
If you enjoy this, please consider subscribing to my Substack.
Sam Altman has said he thinks that developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction, but OpenAI is trying to build it ASAP. Why?
The common story for how AI could overpower humanity involves an “intelligence explosion,” where an AI system becomes smart enough to further improve its capabilities, bootstrapping its way to superintelligence. Even without any kind of recursive self-improvement, some AI safety advocates argue that a large enough number of copies of a genuinely human-level AI system could pose serious problems for humanity. (I discuss this idea in more detail in my recent Jacobin cover story.)
Some people think the transition from human-level AI to superintelligence could happen in a matter of months, weeks, days, or even hours. The faster the takeoff, the more dangerous, the thinking goes.
Sam Altman, circa February 2023, agrees [...]
First published:
February 10th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vBjSyNNnmNtJvmdAg/sam-altman-s-chip-ambitions-undercut-openai-s-safety
Linkpost URL:
https://garrisonlovely.substack.com/p/sam-altmans-chip-ambitions-undercut
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
It is with great sadness that we share with you the passing of our fellow community member and beloved friend Mathilde Danès, at age 29.
A dedicated EA, animal advocate, and children's rights supporter, Mathilde had discovered the effective altruism community in 2016-2017, and the farm animal advocacy movement not long after. In 2018, she co-founded a local EA chapter in Lille, where she then lived. Other notable accomplishments of hers, among the many altruistic actions she took, include catering for several animal advocacy and EA events in France between 2020 and 2023, as well as co-organizing the 2022 edition of the Estivales de la question animale, an annual French-speaking effective animal advocacy summit.
With steadfast sentientist and antinatalist beliefs, she was particularly dedicated to the idea of reducing suffering whenever possible. Over the course of her advocacy years, she strived to live her life in accordance with [...]
First published:
February 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CeCKGfDzYsrvhJPFa/mathilde-danes-1994-2024
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I'm posting this as part of the Forum's Benjamin Lay Day celebration — consider writing a reflection of your own! The “official dates” for this reflection are February 8 - 15 (but you can write about this topic whenever you want).
TL;DR: * Tragic beliefs are beliefs that make the world seem worse, and give us partial responsibility for it. These are beliefs such as: “insect suffering matters” or “people dying of preventable diseases could be saved by my donations”. * Sometimes, to do good, we need to accept tragic beliefs. * We need to find ways to stay open to these beliefs in a healthy way. I outline two approaches, pragmatism and righteousness, which help, but can both be carried to excess.
Why I ignored insects for so long
I’ve been trying not to think about insects for a while. My diet is vegan, and sometimes I think of myself as [...]
Outline:
(00:19) Why I ignored insects for so long
(02:42) What is a tragic belief?
(03:21) How can we open ourselves up to tragic beliefs?
(03:34) Opportunity framing, or pragmatism
(05:33) The joy in righteousness
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
February 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dy5h9Ly8osZEiFkru/tragic-beliefs
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TLDR: Given Charity Entrepreneurship's recent scaling, we are changing our brand to call our extended ecosystem “Ambitious Impact (AIM).” Our new AIM umbrella brand will include the classic CE program as well as recent additional programs connected to grantmaking, research, and effective giving. We are also planning to launch new programs soon. We feel AIM being able to create onramps for other career paths (similar to what we have done for nonprofit entrepreneurship) is the most plausible way of doubling our impact.
A quick history of Charity Entrepreneurship
- Inspired by the early success of a few nonprofits identified by evaluators such as GiveWell, we decided to take a systematic approach to researching and then launching new impact-focused nonprofits (Charity Science Health, Fortify Health).
- After some initial successes, Charity Entrepreneurship was started in 2018 as a formal Incubation Program to get more field-leading charities started.
- 31 projects were founded [...]
Outline:
(00:43) A quick history of Charity Entrepreneurship
(02:00) What will AIM look like going forward
(03:25) Why we are launching AIM
First published:
February 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cpuFnLtppbsLKcbbq/ambitious-impact-aim-a-new-brand-for-charity
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Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay died exactly 265 years ago today (on February 8, 1759). I’m using the anniversary of his death to reflect on his life and invite you to join me by sharing your thoughts sometime this week.
Lay was a radical anti-slavery advocate and an important figure in the Quaker abolitionist movement. He's been described as a moral weirdo; besides viewing slavery as a great sin, he opposed the death penalty, was vegetarian, believed that men and women were equal in the eyes of God, and more. He didn’t hide his views and was known for his “guerrilla theater” protests, which included splashing fake blood on slave-owners and forcing people to step over him as they exited a meeting. Expulsion from various communities, ridicule for his beliefs or appearance (he had dwarfism), and the offended sensibilities of those around him didn’t seem to seriously slow him down.
[...]
Outline:
(01:37) Protests against slavery: shocking people into awareness
(05:55) Life
(10:57) Role in the broader abolition movement
(13:10) Concluding notes
The original text contained 13 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
February 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dM93vHvLTgpk8pLSX/celebrating-benjamin-lay-died-on-this-day-265-years-ago
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Chris Anderson, Head of TED, has just released a new book called Infectious Generosity, which has a whole chapter that encourages readers to take the Giving What We Can Pledge! He has also taken the Giving What We Can Pledge with the new wealth option to give the greater of 10% of income or 2.5% of wealth each year.
This inspiring book is a guide to making Infectious Generosity become a global movement to build a hopeful future. Chris offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts and to use the Internet to give them self-replicating, potentially world-changing, impact.
Here's a quick excerpt from the book:
“The more I’ve thought about generosity, the impact it can have, and the joy it can bring, the more determined I’ve become that it be an absolute core part of my identity.
Jacqueline's work as a [...]
First published:
January 25th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FWbaqM5PaFfrfAxaS/gwwc-pledge-featured-in-new-book-from-head-of-ted-chris
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Charity Entrepreneurship is running a second edition of our Research Training Program (RTP) – a program designed to equip participants with the tools and skills needed to identify, compare, and recommend the most effective charities and interventions.
In this post, we discuss possible long-term career paths for researchers and a gap assessment of what skills people might want to prioritize to pursue those. This discussion may be helpful for people considering the RTP program or those more generally wanting to find other ways of building career capital in research.
These five roles are based on what we think are potential placements or jobs for our first cohort in the RTP. We have made these all a bit more clichéd and separate than they are – in practice, there is a lot of overlap and nuance among them, and a successful research career often involves aspects from all these role [...]
Outline:
(01:41) Role: Monitoring and Evaluation (MandE) for a High-Impact Organization
(04:01) Role: Researcher in a Grantmaking Role / for a Foundation
(05:40) Role: Charity Evaluation Staff
(07:10) Role: Direct Research (such as academic, think tank, or EA meta)
(08:50) Role: Charity Founding (example: CE Incubation Program)
First published:
January 23rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EyedeQmoXGWbKRoxh/5-possibly-impactful-career-paths-for-researchers
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- I investigate the rates of criminal misconduct amongst people who have taken The Giving Pledge (roughly: ~200 [non-EA] billionaires who have pledged to give most of their money to charity).
- I find that rates are fairly high:
- 25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct, and 10% convicted[1]
- 4% of signatories have spent at least one day in prison
- Overall, 41% of signatories have had at least one allegation of substantial misconduct (financial, sexual, or otherwise)
- I estimate that Giving Pledgers are not less likely, and possibly more likely, to commit financial crimes than YCombinator entrepreneurs.
- I am unable to find evidence of The Giving Pledge doing anything to limit the risk of criminal behavior amongst its members.
- I conclude that the rate of criminal behavior amongst major philanthropists is high, which means that we should not expect altruism to substantially lower the risks compared to that of [...]
Outline:
(01:22) Methodology
(02:01) How well do convictions correspond with immoral behavior?
(03:56) Some Representative Cases
(04:08) Are Giving Pledge signatories less likely to commit financial crimes?
(06:05) Giving Pledge's Response to Criminal Behavior
(07:08) PR Impacts
(08:15) Implications for EA
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 22nd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d8nW46LrTkCWdjiYd/rates-of-criminality-amongst-giving-pledge-signatories
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(Cross-posted from my website. Podcast version here, or search for "Joe Carlsmith Audio" on your podcast app.
This essay is part of a series that I'm calling "Otherness and controlin the age of AGI." I'm hoping that the individual essay can be readfairly well on their own, but seeherefor brief summaries of the essays that have been released thus far.)
Earlier in thisseries,I discussed a certain kind of concern about the AI alignment discourse – namely, that it aspires to exert an inappropriate degree of controlover the values that guide the future. In considering this concern, Ithink it's important to bear in mind the aspects of our own valuesthat are specifically focused on pluralism, tolerance, helpfulness, andinclusivity towards values different-from-our-own (I discussed these inthe lastessay).But I don't think this is enough, on its own [...]
Outline:
(01:03) Tyrants and poultry-keepers
(12:29) Are we the conditioners?
(17:50) Lewiss argument in a moral realist world
(23:16) What if the Tao isnt a thing, though?
(32:02) Even without the Tao, shaping the futures values need not be tyranny
(35:13) Freedom in a naturalistic world
(41:53) Does treating values as natural make them natural?
(47:04) Naturalists who still value stuff
(53:23) What should the conditioners actually do, though?
(56:51) On not-brain-washing
(01:04:15) On influencing the values of not-yet-existing agents
The original text contained 37 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 18th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EHL9QJaEwHxNJXaNW/on-the-abolition-of-man
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Should we seek to make our scientific institutions more effective? On the one hand, rising material prosperity has so far been largely attributable to scientific and technological progress. On the other hand, new scientific capabilities also expand our powers to cause harm. Last year I wrote a report on this issue, “The Returns to Science in the Presence of Technological Risks.” The report focuses specifically on the net social impact of science when we take into account the potential abuses of new biotechnology capabilities, in addition to benefits to health and income.
The main idea of the report is to develop an economic modeling framework that lets us tally up the benefits of science and weigh them against future costs. To model costs, I start with the assumption that, at some future point, a “time of perils” commences, wherein new scientific capabilities can be abused and lead to an [...]
First published:
January 17th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PArvxhBaZJrGAuhZp/report-on-the-desirability-of-science-given-new-biotech
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Crossposted from Twitter.
As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year.
- A new malaria vaccine
The World Health Organization recommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concluded Phase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year.
The work didn’t stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people — including Zacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner — the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner is now working to raise money to expedite the deployment further.
- The [...]
First published:
December 31st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8P2GZFLnv8HW9ozLB/ea-wins-2023
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Crossposted from AI Impacts blog
The 2023 Expert Survey on Progress in AI is out, this time with 2778 participants from six top AI venues (up from about 700 and two in the 2022 ESPAI), making it probably the biggest ever survey of AI researchers.
People answered in October, an eventful fourteen months after the 2022 survey, which had mostly identical questions for comparison.
Here is the preprint. And here are six interesting bits in pictures (with figure numbers matching paper, for ease of learning more):
- Expected time to human-level performance dropped 1-5 decades since the 2022 survey. As always, our questions about ‘high level machine intelligence’ (HLMI) and ‘full automation of labor’ (FAOL) got very different answers, and individuals disagreed a lot (shown as thin lines below), but the aggregate forecasts for both sets of questions dropped sharply. For context, between 2016 and 2022 surveys, the forecast [...]
First published:
January 6th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/M9MSe4KHNv4HNf44f/survey-of-2-778-ai-authors-six-parts-in-pictures
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We, on behalf of the EV US and EV UK boards, are very glad to share that Zach Robinson has been selected as the new CEO of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA).
We can personally attest to his exceptional leadership, judgement, and dedication from having worked with him at Effective Ventures US. These experiences are part of why we unanimously agreed with the hiring committee's recommendation to offer him the position.[1] We think Zach has the skills and the drive to lead CEA's very important work.
We are grateful to the search committee (Max Dalton, Claire Zabel, and Michelle Hutchinson) for their thorough process in making the recommendation. They considered hundreds of potential internal and external candidates, including through dozens of blinded work tests. For further details on the search process, please see this Forum post.
As we look forward, we are excited about CEA's future with [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 28th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R6qu7LhcLKLob7t9r/zach-robinson-will-be-cea-s-next-ceo
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I'm only 30% sure [Edit Jan 7: 90% sure] that this is actually an inadequacy made by those whose job it is to maximize donations but I’ve noticed that none of the donations pages of GiveWell, Giving What We Can, Horizon Institute, or METR have this little tab in them that MIRI has (just scroll down after following the link):
This little tool comes from doublethedonation.com.
I was looking for charities to donate to, and I’m grateful I stumbled upon the MIRI donation page because otherwise I would not have known that Google would literally double my donation. None of the other donation pages except MIRI had this little “does your company do employer matching?” box. WHY.
I would wager other tech companies have similar programs, and that a good chunk of EA donations come from employees of those tech companies, and that thousands of dollars a year [...]
First published:
January 5th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fbTE2cBtnxCqemWNp/double-the-donation-ea-inadequacy-found
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There was a recent post about economic growth & effective altruism by Karthik Tadepalli. He pointed out that a lot of people agree that economic growth is important, but it hasn't really led to many suggestions for specific interventions.
I thought it would be good to get the ball rolling[1] by asking a few people what they think are good donation opportunities in this area, or if not, do they think this area is neglected when you have governments, development banks, investors etc all focused on growth.
I'm hoping there will be more in depth research into this in 2024 to see whether there are opportunities for smaller/medium funders, and how competitive it is with the best global health interventions.
I have fleshed out a few of the shorter responses with more details on what the suggested organisation does.
Shruti Rajagopalan (Mercatus Center):
- XKDR Forum - Founded by [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 8th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oTuNw6MqXxhDK3Mdz/economic-growth-donation-suggestions-and-ideas
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Much attention recently has focused on far-UVC light, part of the spectrum of germicidal UV (GUV), and its promise for pandemic prevention. In the following medium investigation, we examine different kinds of GUV, their strengths, weaknesses, and crucial considerations in the real-world deployment of these interventions.
Throughout the report, we emphasize four points that we believe have been lost in some public discussions of far-UVC:
- A great deal of uncertainty remains around far-UVC interventions, to the point that we remain uncertain over the relative cost-effectiveness, all things considered, of far-UVC light versus conventional (~254nm) GUV in many settings.
- Cost-effectiveness depends on deployment context, including the dimensions of rooms, installation type (upper-room, full-room, etc.) assumptions about the mixing of air, etc. Combined with certain physical facts about air and light (e.g. the inverse square law), this complicates strong claims about far-UVC's promise.
- GUV of any kind will not [...]
Outline:
(02:39) Medium Investigation: Germicidal Ultraviolet Light and Disease Transmission Reduction
(10:30) Key Terms and Abbreviations
(13:12) Importance: Why Biological Indoor Air Quality Matters
(17:23) Current status of indoor air quality in the US
(20:22) What is GUV?
(22:49) Full-Room Systems
(23:45) Far-UVC Light
(24:41) Upper-Room GUV
(25:27) In-Duct GUV
(26:42) Benefits of GUV as a biosecurity intervention
(30:24) What do we know about the safety of far-UVC light?
(31:14) Primary Concerns: Skin and Eye Damage
(36:13) Additional Safety Concerns
(36:17) Ozone Production
(37:28) Indoor Air Pollution
(41:08) Skin Microbiome
(42:12) Overall view on safety
(44:10) Additional Risks
(44:14) Public Reaction Considerations
(47:17) Dual-Use Potential and Security Risks
(50:18) Resistance risks
(52:01) Damage to Plastics and Other Materials
(54:47) Comparing Different Types of GUV
(56:08) Is far-UVC technology overhyped?
(59:42) The Complexity of Comparing Different GUV Systems and Wavelengths
(01:04:41) Efficacy
(01:07:35) The Challenges of Studying Real-World GUV Effectiveness
(01:16:53) Safety
(01:17:02) Skin/Eye Effects
(01:18:39) Indoor Air Pollution
(01:19:06) Cost
(01:21:31) Limits to real-world use
(01:23:30) Additional benefits
(01:24:07) Overall View
(01:26:06) Neglectedness
(01:32:11) What Could a Philanthropist Do?
(01:33:29) Grantmaking under Uncertainty: Impact Multipliers for GUV
(01:36:52) Placing Wavelength-Agnostic Bets
(01:41:28) Leveraging Societal Resources Via Advocacy
(01:42:42) Prioritizing shaping RandD incentives over funding specific RandD
(01:44:14) Focusing on high-income countries first
(01:45:37) Focusing on good information over rapid deployment
(01:50:32) Potential funding pathways
(01:55:48) Conclusions and Next Steps
(01:57:03) About Founders Pledge
The original text contained 157 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 9th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EZZveBtxoZJjSighP/are-far-uvc-interventions-overhyped-founders-pledge
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This podcast is an Ask Me Anything with Rob Mather, Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, hosted by Toby Tremlett, the EA Forum’s Content Manager.
If you’re interested in Effective Altruism, you’ve probably heard of Rob Mather’s charity, the Against Malaria Foundation. For almost two decades, they’ve been doing crucial work to protect people, especially children, from Malaria.
To date, around 450 million people have been protected with malaria bed nets from this charity. Once all of their currently funded nets have been distributed, AMF estimates it will have prevented 185,000 deaths. And it’s not just AMF saying this, they’ve been a GiveWell Top Charity since 2009.
Listen to this episode to find out more about how Rob ended up starting one of the most effective global health charities, Rob’s tips for running a charity, how AMF’s work integrates with other NGOs that work on Malaria, and much more.
The original AMA post, which features Forum user’s questions for Rob, more information about AMF, and a link to a transcript for this episode, can be found here.
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rWRSvRxAco2bLoXKr/podcast-transcript-ama-founder-and-ceo-of-the-against
Published for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
As we announced back in October, I have taken on the senior leadership role at MIRI as its CEO. It's a big pair of shoes to fill, and an awesome responsibility that I’m honored to take on.
There have been several changes at MIRI since our 2020 strategic update, so let's get into it.[1]
The short version:
We think it's very unlikely that the AI alignment field will be able to make progress quickly enough to prevent human extinction and the loss of the future's potential value, that we expect will result from loss of control to smarter-than-human AI systems.
However, developments this past year like the release of ChatGPT seem to have shifted the Overton window in a lot of groups. There's been a lot more discussion of extinction risk from AI, including among policymakers, and the discussion quality seems greatly improved.
This provides a glimmer of hope. [...]
Outline:
(03:27) MIRI's mission
(05:47) MIRI in 2021–2022
(10:10) New developments in 2023
(13:03) Looking forward
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 5th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lvd2DFaHKfuveaCyQ/miri-2024-mission-and-strategy-update
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A summary of the Nonlinear situation from a third-person perspective, by Ozy Brennan. I find it to be thoughtful, well-written, and well-researched enough to be part of the conversation. It was also posted on LessWrong.
Edit: full text included below (with permission from the author). I had to reformat a lot so assume all formatting errors are done by me.
About a week ago, I became one of a small, elite group—people who have read every single goddamn word of Nonlinear's Evidence: Debunking False and Misleading Claims. I read the appendix. I read the appendixes to the appendix. I have spent more time thinking about whether a complete stranger got a vegan burger than any person should.
If you just want to make up your own mind, I suggest reading The General Situation and referring to Dramatis Personae when you get confused who is who. If you like drama [...]
Outline:
(02:00) How We Got Here
(03:46) Dramatis Personae
(05:20) Ben's Credibility
(07:39) Kat Woods's Credibility
(11:30) The General Situation
(12:59) Enmeshment
(17:44) Finances
(23:22) Isolation
(25:17) The Drug Situation
(27:34) Specific Situations
(27:37) The Vegan Burger Situation
(29:21) The Driving Situation
(31:21) Speculation About Drugs
(32:42) Alice's Credibility
(36:09) The Saga of Alice's Incubated Organization
(41:58) The Saga of Emerson Spartz's Previous Business Life
(45:14) Could Nonlinear Employ People?
(48:50) Takeaways
The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
January 3rd, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RdiQ3n8cFJBxHRnwu/practically-a-book-review-appendix-to-nonlinear-s-evidence-1
Linkpost URL:
https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/practically-a-book-review-appendix
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I think many EAs have a unique view about how one altruistic action affects the next altruistic action, something like altruism is powerful in terms of its impact, and altruistic acts take time/energy/willpower; thus, it's better to conserve your resources for these topmost important altruistic actions (e.g., career choice) and not sweat it the other actions.
However, I think this is a pretty simplified and incorrect model that leads to the wrong choices being taken. I wholeheartedly agree that certain actions constitute a huge % of your impact. In my case, I do expect my career/job (currently running Charity Entrepreneurship) will be more than 90% of my lifetime impact. But I have a different view on what this means for altruism outside of career choices. I think that being altruistic in other actions not only does not decrease my altruism on the big choices but actually galvanizes them and [...]
First published:
December 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DBcDZJhTDgig9QNHR/altruism-sharpens-altruism
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This is a crosspost for A year of wins for farmed animals, published by Lewis Bollard on 14 December 2023 in Open Philanthropy farm animal welfare research newsletter.
It's been a tough year for farmed animals. The European Union shelved the world's most ambitious farm animal welfare reform proposal, plant-based meat sales sagged, and the media panned cultivated meat while Italy banned it. But advocates for factory farmed animals still won major gains — here are ten of the biggest:
- Wins for the winged. Advocates won 130 new corporate pledges to eliminate cages for hens or the worst abuses of broiler chickens. This progress has now expanded well beyond the West: recent wins include cage-free pledges from the largest Asian restaurant company and the largest Indonesian retailer. That's mostly thanks to the work of the 100+ member groups of the Open Wing Alliance, who now campaign across 67 [...]
First published:
December 24th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aiXyEvheFdwsEoPeC/a-year-of-wins-for-farmed-animals
Linkpost URL:
https://farmanimalwelfare.substack.com/p/a-year-of-wins-for-farmed-animals
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TL;DR: We ran a Donation Election in which 341 Forum users[1] voted on how we should allocate the Donation Election Fund ($34,856[2]). The winners are:
- Rethink Priorities - $12,847.75
- Charity Entrepreneurship: Incubated Charities Fund - $11,351.11
- Animal Welfare Fund (EA Funds) - $10,657.07
This post shares more information about the results:
- Comments from voters about their votes: patterns include referencing organizations' marginal funding posts, updating towards the neglectedness of animal welfare, appreciating strong track records, etc.
- Voting patterns: most people voted for 2-4 candidates (at least one of which was one of the three winners), usually in multiple cause areas
- Cause area stats: similar numbers of points went to cross-cause, animal welfare, risk/future-oriented, and global health candidates (ranked in that order)
- All candidate results, including raw point[3] totals: the Long-Term Future Fund initially placed second by raw point totals
- Concluding thoughts & other charities
You can [...]
The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 24th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7D83kwkyaHLQSo6JT/winners-in-the-forum-s-donation-election-2023
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary.
In the past year, public fora have seen growing concern about existential risk (henceforth, x-risk) from AI. The thought is that we could see transformative AI in the coming years or decades, that it may be hard to ensure that such systems act with humanity's best interests in mind and that those highly advanced AIs may be able to overpower us if they aimed to do so, or otherwise that such systems may be catastrophically misused. Some have reacted by arguing that concerns about x-risk distract from current harms from AI, like algorithmic bias, job displacement and labour issues, environmental impact and so on. And in opposition to those voices, others have argued that attention on x-risk does not draw resources and attention away from current harms -- that both concerns can coexist peacefully.
The claim that x-risk distracts from current harms is contingent. It may be [...]
Outline:
(02:15) The Argument
(09:31) Evidence
(10:46) AI Policy
(14:33) Search Interest
(19:40) Twitter/X Followers
(20:55) Funding
(22:20) Climate Change
(25:39) Maybe the Real Disagreement Is about How Big the Risks Are
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 21st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hXzB72kfdAk6PTzio/attention-on-existential-risk-from-ai-likely-hasn-t
Linkpost URL:
https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/attention-on-existential-risk-from-ai-likely-hasnt-distracted-from-current-harms-from-ai/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Huge thanks to Konrad Seifert, Marcel Steimke, Ysaline Bourgine, Milena Canzler, Alex Rahl-Kaplan, Marieke de Visscher, and Guillaume Vorreux for the valuable feedback provided on drafts of this post, and to many others for the conversations that lead to me writing it.
Views & mistakes are my own.
TL;DR
Being a non-native English speaker makes one sound less convincing. However, poor inclusion of non-native English speakers means missed perspectives in decision-making. Hence, it's a vicious circle where lack of diversity persists: native English culture prevails at the thought leadership level and neglects other cultures by failing to acknowledge that it is inherently harder to stand out as a non-native English speaker.
Why I am writing this
I’m co-directing EA Switzerland (I’m originally from France), and I’ve been thinking about the following points for some time. I’ve been invited to speak at the Panel on Community Building at EAG Boston [...]
Outline:
(00:25) TL;DR
(00:52) Why I am writing this
(01:38) An unconscious bias against non-native English speakers
(02:00) Non-native English speakers sound less convincing
(03:43) Poor inclusion of non-native English speakers means missed perspectives
(04:30) Native English speakers are overrepresented in EA's thought leadership: a vicious circle
(05:47) What can we do about it?
(05:50) Some prompts
(06:35) Let's talk about this
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 20th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F7qzoWhiCTK8KpuTM/the-privilege-of-native-english-speakers-in-reaching-high
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I tend to disagree with most EAs about existential risk from AI. Unfortunately, my disagreements are all over the place. It's not that I disagree with one or two key points: there are many elements of the standard argument that I diverge from, and depending on the audience, I don't know which points of disagreement people think are most important.
I want to write a post highlighting all the important areas where I disagree, and offering my own counterarguments as an alternative. This post would benefit from responding to an existing piece, along the same lines as Quintin Pope's article "My Objections to "We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky"". By contrast, it would be intended to address the EA community as a whole, since I'm aware many EAs already disagree with Yudkowsky even if they buy the basic arguments for AI x-risks.
My question is: what is the [...]
First published:
December 15th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DHybAfxPhqqYa3bQz/what-is-the-current-most-representative-ea-ai-x-risk
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The New York Times
Picture a scene: the New York Times is releasing an article on Effective Altruism (EA) with an express goal to dig up every piece of negative information they can find. They contact Émile Torres, David Gerard, and Timnit Gebru, collect evidence about Sam Bankman-Fried, the OpenAI board blowup, and Pasek's Doom, start calling Astral Codex Ten (ACX) readers to ask them about rumors they'd heard about affinity between Effective Altruists, neoreactionaries, and something called TESCREAL. They spend hundreds of hours over six months on interviews and evidence collection, paying Émile and Timnit for their time and effort. The phrase "HBD" is muttered, but it's nobody's birthday.
A few days before publication, they present key claims to the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), who furiously tell them that many of the claims are provably false and ask for a brief delay to demonstrate the falsehood of [...]
Outline:
(00:06) The New York Times
(03:08) A Word of Introduction
(07:35) The Story So Far: A Recap
(11:08) Avoidable, Unambiguous Falsehoods in Sharing Information About Nonlinear
(21:32) These Issues Were Known and Knowable By Lightcone and the Community. The EA/LW Community Dismissed Them
(27:03) Better processes are both possible and necessary
(38:44) On Lawsuits
(47:15) First Principles, Duty, and Harm
(50:43) What of Nonlinear?
The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 19th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bwtpBFQXKaGxuic6Q/effective-aspersions-how-the-nonlinear-investigation-went
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I’ve been working in animal advocacy for two years and have an amateur interest in AI. All corrections, points of disagreement, and other constructive feedback are very welcome. I’m writing this in a personal capacity, and am not representing the views of my employer.
Many thanks to everyone who provided feedback and ideas.
Introduction.
In a previous post, I set out some of the positive and negative impacts that AI could have on animals. The present post sets out a few ideas for what an animal-inclusive AI landscape might look like: what efforts would we need to see from different actors in order for AI to be beneficial for animals? This is just a list of high-level suggestions, and I haven’t tried to prioritize them, explore them in detail, or suggest practical ways to bring them about. I also haven’t touched on the (potentially extremely [...]
Outline:
(01:23) Why do we need animal-inclusive AI?
(03:44) Moving towards animal-inclusive AI
(03:49) Explicitly mention animals in non-binding commitments
(03:54) Governmental commitments
(06:48) Company commitments
(08:32) Representation of animals in AI decision-making
(10:33) Tangible actions by companies
(14:12) Explicitly mention animals in binding commitments
(21:10) Publish more research on AI's potential impacts on animals
(23:55) Build up the ‘AI safety x animal advocacy’ community
(29:44) Conclusion
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 18th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2cZAzvaQefh5JxWdb/bringing-about-animal-inclusive-ai
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is embarking on an exciting new chapter: after years of support, we will be spinning out of the Effective Ventures Foundation UK and US (collectively referred to as “EV”), our parent charities in the US and UK respectively, to become an independent organisation.
Rest assured that our core mission, commitments, and focus on effective giving remain unchanged. We believe this transition will allow us to better serve our community and to achieve our mission more effectively. Below, you'll find all the details you need, including what is changing, what isn't, and how you can get involved.
A heartfelt thanks
First and foremost, we owe a very big thank you to the team at EV. Their support over the years has helped us to grow and have a meaningful impact in the world. We could not be more grateful for their support.
A big thank [...]
Outline:
(00:41) A heartfelt thanks
(01:08) Why spin out?
(02:36) The details
(02:55) Whats changing
(04:03) Whats not changing
(04:51) How you can help
(05:09) Have more questions?
First published:
December 13th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ngoqSAbcdYhhNgBza/gwwc-is-spinning-out-of-ev
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
We’re announcing two updates today that we believe will strengthen the effective altruism ecosystem.
FTX updates
First, we’re pleased to say that both Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US have agreed to settlements with the FTX bankruptcy estate. As part of these settlements, EV US and EV UK (which I’ll collectively refer to as “EV”) have between them paid the estate $26,786,503, an amount equal to 100% of the funds the entities received from FTX and the FTX Foundation (which I’ll collectively refer to as “FTX”) in 2022. All of this money was either originally received from FTX or allocated to pay the settlement with the knowledge and support of their original donor. This means that EV's projects can continue to fundraise with confidence that donations won’t be used to cover the cost of this settlement. We strongly condemn fraud and the actions underlying Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction.
Also [...]
Outline:
(00:12) FTX updates
(02:59) Future of EV
First published:
December 13th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Recently, Ben Pace wrote a well-intentioned blog post mostly based on complaints from 2 (of 21) Nonlinear employees who 1) wanted more money, 2) felt socially isolated, and 3) felt persecuted/oppressed.
Of relevance, one has accused the majority of her previous employers, and 28 people of abuse - that we know of.
She has accused multiple people of threatening to kill her and literally accused an ex-employer of murder. Within three weeks of joining us, she had accused five separate people of abuse: not paying her what was promised, controlling her romantic life, hiring stalkers, and other forms of persecution.
We have empathy for her. Initially, we believed her too. We spent weeks helping her get her “nefarious employer to finally pay her” and commiserated with her over how badly they mistreated her.
Then she started accusing us of strange things.
You’ve seen Ben's evidence, which [...]
Outline:
(02:20) Short summary overview table
(04:04) This post is long, so if you read just one illustrative story, read this one
(08:37) What is going on? Why did they say so many misleading things? How did Ben get so much wrong?
(12:14) Ben admitted in his post that he was warned in private by multiple of his own sources that Alice was untrustworthy and told outright lies. One credible person told Ben Alice makes things up.
(20:35) Alice has similarities to Kathy Forth, who, according to Scott Alexander, was “a very disturbed person” who, multiple people told him, “had a habit of accusing men she met of sexual harassment. They all agreed she wasnt malicious, just delusional.” As a community, we do not have good mechanisms in place to protect people from false accusations.
(23:41) Why didn’t Ben do basic fact-checking to see if their claims were true? I mean, multiple people warned him?
(24:42) Longer summary table
(26:14) To many EAs, this would have been a dream job
(37:13) Sharing Information on Ben Pace
(47:07) So how do we learn from this to make our community better? How can we make EA antifragile?
(51:22) Conclusion: a story with no villains
(57:16) If you are disturbed by what happened here, here are some ways you can help
(58:53) Acknowledgments
First published:
December 12th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H4DYehKLxZ5NpQdBC/nonlinear-s-evidence-debunking-false-and-misleading-claims
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary:
International funding and coordination to tackle HIV/AIDS and support health systems in lower- and middle-income countries, is at risk of not being renewed by US Congress, due to demands that it should be linked to new abortion-related restrictions in recipient countries.
This program is estimated to have saved over 20 million lives since it was launched by the Bush Administration in 2003, and even now averts over a million HIV/AIDS deaths annually.
Since it has also helped support health systems in LMICs, and tackle malaria and tuberculosis, its impact is likely greater than this.
In my view this is the most important risk to global health we face today, and I think it isn't getting enough attention.
If anyone is interested in research, writing or advocacy on this issue, please do so. Or please get in touch if you are interested in jointly working on this [...]
First published:
December 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gF4nLBpjgFe6XTMrM/pepfar-one-of-the-most-life-saving-global-health-programs-is
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Epistemic Status: I've researched this broad topic for a couple of years. I've read about 30+ books and 100+ articles on the topic so far (I'm not really keeping count). I've also read many other works in the related areas of normative moral philosophy, moral psychology, moral epistemology, moral methodology, and metaethics, since it's basically my area of specialization within philosophy. This project will be my PhD thesis. However, I still have 3 years of the PhD to go, so a substantial amount of my opinions on the matter are subject to changes.
Disclaimer: I have received some funding as a Forethought Foundation Fellow in support of my PhD research. But all the opinions expressed here are my own.
Index.
Part I - Bibliography Review
Part II - Preliminary Takes and Opinions (I'm writing it, coming very soon!)
More parts to be published later on.
Introduction.
Hi everyone, this [...]
Outline:
(00:51) Index.
(01:05) Introduction.
(03:55) Guiding Questions.
(08:33) Who has a good Personal Fit for becoming a Moral Progress researcher?
(15:05) Bibliography Review.
(15:32) TL;DR / Recommended Reading Order.
(17:05) Amazing books (5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Read them and take notes)
(17:15) Allen Buchanan and Rachel Powell - The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (2018) - Genre: Moral Philosophy - No Audiobook
(19:32) Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature. The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes (2011) - Genre: Historical Trends - Audiobook Available
(21:11) Hanno Sauer - Moral Teleology: A Theory of Progress (2023) - Genre: Moral Philosophy - No Audiobook
(22:07) Oded Galor - The Journey of Humanity (2020) - Genre: Historical Trends - Audiobook Available
(23:02) Joseph Henrichs - The Secret of Our Success (2016) - Genre: Cultural Evolution, Pre-History - Audiobook Available
(23:59) Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020) - Genre: Cultural Evolution, Historical Trends since the 1300s - Audiobook Available
(26:51) Great books (4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Read them)
(26:59) Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell - A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made Us Human (2022) - Genre: Moral Psychology, Moral Philosophy - Audiobook Available
(27:40) Philip Kitcher - Moral Progress (2021) - Genre: Moral Philosophy, Social Movements - No Audiobook
(30:22) Hans Rosling - Factfulness: Ten Reasons Were Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (2018) - Genre: Post-Industrial Historical Trends. - Audiobook Available
(31:10) Michael Tomasello - Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny (2018)- Genre: Cognitive Human Development - No Audiobook
(32:03) Jose Antonio Marina - Biography of Inhumanity (2021) - Genre: Moral Values, Cultural Evolution - Audiobook in Spanish only
(32:32) Kim Sterelnys - The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique (2009) - Genre: Human Pre-History - Audiobook Available
(33:25) Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind (2011) - Genre: Political Psychology - Audiobook Available
(34:52) Okay books (3/5 ⭐⭐⭐ - Skim them)
(34:59) Peter Singer - The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology (1979 [2011]) - Genre: Moral Philosophy - No Audiobook
(36:19) Frans de Waal - Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (2006) - Genre: Ape Proto-Morality - No Audiobook
(37:00) Robert Wright - Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (2000) - Genre: Cultural Evolution - Audiobook Available
(37:51) Joshua Greene - Moral Tribes. Emotion, Reason, and the gap between Us and Them (2013) - Genre: Moral Psychology - Audiobook Available
(38:48) Derek Parfit - On What Matters (2011) (just the section on the Triple Theory) - Genre: Moral Philosophy - No Audiobook
(39:28) Steven Pinker - Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018) - Genre: Social Values / Enlightenment Values - Audiobook Available
(40:15) Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (1983) - Genre: Modernity - No Audiobook
(41:26) William MacAskill - Moral Uncertainty (2020) - Genre: Moral Philosophy - No Audiobook
(42:01) Daniel Dennett - Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) - Genre: Evolution - Audiobook Available
(42:52) Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu - Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement (2012) - Genre: Transhumanism, Human Nature - No Audiobook
(43:25) Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism (1965) - Genre: Romantic Values, Nationalism - No Audiobook
(44:06) Mediocre books (2/5 ⭐⭐ - Skip to the relevant sections)
(44:13) Kwame Anthony Appiah - The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010) - Genre: Moral Philosophy, Social Movements - Audiobook Available
(46:13) Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate (2000) - Genre: General Psychology - Audiobook Available
(47:10) Cecilia Heyes - Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking (2018) - Genre: Cultural Evolution, Psychology - Audiobook Available
(48:11) Cass Sunstein - How Change Happens (2019) - Genre: Social Change, Policy - Audiobook Available
(48:44) Angus Deaton - The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (2013) - Genre: Trends in Global Poverty, Health - Audiobook Available
(49:09) Johan Norberg - Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016) - Genre: Post-Industrial Historical Trends - Audiobook Available
(49:39) David Livingstone Smith - On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It (2020) - Genre: - Audiobook Available
(50:18) Bad books (1/5 ⭐ - Skip)
(50:23) Michael Shermer - The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People (2015) - Genre: Enlightenment Values - Audiobook Available
(50:51) Michele Moody-Adams - Genre: Social Movements, Moral Philosophy - Making Space for Justice (2023) - Audiobook Available
(51:21) Thomas Piketty - A Brief History of Equality (2021) - Genre: Historical Trends - Audiobook Available
(51:44) Article collection.
(52:08) Worthwhile articles (Read them).
(52:55) Alright ones (Skim them).
(01:03:29) Bad ones (Skip them).
(01:03:55) Havent read them yet or dont remember enough to classify them.
(01:05:31) Books I havent read yet, and my reasoning for why I want to read them.
(01:05:37) Important books or articles I havent read yet.
(01:07:13) Books or articles I havent read yet. I might read them but I consider less directly relevant or less pressing.
(01:09:56) Minor readings I might do when I have free time (e.g. over the summer just to corroborate if Im missing anything important in my own work):
(01:10:58) Potentially interesting extensions but probably beyond the scope of my work.
(01:13:13) EA work on Moral Progress and related topics.
(01:13:29) Moral Circle Expansion.
(01:15:12) Economic Growth and Moral Progress.
(01:15:31) Progress Studies.
(01:16:22) Social and Intellectual Movements.
(01:16:58) Historical Processes.
(01:17:16) Cultural Evolution and Value Drift.
(01:18:37) Longtermist Institutional Reform.
(01:19:17) Conclusion.
(01:19:46) Acknowledgements.
(01:20:05) Contact Information.
First published:
December 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YC3Mvw2xNtpKxR5sK/phd-on-moral-progress-bibliography-review
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary of findings 2 years in:
- A monthly universal basic income (UBI) empowered recipients and did not create idleness. They invested, became more entrepreneurial, and earned more. The common concern of “laziness” never materialized, as recipients did not work less nor drink more.
- Both a large lump sum and a long-term UBI proved highly effective. The lump sum enabled big investments and the guarantee of 12 years of UBI encouraged savings and risk-taking.
- A short-term UBI was the least impactful of the designs but still effective. On nearly all important economic measures, a 2-year-only UBI performed less well than giving cash as a large lump sum or guaranteeing a long-term UBI, despite each group having received roughly the same total amount of money at this point. However, it still had a positive impact on most measures.
- Governments should consider changing how they deliver cash aid. Short-term monthly payments [...]
Outline:
(02:37) A monthly UBI made people in poverty more productive, not less
(03:57) Giving $500 as a lump sum improved economic outcomes more than giving it out over 24 months
(06:27) The promise of a long-term UBI encouraged saving and investment
(07:43) This research should inform how cash is given to people in extreme poverty
(10:28) Study design
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DBx98atdYFM3yKR9C/early-findings-from-the-world-s-largest-ubi-study
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I'm Ezra, CEO of EA Israel, but am writing this in a personal capacity. My goal in writing this is to give the community a sense of what someone from a decent-sized local EA group is going through during a time of national crisis. I'll try to keep the post relatively apolitical, but since this is such a charged topic, I'm not sure I'll succeed. I will say that I’m quite nervous about the responses to the post, since the forum can sometimes lean towards criticism. Ideally, I’d want people who are reading this to do so with a sense of compassion, while keeping in mind that this is a difficult time and difficult topic to post or share experiences about. I also don't want the comments to be a discussion of the war per se, but of the experiences of an EA during the war. Finally, I'm sure that [...]
Outline:
(01:25) So what have I been doing since the outbreak of the war?
(04:09) How has my experience changed the way I think about EA concepts?
(04:35) Donation recommendations
(05:39) Important aspects of suffering arent captured by usual metrics
(06:17) Theres even more moral uncertainty
(07:39) Caring about people far away can go wrong if the topic is trending
(08:44) Models of complex situations can be overly simplistic and harmful
(11:24) Optimisation is irrelevant
(12:59) Ambition to improve the world
(14:06) The importance of peace
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iXv6zjbAfwrpQy37B/ea-thoughts-from-israel-hamas-war
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary.
- EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF)[1] has historically had a somewhat scattershot focus within “EA meta.” This makes it difficult for us to know what to optimize for or for donors to evaluate our performance
- We propose that we switch towards focusing our grantmaking on Principles-First EA[2]
- This includes supporting:
- research that aids prioritization across different cause areas
- projects that build communities focused on impartial, scope sensitive and ambitious altruism
- infrastructure, especially epistemic infrastructure, to support these aims
- We hope that the tighter focus area will make it easier for donors and community members to evaluate the EA Infrastructure Fund, and decide for themselves whether EAIF is a good fit to donate to or otherwise support
- Our tentative plan is to collect feedback from the community, donors, and stakeholders until the end of this year. Early 2024 will focus on refining our approach and helping ease transition for grantees. We'll begin piloting our new vision in Q2 2024.
Introduction and background [...]
Outline:
(01:17) Introduction and background context
(04:29) Proposal
(05:10) Examples of projects under the new EAIF's purview
(06:01) Examples of projects that are outside of the updated scope
(06:46) Why focus on Principles-First EA?
(08:43) Potential Metrics
(10:05) Potential Alternatives for Donors and Grantees
(10:52) Tentative Timeline
(11:46) Appendices
(11:53) Examples of projects that I (Caleb) would be excited for this fund to support
(13:00) Scope Assessment of Hypothetical EAIF Applications
(15:53) Key Considerations
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FnNJfgLgsHdjuMvzH/ea-infrastructure-fund-s-plan-to-focus-on-principles-first
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Charity Entrepreneurship in collaboration with Giving What We Can is opening a new program to launch 4-6 new Effective Giving Initiatives (EGIs) in 2024. We expect them to raise millions in counterfactual funding for highly impactful charities, even in their first few years.
[Applications are open now]
In recent years Doneer Effectief, Effektiv Spenden & Giving What We Can have moved huge sums of money ($1.4m, $35m and $330m, respectively) to the best charities globally. We aim to build on their experience and success by launching new EGIs in highly promising locations. These initiatives can be fully independent or run in collaboration with existing organizations, depending on what is most impactful. We’ll provide the training, the blueprints, and the all-important seed funding.
This 8-week full-time, fully cost-covered program will run online from April 15 to June 7, 2024, with 2 weeks in person in London. We encourage individuals from all countries [...]
Outline:
(01:31) Who is this program for?
(02:35) Why do we think this is promising?
(04:17) Our top recommended target countries
(05:25) Should you apply?
(06:43) Application process
First published:
December 5th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ME4ihqRojjuhprejm/effective-giving-incubation-apply-to-ce-and-gwwc-s-new
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
To EAs, "development economics" evokes the image of RCTs on psychotherapy or deworming. That is, after all, the closest interaction between EA and development economists. However, this characterization has prompted some pushback, in the form of the argument that all global health interventions pale in comparison to the Holy Grail: increasing economic growth in poor countries. After all, growth increases basically every measure of wellbeing on a far larger scale than any charity intervention, so it's obviously more important than any micro-intervention. Even a tiny chance of boosting growth in a large developing country will have massive expected value, more than all the GiveWell charities you can fund.
The argument is compelling[1] and well-received - so why haven't "growth interventions" gone anywhere? I think the EA understanding of growth is just too abstract to yield really useful interventions that EA organizations could lobby for or implement directly. We need specific [...]
Outline:
(02:31) Sectoral Transformation
(03:21) 1. Agricultural productivity growth can drive sectoral transformation... or hurt it.
(08:44) 2. Education leads people to move out of agriculture (but with some negative spillovers).
(10:39) 3. Barriers to reallocation are surprisingly small; people select into sectors based on their skills.
(12:36) 4. Most sectoral transformation today comes from people moving into services, not manufacturing.
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H7rjCEmhcWscZsEnE/what-do-we-really-know-about-growth-in-lmics-part-1-sectoral
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
tl;dr: It actually seems pretty rare for people to care about the general good as such (i.e., optimizing cause-agnostic impartial well-being), as we can see by prejudged dismissals of EA concern for non-standard beneficiaries and for doing good via indirect means.
Introduction.
Moral truisms may still be widely ignored. The moral truism underlying Effective Altruism is that we have strong reasons to do more good, and it's worth adopting the efficient promotion of the impartial good among one's life projects. (One can do this in a “non-totalizing” way, i.e. without it being one's only project.) Anyone who personally adopts that project (to any non-trivial extent) counts, in my book, as an effective altruist (whatever their opinion of the EA movement and its institutions).
Many people don’t adopt this explicit goal as a personal priority to any degree, but still do significant good via more particular commitments (to more specific communities, causes, or individuals). [...]
Outline:
(03:14) Let's be honest
(08:36) OK, but what about the actual movement/institutions?
(09:32) Serious Evaluation Goes Beyond Vibes
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 1st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YKidYukDhKLBtDqsh/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual
Linkpost URL:
https://rychappell.substack.com/p/doing-good-effectively-is-unusual
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
effektiv-spenden.org is an effective giving platform in Germany and Switzerland that was founded in 2019. To reflect on our past impact, we examine Effektiv Spenden's cost-effectiveness as a "giving multiplier" from 2019 to 2022 in terms of how much money is directed to highly effective charities due to our work. We have two primary reasons for this analysis:
- To provide past and future donors with transparent information about our cost-effectiveness;
- To hold ourselves accountable, particularly in a situation where we are investing in further growth of our platform.
We provide both a simple multiple (or “leverage ratio”) of donations raised for highly effective charities compared to our operating costs, as well as an analysis of the counterfactual (i.e. what would have happened had we never existed).
Our analysis complements our Annual Review 2022 (in German) and builds on previous updates and annual reviews, such as, amongst others, our reviews of 2021 and 2019. [...]
Outline:
(02:07) Key results
(03:56) How to interpret our results
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
December 1st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wtjFne8WdcLJTpyWm/effektiv-spenden-s-impact-evaluation-2019-2023-exec-summary
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism — Scott Alexanderhttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ML6hxqM6g6mXewJtZ/in-continued-defense-of-effective-altruism-scott-alexander
**Linkpost URL:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-effective
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.**
I took the GWWC Pledge in 2018, while I was an undergraduate student. I only have a hazy recollection of the journey that led to me taking the Pledge. I thought I’d write that down, reflect on how I feel now, and maybe share it.
In high-school, I was kind of cringe
I saw respected people wear suits, and I watched (and really liked) shows like Suits.
I unreflectively assumed I’d end up the same. The only time I would reflect on it was to motivate myself to study for my upcoming exams — I have memories of going to the bathroom as a 17-year old, looking at myself in the mirror, and imagining being successful. I imagined the BMW I might drive, the family I could provide for, and the nice house I could own. A lot of this was psychologically tied up in aspirations to be in great shape.
I was [...]
Outline:
(00:20) In high-school, I was kind of cringe
(02:09) In early university, I didn’t really know who I wanted to be
(04:20) Then, I started giving
(05:13) Then, I took the Pledge
(07:09) Does how we feel about giving matter?
First published:
November 29th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sdNYqwaTJ5j4hGZit/how-i-feel-about-my-gwwc-pledge
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The last year has been tough
The last year has been tough for EA.
FTX blew up in the most spectacular way and SBF has been found guilty of one of the biggest frauds in history. I was heartbroken to learn that someone I trusted hurt so many people, was heartbroken for the people who lost their money, and was heartbroken about the projects I thought would happen that no longer will. The media piled on, and on, and on.
The community has processed the shock in all sorts of ways — some more productive than others. Many have published thoughtful reflections. Many have tried to come up with ways to ensure that nothing like this will ever happen again. Some people rallied, some people looked for who to blame, we all felt betrayed.
I personally spent November–February working more than full-time on a secondment to Effective Ventures. Meanwhile, there were several [...]
Outline:
(00:03) The last year has been tough
(02:55) The EA community is good
(05:43) EA ideas are good
First published:
November 28th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dgXg6ddauC3sBwe67/ea-is-good-actually
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Rob Mather, CEO, AMF, 25 November 2023
2023 has been a very busy year for AMF, more on 2024 later.
Impact
AMF's team of 13 is in the middle of a nine-month period during which we are distributing, with partners, 90 million nets to protect 160 million people in six countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.
The impact of these nets is expected to be, ± 20%, 40,000 deaths prevented, 20 million cases of malaria averted and a US$2.2 billion improvement in local economy (12x the funds applied). When people are ill they cannot farm, drive, teach – function, so the improvement in health leads to economic as well as humanitarian benefits.
This is a terrific contribution from the tens of thousands of donors who have contributed US$180 million over the last two years, and the many partners with whom we work that make possible the distribution [...]
First published:
November 24th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fkft56o8Md2HmjSP7/amf-reflecting-on-2023-and-looking-ahead-to-2024
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
With immense sadness, we want to let the community know about the passing of Sebastian Lodemann, who lost his life on November 9th, 2023, in a completely unexpected and sudden accident. Those who have met him know how humble and kind he was, in addition to being a brilliant and energetic person full of light. Sebastian was deeply altruistic, curious, and took seriously both the challenges facing our world, and its potential. He loved connecting with humans from across the globe and supporting as many people as he could, so there will be a wide international community of people who will keenly feel his absence.
Sebastian has been involved with EA since 2016, working on a wide range of projects in AI governance and strategy, pandemic prevention, civilisational resilience and career advising, and taking the Giving What We Can pledge.
We extend our deepest sympathies to Sebastian's wife, his children, his [...]
First published:
November 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dqDhXc9qirhPHjfXH/the-passing-of-sebastian-lodemann
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Despite the complicated and imperfect origins of American Thanksgiving, what's worth preserving is the moment it offers for society to step back and count our blessings. And in this moment, I want to express my gratitude to the EA community.
It's been a hard year for EA, and many of us have felt increasing levels of disillusionment. Still, a huge thank you to each of you for being part of this messy, but beautiful family.
What I love about EA is that at our core, we are people who look around and see a world is world is messed up and kind of shitty. But also, when we see this mess, we deeply feel a moral responsibility to do something about it. And rather than falling into despair, we are optimistic enough to think we can actually do something about it.
This more than anything else is what I think makes this [...]
First published:
November 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YRGSmjYDaMvScCXh2/a-thanksgiving-gratitude-post-to-ea
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The Giving What We Can research team is excited to share the results of our first round of evaluations of charity evaluators and grantmakers! After announcing our plans for a new research direction last year, we have now completed five[1] evaluations that will inform our donation recommendations for this giving season. There are substantial limitations to these evaluations, but we nevertheless think that this is a significant improvement on the status quo, in which there were no independent evaluations of evaluators’ work. We plan to continue to evaluate evaluators, extending the list beyond the five we’ve covered so far, improving our methodology, and regularly renewing our existing evaluations.
In this post, we share the key takeaways from each of these evaluations, and link to the full reports. Our website will be updated to reflect the new fund and charity recommendations that came out of these evaluations (alongside many other updates) on [...]
Outline:
(02:23) Global health and wellbeing
(02:26) GiveWell (GW)
(03:43) Happier Lives Institute (HLI)
(04:00) Animal welfare
(04:04) EA Funds’ Animal Welfare Fund (AWF)
(05:07) Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)
(08:13) Reducing global catastrophic risks
(08:17) EA Funds’ Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF)
(09:57) Longview's Longermism Fund (LLF)
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 22nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/PTHskHoNpcRDZtJoh/gwwc-s-evaluations-of-evaluators
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In honor of “Marginal Funding Week” for 2023 Giving Season on the EA Forum, I’d like to tell you what Rethink Priorities (RP) would do with funding beyond what we currently expect to raise from our major funders, and to emphasize that RP currently has a significant funding gap even after taking these major funders into account.
A personal appeal
Hi. I know it's traditional in EA to stick to the facts and avoid emotional content, but I can’t help but interject and say that this fundraising appeal is a bit different. It is personal to me. It's not just a list of things that we could take or leave, it's a fight for RP to survive the way I want it to as an organization that is intellectually independent and serves the EA community.
To be blunt, our funding situation is not where we want it to be. 2023 has been a [...]
Outline:
(07:00) General
(07:03) $1K - $10K per research work to allow us to publish our backlog of research
(11:29) Worldview Investigations
(11:33) $200K to do cause prioritization research and build on the cross-cause model
(14:27) $500K to do more worldview cause exploration
(14:58) Surveys and Data Analysis
(15:02) $60K to run the next EA Survey
(16:01) $40K-100K to more rigorously understand branding for EA and existential risk
(17:56) $25K-$100K to more rigorously understand EA's growth trajectory
(18:53) $40K to more rigorously understand branding for AI risk outreach
(19:35) $50K to more rigorously understand why people drop out of EA
(20:03) Animal welfare
(21:17) $250K to create a review of interventions to reduce the consumption of animal products
(22:10) $38K to create a Farmed Animals Impact Tracker
(23:09) $60K to understand interventions that would address crustacean welfare
(23:39) $50K for development and implementation of an insect farming welfare ask
(24:32) $100K to develop a database of possible near-term interventions for wild animals
(25:15) $75K to do a theory of change status report for the animal advocacy movement
(26:13) $300K to develop a better system similar to QALYs/DALYs but for animals
(27:18) Global Health and Development
(27:22) $405K to pilot our Value of Research model
(29:21) AI Governance
(29:25) $15K to write up learnings from spending a year attempting longtermist incubation
(30:07) $114K to train an additional AI policy researcher
(31:05) Included with your donation: talent pipelines and field building
(33:45) Conclusion
(36:19) Acknowledgements
First published:
November 21st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cMcEBSNiy4meDrmuE/rethink-priorities-needs-your-support-here-s-what-we-d-do
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Just as~2 years ago, the EA Animal Welfare Fund has significant room for more funding. This could be a pretty important point that informs end of year giving for a number of donors who are looking to make donations within the animal sector.
Briefly, here's why the Animal Welfare Fund has some pretty significant room for more funding at this point:
- Right now, there's currently ~$1M in the Animal Welfare Fund.
- We also now have 50 grants, summing to ~$4.5M in grants under evaluation.
- Between mid-last year and mid-this year, the EA AWF received ~350 applications over the past year of which ~150 were desk rejects and ~200 were graded by fund managers. Of these ~200, ~60 received funding, and ~30 received the grant amount they applied for or more.
- Assuming that the general shape of the pipeline remains similar, that could imply we may now have more grants than we can fund. Potentially [...]
First published:
November 20th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpqab3LwmA6yBFJCk/the-ea-animal-welfare-fund-once-again-has-significant-room
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Thanks to Michael St. Jules for his comments.
Key Takeaways
- The evidence that animal welfare dominates in neartermism is strong.
- Open Philanthropy (OP) should scale up its animal welfare allocation over several years to approach a majority of OP's neartermist grantmaking.
- If OP disagrees, they should practice reasoning transparency by clarifying their views:
- How much weight does OP's theory of welfare place on pleasure and pain, as opposed to nonhedonic goods?
- Precisely how much more does OP value one unit of a human's welfare than one unit of another animal's welfare, just because the former is a human? How does OP derive this tradeoff?
- How would OP's views have to change for OP to prioritize animal welfare in neartermism?
Summary.
- Rethink Priorities (RP)'s moral weight research endorses the claim that the best animal welfare interventions are orders of magnitude (1000x) more cost-effective than the best neartermist alternatives.
- Avoiding this conclusion seems very difficult:
- Rejecting hedonism (the view that only pleasure and pain have moral [...]
Outline:
(00:09) Key Takeaways
(02:46) The Evidence Endorses Prioritizing Animal Welfare in Neartermism
(06:32) Objections
(06:35) Animal Welfare Does Not Dominate in Neartermism
(07:07) RPs Project Assumptions are Incorrect
(09:21) Endorsing Overwhelming Non-Hedonism
(14:13) Endorsing Overwhelming Hierarchicalism
(16:09) Its Strongly Intuitive that Helping Humans Helping Chickens
(16:46) Skepticism of Formal Philosophy
(17:58) Even if Animal Welfare Dominates, it Still Shouldnt Receive a Majority of Neartermist Funding
(18:12) Worldview Diversification Opposes Majority Allocations to Controversial Cause Areas
(19:43) OP is Already a Massive Animal Welfare Funder
(20:16) Animal Welfare has Faster Diminishing Marginal Returns than Global Health
(21:36) Increasing Animal Welfare Funding would Reduce OP's Influence on Philanthropists
(23:42) Request for Reasoning Transparency from OP
(26:13) Conclusion
First published:
November 19th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/btTeBHKGkmRyD5sFK/open-phil-should-allocate-most-neartermist-funding-to-animal
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc, the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.
A member of OpenAI's leadership team for five years, Mira has played a critical role in OpenAI's evolution into a global AI leader. She brings a unique skill set, understanding of the company's values, operations, and business, and already leads the company's research, product, and safety functions. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO.
Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the [...]
First published:
November 17th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjgD3Q5uWD2iJZpEN/sam-altman-fired-from-openai
Linkpost URL:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary
We (Habiba Banu and Roxanne Heston) have launched Spiro, a new TB screening and prevention charity focused on children. Our website is here.
We are fundraising $198,000 for our first year. We’re currently reaching out to people in the EA network. So far we have between 20%-50% of our budget promised and fundraising is currently one of the main things we’re focusing on.
The major components of our first year budget are co-founder time, country visits, and delivery of a pilot program, which aims to do household-level TB screening and provision of preventative medication.
We think that this project has a lot of promise:
- Tuberculosis has a huge global burden, killing 1.3 million people every year, and is disproportionately neglected and fatal in young children.
- The evidence for preventative treatment is robust and household programs are promising, yet few high-burden countries have scaled up this intervention.
- Modeling by Charity Entrepreneurship and by academics indicate that this [...]
Outline:
(02:10) Who are we?
(03:26) What are we going to do?
(04:12) Why TB?
(04:40) Why this intervention?
(06:36) Why Spiro?
(07:28) Budget
(09:21) Learn more
(09:36) Donations
First published:
November 17th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/C8ZzjFc7aKT7ihmeK/spiro-new-tb-charity-raising-seed-funds
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
(Cross-posted from my website)
I’ve written a report about whether advanced AIs will fake alignment during training in order to get power later – a behavior I call “scheming” (also sometimes called “deceptive alignment”). The report is available on arXiv here. There's also an audio version here, and I’ve included the introductory section below. This section includes a full summary of the report, which covers most of the main points and technical terminology. I’m hoping that the summary will provide much of the context necessary to understand individual sections of the report on their own.
Abstract
This report examines whether advanced AIs that perform well in training will be doing so in order to gain power later – a behavior I call “scheming” (also sometimes called “deceptive alignment”). I conclude that scheming is a disturbingly plausible outcome of using baseline machine learning methods to train goal-directed AIs sophisticated enough to [...]
Outline:
(02:20) 0. Introduction
(11:44) 0.1 Preliminaries
(15:20) 0.2 Summary of the report
(15:49) 0.2.1 Summary of section 1
(17:55) 0.2.2 Summary of section 2
(34:10) 0.2.3 Summary of section 3
(38:10) 0.2.4 Summary of section 4
(50:17) 0.2.5 Summary of section 5
(53:50) 0.2.6 Summary of section 6
The original text contained 66 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 15th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jd7QinmkdzegerRCm/new-report-scheming-ais-will-ais-fake-alignment-during
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post summarizes how my partner and I decided whether to have children or not. We spent hundreds of hours on this decision and hope to save others part of that time. We found it very useful to read the thoughts of people who share significant parts of our values on the topic and thus want to "pay it forward" by writing this up. In the end, we decided to have children; our son is four months old now and we’re very happy with how we made the decision and with how our lives are now (through a combination of sheer luck and good planning). It was a very narrow and very tough decision though.
Both of us care a lot about having a positive impact on the world and our jobs are the main way we expect to have an impact (through direct work and/or earning to give). As a [...]
Outline:
(01:35) Process - how we decided
(04:25) Content - considerations we used
(04:29) Impact considerations
(04:33) Time
(07:29) Sleep
(10:45) Money
(11:33) Flexibility
(12:07) Effects on one's community
(13:07) Falling out of the heavy tail
(13:38) The childrens impact
(14:17) Value drift
(14:44) Personal life worthiness or happiness considerations
(14:49) Health
(18:06) Social/soft factors
(20:49) Overarching considerations
First published:
November 12th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YYnjHt5YzuHSH7oRR/kids-or-no-kids
Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3MzDMBk4DZrbYePJS/kids-or-no-kids
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
(Written in a personal capacity, and not representing either my current employer or former one)
In 2016, I founded Utility Farm, and later merged it with Wild-Animal Suffering Research (founded by Persis Eskander) to form Wild Animal Initiative. Wild Animal Initiative is, by my estimation, a highly successful research organization. The current Wild Animal Initiative staff deserve all the credit for where they have taken the organization, but I’m incredibly proud that I got to be involved early in the establishment of a new field of study, wild animal welfare science, and to see the tiny organization I started in an apartment with a few hundred dollars go on to be recommended by ACE as a Top Charity for 4 years in a row. In my opinion, Wild Animal Initiative has become, under the stewardship of more capable people than I, the single best bet for unlocking interventions that could tackle [...]
Outline:
(08:21) A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for charities
(11:22) A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for the EA community
(13:59) The success of EA shouldn’t only be measured by how much money is moved by the community
First published:
November 11th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AyLF2KQ8AqQuiuDLz/a-robust-earning-to-give-ecosystem-is-better-for-ea
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I spoke with some people who worked or served on the board at organizations that had a leadership transition after things went seriously wrong. In some cases the organizations were EA-affiliated, in other cases only tangentially related to the EA space.
This is an informal collection of advice the ~eight people I spoke with have for staff or board members who might find themselves in a similar position. I bucketed this advice into a few categories below. Some are direct quotes and others are paraphrases of what they said. All spelling is Americanized for anonymity.
I’m sharing it here not because I think it's an exhaustive accounting of all types of potential leadership issues (it's not) or because I think any of this is unique to or particularly prevalent in or around EA (I don’t). But I hope that it's helpful to any readers who may someday be in a position like [...]
Outline:
(01:06) Written policies
(02:39) Role of board / advice for board
(06:12) Advice for staff
(10:39) More notes
First published:
November 9th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jLaDP2aWxdDCzwBYy/takes-from-staff-at-orgs-with-leadership-that-went-off-the
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Athena is a new research mentorship program fostering diversity of ideas in AI safety research. We aim to get more women and marginalized genders into technical research and offer the support needed to thrive in this space.
Applications for scholars are open until December 3rd, 2023
Apply as a scholar: here
Apply as a mentor or speaker: here
Financial aid is available for travel expenses for the in-person retreat to those otherwise unable to attend without it
Program Structure
A 2-month hybrid mentorship program for women looking to strengthen their research skills and network in technical AI safety research beginning in January 2024.
This includes 1-week in-person retreat in Oxford, UK followed by a 2-month remote mentorship by established researchers in the field, with networking and weekly research talks.
Athena aims to equip women with the knowledge, skills, and network they need to thrive in AI safety research. We believe that diversity is a strength [...]
Outline:
(01:32) Who should apply?
(01:53) Application process
(02:08) Questions?
(02:15) Why are we doing this
First published:
November 7th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B2t559dP65ffKZsDa/announcing-athena-women-in-ai-alignment-research
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
General note: The bulk of this post was written a couple of months ago, but I am releasing it now to coincide with the Effective Giving Spotlight week. I shortly expect to release a second post documenting some observations on the community building funding landscape.
Introduction
Way back in 2010, I was sitting in my parents' house, watching one of my favourite TV shows, the UK's Daily Politics. That day's guest was an Oxford academic by the name of Toby Ord. He was donating everything above £18000 (£26300 in today's money) to charity, and gently pushing others to give 10%.
"Nice guy," I thought. "Pity it'll never catch on."
Two years later, a couple of peers interned at Giving What We Can. At the same time, I did my own internship in finance, and my estimate of my earning potential quadrupled[1]. One year after that, I graduated and took the Giving What We [...]
Outline:
(01:13) Post goals
(02:28) My path
(03:07) Work
(05:36) Lifestyle Inflation
(07:48) Savings
(09:27) Donations
(10:11) Community
(10:14) Why engage?
(11:58) Why stop?
(13:48) Closing Thoughts
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 7th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gxppfWhx7ta2fkF3R/10-years-of-earning-to-give
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This write-up is a compilation of organisations and projects aligned / adjacent to the effective altruism movement in East Asia and Southeast Asia and was written around the EAGxPhilippines conference. Some organisations, projects, and contributors also prefer to not be public and hence removed from this write-up. While this is not an exhaustive list of projects and organisations per country in the region, it is a good baseline of the progress of the effective altruism movement for this side of the globe.
Feel free to click the links to the organisations/projects themselves to dive deeper into their works.
Contributors: Saad Siddiqui; Anthony Lau; Anthony Obeyesekere; Masayuki "Moon" Nagai; Yi-Yang Chua; Elmerei Cuevas, Alethea Faye Cedaña, Jaynell Ehren Chang, Brian Tan, Nastassja "Tanya" Quijano; Dion Tan, Jia Yang Li; Saeyoung Kim; Nguyen Tran; Alvin Lau
Forum Post Graphic credits to Jaynell Ehren Chang
EAGxPhotos credits to CS Creatives
Mainland China 🇨🇳
China Global Priorities Group
- Aims [...]
Outline:
(01:15) Mainland China 🇨🇳
(01:18) China Global Priorities Group
(01:51) City Group: EAHK
(03:13) University Group: EAHKU
(03:39) Academia (AI):
(04:51) Academia (Psychology):
(05:04) Cause specific organisations/ projects
(05:27) EA Indonesia
(08:17) EA Japan
(09:36) Malaysia 🇲🇾
(09:42) EA Malaysia
(10:15) Philippines 🇵🇭
(10:22) A. Meta Organizations/ Projects:
(11:18) B. Some Cause Specific Organisations
(12:57) Singapore 🇸🇬
(13:03) EA Singapore
(13:19) EA NUS
(13:27) Welfare Matters
(13:35) CEARCH
(13:45) GFI APAC
(13:53) Global Food Partners
(13:59) Effective Giving SG
(14:08) AI Safety
(14:14) South Korea 🇰🇷
(14:17) EA South Korea
(14:40) Viet Nam 🇻🇳
(14:46) EA Viet Nam
(14:55) EA Fullbright (Fulbright University Vietnam)
(15:02) LessWrong Vietnam
(15:11) Shrimp Welfare Project
(15:15) Taiwan 🇹🇼
(15:21) EA Taiwan
First published:
November 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NrqGyXzvwB2Gqu6XW/state-of-the-east-and-southeast-asian-eacosystem
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
TLDR: The best research we have shows that clean water may provide a 30% mortality reduction to children under 5. This might be the biggest mortality reduction of any single global health intervention, yet we don’t understand why it works.
Here, I share my journey exploring a life-saving intervention that we don’t fully understand, but really should. I may err a little on the side of artistic license - so if you find inaccuracies please forgive me, correct me or even feel free to just tear me to shreds in the comments ;).
Part 1: Givewell's Seemingly absurd numbers
I first became curious after a glance at what seemed like a dubious GiveWell funded project. A $450,000 dollar scoping grant for water chlorination in Rwanda? This didn’t make intuitive sense to me.
In Sub-saharan Africa diarrhoea causes 5-10% of child mortality. While significant, the diarrhea problem continues to improve with better access to [...]
Outline:
(02:26) Part 2: A Nobel Prize winner's innovative math
(04:27) Part 3. We already knew about this anomaly – 100 years ago
(08:10) Part 5: What next for clean water?
The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 4th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hFPbe2ZwmB9athsXT/clean-water-the-incredible-30-mortality-reducer-we-can-t
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post is a part of Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: “Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation.” The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximization for cause prioritization; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximization robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritize existential risk mitigation over all else. This post presents a software tool we're developing to better understand risk and effectiveness.
Executive Summary
The cross-cause cost-effectiveness model (CCM) is a software tool under development by Rethink Priorities to produce cost-effectiveness evaluations in different cause areas.
- The CCM enables evaluations of interventions in global health and development, animal welfare, and existential risk mitigation.
- The CCM also includes functionality for evaluating research projects aimed at improving existing interventions or discovering more effective alternatives.
The CCM follows a Monte Carlo approach to assessing probabilities.
- The CCM accepts user-supplied distributions as parameter [...]
Outline:
(00:43) Executive Summary
(04:24) Purpose
(05:36) Key Features
(05:52) We model uncertainty with simulations
(06:38) We incorporate user-specified parameter distributions
(07:17) Our results capture outcome ineffectiveness
(08:42) We enable users to specify the probability of extinction for different future eras
(09:28) Structure
(10:08) Intervention module
(10:40) Global Health and Development
(11:14) Animal Welfare
(12:00) Existential Risk Mitigation
(13:59) Research projects module
(14:56) Limitations
(15:12) It is geared towards specific kinds of interventions
(16:24) Distributions are a questionable way of handling deep uncertainty
(17:13) The model doesn’t handle model uncertainty
(18:01) The model assumes parameter independence
(18:59) Lessons
(19:06) The expected value of existential risk mitigation interventions depends on future population dynamics
(20:15) The value of existential risk mitigation is extremely variable
(21:38) Tail-end results can capture a huge amount of expected value
(22:22) Unrepresented correlations may be decisive
(23:43) Future Plans
(24:49) Acknowledgements
First published:
November 3rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pniDWyjc9vY5sjGre/rethink-priorities-cross-cause-cost-effectiveness-model
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
A key question for many interventions' impact is how long the intervention changes some output counterfactually, or how long the intervention washes out. This is often the case for work to change policy: the cost-effectiveness of efforts to pass animal welfare ballot initiatives, nuclear non-proliferation policy, climate policy, and voting reform, for example, will depend on (a) whether those policies get repealed and (b) whether they would pass anyway. Often there is an explicit assumption, e.g., that passing a policy is equivalent to speeding up when it would have gone into place anyway by X years.[1] [2] As people routinely note when making these assumptions, it is very unclear what assumption would be appropriate.
In a new paper (my economics "job market paper"), I address this question, focusing on U.S. referendums but with some data on other policymaking processes:
Policy choices sometimes appear stubbornly persistent, even when they become politically unpopular or [...]
Outline:
(02:20) Overview of Results and Methods
(06:23) Notes Particular to the EA Community
(06:27) Policy Changes Seem to Matter (Much) Longer than EAs Have Assumed
(07:34) Neglectedness Matters
(08:02) Comparing Persistence: Can We Compare Policy to Other Social Changes?
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jCwuozHHjeoLPLemB/how-long-do-policy-changes-matter-new-paper
Linkpost URL:
https://zachfreitasgroff.com/FreitasGroff_Policy_Persistence.pdf
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
YouGov recently reported the results of a survey (n=1000) suggesting that about “one in five (22%) Americans are familiar with effective altruism.”[1]
We think these results are exceptionally unlikely to be true. Their 22% figure is very similar to the proportion of Americans we previously found claim to have heard of effective altruism (19%) in our earlier survey (n=6130). But, after conducting appropriate checks, we estimated that much lower percentages are likely to have genuinely heard of EA[2] (2.6% after the most stringent checks, which we speculate is still likely to be somewhat inflated[3]).
Is it possible that these numbers have simply dramatically increased following the FTX scandal?
Fortunately, we have tested this with multiple followup surveys explicitly designed with this possibility in mind.[4]
In our most recent survey (conducted October 6th[5]), we estimated that approximately 16% (13.0%-20.4%) of US adults would claim to have heard of EA. Yet, when we add in [...]
Outline:
(02:00) Attitudes towards EA
(02:35) Conclusions
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
November 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CwKiAt54aJjcqoQDh/are-1-in-5-americans-familiar-with-ea
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Intro
A few months ago, the other (former) Alvea executives and I made the difficult decision to wind Alvea down and return our remaining funding to investors. In this post, I’ll share an overview of Alvea's story and highlight a few of our wins and challenges from my perspective as an Alvea Co-Founder and former CTO, in hopes that our experiences might be useful to others who are working on (or considering) ambitious projects to solve the biggest problems in the world. I’m sharing everything below in a personal capacity and as a window into my current thinking—this is not the definitive or official word on Alvea and it doesn’t necessarily represent the views of any other Alvea team members. I expect my reflections to continue evolving as I further process the journey and outcomes of this project, and hope to share more along the way.
Alvea's Story
First vaccine sprint and [...]
Outline:
(00:05) Intro
(00:55) Alvea's Story
(00:59) First vaccine sprint and decision to continue Alvea (December 2021 through April 2022)
(02:48) Product pursuits (May 2022 through July 2022)
(04:04) Second vaccine sprint (August 2022-December 2023)
(05:22) Funding environment change and pivot (Dec 2022 - May 2023)
(07:33) Wind down and PanLabs spin out (June-Present)
(09:08) Wins
(09:11) Record time to safe clinical development
(10:12) General-purpose rapid drug development capacity
(11:12) Team Development
(12:09) Medical countermeasure knowledge
(13:02) Challenges
(13:22) Challenges of rapid growth
(14:21) Costs of complex non-standard corporate set up
(15:00) Navigating the transition from short- to long-term goals
(16:12) Conclusion
First published:
November 1st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/d9bamQHBAwAjuKtNA/alvea-s-story-wins-and-challenges-unofficial
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
After careful consideration, we made the difficult decision to wind Alvea down and return our remaining funds to investors. This decision was the result of many months of experimentation and analysis regarding Alvea's strategy, path to impact, and commercial potential, which ultimately led us to the conclusion that Alvea's overall prospects were not sufficiently compelling to justify the requisite investment of money, time, and energy over the coming years.
Alvea started in late 2021 as a moonshot to rapidly develop and deploy a room temperature-stable DNA vaccine candidate against the Omicron wave of COVID-19, and we soon became the fastest startup to take a new drug from founding to a Phase 1 clinical trial. However, we decided to discontinue our lead candidate during the follow-up period of the trial as the case for large-scale impact weakened amidst the evolving pandemic landscape. Over the following year, we explored different applications of our [...]
First published:
November 1st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3EjExF8HeJbmk4Bp4/alvea-wind-down-announcement-official
Linkpost URL:
https://www.alvea.bio/winddown/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Released today (10/30/23) this is crazy, perhaps the most sweeping action taken by government on AI yet.
Below, I've segmented by x-risk and near term risk related proposals. It's worth noting that some of these are very specific and direct an action to be taken by one of the executive branch organizations (i.e. sharing of saftey test results) but others are guidances, which involve "calls on Congress" to pass legislation that codifies the desired action.
Existential Risk Related Actions:
- Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government. In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all [...]
Outline:
(00:37) Existential Risk Related Actions:
(03:10) Near Term Risk Actions:
(03:14) General
(03:46) Privacy
(04:33) Discrimination
(05:11) Jobs
First published:
October 30th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pcbsM45vLmHcFpNnr/president-biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and
Linkpost URL:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/30/fact-sheet-president-biden-issues-executive-order-on-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Views are my own, not Open Philanthropy's. I am married to the President of Anthropic and have a financial interest in both Anthropic and OpenAI via my spouse.
Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to help out with efforts to get responsible scaling policies adopted. In that context, a number of people have said it would be helpful for me to be publicly explicit about whether I’m in favor of an AI pause. This post will give some thoughts on these topics.
I think transformative AI could be soon, and we’re not ready
I have a strong default to thinking that scientific and technological progress is good and that worries will tend to be overblown. However, I think AI is a big exception here because of its potential for unprecedentedly rapid and radical transformation.1
I think [...]
Outline:
(00:36) I think transformative AI could be soon, and we’re not ready
(02:11) If it were all up to me, the world would pause now - but it isn’t, and I’m more uncertain about whether a “partial pause” is good
(07:46) Responsible scaling policies (RSPs) seem like a robustly good compromise with people who have different views from mine (with some risks that I think can be managed)
The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 27th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ntWikwczfSi8AJMg3/we-re-not-ready-thoughts-on-pausing-and-responsible-scaling
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary
- Given EA's history and values, I’d have expected for impact evaluation to be a distinguishing feature of the movement. In fact, impact evaluation seems fairly rare in the EA space.
- There are some things specific actors could do for EA to get more of the benefits of impact evaluation. For example, organisations that don’t already could carry out evaluations of their impact, and a well-suited individual could start an organisation to carry out impact evaluations and analysis of the EA movement.
- Overall I’m unsure to what extent more focus on impact evaluation would be an improvement. On the one hand, establishing impact is challenging for many EA activities and impact evaluation can be burdensome. On the other hand, an organisation's historic impact seems very action-relevant to its future activities and current levels of impact evaluation seem low.
What Is Impact Evaluation?
Over the last year I’ve been speaking to EA orgs about their impact [...]
Outline:
(00:59) What Is Impact Evaluation?
(01:22) Why is Impact Evaluation Important?
(02:17) I’d expect Impact Evaluation to be quite common in EA
(03:00) Impact evaluation is fairly rare in EA
(04:42) Potentially justified reasons for this
(05:58) Some low- to medium-cost opportunities
(08:11) Conclusion
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hDNpHEA2Kn4xBoS8r/impact-evaluation-in-ea
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Figure 1 (see full caption below)This post is a part of Rethink Priorities' Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: "Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation." The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximisation for cause prioritisation; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximisation robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritise existential risk mitigation over all else.
Executive Summary
Background
- This report builds on the model originally introduced by Toby Ord on how to estimate the value of existential risk mitigation.
- The previous framework has several limitations, including:
- The inability to model anything requiring shorter time units than centuries, like AI timelines.
- A very limited range of scenarios considered. In the previous model, risk and value growth can take different forms, and each combination represents one scenario
- No explicit treatment of persistence –– how long the mitigation efforts’ effects last for ––as a variable of interest.
- No easy way [...]
Outline:
(00:38) Executive Summary
(05:26) Abridged Report
(11:20) Generalised Model: Arbitrary Risk Profile
(13:37) Value
(19:00) Great Filters and the Time of Perils Hypothesis
(21:06) Decaying Risk
(21:55) Results
(21:58) Convergence
(25:35) The Expected Value of Mitigating Risk Visualised
(31:59) Concluding Remarks
(35:00) Acknowledgements
The original text contained 24 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/S9H86osFKhfFBCday/how-bad-would-human-extinction-be
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I am excited about AI developers implementing responsible scaling policies; I’ve recently been spending time refining this idea and advocating for it. Most people I talk to are excited about RSPs, but there is also some uncertainty and pushback about how they relate to regulation. In this post I’ll explain my views on that:
- I think that sufficiently good responsible scaling policies could dramatically reduce risk, and that preliminary policies like Anthropic's RSP meaningfully reduce risk by creating urgency around key protective measures and increasing the probability of a pause if those measures can’t be implemented quickly enough.
- I think that developers implementing responsible scaling policies now increases the probability of effective regulation. If I instead thought it would make regulation harder, I would have significant reservations.
- Transparency about RSPs makes it easier for outside stakeholders to understand whether an AI developer's policies are adequate to manage risk, and creates a focal point for [...]
Outline:
(02:03) Why I’m excited about RSPs
(03:26) Thoughts on an AI pause
(04:56) I expect RSPs to help facilitate effective regulation
(06:24) Anthropic's RSP
(09:16) On the name “responsible scaling”
First published:
October 24th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cKW4db8u2uFEAHewg/thoughts-on-responsible-scaling-policies-and-regulation
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
NIMBYs don’t call themselves NIMBYs. They call themselves affordable housing advocates or community representatives or environmental campaigners. They’re usually not against building houses. They just want to make sure that those houses are affordable, attractive to existing residents, and don’t destroy habitat for birds and stuff.
Who can argue with that? If, ultimately, those demands stop houses from being built entirely, well, that's because developers couldn’t find a way to build them without hurting poor people, local communities, or birds and stuff.
This is called politics and it's powerful. The most effective anti-housebuilding organisation in the UK doesn’t call itself Pause Housebuilding. It calls itself the Campaign to Protect Rural England, because English people love rural England. CPRE campaigns in the 1940s helped shape England's planning system. As a result, permission to build houses is only granted when it's in the “public interest”; in practice it is given infrequently and often with [...]
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/avrFeH6LpqJrjmGmc/pausing-ai-might-be-good-policy-but-it-s-bad-politics
Linkpost URL:
https://unfoldingatlas.substack.com/p/pause-ai-is-bad-politics
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
After launching our first batch of 2023 charities in April, we are now thrilled to announce the launch of four new nonprofit organizations through our July/August 2023 Incubation Program.
The 2023 Round 2 incubated charities are:
- Clear Solutions - Providing treatment for young children to prevent deaths from diarrhoeal diseases.
- Lafiya Nigeria - Reducing maternal mortality by providing safe family planning options in rural northern Nigeria.
- Alliance for Reducing Microbial Resistance - Supporting sustainable access to and the development of antimicrobials to combat antimicrobial resistance.
- Concentric Policies - Preventing and controlling noncommunicable diseases through data-driven policymaking.
Detailed introductions to the new projects will follow below.
Context: The Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program July-August 2023
The July-August 2023 program focused on global health, including health security and policy-focused interventions. Our generous donors from the CE Seed Network have provided the new initiatives with $583,000 seed funding to kickstart their interventions.
In addition to the seed grants, as usual, we will [...]
Outline:
(02:13) Our new charities introduce themselves:
(02:17) CLEAR SOLUTIONS
(09:01) CONCENTRIC POLICIES
First published:
October 19th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pKDob5yXh2djqdgcP/presenting-2023-incubated-charities-round-2-charity
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary of Findings
It has been almost a year since FTX went bankrupt on November 11, 2022. Some of the ways that has impacted EA have been obvious, like the shuttering of the FTX Foundation, expected to be one of the biggest EA funders. But recent discussions show that the broader impact of the FTX scandal on EA isn’t well understood, and that there is a desire for more empirical evidence on this topic. To that end, I have aggregated a variety of publicly available EA metrics to improve the evidence base. Unfortunately, these wide-ranging perspectives clearly show a broad-based and worrisome deterioration of EA activity in the aftermath of FTX.
Previous attempts to quantify how FTX impacted EA have focused on surveys of members of the EA community, university students, the general public, and university group organizers. These surveys were conducted in the months following FTX's collapse. Their results have been [...]
Outline:
(00:04) Summary of Findings
(04:22) Detailed Findings
(04:25) Notes on Data Sources and Presentation
(05:21) Donation Data
(05:24) EA Funds: Donation and Donor Data
(08:10) GWWC Pledges
(08:43) EA Newsletter Subscriptions
(09:41) Attitude Data
(09:44) Survey of EA Community
(12:20) Surveys of University Populations and General Public
(13:47) Engagement Metrics
(13:51) EffectiveAltruism.org Web Traffic
(16:52) EA Forum
(19:09) Google Search Interest
(20:39) EA Global and EA Global X
(22:51) Virtual Programs
(23:47) 80k Metrics
(24:22) University Group Accelerator Program
(24:43) Additional data that would shed more light on FTX's impact and its causes
(27:42) Conclusions
(29:24) Appendix: Meta commentary about data collection and distribution
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 17th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vXzEnBcG7BipkRSrF/how-has-ftx-s-collapse-impacted-ea
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This post is a part of Rethink Priorities’ Worldview Investigations Team's CURVE Sequence: “Causes and Uncertainty: Rethinking Value in Expectation.” The aim of this sequence is twofold: first, to consider alternatives to expected value maximization for cause prioritization; second, to evaluate the claim that a commitment to expected value maximization robustly supports the conclusion that we ought to prioritize existential risk mitigation over all else.
Summary
- Expected value (EV) maximization is a common method for making decisions across different cause areas. The EV of an action is an average of the possible outcomes of that action, weighted by the probability of those outcomes occurring if the action is performed.
- When comparing actions that would benefit different species (e.g., malaria prevention for humans, cage-free campaigns for chickens, stunning operations in shrimp farms), calculating EV includes assessing the probability that the individuals it affects are sentient.
- Small invertebrates, like shrimp and insects, have relatively low probabilities [...]
Outline:
(04:12) 1. Introduction
(07:13) 2. Results of EV maximization
(10:33) 3. Dissatisfaction with results of EV maximization
(14:57) 4. Risk
(16:25) 5. Risk aversion as avoiding worst case outcomes
(16:30) 5.1. Risk aversion about outcomes
(18:22) 5.2. A formal model of risk aversion about outcomes
(21:45) 6. Risk aversion as avoiding inefficacy
(22:12) 6.1. Difference-making risk aversion
(23:45) 6.2. The risk of wasting money on non-sentient creatures
(27:10) 6.3. Is difference-making risk aversion rational?
(29:10) 6.4. A formal model of difference-making risk aversion
(32:51) 7. Risk as avoiding ambiguity
(40:19) 8. What about chickens?
(45:01) 9. Conclusions
(47:19) Acknowledgments
The original text contained 34 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 16th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HMakzketADQq4bkvD/the-risks-and-rewards-of-prioritizing-animals-of-uncertain
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I’m a grantmaker who previously spent a decade as a professional investor. I’ve recently helped some Open Phil, GiveWell, and Survival and Flourishing Fund grantees with their cash and foreign exchange (FX) management. In the EA community, we seem collectively quite bad at this. My aim with this post is to help others 80/20 their cash and FX management: for 20% of the effort (these 4 items below), we can capture 80% of the benefit of corporate best practices. This will often be a highly impactful use of your time: I think that for the median organization, implementing these suggestions will take 15 to 30 hours of staff time, but will be about as valuable as raising 5% more money.
My suggestions are:
- have more than one bank
- invest your cash in a government-guaranteed money market account, earning ~5%
- hold international currencies in the same proportions as your spending in those currencies
- watch out for [...]
Outline:
(01:09) Have more than one bank
(03:04) Invest your cash in a government guaranteed money market account, earning ~5%
(06:59) Hold FX in the same proportions as your spending
(08:58) Watch out for FX fees
First published:
October 14th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/akSr4YXHKZcK8EnQe/cash-and-fx-management-for-ea-organizations
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Philanthropist Chuck Feeney died on October 9, at 92. He founded one of the largest private charitable foundations in history, giving away his entire fortune within his lifetime. He was almost obsessively secretive in his giving, and set a standard of seriousness which inspired the Giving Pledge and many of its pledgers.
Feeney was born at the tail end of the Great Depression into modest circumstances, raised by blue-collar Irish-American parents, and became the first of his family to attend university.
The story of his fortune began after Feeney enrolled in the U.S. Air Force, soon deployed to Japan as a radio operator during the Korean War. The 1944 GI Bill of Rights had entitled returning GIs to a course of study after WWII, and the scheme was renewed for Korean War veterans. He used the allowance to attend Cornell, graduated in 1956, then travelled to Europe to indulge a newly developed [...]
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 11th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yS3qRbHzzWxjR2Ehp/chuck-feeney-1931-2023
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Crosspost from Astral Codex Ten.
I.
Last month, Ben West of the Center for Effective Altruism hosted a debate among long-termists, forecasters, and x-risk activists about pausing AI.
Everyone involved thought AI was dangerous and might even destroy the world, so you might expect a pause - maybe even a full stop - would be a no-brainer. It wasn’t. Participants couldn’t agree on basics of what they meant by “pause”, whether it was possible, or whether it would make things better or worse.
There was at least some agreement on what a successful pause would have to entail. Participating governments would ban “frontier AI models”, for example models using more training compute than GPT-4. Smaller models, or novel uses of new models would be fine, or else face an FDA-like regulatory agency. States would enforce the ban against domestic companies by monitoring high-performance microchips; they would enforce it against non-participating governments by banning [...]
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7WfMYzLfcTyDtD6Gn/pause-for-thought-the-ai-pause-debate
Linkpost URL:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/pause-for-thought-the-ai-pause-debate
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Last year, we committed $350 million to GiveWell's evidence-backed, cost-effective recommendations in global health and development.
This year, we’re committing $300M to support GiveWell's recommendations over the next three years. This returns our annual support to its 2020 level ($100M/year). And it brings us to more than $1 billion in funding for GiveWell's recommendations over the course of Open Philanthropy's existence.
We’re committing all of this funding now, but we anticipate that GiveWell will spend it at their discretion in whatever way they think helps beneficiaries the most. As they explain in this post, they’ve been spending carefully in anticipation of a potential decrease in our funding; we’ve been discussing this with them actively as we developed our plan for the next few years.
The rest of this post:
- Shares examples of recent GiveWell recommendations we’ve funded.
- Discusses reasons we’ve increased our bar for funding in our Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio.
- Explains how GiveWell's impressive [...]
Outline:
(01:32) Where our funding to GiveWell's recommendations ultimately goes
(03:13) Our higher bar for Global Health and Wellbeing giving
(05:42) How GiveWell's impressive growth and our higher Global Health and Wellbeing bar influence our current plans
(13:28) This means that the marginal GiveWell opportunity will be at least as strong as in past years
(13:59) Closing thoughts
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KuByzfn6yiKMWBKmr/our-planned-allocation-to-givewell-s-recommendations-for-the
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In the latest episode of the 80,000 Hours podcast, Kevin Esvelt talks about the New World screwworm. He claims that there is a potential for a massive animal welfare win, if we can eliminate this parasite.
This feels worthy of a discussion, so I'm starting this thread. Is this issue on anyone's radar? Has anyone looked into these claims? They seem potentially important/actionable, if true!
Relevant section from the podcast:
Kevin Esvelt: [...] the New World screwworm, which has the amazing scientific name of Cochliomyia hominivorax: “the man devourer.” But it doesn’t primarily eat humans; it feeds indiscriminately on warm-blooded things, so mammals and birds. It's a botfly that lays its eggs in open wounds, anything as small as a tick bite. And it's called the screwworm because the larvae are screw-shaped and they drill their way into living flesh, devouring it. And as they do, they cultivate bacteria that attract [...]
First published:
October 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JWuPdMaPiNy7AD3AX/potentially-actionable-opportunity-eliminating-the-new-world
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Key Points
- Animal parties are minor (niche) political parties with a single-issue focus on animals.
- Animal parties can win seats in elections that use proportional representation. The most important strategic decision is to choose to contest elections where seats can be won with just a couple of percent of the vote. Animal parties have won seats in five countries (Australia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal).
- When an animal party wins even one seat or a couple of seats, the impact for animals is typically positive and moderate. Occasionally, the impact can be enormous.
- We recommend a handful of countries where we think small grants are likely to help animal parties win at least one seat. Providing initial funding for animal parties in these countries appears to be low-hanging fruit, and this small level of funding is likely to have a disproportionately high level of impact.
Executive Summary
This approach involves establishing political parties with an explicit [...]
Outline:
(00:09) Key Points
(01:07) Executive Summary
(08:06) Table of Contents
(10:18) 1. How Do Animal Advocacy Parties Work?
(12:45) 2. Theory of Change
(16:08) 3. Voting Systems and Minor Parties
(16:38) 3.1 We focus on proportional representation
(24:05) 3.2 Contesting more elections seems better than spending more on advertising
(29:10) 4. Current Seats: Where Have Animal Parties Won Seats?
(32:31) 5. Expanding Existing Parties: Where Could Animal Parties Win More Seats?
(32:38) 5.1 Where do animal parties exist?
(34:08) 5.2 Method: How we forecast the chance of winning a seat
(39:22) 5.3 Results: Our predicted chances of winning a seat for existing parties
(40:51) 6. Future Parties: Where Could Future Animal Parties Be Established?
(40:58) 6.1 Where do animal parties not yet exist?
(42:14) 6.2 Results: Our predicted chances of winning a seat for future parties
(43:20) 7. European Parliament: Could Animal Parties Win More Seats in the European Parliament?
(45:29) 8. Track Record of Existing Parties
(45:53) 8.1 Australia: Animal Justice Party (New South Wales)
(51:15) 8.2 Belgium: Victoria Austraet, Independent
(54:39) 8.3 France: Ecological Revolution for the Living (REV)
(56:30) 8.4 Netherlands: Party for the Animals
(59:45) 8.5 Portugal: People-Animals-Nature (PAN)
(01:02:11) 9. Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
(01:02:16) 9.1 Costs: Parties often pay for themselves
(01:07:51) 9.2 Impact: Our rough back-of-the-envelope calculation
(01:17:09) 10. Academic Literature
(01:17:13) 10.1 What do studies tell us about animal parties?
(01:22:22) 10.2 How do minor parties influence policy?
(01:31:34) 10.3 What is the relationship between elections, veg*n voters, and animal welfare?
(01:35:34) 11. An Alternative Strategy: Voting Blocs
(01:43:55) Acknowledgements
(01:44:09) Bibliography
First published:
October 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kiq83nGBoK8tih4wB/party-politics-for-animal-advocacy-part-1-animal-focused
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Epistemic status: Hot takes for discussion. These observations are a side product of another strategy project, rather than a systematic and rigorous analysis of the funding landscape, and we may be missing important considerations. Observations are also non-exhaustive and mostly come from anecdotal data and EA Forum posts. We haven’t vetted the resources that we are citing; instead, we took numerous data points at face value and asked for feedback from >5 people who have more of an inside view than we do (see acknowledgments, but note that these people do not necessarily endorse all claims). We aim to indicate our certainty in the specific claims we are making.
Context and summary
While researching for another project, we discovered that there have been some significant changes in the EA funding landscape this year. We found these changes interesting and surprising enough that we wanted to share them, to potentially help people update [...]
Outline:
(00:47) Context and summary
(05:52) Some observations on the general EA funding landscape
(05:57) More funding sources
(08:00) More activity in the effective giving ecosystem
(08:41) Changes in funding flows
(14:01) Potential future EA funding
(15:09) Some observations on the AI safety funding landscape
(15:29) A brief overview of the broad AI safety funding landscape
(18:39) There might be more funding gaps in AI safety this year
(22:19) Potential future AI safety funding
(25:07) Further questions
(27:17) Further resources (non-exhaustive)
(27:58) Acknowledgments
The original text contained 18 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RueHqBuBKQBtSYkzp/observations-on-the-funding-landscape-of-ea-and-ai-safety
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This is a summary of a report on trends in violence since the dawn of humanity: from the hunter-gatherer period to the present day.[1] The full report is available at this Substack and as a preprint on SSRN.[2] Phil did 95% of the work on the report.
Expert reviewers provided the following comments on our report.
“Thomson and Halstead have provided an admirably thorough and fair assessment of this difficult and emotionally fraught empirical question. I don’t agree with all of their conclusions, but this will surely be the standard reference for this issue for years to come.”
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University
“This work uses an impressively comprehensive survey of ethnographic and archeological data on military mortality in historically and archeologically known small-scale societies in an effort to pin down the scale of the killing in the pre-agricultural world. This will be a useful [...]
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
October 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QH2sECmmbLWbMXLhJ/violence-before-agriculture
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
From the looks of it, next week might be rough for people who care about Effective Altruism. As CEA acting CEO Ben West pointed out on the forum:
“Sam Bankman-Fried's trial is scheduled to start October 3, 2023, and Michael Lewis's book about FTX comes out the same day. My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA …
Nonetheless, I think there's a decent chance that viewing the Forum, Twitter, or news media could become stressful for some people, and you may want to pre-emptively create a plan for engaging with that in a healthy way.
I really appreciated that comment since I didn’t know that and I’m glad I had time to mentally prepare. As someone who does outward facing voluntary community building at my workplace and in London, I feel nervous. I’ve written this piece to manage that anxiety. I actually wrote a lot of it [...]
Outline:
(01:04) Thoughts on EA after 2022
(06:30) Why I’m still publicly going out to bat for EA
(10:46) Conclusion and some caveats
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 30th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wGKGrCYNwjhhK4N69/why-i-m-still-going-out-to-bat-for-the-ea-movement-post-ftx
Linkpost URL:
https://bashingthearc.substack.com/p/why-im-still-going-out-to-bat-for
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
It's been another busy year at Open Philanthropy; after nearly doubling the size of our team in 2022, we’ve added over 30 new team members so far in 2023. Now we’re launching a number of open applications for roles in all of our Global Catastrophic Risks (GCR) cause area teams (AI Governance and Policy, Technical AI Safety, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness, GCR Cause Prioritization, and GCR Capacity Building[1]).
The application, job descriptions, and general team information are available here.
We’re hiring because our GCR teams feel pinched and really need more capacity. Program Officers in GCR areas think that growing their teams will lead them to make significantly more grants at or above our current bar. We’ve had to turn down potentially promising opportunities because we didn’t have enough time to investigate them[2]; on the flip side, we’re likely currently allocating tens of millions of dollars suboptimally in ways that more [...]
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 29th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bBefhAXpCFNswNr9m/open-philanthropy-is-hiring-for-multiple-roles-across-our
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
As some of you know, I’m working on growing the US market for Chinese tofus. I believe it could be a way to significantly reduce animal suffering, while shifting American dining culture.
We just launched our book - Broken Cuisine - which introduces five of these tofus to Western home cooks. The goal is to spark curiosity and demand for these ingredients, so that we can convince retailers to carry them.
Do you have five minutes right now to take an action?
- Download our FREE e-book on Amazon. (If possible, TODAY)
- Skim through.
- A day or two later, leave an honest review. (Amazon easily detects spam.)
Downloading and reviewing our book during launch week will convince the Amazon recommender algorithm to push our book, creating a virtuous cycle that will bring it to more people. If Broken Cuisine can crack the bestseller lists, I'm hopefully we can meaningfully start growing the market for these foods!
Thank [...]
First published:
September 27th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RTG4ZAy6bqJqXo7uW/our-tofu-book-has-launched-upvote-on-amazon
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of our new community strategy that aims to connect our existing community better, and inspire more people to join us – I’ve been working on this for the past few months and am thrilled to finally share it!
Over the almost two years I’ve been working with Giving What We Can, I’ve seen how important our community is — whether it's a supportive network to ask questions, a friendly face in a new city, or a shared sense that none of us are alone in wanting to do what we can to make a better world, I’ve personally taken much-needed inspiration, motivation, and comfort more times than I can count, simply by hearing from you!
I want to make it easier for you to do the same.
We are launching some new spaces for you to meet, connect, and chat with each other. [...]
Outline:
(01:51) TL;DR: How do I get involved?
(02:15) 1: GWWC Local Groups
(04:14) What will GWWC Groups look like?
(05:39) Locations for GWWC Groups
(06:57) What if we already have a local group focused on creating community around effective giving?
(07:28) Help run a GWWC Group
(09:20) Can I run events about effective giving if I’m not part of a group?
(10:19) One for the World is helping to support our groups
(10:54) Evaluating the trial
(11:29) FAQ:
(11:33) Being a part of a local group
(13:19) 2: Our new online community space
(14:17) 3: Global Effective Giving Community Directory
First published:
September 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KuNsnszBxENS3tWMm/gwwc-s-new-community-strategy
Linkpost URL:
https://givingwhatwecan.org/blog/community-strategy-2023
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Overview
The total moral value of the world includes humans as well as all other beings of moral significance. As such, a picture of the overall trajectory of net global welfare that accounts for both human and non-human populations is important context for thinking about the future on any timescale, and about the potential impacts of transformative technologies.
There's compelling evidence that life has gotten better for humans recently, but the same can’t be said for other animals, especially given the rise of industrial animal agriculture. How do these trends cash out, and what's the overall trajectory?
I’ve used human and farmed animal population data, estimates of welfare ranges across different species, and estimates of the average wellbeing of different species to get a rough sense of recent trends in total global welfare. Importantly, this initial analysis is limited to humans and some of the most abundant farmed animals—it does not consider effects [...]
Outline:
(00:04) Overview
(01:49) Notes and Assumptions
(03:36) Analysis
(03:39) Background and Definitions
(04:57) Populations
(05:57) Welfare Capacities
(07:10) Total Welfare
(09:29) Tentative Reflections
(11:33) Future Directions
(12:38) Acknowledgments
First published:
September 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HDFxQwMwPp275J87r/net-global-welfare-may-be-negative-and-declining-1
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Andy Weber was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs from 2009 to 2014. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks. You might also know him from his appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast. Ask him anything![1]
He’ll try to answer some questions on Friday, September 29 (afternoon, Eastern Time), and might get to some earlier.
I (Lizka) am particularly excited that Andy can share his experience in nuclear (and other kinds of) threat reduction given that it is Petrov Day today.
Instructions and practical notes:
- Please post your questions as comments on this post.
- Posting questions earlier is better than later.
- If you have multiple questions, it might be better to post them separately.
- Feel free to upvote questions that others have posted, as it might help prioritize questions later.
Other context and topics that might be especially interesting to talk about:
- Risks of “tactical” nuclear [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KbTasufbtJwZYiJQ8/ama-andy-weber-u-s-assistant-secretary-of-defense-from-2009
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Our team at Our World in Data just launched a new page on animal welfare! There you can find a brand new Animal Welfare Data Explorer, 22 interactive charts, and 4 new articles:
- How many animals get slaughtered every day?
- How many animals are factory-farmed?
- Do better cages or cage-free environments really improve the lives of hens?
- Adopting slower-growing breeds of chicken would reduce animal suffering significantly
On Our World in Data, we cover many topics related to reducing human suffering: alleviating poverty, reducing child and maternal mortality, curing diseases, and ending hunger.
But if we aim to reduce total suffering, society's ability to reduce this in other animals – which feel pain, too – also matters.
This is especially true when we look at the numbers: every year, humans slaughter more than 80 billion land-based animals for farming alone. Most of these animals are raised in factory farms, often in painful and inhumane conditions.
Estimates for fish [...]
First published:
September 25th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pydpzj9sxcdSsAngr/new-page-on-animal-welfare-on-our-world-in-data
Linkpost URL:
https://ourworldindata.org/animal-welfare
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary
Shrimp Welfare Project launched in Sep 2021, via the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program. We aim to reduce the suffering of billions of farmed shrimps. This post summarises our work to date, what we plan to work on going forward, and clarifies areas where we’re not focusing our attention. This post was written to coincide with the launch of our new (Shr)Impact page on our website.
We have four broad workstreams: corporate engagement, farmer support, research, and raising issue salience. We believe our key achievements to date are:
- Corporate engagement: Our Humane Slaughter Initiative (commitments with large producers to purchase electrical stunners, such as MER Seafood, and Seajoy), ongoing conversations with UK retailers (including Marks & Spencer, who now have a published Decapod Welfare Policy), and contributing to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council's (ASC) Shrimp Welfare Technical Working Group.
- Humane Slaughter Initiative: This work in particular seems to be our most promising work so far, and we Guesstimate that our work [...]
Outline:
(06:06) Our Work So Far
(06:18) Corporate Engagement
(07:35) Farmer Support
(08:54) Research
(10:58) Raising Issue Salience
(12:16) What Were Doing Now
(12:37) Humane Slaughter Initiative
(14:54) Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India (SSFI)
(16:22) Shrimp Welfare Index
(18:24) What We Arent Doing
(19:21) Wild-Caught
(22:00) Specialisation work
(25:12) ”Shrimp-Inclusive” work
(27:45) How You Can Help
(27:48) Funding
(28:17) ASC stakeholder consultation
(29:27) Volunteer or work with us
(30:21) Newsletter and social media
(30:57) Start a “shrimp welfare project”
First published:
September 25th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qo3559TqP5BzoQyWX/two-years-of-shrimp-welfare-project-insights-and-impact-from
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In this post I talk about several strong non-epistemic incentives and issues that can influence people to pursue longtermist[1]career paths (and specifically x-risk reduction careers and AI safety[2]) for EA community members.
For what it's worth, I personally I am sympathetic to longtermism, and to people who want to create more incentives for longtermist careers, because of the high urgency some assign to AI Safety and the fact that longtermism is a relatively new field. I am currently running career support pilots to support early-career longtermists.) However I think it's important to think carefully about career choices, even when it's difficult. I'm worried that these incentives lead people to feel (unconscious & conscious) pressure to pursue (certain) longtermist career paths even if it may not be the right choice for them. I think it's good for to be thoughtful about cause prioritization and career choices, especially for people earlier in their [...]
Outline:
(01:00) Incentives
(01:04) Good pay and job security
(02:04) Funding in an oligopoly
(03:54) It's easier to socially defer
(05:02) High status
(06:49) Role models and founder's effects
(07:46) Availability
(09:15) Support
(09:54) Transferable career capital
(10:28) Conclusion and Suggestions
The original text contained 18 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SWfwmqnCPid8PuTBo/monetary-and-social-incentives-in-longtermist-careers
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In March of this year, 30,000 people, including leading AI figures like Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, signed a letter calling on AI labs to pause the training of AI systems. While it seems unlikely that this letter will succeed in pausing the development of AI, it did draw substantial attention to slowing AI as a strategy for reducing existential risk.
While initial work has been done on this topic (this sequence links to some relevant work), many areas of uncertainty remain. I’ve asked a group of participants to discuss and debate various aspects of the value of advocating for a pause on the development of AI on the EA Forum, in a format loosely inspired by Cato Unbound.
- On September 16, we will launch with three posts:
- David Manheim will share a post giving an overview of what a pause would include, how a pause would work, and some possible concrete steps [...]
First published:
September 8th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6SvZPHAvhT5dtqefF/debate-series-should-we-push-for-a-pause-on-the-development
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Earlier today, Will MacAskill stepped down from the board of Effective Ventures UK[1], having served as a trustee since its founding more than a decade ago.
Will has been intending to step down for several months and announced his intention to do so earlier this year. Will had initially planned to remain on the board until we brought on additional trustees to replace him. However, given that our trustee recruitment process has taken longer than anticipated, and given also that Will continues to be recused from a significant proportion of board business[2], he felt that it didn’t make sense for him to stay on any longer.
Will announced his resignation today.
As a founding board member of EV UK (then called CEA), Will played a vital role in getting EV and its constituent projects off the ground, including co-founding Giving What We Can and 80,000 Hours. We are very grateful [...]
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 21st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mArisdpuQiFtTNWw3/will-macaskill-has-stepped-down-as-trustee-of-ev-uk
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
tl;dr: Advocacy to the public is a large and neglected opportunity to advance AI Safety. AI Safety as a field is unfamiliar with advocacy, and it has reservations, some founded and others not. A deeper understanding of the dynamics of social change reveals the promise of pursuing outside game strategies to complement the already strong inside game strategies. I support an indefinite global Pause on frontier AI and I explain why Pause AI is a good message for advocacy. Because I’m American and focused on US advocacy, I will mostly be drawing on examples from the US. Please bear in mind, though, that for Pause to be a true solution it will have to be global.
The case for advocacy in general
Advocacy can work
I’ve encountered many EAs who are skeptical about the role of advocacy in social change. While it is difficult to prove causality in social phenomena like this [...]
Outline:
(00:46) The case for advocacy in general
(00:50) Advocacy can work
(02:32) We can now talk to the public about AI risk
(03:22) What having the public's support gets us
(05:17) Social change works best inside and outside the system
(09:31) Pros and potential pitfalls of advocacy
(09:35) Other pros of advocacy
(11:11) Misconceptions about advocacy
(13:23) Downsides to advocacy
(14:26) Downside risks of continuing the status quo
(15:59) The case for advocating AI Pause
(16:31) Pros and pitfalls of AI Pause
(21:09) How AI Pause advocacy can effect change
(24:01) Audience questions
First published:
September 20th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Y4SaFM5LfsZzbnymu/the-case-for-ai-safety-advocacy-to-the-public
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I don't have much time to get into this, but I heard rumblings, saw a post, and wrote a comment, and now I'm making a post of my own because this information feels worth spreading now. I will not be going into much more details, for reasons that should be obvious.
For those that don't know me, I'm a therapist who has been working in the community for about 5 years now, and has been almost exclusively working with the community since early 2020, though I've been scaling down my therapy practice to focus on other projects like therapist recruitment/supervision, and mental health research. I also do mediation now and then, and in both situations, Community Health has been incredibly helpful.
Another of my major things is teaching at various rationality camps and workshops for high-school age students, as well as some for adults. To say that Community Health has been valuable [...]
First published:
September 19th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/78A2NHL3zBS3ESurp/my-life-would-be-much-harder-without-the-community-health
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Personal opinion only. Inspired by filling out the Meta coordination forum survey.
Epistemic status: Very uncertain, rough speculation. I’d be keen to see more public discussion on this question
One open question about the EA community is it's relationship to AI safety (see e.g. MacAskill). I think the relationship EA and AI safety (+ GHD & animal welfare) previously looked something like this (up until 2022ish):
With the growth of AI safety, I think the field now looks something like this:
It's an open question whether the EA Community should further grow the AI safety field, or whether the EA Community should become a distinct field from AI safety. I think my preferred approach is something like: EA and AI safety grow into new fields rather than into eachother:
- AI safety grows in AI/ML communities
- EA grows in other specific causes, as well as an “EA-qua-EA” movement.
As an ideal state, I could imagine the EA [...]
First published:
September 18th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/opCxiPwxFcaaayyMB/relationship-between-ea-community-and-ai-safety
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
When talking to newcomers to the field of biosecurity, I often felt annoyed that there wasn't a single introductory resource I could point them to that gives an overview of all the biosecurity-relevant organizations, upskilling opportunities, and funders.
With the help of a lot of contributors, I started this Google doc to provide such a resource. I'm sure that we missed some relevant organizations, and it'd be lovely if some people were to comment on the doc with additional information!
I'll copy the current version below, but please check out the link to the doc if you want to comment and see the most up-to-date version in the future!
Contributors: Max Görlitz, Simon Grimm, Andreas Prenner, Jasper Götting, Anemone Franz, Eva Siegmann, & more
Introduction
I would like to see something like aisafety.world for biosecurity. There already exists the Map of Biosecurity Interventions, but I want one for organizations!
This is a work-in-progress attempt to [...]
Outline:
(01:25) Policy
(01:28) Think tanks
(01:31) Europe
(04:30) USA
(07:11) (Inter)governmental actors
(07:15) USA
(08:25) Europe
(09:21) International actors
(11:49) Technical RandD
(12:26) GCBR-focused non-profits
(14:06) Relevant for-profits
(14:27) Academic labs
(14:31) Upskilling (fellowships)
(14:35) Focused on newcomers
(15:44) E-learning resources
(16:42) Focused on people with some experience
(20:32) Funders of work on biorisk mitigation
(20:36) Major funders explicitly focused on catastrophic biorisk
(22:17) Smaller funders with some part of their portfolio dedicated to catastrophic biorisk
(23:33) Funders that are focused on pandemic preparedness more broadly
First published:
September 17th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/28iXeSY75aLsqAagg/map-of-the-biosecurity-landscape-list-of-gcbr-relevant-orgs
Linkpost URL:
https://bit.ly/biosecurity-map
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Should we lobby governments to impose a moratorium on AI research? Since we don’t enforce pauses on most new technologies, I hope the reader will grant that the burden of proof is on those who advocate for such a moratorium. We should only advocate for such heavy-handed government action if it's clear that the benefits of doing so would significantly outweigh the costs.[1] In this essay, I’ll argue an AI pause would increase the risk of catastrophically bad outcomes, in at least three different ways:
- Reducing the quality of AI alignment research by forcing researchers to exclusively test ideas on models like GPT-4 or weaker.
- Increasing the chance of a “fast takeoff” in which one or a handful of AIs rapidly and discontinuously become more capable, concentrating immense power in their hands.
- Pushing capabilities research underground, and to countries with looser regulations and safety requirements.
Along the way, I’ll introduce an argument for optimism [...]
Outline:
(01:09) Feedback loops are at the core of alignment
(01:54) Alignment and robustness are often in tension
(03:21) Alignment is doing pretty well
(04:30) Alignment research was pretty bad during the last “pause”
(06:31) Fast takeoff has a really bad feedback loop
(08:43) Slow takeoff is the default (so don’t mess it up with a pause)
(09:25) Alignment optimism: AIs are white boxes
(09:49) Human and animal alignment is black box
(11:41) Status quo AI alignment methods are white box
(13:25) White box alignment in nature
(15:35) Realistic AI pauses would be counterproductive
(15:56) Realistic pauses are not international
(18:19) Realistic pauses don’t include hardware
(19:23) Hardware overhang is likely
(20:58) Likely consequences of a realistic pause
The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 16th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JYEAL8g7ArqGoTaX6/ai-pause-will-likely-backfire
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I’m Catherine, and I'm one of the Community Liaisons working in CEA's Community Health and Special Projects Team. This is a personal post about my career.
I’m somewhat to the right of the main age peak of the EA community😬 .So I’ve had a lot of time to make mistakes sub-optimal choices in my career. It has been a long and odd road from my childhood/teenage dream to become a train driver, Department of Conservation ranger, vet and then physicist.
Train I planned to drive. Endangered parrot I planned to help make less endangered.Before I got into EA
Fluke 1: Born into immense privilege by global standards (and reasonable privilege by rich country standards)
Mistake 1: Not doing something with that privilege. I wish someone (maybe me?) sat me down and said (maybe a more polite version of)“You know which part of the bell curve you’re on. Try doing something more useful for the [...]
Outline:
(00:42) Before I got into EA
(00:46) Fluke 1: Born into immense privilege by global standards (and reasonable privilege by rich country standards)
(00:54) Mistake 1: Not doing something with that privilege. I wish someone (maybe me?) sat me down and said (maybe a more polite version of)“You know which part of the bell curve you’re on. Try doing something more useful for the world!”.
(01:35) Good call 1: I talked to other students in the research group before choosing a PhD supervisor
(01:58) Mistake 2: Mistaking my interest in the ideas with interest in the day to day work
(02:17) Mistake 3: Not giving up sooner
(02:59) Mistake 4: Not exploring more options (even though they were scary)
(03:14) Good Call 2: Got really good at a valuable(ish) thing, and then used that as leverage to branch out a little
(03:54) After learning about EA
(04:03) Good call 3: I didn’t let my age put me off changing careers
(04:40) Good call 4: I reliably did stuff that seemed to need doing, even if they were boring, low status, or unpaid. I tried to be of service to others.
(05:46) Mistake 5: Thought too narrowly about my absolute advantage and didnt consider where my largest impact was.
(07:15) Good Call 5: I took a scary step - quitting my secure job without another guaranteed paid opportunity lined up (but with runway and a plan Z).
(07:48) Mistake 6: Not giving up sooner (again)
(08:12) Mistake 7: Over updating on a few rejections
(09:19) Fluke 2: Stumbling into a role at the Groups team at CEA
(09:44) Good call 6 (the best call): Doing what people I trusted thought would be most valuable
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 15th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w59DkYCJYqaYDpEqG/mistakes-flukes-and-good-calls-i-made-in-my-multiple-careers
--- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Citation: Romero Waldhorn, D., & Autric, E. (2022, December 21). Shrimp: The animals most commonly used and killed for food production. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/b8n3t
Summary
- Decapod crustaceans or, for short, decapods[1] (e.g., crabs, shrimp, or crayfish) represent a major food source for humans across the globe. If these animals are sentient, the growing decapod production industry likely poses serious welfare concerns for these animals.
- Information about the number of decapods used for food is needed to better assess the scale of this problem and the expected value of helping these animals.
- In this work we estimated the number of shrimp and prawns farmed and killed in a year, given that they seem to be the vast majority of decapods used in the food system.
- We estimated that around:
- 440 billion (90% subjective confidence interval [SCI]: 300 billion - 620 billion) farmed shrimp are killed per year, which vastly exceeds the figure of the most numerous farmed vertebrates used [...]
Outline:
(07:47) Methods
(08:56) Farmed shrimp estimates
(11:50) Wild-caught shrimp estimates
(16:36) Total shrimp estimates
(16:51) Results
(16:54) Farmed shrimp
(22:45) Wild shrimp
(27:19) Total shrimp estimates
(29:39) Discussion
(38:58) Conclusion
(40:10) Acknowledgments
(41:12) References
(57:17) Appendix
(57:20) Farmed shrimp estimates
(01:07:05) Wild-caught shrimp estimates
The original text contained 29 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Fhoq7tP9LYPqaJDxx/shrimp-the-animals-most-commonly-used-and-killed-for-food
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In March of this year, 30,000 people, including leading AI figures like Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, signed a letter calling on AI labs to pause the training of AI systems. While it seems unlikely that this letter will succeed in pausing the development of AI, it did draw substantial attention to slowing AI as a strategy for reducing existential risk.
While initial work has been done on this topic (this sequence links to some relevant work), many areas of uncertainty remain. I’ve asked a group of participants to discuss and debate various aspects of the value of advocating for a pause on the development of AI on the EA Forum, in a format loosely inspired by Cato Unbound.
- On September 16, we will launch with three posts:
- David Manheim will share a post giving an overview of what a pause would include, how a pause would work, and some possible concrete steps [...]
First published:
September 8th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6SvZPHAvhT5dtqefF/debate-series-should-we-push-for-a-pause-on-the-development
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
There has already been ample discussion of what norms and taboos should exist in the EA community, especially over the past ten months. Below, I'm sharing an incomplete list of actions and dynamics I would strongly encourage EAs and EA organizations to either strictly avoid or treat as warranting a serious—and possibly ongoing—risk analysis.
I believe there is a reasonable risk should EAs:
- Live with coworkers, especially when there is a power differential and especially when there is a direct report relationship
- Date coworkers, especially when there is a power differential and especially when there is a direct report relationship
- Promote[1] drug use among coworkers, including legal drugs, and including alcohol and stimulants
- Live with their funders/grantees, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
- Date their funders/grantees, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
- Date the partner of their funder/grantee, especially when substantial conflict-of-interest mechanisms are not active
- Retain someone as a full-time contractor or grant recipient [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 8th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MvwctfyZ9NrhPzyPj/an-incomplete-list-of-things-i-think-eas-probably-shouldn-t
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Epistemic status: Once I started actively looking into things, much of my information in the post below came about by a search for negative information about the Nonlinear cofounders, not from a search to give a balanced picture of its overall costs and benefits. I think standard update rules suggest not that you ignore the information, but you think about how bad you expect the information would be if I selected for the worst, credible info I could share, and then update based on how much worse (or better) it is than you expect I could produce. (See section 5 of this post about Mistakes with Conservation of Expected Evidence for more on this.) This seems like a worthwhile exercise for at least non-zero people to do in the comments before reading on. (You can condition on me finding enough to be worth sharing, but also note that I think [...]
Outline:
(10:09) A High-Level Overview of The Employees’ Experience with Nonlinear
(16:25) An assortment of reported experiences
(40:59) Conversation with Nonlinear
(48:47) My thoughts on the ethics and my takeaways
The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 7th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/32LMQsjEMm6NK2GTH/sharing-information-about-nonlinear
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
On 23rd August, Nick Beckstead stepped down from the boards of Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US.
For context, EV UK and EV US host and fiscally sponsor several (mostly EA-related) projects, such as CEA, 80,000 Hours and various others (see more here).
Since November 2022, Nick has been recused from all board matters related to the collapse of FTX. Over time, it became clear that Nick’s recusal made it difficult for him to add sufficient value to EV and its projects for it to be worth him remaining on the boards[1]. Nick and the other trustees felt that this was sufficient reason for Nick to step down.
Nick wanted to share the following:
Ever since the collapse of FTX, I've been recused from a substantial fraction of business on both boards. This has made it hard to contribute as much as I would like to as a board member, during a time [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Defu3jkejb7pmLjeN/nick-beckstead-is-leaving-the-effective-ventures-boards
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
In which: I list 9 projects that I would work on if I wasn’t busy working on safety standards at ARC Evals, and explain why they might be good to work on.
Epistemic status: I’m prioritizing getting this out fast as opposed to writing it carefully. I’ve thought for at least a few hours and talked to a few people I trust about each of the following projects, but I haven’t done that much digging into each of these, and it’s likely that I’m wrong about many material facts. I also make little claim to the novelty of the projects. I’d recommend looking into these yourself before committing to doing them. (Total time spent writing or editing this post: ~8 hours.)
Standard disclaimer: I’m writing this in my own capacity. The views expressed are my own, and should not be taken to represent the views of ARC/FAR/LTFF/Lightspeed or any other org [...]
Outline:
(02:41) Relevant beliefs I have
(04:52) Technical AI Safety Research
(05:38) Ambitious mechanistic interpretability
(08:34) Late stage project management and paper writing
(09:53) Creating concrete projects and research agendas
(11:32) Grantmaking
(12:37) Working on Open Philanthropy’s Funding Bottlenecks
(14:24) Working on the other EA funders’ funding bottlenecks
(16:02) Chairing the Long-Term Future Fund
(17:28) Community Building
(17:54) Onboarding senior academics and research engineers
(20:05) Extending the young EA/AI researcher mentorship pipeline
(22:31) Writing blog posts or takes in general
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
September 6th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zcHdehWJzDpfxJpmf/what-i-would-do-if-i-wasn-t-at-arc-evals
Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6FkWnktH3mjMAxdRT/what-i-would-do-if-i-wasn-t-at-arc-evals
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I sometimes get a vibe that many people trying to ambitiously do good in the world (including EAs) are misguided about what doing successful policy/governance work looks like. An exaggerated caricature would be activities like: dreaming up novel UN structures, spending time in abstract game theory and ‘strategy spirals[1]’, and sweeping analysis of historical case studies.
Instead, people that want to make the world safer with policy/governance should become experts on very specific and boring topics. One of the most successful people I’ve met in biosecurity got their start by getting really good at analyzing obscure government budgets.
Here are some crowdsourced example areas I would love to see more people become experts in:
- Legal liability - obviously relevant to biosecurity and AI safety, and I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards (e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism, or if [...]
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
August 31st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J7nmbqcWncPMZFhGC/want-to-make-a-difference-on-policy-and-governance-become-an
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I work as a Resident Assistant at my college. Last year, only a few weeks into me starting, I was called at night to come help with a drunk student. I didn’t actually help very much, and probably didn’t have to be there. I didn’t even have to write up the report at the end. At one point I went outside to let medical services into the building, but mostly I just stood in a hallway.
The person in question was so drunk they couldn’t move. They had puked in the bathroom and were lying in the hallway crying. They could barely talk. When Campus Safety arrived they kneeled down next to this person and helped them drink water, while asking the normal slew of questions about the person’s evening.
They asked this person, whose name I can’t even remember, why they had been drinking so much. They said, in between hiccups [...]
First published:
September 3rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/buFyakASucJnrZj7X/the-lives-we-can-save
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Congrats on having invented something exciting!
Usually, the best way to get innovative new technology into the hands of beneficiaries quickly is to get a for-profit company to invest with a promise of making money. This can happen via licensing a patent to an existing manufacturer, or creating a whole startup company and raising venture capital, etc.
One of the things such investors want to see is a 'moat': something that this company can do that no other company can easily copy. A patent/exclusive license is a good way to create a moat.
There are some domains like software where simply publishing 'open source' ideas causes those ideas to get used, but for most domains including manufacturing, my default expectation is that new tech is not used unless someone can make money off it. Pharma is a great example - there are tons of vaccines and niche treatments that we [...]
First published:
August 31st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/X2w4uqjDuGPJFaHPp/should-i-patent-my-cultivated-meat-method
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Hi folks, in this post we’d like to describe our views as the Chair (Peter) and Director (Michael) of HLI in light of the recent conversations around HLI’s work. The purpose of this post is to reflect on HLI’s work and its role within the EA community in response to community member feedback, highlight what we’re doing about it, and engage in further constructive dialogue on how HLI can improve moving forward.
HLI hasn’t always got things right. Indeed, we think there have been some noteworthy errors (quick note: our goal here isn’t to delve into details but to highlight broad lessons learnt, so this isn’t an exhaustive list):
- Most importantly, we were overconfident and defensive in communication, particularly around our 2022 giving season post.
- We described our recommendation for StrongMinds using language that was too strong: “We’re now in a position to confidently recommend StrongMinds as the most effective way we [...]
---
First published:
September 1st, 2023
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I sometimes get a vibe that many people trying to ambitiously do good in the world (including EAs) are misguided about what doing successful policy/governance work looks like. An exaggerated caricature would be activities like: dreaming up novel UN structures, spending time in abstract game theory and ‘strategy spirals[1]’, and sweeping analysis of historical case studies.
Instead, people that want to make the world safer with policy/governance should become experts on very specific and boring topics. One of the most successful people I’ve met in biosecurity got their start by getting really good at analyzing obscure government budgets.
Here are some crowdsourced example areas I would love to see more people become experts in:
- Legal liability - obviously relevant to biosecurity and AI safety, and I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards (e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism, or if [...]
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
August 31st, 2023
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This piece defends a strong form of epistemic modesty: that, in most cases, one should pay scarcely any attention to what you find the most persuasiv…
---
First published:
October 29th, 2017
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WKPd79PESRGZHQ5GY/in-defence-of-epistemic-modesty
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
For most people I don't think it's important to have a really precise definition of integrity. But if you really want to go all-in on consequentialis…
---
First published:
November 14th, 2016
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CfcvPBY9hdsenMHCr/integrity-for-consequentialists-1
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
TL;DR:
- EAGs from 2022–2023 each cost around $2M–$3.6M USD at around $1.5k–2.5k per person per event.
- These events typically cost a lot because the fixed costs of running professional events in the US and UK are surprisingly high.
- We’re aiming to get these event costs down to ≤$2M each moving forwards.
- We’ve already started to cut back on spending and will continue to do so, whilst also raising default ticket prices to recoup more of our costs.
Throughout this post, for legibility I discuss the direct costs behind running our events and don’t include other indirect costs like staff salaries, software, and our office space (which would increase the costs below by ~25%).
Introduction
This year (2023), EAG Bay Area cost $2M and EAG London cost £2M (including travel grant costs).[1] Our most expensive event ever was EAG SF 2022, which cost $3.6M. This gives us a range of about $1.5–2.5k per person per event.[2]
In-person EAGx [...]
---
Outline:
(03:07) Venue and catering
(06:07) Other costs
(07:08) What are we doing to save money?
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
August 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/n5GJEP3tMrzdfYPGG/how-much-do-eags-cost-and-why
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Spoilers ahead — listen to the episode beforehand if you don’t want to hear a rough summary first. …
---
First published:
August 26th, 2016
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
∼250,000 new contraceptive users, ∼20 million new listeners and up to ∼60x cost effectiveness
TL;DR:
In 2021, FEM launched our pilot: a 3-month family planning radio campaign, educating listeners about maternal health and effective contraception. Our ads and shows played up to 860 times in Kano state in northern Nigeria, reaching ~5.6 million. An independent survey showed that in 11 months, contraceptive use increased by ~75% among all women in the state. Since then, we launched a 9-month campaign, aired proofs of concept in three new locations and re-aired in 8 more states, reaching an estimated 20 million new listeners. We were recommended by Giving What We Can and Founders Pledge, who assess our campaigns as ~22 times as effective as cash transfers. We developed new technologies that will allow us to customise health advice to listeners and run a randomised controlled trial. We continue to build organisational capacity to scale across [...]
---
Outline:
(00:14) TL;DR:
(01:21) Promising results from our pilot (Oct - Dec 2021)
(03:58) New technology to evaluate our impact (Jan -Dec 2022)
(05:40) Launching our first 9 month campaign (May 2022 - Feb 2023)
(06:49) Scaling our work: three new proofs of concept (Oct - Dec 2022)
(08:13) Cost-effectiveness estimates
(09:47) Meet the FEM team
(12:57) Key learnings
(14:47) Our biggest mistakes
(16:00) Our biggest successes
(16:55) What we’re doing now
(18:17) Our plan for the years ahead
(20:30) Support our work
---
First published:
August 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Xd9ZZuPCKAvKpzvdB/empowering-numbers-fem-since-2021
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Summary
- Impact obsession is a potentially unhelpful way of relating to doing good which we’ve observed among effective altruists, including ourselves. (More)
- What do we mean by impact obsession?
- One can distinguish unhealthy and healthy forms of impact obsession. (More)
- Common characteristics include an overwhelming desire for doing the most good one can do, basing one’s self-worth on one’s own impact, judging it by increasingly demanding standards (“impact treadmill”), overexerting oneself, neglecting or subjugating non-altruistic interests, and anxiety about having no or negative impact. (More)
- Is impact obsession good or bad?
- Many aspects of impact obsession are reasonable and even desirable. (More)
- Others can have detrimental consequences like depression, anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment. (More)
- What to do about (unhealthy) impact obsession?
- Besides useful standard (mental) health advice, potentially helpful strategies involve, for example: reflecting on our relationship with and motives for having impact, integrating conflicting desires, shifting from avoidance to approach motivation, cultivating additional sources of meaning and self-worth, reducing resistance [...]
---
Outline:
(05:31) Why we wrote this post
(06:21) What do we mean by impact obsession?
(06:25) Healthy vs. unhealthy impact obsession
(08:25) Common characteristics
(08:56) Overwhelming desire for maximizing positive impact
(09:41) Self-worth and identity are linked to impact
(10:09) Personally demanding (or unreasonable) standards
(10:39) Excessive comparisons and the impact treadmill
(11:50) Pushing oneself too hard and neglecting non-altruistic interests
(12:34) Black-and-white thinking
(13:07) Frequent worries about (prioritization) mistakes
(13:40) Obsessive thoughts about impact
(14:11) Impact obsession, clinical perfectionism, and scrupulosity
(15:57) Benefits and costs
(16:00) Isn’t impact obsession reasonable?
(17:43) Benefits
(18:54) Potential negative consequences of unhealthy impact obsession
(19:11) Depression, feeling worthless or unable to contribute
(21:05) Anxiety and guilt
(22:47) Burnout and (chronic) fatigue
(25:09) Reduced curiosity, excitement, and interests
(27:02) Less likely to enter flow states and reduced creativity
(27:58) Competitive comparisons, shame, and isolation
(29:13) Other risks
(29:51) What might help
(31:11) Reflect on your relationship with having impact and your conflicting motivations
(32:49) Strengthen additional sources of meaning and self-worth
(35:48) What about value drift?
(37:25) Approach motivation vs. avoidance motivation
(38:51) Obligation vs. exciting opportunity
(39:20) Focusing on the positive
(41:09) Focus less on yourself, compare yourself less
(42:11) You want to be the least impactful person in the world
(43:57) Leaning into absurdity
(45:22) Accepting what we cannot change
(46:31) Beware self-improvement perfectionism
(46:57) Welcoming and exploring negative emotions with acceptance and curiosity
(50:48) Fear and coming to terms with the possibility of having no impact
(53:48) Sadness, despair, and guilt
(55:22) Feeling like a failure or inadequate
(58:30) Replacing self-criticism with self-compassion
(01:00:32) Fully commit to rest
(01:00:51) Keeping yourself busy with semi-useful tasks
(01:02:08) Not committing to rest
(01:03:56) It’s fine if you need more rest than others
(01:04:25) Other related relevant resources
(01:04:58) Acknowledgements
The original text contained 29 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
August 23rd, 2023
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Sometimes, there is a reason other grantmakers aren't funding a fairly well-known EA (-adjacent) project.
This post is written in a professional capacity, as a volunteer/sometimes contractor for EA Funds’ Long-Term Future Fund (LTFF), which is a fiscally sponsored project of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) and Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. I am not and have never been an employee at either Effective Ventures entity. Opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent that of any of my employers or of either Effective Ventures entity. I originally wanted to make this post a personal shortform, but Caleb Parikh encouraged me to make it a top-level post instead.
There is an increasing number of new grantmakers popping up, and also some fairly rich donors in longtermist EA that are thinking of playing a more active role in their own giving (instead of deferring). I am broadly excited about the diversification of [...]
---
Outline:
(02:13) Reasons against broadly sharing reasons for rejection
(03:16) Select examples
(06:52) Some tradeoffs and other considerations
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
August 23rd, 2023
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
These are my own views, and not those of my employer, EVOps, or of CEA who I have contracted for in the past and am currently contracting for now. This was meant to be a strategy fortnight contribution, but it's now a super delayed/unofficial, and underwritten strategy fortnight contribution. [1]
Before you read this:
This is pretty emotionally raw, so please 1) don’t update too much on it if you think I’m just being dramatic 2) I might come back and endorse or delete this at some point. I’ve put off writing this for a long time, because I know that some of the conclusions or implications might be hurtful or cause me to become even more unpopular than I already feel I am - as a result, I’ve left it really brief, but I’m willing to make it more through if I get the sense that people think it’d be [...]
---
Outline:
(00:21) Before you read this:
(01:20) Summary:
(01:40) Introduction
(02:07) Global EA
(03:19) Narrow EA
(04:58) Reasons I think this is important and should be addressed:
(07:14) Reasons not to address this:
(07:48) Reasons I might be wrong:
(08:16) Other notes:
(09:08) About me:
(09:36) Thanks:
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
August 21st, 2023
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Imagine this: • > Oliver: … Thus we see that donating to the opera is the best way of promoting the arts.> > Eleanor: Okay, but I’m principally int… ---
First published:
January 24th, 2016
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/omoZDu8ScNbot6kXS/beware-surprising-and-suspicious-convergence
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Also available on the Rethink Priorities website.
Executive summary
Plant-based meats, like the Beyond Sausage or Impossible Burger, and cultivated meats have become a source of optimism for reducing animal-based meat usage.
- Public health, environmental, and animal welfare advocates aim to mitigate the myriad harms of meat usage.
- The price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis posits that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat.
- The PTC hypothesis rests on the premise that PTC primarily drive food choice.
The PTC hypothesis and premise are both likely false.
- A majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive.
- PTC do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles.
- Although not examined here, there may exist other viable approaches to drive the replacement of animal-based meats with plant-based meats.
There [...]
Outline:
(00:11) Executive summary
(02:01) Introduction
(07:26) The PTC premise
(13:55) Operationalizing and testing PTC individually
(14:43) Price
(18:13) Taste
(24:35) Convenience
(27:03) Empirical tests of the PTC hypothesis
(28:43) Hypothetical discrete choice experiments
(34:29) Commercial case studies
(37:40) Malan 2022 field experiment
(47:21) Further caveats
(52:09) Conclusions and recommendations
(56:55) Disclosures
(56:58) Author information
(57:05) Acknowledgements
(57:27) Funding
(57:42) Conflicts of interest
(57:55) Open science
(58:02) References
The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
August 15th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iukeBPYNhKcddfFki/price-taste-and-convenience-competitive-plant-based-meat
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
What is the definition of Effective Altruism? What claims does it make? What do you have to believe or do, to be an Effective Altruist?
I don’t think that any of these questions make sense.
It’s not surprising that we ask them: if you asked those questions about feminism or secularism, Islamism or libertarianism, the answers you would get would be relevant and illuminating. Different proponents of the same movement might give you slightly different answers, but synthesising the answers of several people would give you a pretty good feeling for the core of the movement.
But each of these movements is answering a question. Should men and women be equal? (Yes.) What role should the church play in governance? (None.) What kind of government should we have? (One based on Islamic law.) How big a role should government play in people’s private lives? (A small one.)
Effective Altruism isn’t [...]
Outline:
(01:35) What does this mean for how we think and talk about Effective Altruism?
First published:
October 16th, 2014
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FpjQMYQmS3rWewZ83/effective-altruism-is-a-question-not-an-ideology
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
This is a blog post, not a research report, meaning it was produced quickly and is not to Rethink Priorities’ typical standards of substantiveness and careful checking for accuracy.Super quick summaryThis is a list of twenty projects that we (Rethink Priorities’ Existential Security Team) think might be especially promising projects for reducing existential risk, based on our very preliminary and high-level research to identify and compare projects.You can see an overview of the full list here. Here are five ideas we (tentatively) think seem especially promising:Improving info/cybersec at top AI labsAI lab coordinationField building for AI policyFacilitating people’s transition from AI capabilities research to AI safety researchFinding market opportunities for biodefence-relevant technologiesIntroductionWhat is this list?This is a list of projects that we (the Existential Security Team at Rethink Priorities) think are plausible candidates for being top projects for substantially reducing existential risk.The list was generated based on a wide search (resulting in an initial list of around 300 ideas, most of which we did not come up with ourselves[1]) and a shallow, high-level prioritization process (spending between a few minutes and an hour per idea). The process took about 100 total hours of work, spread across three researchers. More details on our research process can be found in the appendix. Note that some of the ideas we considered most promising were excluded from this list due to being confidential, sensitive or particularly high-risk.We’re planning to prioritize projects on this list (as well as other non-public ideas) for further research, as candidates for projects we might eventually incubate. We’re planning to focus exclusively on projects aiming to reduce AI existential risk in 2023 but have included project ideas in other cause areas on this list as we still think those ideas are promising and would be excited about others working on them. More on our team’s strategy here.We’d be potentially excited about others researching, pursuing and supporting the projects on this list, although we don't think this is a be-all-end-all list of promising existential-risk-reducing projects and there are important limitations to this list (see “Key limitations of this list”).Why are we sharing this list and who is it for?By sharing this list, we’re hoping to:Give a sense of what kinds of projects we’re considering incubating and be transparent about our research process and results.Provide inspiration for projects others could consider working on.Contribute to community discussion about existential security entrepreneurship – we’re excited to receive feedback on the list, additional project suggestions, and information about the project areas we highlight (for example, existing projects we may have missed, top ideas not on this list, or reasons that some of our ideas may be worse than we think).You might be interested in looking at this list if you’re:Considering being a founder or early employee of a new project. This list can give you some inspiration for potential project areas to look into. If you’re interested in being a (co-)founder or early employee for one of the projects on this list, feel free to reach out to Marie Buhl [...] ---
First published:
June 21st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AJwuMw7ddcKQNFLcR/20-concrete-projects-for-reducing-existential-risk
Linkpost URL:
https://rethinkpriorities.org/longtermism-research-notes/concrete-projects-for-reducing-existential-risk
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
I'm not very good at feeling the size of large numbers. Once you start tossing around numbers larger than 1,000 (or maybe even 100), the numbers just seem "big".
Consider Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If you told me that Sirius is as big as a million Earths, I would feel like that's a lot of Earths. If, instead, you told me that you could fit a billion Earths inside Sirius … I would still just feel like that's a lot of Earths.
The feelings are almost identical. In context, my brain grudgingly admits that a billion is a lot larger than a million, and puts forth a token effort to feel like a one-billion-Earths-sized star is bigger than a one-million-Earths-sized star. But out of context — if I weren’t anchored at "a million" when [...]
First published:
October 7th, 2014
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hkimyETEo76hJ6NpW/on-caring
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Today is my two-year anniversary with EA NYC, where I serve as director. To say I've learned a lot would be a tremendous understatement. The more visible parts of that learning are often technical: who's doing what in which organization, why [niche thing I'd never heard of] is actually really important, what mentorship opportunities exist for people with [these very specific qualities], how to wrangle 100+ people into a group photo and still have everyone visible. (I've gotten super good at that last part!) But I've also learned—or relearned—some much larger life lessons.
None of the below lessons are wholly novel, but I think they're worth stating for the broader community. Regardless of where I personally am in five or ten years, I think this is a list I'll return to. The contents are simple but so, so easy to forget. Without further ado, here are ten major lessons I've from [...]
Outline:
(01:48) 2. Extremely impressive people have imposter syndrome
(02:30) 3. People often want permission to do good
(03:39) 4. Tempering rejection is a learned skill
(04:22) 5. There are no adults in the room
(04:56) 6. Getting adults in the room requires making room
(05:20) 7. Blank slates are scarier for some than others
(05:51) 8. Inclusivity requires exclusivity
(06:20) 9. People who care a lot can be easy targets for predators
(07:00) 10. You will run into your ex at EAG, or: Social/professional divides are hard without active effort
First published:
August 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oPao8avpq48GPvzDZ/two-years-community-building-ten-lessons-re-learned
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
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Prompted by the FTX collapse, the rapid progress in AI, and increased mainstream acceptance of AI risk concerns, there has recently been a fair amount of discussion among EAs whether it would make sense to rebalance the movement’s portfolio of outreach/recruitment/movement-building activities away from efforts that use EA/EA-related framings and towards projects that instead focus on the constituent causes. In March 2023, Open Philanthropy’s Alexander Berger invited Claire Zabel (Open Phil), James Snowden (Open Phil), Max Dalton (CEA), Nicole Ross (CEA), Niel Bowerman (80k), Will MacAskill (GPI), and myself (Open Phil, staffing the group) to join a working group on this and related questions.
In the end, the group only ended up having two meetings, in part because it proved more difficult than expected to surface key action-relevant disagreements. Prior to the first session, participants circulated relevant memos and their initial thoughts on the topic. The group also did a small [...]
First published:
August 10th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3kMQTjtdWqkxGuWxB/update-on-cause-area-focus-working-group
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
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Actions that have a large impact sometimes don't feel like much. To counteract that bias, I'm sharing arguably the best use of two minutes this month for those in the U.S.
Background
In May, the US Supreme Court upheld the ability of US states to require certain standards for animal products sold within their borders, e.g. California's Prop 12, which banned the sale of animal products that involve certain intensive confinement practices.
It was a huge victory! But after their defeat in the Supreme Court, the animal farming industry has turned to Congress, pushing the EATS Act.
The proposed legislation would take away state power to regulate the kind of agricultural products that enter their borders. Essentially, if any one state permits the production or sale of a particular agricultural product, every other state could have to do so as well, regardless of how dangerous or unethical the product is and regardless of existing [...]
Outline:
(00:14) Background
First published:
August 7th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qgbLr6es2jCwwcGuH/best-use-of-2-minutes-this-month-u-s
Want more? Check out our ML Safety Newsletter for technical safety research.
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I'm working writing more, quicker, and not directly for an EA Forum audience. This is a post copied over from my blog.
I wonder what they’re doing today, the kid whose life I saved. Maybe playing with other kids in their village. Maybe seeking shade with his or her siblings, trying to escape the sub-Saharan African heat. Maybe being held by their mother or grandmother, nurtured.
Whatever they’re doing today, some day they’ll grow up, and they’ll live. They’ll have a first kiss, a favorite dance, a hobby that makes them feel free, a role model they look up to, a best friend… all of it. They’ll live. And I think it will be because of what I did today.
. . .
It isn’t thrilling or adventurous, saving a life in the 21st century. I opened my laptop, clicked my way to a bookmarked website, and donated to a standout charity. Someone watching [...]
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
August 7th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Nvw7dGi4kmuXCDDhH/i-saved-a-kid-s-life-today
Linkpost URL:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/135792543
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Or: “Why EA biosecurity epistemics are whack”
The effective altruism (EA) biosecurity community focuses on reducing the risks associated with global biological catastrophes (GCBRs). This includes preparing for pandemics, improving global surveillance, and developing technologies to mitigate the risks of engineered pathogens. While the work of this community is important, there are significant challenges to developing good epistemics, or practices for acquiring and evaluating knowledge, in this area.
One major challenge is the issue of infohazards. Infohazards are ideas or information that, if widely disseminated, could cause harm. In the context of biosecurity, this could mean that knowledge of specific pathogens or their capabilities could be used to create bioweapons. As a result, members of the EA biosecurity community are often cautious about sharing information, particularly in online forums where it could be easily disseminated. [1]
The issue of infohazards is not straightforward. Even senior biosecurity professionals may have different thresholds for what they [...]
Outline:
(01:57) Challenges for cause and intervention prioritisation
(04:01) Challenges for transparent and trustworthy advocacy
(06:06) What are known best practices?
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
August 5th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3a6QWDhxYTz5dEMag/how-can-we-improve-infohazard-governance-in-ea-biosecurity
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I collected my favorite public pieces of research on AI strategy, governance, and forecasting from 2023 so far.
If you're a researcher, I encourage you to make a quick list of your favorite pieces of research, then think about what makes it good and whether you're aiming at that with your research.
To illustrate things you might notice as a result of this exercise:
I observe that my favorite pieces of research are mostly aimed at some of the most important questions[1]– they mostly identify a very important problem and try to answer it directly.
I observe that for my favorite pieces of research, I mostly would have been very enthusiastic about a proposal to do that research– it's not like I'd have been skeptical about the topic but the research surprised me with how good its results were.[2]
1. Model evaluation for extreme risks (DeepMind, Shevlane et al., May)
Current approaches to building general-purpose AI [...]
Outline:
(00:48) 1. Model evaluation for extreme risks (DeepMind, Shevlane et al., May)
(02:35) 2. Towards best practices in AGI safety and governance: A survey of expert opinion (GovAI, Schuett et al., May)
(04:42) 3. What does it take to catch a Chinchilla? Verifying Rules on Large-Scale Neural Network Training via Compute Monitoring (Shavit, March)
(06:53) 4. Survey on intermediate goals in AI governance (Rethink Priorities, Räuker and Aird, March)
(09:12) 5. Literature Review of Transformative AI Governance (LPP, Maas, forthcoming)
(10:44) 6. “AI Risk Discussions” website: Exploring interviews from 97 AI Researchers (Gates et al., February)
(12:46) 7. What a compute-centric framework says about AI takeoff speeds - draft report (OpenPhil, Davidson, January)
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
July 23rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zzyD8eTbqj7xairmZ/my-favorite-ai-governance-research-this-year-so-far
Linkpost URL:
https://blog.aiimpacts.org/p/my-favorite-ai-governance-research
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I recently resigned as Columbia EA President and have stepped away from the EA community. This post aims to explain my EA experience and some reasons why I am leaving EA. I will discuss poor epistemic norms in university groups, why retreats can be manipulative, and why paying university group organizers may be harmful. Most of my views on university group dynamics are informed by my experience with Columbia EA. My knowledge of other university groups comes from conversations with other organizers from selective US universities, but I don’t claim to have a complete picture of the university group ecosystem.
Disclaimer: I’ve written this piece in a more aggressive tone than I initially intended. I suppose the writing style reflects my feelings of EA disillusionment and betrayal.
My EA Experience
During my freshman year, I heard about a club called Columbia Effective Altruism. Rumor on the street told me it was a cult, [...]
Outline:
(00:51) My EA Experience
(06:18) Epistemic Problems in Undergraduate EA Communities
(08:08) My Best Guess on Why AI Safety Grips Undergraduate Students
(11:22) Caveats
(11:44) How Retreats Can Foster an Epistemically Unhealthy Culture
(12:06) Against Taking Ideas Seriously
(13:16) Why Do People Take Ideas Seriously in Retreats?
(15:09) Other Retreat Issues
(16:16) University Group Organizer Funding
(16:35) Why I Think Paying Organizers May Be Bad
(17:31) Potential Solutions
(18:21) Final Remarks
First published:
August 3rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/euzDpFvbLqPdwCnXF/university-ea-groups-need-fixing
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I'm stepping down as chair of the Long-Term Future Fund. I'm writing this post partially as a loose set of reflections on my time there, and partially as an overall update on what's going on with the fund, as I think we should generally be transparent with donors and grantees, and my sense is the broader community has fairly little insight into the fund's current operations. I'll start with a brief history of what's happened since I joined the fund, and its impact, and move to a few reflections on ways the fund is working now.
(Also-- you can donate to the Long-Term Future Fund here, and let us know here if you might be interested in becoming a fund manager. (The Long-Term Future Fund is part of EA Funds, which is a fiscally sponsored project of Effective Ventures Foundation (UK) (EV UK) and Effective Ventures Foundation USA Inc. (EV US). [...]
Outline:
(00:56) A brief history of my time on the Long-Term Future Fund
(03:29) The fund’s impact
(05:42) Reflections
(05:45) Problems with scale
(11:22) Transparency
First published:
August 2nd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9vazTE4nTCEivYSC6/reflections-on-my-time-on-the-long-term-future-fund
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Views expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer SecureBio.
Summary
- Far-UVC has great promise, but a lot of work still needs to be done
- There still are many important open research questions that need to be answered before the technology can become widely adopted
- Right now, a key priority is to grow the research field and improve coordination
- The main reason far-UVC is so promising is that widespread installation could passively suppress future pandemics before we even learn that an outbreak has occurred
- Higher doses mean more rapid inactivation of airborne pathogens but also more risk for harm to skin, eyes, and through indoor air chemistry. Therefore, the important question in safety is, “How high can far-UVC doses go while maintaining a reasonable risk profile?”
- Existing evidence for skin safety within current exposure guidelines seems pretty robust, and I expect that skin safety won't be the bottleneck for far-UVC deployment at [...]---
First published:
July 31st, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/z8ZWwm4xeHBAiLZ6d/thoughts-on-far-uvc-after-working-in-the-field-for-8-months
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On Tuesday, the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law held a hearing on AI. The hearing involved 3 witnesses – Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthopic), Yoshua Bengio (Turing Award winner, and the second-most cited AI resarcher in the world), and Stuart Russell (Professor of CS at Berkeley, and co-author of the standard textbook for AI). The hearing wound up focusing a surprising amount on AI X-risk and related topics. I originally planned on jotting down all the quotes related to these topics, thinking it would make for a short post of a handful of quotes, which is something I did for a similar hearing by the same subcommittee 2 months ago. Instead, this hearing focused so much on these topics that I wound up with something that’s better described as a partial transcript.All the quotes below are verbatim. Text that is bolded is simply stuff I thought readers might find particularly interesting. If you want to listen to the hearing, you can do so here (it’s around 2.5 hours). You might also find it interesting to compare this post to the one from 2 months ago, to see how the discourse has progressed.Opening remarksSenator Blumenthal:What I have [...]
First published:
July 27th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/67zFQT4GeJdgvdFuk/partial-transcript-of-recent-senate-hearing-discussing-ai-x
Linkpost URL:
https://medium.com/@daniel_eth/ai-x-risk-at-senate-hearing-7104f371ca0b
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TL;DR: When I say “General EA” I am referring to the cluster including the term “effective altruism,” the idea of “big-tent EA,” as well as branding and support of those ideas. This post is a response in opposition to many calls for renaming EA or backing away from an umbrella movement. I make some strategic recommendations and take something of a deep dive using my own personal history/cause prioritization as a case study for why “General EA” works (longpost is long, so there's TL;DRs for each major section). I’m primarily aiming to see if I’m right that there’s a comparatively silent group that supports EA largely as it. If you’re in that category and don’t need the full rationale and story, the call to action is to add a comment linking your favorite “EA win” (success story/accomplishment you’d like to have people associate with EA).Since long before last fall's reckoning, I've been following discussions in the EA community both for or against the "effective altruism" name, debates about rebranding, and calls to splinter the various worldviews currently covered by the EA umbrella into separate groups. There are too many to link, and since this post is ultimately in opposition to them, [...]
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
July 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/FzoMPHtXzTig8pXuh/general-support-for-general-ea
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SummaryWe are launching the Meta Charity Funders, a growing network of donors sharing knowledge and discussing funding opportunities in the EA meta space. Apply for funding by August 27th or join the circle as a donor. See below or visit our website to learn more!If you are doing EA-aligned “meta” work, and have not received substantial funding for several years, you might be worried about funding. Over the past 10 years, Open Philanthropy and EA Funds comprised a large percent of total meta funding and are far from independent of each other. This lack of diversity means potentially effective projects outside their priorities often struggle to stay afloat or scale, and the beliefs of just a few grant-makers can massively shape the EA movement’s trajectory. It can be difficult for funders within meta as well. Individual donors often don’t know where to give if they don’t share EA Funds’ approach. Thorough vetting is scarce and expensive, with only a handful of grant-makers deploying tens of millions per year in meta grants, resulting in sub-optimal allocations. This is why we are launching the Meta Charity Funders, a growing network of donors sharing knowledge, discussing funding opportunities, and running joint open grant rounds in the EA meta [...]
First published:
July 26th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5WLGmCg7vSfXeqSWC/launching-the-meta-charity-funding-circle-mcf-apply-for
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SummaryQuadratic funding (QF) is a mechanism that has gained attention as a potential way to improve resource allocation in a number of philanthropic decision situations. In this post, I explain how the mechanism works, discuss some of its drawbacks, and discuss how these drawbacks relate to several proposed use cases. I argue that its drawbacks severely limit the practical applicability of the mechanism, and that QF will generally not be an attractive option for philanthropic applications.IntroductionQuadratic funding is a mechanism for providing public goods which was first proposed by Buterin, Hitzig and Weil (2019) (henceforth BHW). It is related to (but different from) quadratic voting, and has attracted attention in the philanthropic space in the past few years. For example, Gitcoin and DoraHacks are two of the main platforms that currently use QF for funding software development, with Gitcoin alone distributing over $50 million using this mechanism. WeTrust has used QF for matching donations. The effective altruism (EA) community in particular has also demonstrated interest in the mechanism. Two of its proponents were guests on the 80,000 Hours podcast (Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl), the paper proposing the mechanism has been cited in the GPI research agenda, and a number of EA Forum posts discuss it. One project proposal suggested [...]
The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
July 4th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kHDjtqSiSohZAQyjG/some-thoughts-on-quadratic-funding
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Since writing The Precipice, one of my aims has been to better understand how reducing existential risk compares with other ways of influencing the l…---
First published:
July 18th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Doa69pezbZBqrcucs/shaping-humanity-s-longterm-trajectory
Linkpost URL:
http://files.tobyord.com/shaping-humanity's-longterm-trajectory.pdf
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Since writing The Precipice, one of my aims has been to better understand how reducing existential risk compares with other ways of influencing the l…---
First published:
July 18th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Doa69pezbZBqrcucs/shaping-humanity-s-longterm-trajectory
Linkpost URL:
http://files.tobyord.com/shaping-humanity's-longterm-trajectory.pdf
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Formerly known as "Aaron's Epistemic Stories", which stops working as a title when it's on the Forum and people aren't required to read it.What is this post?A story about how I reacted poorly to my first few EA job rejections, and what I learned from reflecting on my mistakes.Context: When I worked at CEA, my colleague was working on EA Virtual Program curricula. She asked me to respond to this prompt:"What made you start caring about having good epistemics? What made you start trying to improve your epistemics? Why?"I wrote a meandering, stream-of-consciousness response and shared it. I assumed it would either be ignored or briefly summarized as part of a larger piece. Instead, it — went directly to the curriculum for the In-Depth Program?That was a surprise.[1] It was a much bigger surprise when people started reaching out to tell me how much it had helped them: maybe a dozen times over the last two years. From the emails alone, it seems to be the most important thing I've written.[2]So I'm sharing a lightly edited version on the Forum, in case it helps anyone else. Recovering from rejectionAfter I graduated from college, I took the most profitable job I could find, at a company in a cheap city. I wanted to save money so I could be flexible later. So far, so good.I started an EA group at the company, which kept me thinking about effective altruism on a regular basis even without my college group. It wasn’t nearly as fun to run as the college group — people who work full-time jobs don't like extra meetings, and my co-organizers kept getting other jobs and leaving. But I still felt like “part of EA”.Eventually, I decided to move on from the company. So I applied to GiveWell, got to the very last step of the application process… and got rejected.Well, I thought, I guess it makes sense that I’m not qualified for an EA job. My grades weren’t great, and I was never a big researcher in college. Time to do something else.(This is a story about a mistake. Do you see it?)I moved to San Diego and spent the next 18 months as a freelance tutor and writer, feeling generally dissatisfied with my life. My local group met rarely and far away; I had no car, I was busy with family stuff, and I became less and less engaged with EA.Through an old connection, I was introduced to a couple who ran an EA-aligned foundation and lived nearby. I ended up doing part-time operations work for them — reading papers, emailing charities with questions, and other EA-flavored stuff.This boosted my confidence and led me to think harder about my career, though I kept running into limitations. For example, GiveDirectly’s CEO wanted to hire a research assistant for his lab at UCSD, but I’d totally forgotten my old R classes and wasn’t a good candidate, despite having a great connection from my operations work. There goes maybe the best opportunity I’ll ever [...]---
First published:
July 3rd, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NDRBZNc2sBy5MC8Fw/recovering-from-rejection-my-piece-for-the-in-depth-ea
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On May 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a 2018 California law, Proposition 12, which banned the sale of certain animal products that did not meet minimum welfare standards. Especially now that such ballot initiatives have withstood legal challenges, a relevant question we might ask is: how cost-effective were initiatives like Proposition 12 at reducing farmed animal suffering? Below is the executive summary of a report I wrote for Rethink Priorities analyzing the cost-effectiveness of not just Proposition 12, but also three other historical animal welfare ballot initiatives in the United States. In this report, I also compared the results to the cost-effectiveness of corporate campaigns. The full report is viewable here with a detailed discussion of the methodology and results. Executive SummaryKey ResultsIn this report, I estimated the impact and cost-effectiveness of four historical United States ballot initiatives that either restricted the use of common animal confinement methods (including extremely confining stalls and tethering for veal calves, extremely confining gestation crates for breeding sows, and conventional cages for egg-laying hens), set minimum per-animal space requirements, and/or mandated cage-free systems for egg-laying hens.[1] These initiatives are Arizona Proposition 204 (2006), California Proposition 2 (2008), Massachusetts Question 3 (2016), and California Proposition 12 (2018).The three metrics of impact I estimated were: The number of years of improved animal welfare produced per dollar spent passing the initiatives for three animal types (veal calves, breeding sows, and egg-laying hens);The estimated years of disabling pain-equivalent suffering[2] alleviated per dollar for veal calves, breeding sows, and egg-laying hens; and The relative years of improved hen welfare and disabling pain-equivalent suffering avoided per dollar per year of counterfactual impact compared to corporate cage-free campaigns,[3] rated using an equivalent metric. I estimated these metrics by building a Monte Carlo model in Causal that used data on state population sizes, per-capita animal product consumption, state animal populations, and campaign fundraising amounts to estimate the number of animals whose quality of life was improved over the first four years in which the ballot initiatives were in place. In addition, for egg-laying hens specifically, I used data from the Welfare Footprint Project to estimate the years of suffering alleviated by the transition away from conventional cages for the ballot initiatives that included egg-laying hens (Welfare Footprint Project). Finally, I compared the per-dollar years of improved welfare generated and suffering avoided by ballot initiatives to that accomplished by corporate campaigns, using cost-effectiveness estimates from Saulius Šimčikas, the estimated number of animals whose lives were improved, and the Welfare Footprint data.The key takeaways are:Among all species, about 5.0 years of animal life were improved per dollar spent (with a 90-percentile range between 3.9 and 6.4 years per dollar). This translates into approximately 0.10 years of suffering avoided per dollar spent on all four ballot initiatives, with a 90-percentile range from 0.05 years per dollar to 0.14 years per dollar.Helping egg-laying hens is, by far, the most impactful farmed animal welfare reform.Nearly all (about 99%) of the reductions in farmed-animal suffering by these four initiatives can be attributed to bans on battery [...]The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
June 20th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EEMpNRJK5qqCw6zqH/a-cost-effectiveness-analysis-of-historical-farmed-animal
Linkpost URL:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p7xqop2FlIF8Kw45za0NnJPwvUA70Mb1UzjijMRKRr8/edit?usp=sharing
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WHY WRITE A POST ABOUT THEORIES OF CHANGE?As participants in a movement with ‘effective’ in its name, it’s easy to think of ourselves as being above falling for the most common mistakes made in the…The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
July 16th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9t7St3pfEEiDsQ2Tr/nailing-the-basics-theories-of-change
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Announcing Fatebook: a website that makes it extremely low friction to make and track predictions. …---
First published:
July 11th, 2023
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DWFRBzK3rAH3HFDZr/fatebook-the-fastest-way-to-make-and-track-predictions
Linkpost URL:
https://fatebook.io
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Epistemic status: layperson’s attempt to understand the relevant considerations. I welcome corrections from anyone with a better understanding of welfare biology SummaryThe Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) has a novel opportunity to spend up to $115,500 to purchase and install electric stunners at multiple shrimp farmsThe stunners would be used to stun shrimp prior to slaughter, likely rendering them unconscious and thereby preventing suffering that is currently experienced when shrimp asphyxiate or freeze without effective analgesics Based on formal agreements SWP has signed with multiple producers, raising $115,500 would enable the stunning (rather than rather than conventional slaughtering) of 1.7 billion shrimp over the next three years, for a ratio of nearly 15000 shrimp/dollar I performed a preliminary cost-effectiveness analysis of this initiative and reached the following three tentative conclusions:The expected cost-effectiveness distribution for electric shrimp stunning likely overlaps that of corporate hen welfare campaignsThe cost-effectiveness of electric shrimp stunning is more likely to be lower than that of corporate hen welfare campaigns than it is to be higherShrimp stunning is a very heavy-tailed intervention. The mean cost-effectiveness of stunning is significantly influenced by a few extreme cases, which mostly represent instances in which the undiluted experience model of welfare turns out to be correctGiven these results, electric shrimp stunning might be worth supporting as a somewhat speculative bet in the animal welfare space. Considerations that might drive donor decisions on this project include risk tolerance, credence in the undiluted experience model of welfare, and willingness to take a hits-based giving approach.Description of the OpportunityThe following information is quoted from the project description written by Marcus Abramovitch on the Manifund donation platform, based on information provided by Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla (CEO of SWP) : Project summaryShrimp Welfare Project is an organization of people who believe that shrimps are capable of suffering and deserve our moral consideration [1]. We aim to cost-effectively reduce the suffering of billions of shrimps and envision a world where shrimps don't suffer needlessly.Programme: our current most impactful intervention is to place electrical stunners with producers ($60k/stunner): We have signed agreements with 2 producers willing and able to use electrical stunning technology as part of their slaughter process which will materially reduce the acute suffering at the last few minutes / hours of shrimps lives. Collectively, these 2 agreements will impact more than half a billion animals per year at a rate of more than 4,000 shrimps/dollar/annum. Please take a look at our blog post on the first agreement here. We are in advanced negotiations with 2 more producers which would take the number of animals to more than 1 billion shrimps per annum.See our back-of-the-envelope calculation for the number of shrimps and cost-effectiveness analysis hereProject goalsSimplified end-game of this programme: the interim goal of placing these stunners with selected producers in different contexts/systems is to remove some perceived obstacles to the industry and show major retailers and other shrimp buyers that electrical stunning is something they can demand from their supply chain The ultimate goal is for electrical stunning to be:widely adopted by medium to large shrimp producers [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CmAexqqvnRLcBojpB/electric-shrimp-stunning-a-potential-high-impact-donation
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This is a linkpost for "Forecasting Existential Risks: Evidence from a Long-Run Forecasting Tournament," accessible here: https://forecastingresearch.org/s/XPT.pdfToday, the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) released "Forecasting Existential Risks: Evidence from a Long-Run Forecasting Tournament", which describes the results of the Existential-Risk Persuasion Tournament (XPT).The XPT, which ran from June through October of 2022, brought together forecasters from two groups with distinctive claims to knowledge about humanity’s future — experts in various domains relevant to existential risk, and "superforecasters" with a track record of predictive accuracy over short time horizons. We asked tournament participants to predict the likelihood of global risks related to nuclear weapon use, biorisks, and AI, along with dozens of other related, shorter-run forecasts.Some major takeaways from the XPT include:The median domain expert predicted a 20% chance of catastrophe and a 6% chance of human extinction by 2100. The median superforecaster predicted a 9% chance of catastrophe and a 1% chance of extinction. Superforecasters predicted considerably lower chances of both catastrophe and extinction than did experts, but the disagreement between experts and superforecasters was not uniform across topics. Experts and superforecasters were furthest apart (in percentage point terms) on AI risk, and most similar on the risk of nuclear war.Predictions about risk were highly correlated across topics. For example, participants who gave higher risk estimates for AI also gave (on average) higher risk estimates for biorisks and nuclear weapon use.Forecasters with higher “intersubjective accuracy”—i.e., those best at predicting the views of other participants—estimated lower probabilities of catastrophic and extinction risks from all sources.Few minds were changed during the XPT, even among the most active participants, and despite monetary incentives for persuading others.See the full working paper here.FRI hopes that the XPT will not only inform our understanding of existential risks, but will also advance the science of forecasting by:Collecting a large set of forecasts resolving on a long timescale, in a rigorous setting. This will allow us to measure correlations between short-run (2024), medium-run (2030) and longer-run (2050) accuracy in the coming decades.Exploring the use of bonus payments for participants who both 1) produced persuasive rationales and 2) made accurate “intersubjective” forecasts (i.e., predictions of the predictions of other participants), which we are testing as early indicators of the reliability of long-range forecasts.Encouraging experts and superforecasters to interact: to share knowledge, debate, and attempt to persuade each other. We plan to explore the value of these interactions in future work.As a follow-up to our report release, we are producing a series of posts on the EA Forum that will cover the XPT's findings on:AI risk (in 6 posts):OverviewDetails on AI riskDetails on AI timelinesXPT forecasts on some key AI inputs from Ajeya Cotra's biological anchors reportXPT forecasts on some key AI inputs from Epoch's direct approach modelConsensus on the expected shape of development of AI progressOverview of findings on biorisk (1 post)Overview of findings on nuclear risk (1 post)Overview of findings from miscellaneous forecasting questions (1 post)FRI's planned next steps for this research agenda, along with a request for input on what FRI should do next (1 post) Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/un42vaZgyX7ch2kaj/announcing-forecasting-existential-risks-evidence-from-a
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IntroductionLast year, one conversation left a lasting impression on me. A friend remarked on the challenges of navigating "corrupting forces" in the Bay Area. Intrigued by this statement, I decided to investigate the state of affairs in the Bay if I had the chance. So when I got the opportunity to visit Berkeley in February 2023, I prepared a set of interview questions. Can you share an experience where you had difficulty voicing your opinion? What topics are hard to clearly think about due to social pressures and factors related to your EA community or EA in general? Is there anything about your EA community that makes you feel alienated? What is your attitude towards dominant narratives in Berkeley? [1] In the end, I formally interviewed fewer than ten people and had more casual conversations about these topics with around 30 people. Most people were involved in AI alignment to some extent. The content for this collection of vignettes draws from the experience of around ten people. [2] I chose the content for the vignettes for one of two reasons – potential representativity and potential extraordinariness. I hypothesized that some experiences represent the wider EA Berkeley community accurately. Others, I included because they surprised me, and I wanted to find out how common they are. All individuals gave me their consent to post the vignettes in their current form. How did I arrive at these vignettes? It was a four-step process. First, I conducted the interviews while jotting down notes. For the more casual conversations, I took notes afterwards. The second step involved transcribing these notes into write-ups. After that, I obscured any identifying details to ensure the anonymity of the interviewees. Lastly, I converted the write-ups into vignettes by condensing them into narratives and honing in on key points while trying to retain the essence of what was said.I tried to reduce artistic liberties by asking participants to give feedback on how close the vignettes were to the spirit of what they meant (or think they meant at the time). It is worth noting that I bridged some gaps with my own interpretations of the conversations, relying on the participants to point out inaccuracies. By doing that, I might have anchored their responses. Moreover, people provided different levels of feedback. Some shared thorough, detailed reviews pointing out many imprecisions and misconceptions. Sometimes, that process spanned multiple feedback cycles. Other participants gave minimal commentary.Because I am publishing the vignettes months after the conversations and interviews, I want to include how attitudes have changed in the intervening period. I generalised the attitudes into the following categories:Withdrawn endorsement (Status: The interviewee endorsed the following content during the interview but no longer endorses it at the time of publication.)Weakened endorsement (Status: The interviewee has weakened their endorsement of the following content since the interview.)Unchanged endorsement (Status: The interviewee maintains their endorsement of the following content, which has remained unchanged since the interview.)Strengthened endorsement (Status: The interviewee has strengthened their endorsement of the following content since the interview.)I clustered the vignettes according [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WxqyXbyQiEjiAsoJr/the-seeker-s-game-vignettes-from-the-bay
The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
Linkpost URL:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yXLEcd9eixWucKGHg/the-seeker-s-game-vignettes-from-the-bay
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This is a tough one to post, it’s also a little off topic for the forum. I went back and forth a great deal about whether to crosspost it anyway, and ultimately decided to, since I have in some ways posted on this topic here before, and since there are several parts that are directly relevant to Effective Altruism (the last three sections all have substantial relevance of some sort). Doing this also makes it easier for this to be relatively public, and so to get some difficult conversations over with. The short version of it is that I’ve been an alcoholic, mostly in secret, for about three years now. This blogpost is a lengthy dive into different observations about it, and ways it has changed my mind on various issues. I don’t want to post the whole thing below because, well, frankly it’s huge and only occasionally relevant, so instead I’m going to post some relevant quotes as people often do with linkposts of things they didn’t write. There’s a good deal more in the link.
First, here’s a quick summary of how things got started:
“I started drinking during early 2020, when as far as I can tell there was no special drama going on with Effective Altruism, and I had already been involved with it in a similar capacity for a couple years. Most of the alcoholics I’ve met at this point either got started or got significantly worse during the pandemic, I was no different.
But the truth is my drinking even then wasn’t terribly dramatic a coping mechanism. There was never anything that meaningfully ‘drove me to drink’. The idea that drinking at this point could land me here wasn’t part of my decision at all, I was just kind of bored and lonely and decided it would be a fun treat to drink a beer or two at night – something I had very rarely done before.
As the pandemic wore on, it became something I looked forward to more and more, and eventually I discovered the appeal of hard liquor, which I never switched back from, and eventually I started working on my thesis for my first MA. The combination of my thesis and hard liquor turned a casual habit and minor coping mechanism into something more obviously hard for me to let go of. Over the course of the next three years things got slowly worse from there, and I came to realize more and more how little control I had.
It wasn’t some meaningful part of the larger story of my life, replete with a buried darkness in my soul coming to the forefront, or a unique challenge driven by terrible circumstances. I have had to push back in therapy repeatedly on these subtler and more interesting attempts to make something of the event. The truth is sober reflection makes it all look like little more than a meaningless tragedy.”
Here are some reflections on what [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/F2MfbmRAiMx2PDhaD/some-observations-on-alcoholism
Linkpost URL:
https://www.thinkingmuchbetter.com/main/alcoholism/
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Manifund is launching a new regranting program! We will allocate ~$2 million over the next six months based on the recommendations of our regrantors. Grantees can apply for funding through our site;… Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RMXctNAksBgXgoszY/announcing-manifund-regrants
Linkpost URL:
https://manifund.org/rounds/regrants
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Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) is an outstanding Charity Entrepreneurship-incubated charity recognized externally for its impactful work by RP, Founders Pledge, Schmidt Futures, and Open Philanthropy. It's one of the clearest cases of new charities having a profound impact on the world. However, everything is clear in hindsight; it now seems obvious that this was a great idea and team to fund, but who funded LEEP at the earliest stage? Before any of the aforementioned bodies would have considered or looked at them, who provided funding when $60k made the difference between launching and not existing? The CE Seed Network, so far, has been a rather well-kept secret. They are the first people to see each new batch of CE-incubated charities and make a decision on whether and how much to support them. A handful of donors supported LEEP in its earliest days, culminating in the excellent charity we see today. Some of them donated anonymously, never seeking credit or the limelight, just quietly making a significant impact. Others engaged deeply and regularly with the team, eventually becoming trusted board members. Historically, the Seed Network has been a small group (~30) of primarily E2G-focused EAs, invited by the CE team or alumni from the CE program to join. However, now we are opening it up for expressions of interest for those who might want to join in future rounds. Our charity production has doubled (from 5 to 10 charities a year) and although our Seed Network has grown, there is still room for more members to join to support our next batches of charities. We have now created a website to describe how it works. On that website, there's an application form for those who might be a good fit to be a member in the future. It’s not a great fit for everyone as it focuses on the CE (near-termist) cause areas and donors who could donate over $10k a year to new charities and can make a decision on whether and whom to fund with how much in a short period of time when we send out the newest project proposals (~9 days). But for those who fit, we think it's one of the most impactful ways to donate. Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t6JzBxtrXjLRufE8o/who-was-the-funder-that-counterfactually-resulted-in-leep
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TL;DR: We are excited to announce our Research Training Program. This online program is designed to equip participants with the tools and skills needed to identify, compare, and recommend the most effective charities and interventions. It is a full-time, fully cost-covered program that will run online for 11 weeks. Apply here!Deadline for application: July 17, 2023The program dates are: October 2 - December 17So far, Charity Entrepreneurship has launched and run two successful training programs: a Charity Incubation Program and a Foundation Program. Now we are piloting a third - a Research Training Program, which will tackle a different problem: The Problem:People: Many individuals are eager to enter research careers, level up their current knowledge and skills from junior to senior, or simply make their existing skills more applicable to work within EA framework/organizations. At the same time, research organizations have trouble filling a senior-level researcher talent gap. There is a scarcity of specific training opportunities for the niche skills required, such as intervention prioritization and cost-effectiveness analyses, which are hard to learn through traditional avenues. Ideas: A lack of capacity for exhaustive investigation means there are a multitude of potentially impactful intervention ideas that remain unexplored. There may be great ideas being missed, as with limited time we will only get to the most obvious solutions that other people are likely to have thought of as well. Evaluation: Unlike the for-profit sector, the nonprofit sector lacks clear metrics for assessing an organization's actual impact. External evaluations can help nonprofits evaluate and reorganize their own effectiveness, and also allow funders to choose the highest impact opportunities available to them- potentially unlocking more funding (sometimes limited by lack of public external evaluation). There are some great organizations that carry out evaluations (e.g., GiveWell), but they are constrained by capacity and have limited scope; this results in several potentially worthwhile organizations remaining unassessed.Who Is This Program For?Motivated researchers who want to produce trusted research outputs to improve the prioritization and allocation decisions of effectiveness-minded organizationsEarly career individuals who are seeking to build their research toolkits and gain practical experience through real projectsExisting researchers in the broader Global Health and Well-being (global health, animal advocacy, mental health, heath/bio security, etc.) communities who are interested in approaching research from an effectiveness-minded perspectiveWhat Does Being a Fellow Involve?Similar to our Charity Incubation Program, the first month focuses on learning generalizable and specific research skills. It involves watching training videos, reading materials, and practicing by applying those skills to concrete mini research projects. Participants learn by doing while we provide guidance and lots of feedback.The second month is focused on applying skills, working on different stages of the research process, and producing final research reports- that could be used to guide real decision-making.Frequent feedback on your projects from experts researchersRegular check-in calls with a mentor for troubleshooting, guidance on research, and your career Writing reports on a selected topicsOpportunity to connect with established researchers and explore potential job opportunitiesAssistance with editing your cause area report for publication and disseminationWhat Are We Offering?11 weeks of online, full-time training with practical research assignments, expert mentoring, feedback, and published output "Shovel ready" research topics that are highly promising, [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AdouuTH7esiDQPExz/announcing-ce-s-new-research-training-program-apply-now
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There was a debate on the statement “AI research and development poses an existential threat” (“x-risk” for short), with Max Tegmark and Yoshua Bengio arguing in favor, and Yann LeCun and Melanie Mitchell arguing against. The YouTube link is here, and a previous discussion on this forum is here.The first part of this blog post is a list of five ways that I think the two sides were talking past each other. The second part is some apparent key underlying beliefs of Yann and Melanie, and how I might try to change their minds.[1]While I am very much on the “in favor” side of this debate, I didn’t want to make this just a “why Yann’s and Melanie’s arguments are all wrong” blog post. OK, granted, it’s a bit of that, especially in the second half. But I hope people on the “anti” side will find this post interesting and not-too-annoying.Five ways people were talking past each other1. Treating efforts to solve the problem as exogenous or notThis subsection doesn’t apply to Melanie, who rejected the idea that there is any existential risk in the foreseeable future. But Yann suggested that there was no existential risk because we will solve it; whereas Max and Yoshua argued that we should acknowledge that there is an existential risk so that we can solve it.By analogy, fires tend not to spread through cities because the fire department and fire codes keep them from spreading. Two perspectives on this are:If you’re an outside observer, you can say that “fires can spread through a city” is evidently not a huge problem in practice.If you’re the chief of the fire department, or if you’re developing and enforcing fire codes, then “fires can spread through a city” is an extremely serious problem that you’re thinking about constantly.I don’t think this was a major source of talking-past-each-other, but added a nonzero amount of confusion.2. Ambiguously changing the subject to “timelines to x-risk-level AI”, or to “whether large language models (LLMs) will scale to x-risk-level AI”The statement under debate was “AI research and development poses an existential threat”. This statement does not refer to any particular line of AI research, nor any particular time interval. The four participants’ positions in this regard seemed to be:Max and Yoshua: Superhuman AI might happen in 5-20 years, and LLMs have a lot to do with why a reasonable person might believe that.Yann: Human-level AI might happen in 5-20 years, but LLMs have nothing to do with that. LLMs have fundamental limitations. But other types of ML research could get there—e.g. my (Yann’s) own research program.Melanie: LLMs have fundamental limitations, and Yann’s research program is doomed to fail as well. The kind of AI that might pose an x-risk will absolutely not happen in the foreseeable future. (She didn’t quantify how many years is the “foreseeable future”.)It seemed to me that all four participants (and the moderator!) were making timelines and LLM-related arguments, in ways that were both annoyingly vague, and unrelated to the statement under debate.(If astronomers found a [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LEEcSn4gt7nBwBghk/munk-ai-debate-confusions-and-possible-cruxes
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This post is a slightly belated contribution to the Strategy Fortnight. It represents my personal takes only; I’m not speaking on behalf of any organisation I’m involved with. For some context on how I’m now thinking about talking in public, I’ve made a shortform post here [link]. Thanks to the many people who provided comments on a draft of this post. Intro and OverviewHow does decision-making in EA work? How should it work? In particular: to what extent is decision-making in EA centralised, and to what extent should it be centralised? These are the questions I’m going to address in this post. In what follows, I’ll use “EA” to refer to the actual set of people, practices and institutions in the EA movement, rather than EA as an idea.My broad view is that EA as a whole is currently in the worst of both worlds with respect to centralisation. We get the downsides of appearing (to some) like a single entity without the benefits of tight coordination and clear decision-making structures that centralised entities have.It’s hard to know whether the right response to this is to become more centralised or less. In this post, I’m mainly hoping just to start a discussion of this issue, as it’s one that impacts a wide number of decisions in EA. [1] At a high level, though, I currently think that the balance of considerations tends to push in favour of decentralisation relative to where we are now. But centralisation isn’t a single spectrum, and we can break it down into sub-components. I’ll talk about this in more depth later in the post, but here are some ways in which I think EA should become more decentralised:Perception: At the very least, wider perception should reflect reality on how (de)centralised EA is. That means:Core organisations and people should communicate clearly (and repeatedly) about their roles and what they do and do not take ownership for. (I agree with Joey Savoie’s post, which he wrote independently of this one.)We should, insofar as we can, cultivate a diversity of EA-associated public figures.[Maybe] The EA Forum could be renamed. (Note that many decisions relating to CEA will wait until it has a new executive director).[Maybe] CEA could be renamed. (This is suggested by Kaleem here.)Funding: It’s hard to fix, but it would be great to have a greater diversity of funding sources. That means:Recruiting more large donors.Some significant donor or donors start a regranters program.More people pursue earning to give, or donate more (though I expect this “diversity of funding” consideration to have already been baked-in to most people’s decision-making on this). Luke Freeman has a moving essay about the continued need for funding here.Decision-making: Some projects that are currently housed within EV could spin out and become their own legal entities. The various different projects within EV have each been thinking through whether it makes sense for them to spin out. I expect around half of the projects will ultimately spin out over the coming year or two, which seems positive from my perspective.[Maybe] CEA could partly dissolve into sub-projects.Culture:We could [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DdSszj5NXk45MhQoq/decision-making-and-decentralisation-in-ea
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Epistemic Status: This is a subject I've been casually thinking about for a while, but I wrote this document fairly quickly. Take this with a big grain of salt. This is written in a personal capacity.A lot of EA, especially in meta and longtermism, is made up of small organizations and independent researchers. This provides some benefits, but I think the downsides are substantial and often unappreciated. More clearly:EA funding mostly comes from a very few funders, but it goes to a mass of small organizations. My impression is that this is an unusual combination.I think that there are a lot of important downsides to having things split up into a bunch of small nonprofits.I'm suspicious of many of the reasons for having small organizations that I've come across. There might well still be good reasons I haven't heard or that haven't been suggested.I suggest some potential changes we could make to try to get some of the best incremental tradeoffs.DownsidesLow Management FlexibilityIf you want to quickly create a new project in a sizeable organization, you can pull people from existing teams. This requires upper management but is normal for said management. On the other hand, if you instead have a bunch of tiny independent organizations, your options are much more limited. Managers of tiny organizations can be near-impossible to move around because many of them own key funding relationships. Pulling together employees from different organizations is a pain, as no one has the authority to directly do this. The best you can do is slowly encourage people to join said new project.Moving people around is crucial for startups and tech firms. The first version Amazon Prime was made in under two months, in large part because Jeff Bezos was able to rapidly deploy the right people to it. At other tech companies, some amounts of regularly rotating team members is considered healthy. Strong software engineers get to work on many projects and people.Small nonprofit teams with locked-in mission statements are the opposite of this. This rigidness could be good for donors with little trust, but it comes at a substantial cost of flexibility.I’ve seen several projects in EA come up that could use rapid labor. Funding rounds seem particularly labor-intensive. It often seems to me like it should be possible to pull trusted people from existing organizations for a few weeks or months, but doing so is awkward because they’re formally part of separate organizations with specific mission statements and funding agreements.A major thing that managers at sizeable organizations do is size up requests for labor changes. The really good requests (with good managers) get quickly moved forward, and the bad ones are shot down. This is hard to do without clear, able, and available authorities.Low Employee FlexibilityEmployees that join small organizations with narrow missions can be assured that they will work on those missions. But if they ever want to try working with a different team or project, even just for a few months, the only option is often that [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/P55P4YJoncfQmZ2RR/downsides-of-small-organizations-in-ea
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StatusWhile this is part of EA Strategy Fortnight, my intention is to focus more on what effective altruism did well, rather than what it should do. At the same time, my hope would be that the post provides the community with at least some valuable context to the discussions about the path forward.This post will be very subjective and a lot less thought-through than what I am usually comfortable sharing, although built on ~13 years of experience in the field. Some details may be off, for example by memory distortion or indirect testimonies. Nevertheless, it’s truthful to my internal models – when I walk and talk to my dog about this kind of stuff, you can expect my mind to go in the same direction as this post.Kisiel, my co-author, that prefer to stay as a lurker.ContextRecently, there has been a lot of attention directed at effective altruism. Some was external, but, from my perspective, most of it came from within the movement. My interpretation was that at least a portion of it was built on feelings of anxiety, doubt, and maybe some anger or fear. Of course, a lot of concerns seemed to me legitimized by what was happening or what we were discovering.In some way, I was worried about the community I identify as part of, but at the same time, there was this feeling of appreciation that we can go together through a crisis. It’s a lesson for a young movement, and experience is invaluable. Just like it’s better to learn hard lessons about life as a teenager than an adult, of course ideally with not much harm involved.The energy spent on inward focus felt encouraging, even though I disagreed with a chunk of the opinions. After all, some of the values of effective altruism I’m the most optimistic about are openness to criticism, intellectual humility, and truth-seeking. But the more external and internal takes I was reading, the more something seemed off. Something was missing.It felt one-sided. There was almost no mention of successes and wins – some appreciation of what this very young and weird movement managed to achieve in such a short period of time. Maybe I shouldn’t expect this in adversarial pieces about EA, and maybe it was implied when people were making criticism internally, but it still didn’t feel fully right to me.It felt like we all take effective altruism for granted. There was not much gratitude in the air.Maybe one can argue that EA hasn’t done much. While I have my strong intuitions on the counterfactual impact of EA in many areas, in the end I don’t feel fully qualified here, so I would prefer to defer. Yet, I’m confident that there is at least one success we should celebrate, and it’s very much absent from the discourse – making historical progress for animals.Animal advocate’s lens on effective altruismThis is my take on the short path of effective altruism’s impact on animals. Please note that I came from the part of [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GCaRhu84NuCdBiRz8/ea-s-success-no-one-cares-about
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I’m sharing the below as part of the EA Strategy Fortnight. I think there’s value in discussing what the role of effective giving in the EA community should be, as (1) I expect people have quite different views on this, and (2) I think there are concrete things we should do differently based on our views here (I share some suggestions at the bottom of this post).These claims or similar ones have been made by others in various places (e.g. here, here, and here), but I thought it'd be useful to put them together in one place so people can critique them not only one-by-one but also as a set. This post doesn’t make a well-supported argument for all these claims and suggestions: many are hypotheses on which I’d love to see more data and/or pushback.Full disclosure: I work at Giving What We Can (though these are my personal views).Claim 1: Giving effectively and significantly should be normal in the EA communityMore concretely, I think it would be desirable and feasible for most people who currently self-associate with EA to give at least 10% of their income to high-impact funding opportunities (e.g. by taking the GWWC Pledge) or to be on their way there (e.g. by taking the Trial Pledge).[1]I think this is desirable for three reasons: (1) effective giving is — in absolute terms — an incredibly efficient way for us to convert resources into impact,[2] (2) even for individuals who may have more impact directly through their careers, giving effectively is often highly cost-effective on the margin[3] and is not mutually exclusive with their direct impact (so worth doing!)[4], and (3) there are many positive effects for the EA community as a whole from having effective giving as a norm.[5]I also think this is feasible. There are good reasons for some people to not give at some points in their lives — for instance, if it leaves someone with insufficient resources to live a comfortable life, or if it would interfere strongly with the impact someone could have in their career. However, I expect these situations will be the exception rather than the rule within the current EA community,[6] and even where they do apply there are often ways around them (e.g. exceptions to the Pledge for students and people who are unemployed).Claim 2: Giving effectively and significantly should not be required in the EA communityI think we should positively encourage everyone in the EA community who can give effectively and significantly to do so, and celebrate people when they do — but I don’t think that this should be an (implied) requirement for people in order to “feel at home” in the community, for a couple of reasons: EA is about using one's resources to try to do the most good, and its community should be accessible to people who want to use different types of resources to do this (e.g. money, time, network, expertise).Moreover, we don’t want the EA community to intentionally or unintentionally select only for people who have significant financial resources: we would be missing out on many (if not most) of the people we [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zohs3eYHd8WdhF88M/four-claims-about-the-role-of-effective-giving-in-the-ea
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This post is part of EA Strategy Fortnight. You can see other Strategy Fortnight posts here.I’ve been reflecting on the role of funding in the EA movement & community over time. Specifically I wanted to improve common knowledge around funding flows in the EA movement building space. It seems that many people may not be aware of it. Funders (and the main organizations they have supported) have shaped the EA community in many ways - the rate & speed at which EA has grown (example), the people that are attracted and given access to opportunities, and the culture and norms the community embodies and the overall ecosystem. I share some preliminary results from research I’ve conducted looking at the historical flow of data to movement building sources. I wanted to share what I have so far for the strategy fortnight to get conversation started. I think there is enough information here to understand the general pattern of funding flows. If you want to play around with the data, here is my (raw, messy) spreadsheet.Key observations Total funding 2012-2013 by known sourcesAccording to known funding sources, approximately $245M have been granted to EA movement building organizations and projects since 2012. I’d estimate the real number is something like $250-280M. The Open Philanthropy EA Community Growth (Longtermism) team (OP LT) has directed ~64% ($159M) of known movement building funding (incl. ~5% or $12M to the EAIF) since 2016. Note that OP launched an EACG program for Global Health and Wellbeing in 2022, which started making grants in 2023. Their budget is significantly smaller (currently ~$10M per year) and they currently prioritize effective giving organizations.The unlabeled dark blue segment is “other donors”Funders of EA Groups from 2015-2022 See discussion below for description of the "CEA - imputed" category. Note that I’ve primarily estimated paid organizer time, not general groups expenses. EA groups are an important movement building project. The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) has had an outsized influence on EA groups for much of the history of the EA movement. Until May 2021, CEA was the primary funder of part- and full-time work on EA groups. In May 2021, CEA narrowed its scope to certain university & city/national groups, and the EA Infrastructure Fund (EAIF) started making grants to non-target groups. In 2022, OP LT took over most university groups funding from both CEA (in April) and EAIF (in August). Until 2021 most of CEA’s funding has come from OP LT, so its EA groups funding can be seen as an OP LT regrant. Breakdown of funding by source and time (known sources)2012-2016Before 2016, there was very limited funding available for meta projects and almost no support from institutional funders. Most organizations active during this period were funded by individual earning-to-givers and major donors or volunteer-run. Here’s a view of funding from 2012-2016:No donations from Jaan Tallinn during this period were via SFF as it didn’t exist yet. There is a $10K donation from OP to a UC Berkeley group in 2015 that is not visible in the main chart. “Other donors” includes mostly individual [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nnTQaLpBfy2znG5vm/the-flow-of-funding-in-ea-movement-building
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Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies that make what they call “cultivated chicken,” said Wednesday that they have gotten approval from the US Department of Agriculture to start producing their cell-based proteins.Good Meat, which is owned by plant-based egg substitute maker Eat Just, said that production is starting immediately. Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sPnNyG79CcSZq9avo/lab-grown-meat-is-cleared-for-sale-in-the-united-states
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Gesturing at a thing to mostly avoid. My personal opinion. This topic has been discussed on the EA Forum before, e.g. Free-spending EA might be a big problem (2022) and The biggest risk of free-spending EA is grift (2022). I also wrote What's Your Hourly Rate? in 2013, and Value of time as an employee in 2019. This piece mostly stands on its own. There's a temptation, when solving the world's toughest and most-important problems, to throw money around. Lattes on tap! Full-time massage team! Business class flights! Retreat in the Bahamas! When you do the cost/benefit analysis it comes out positive: "An extra four hours of sleep on the plane is worth four thousand dollars, because of how much we're getting paid and how tight the time is." The problem, which we always underindex on, is that our culture doesn't stand up to this kind of assault on normalcy. No altruistic, mission-oriented culture can. "I have never witnessed so much money in my life." [1] What is culture? I often phrase it as "lessons from the early days of an org." How we survive; how we make it work despite the tough times; our story of how we started with something small and ended up with something great. That knowledge fundamentally pervades everything we do. It needs upkeep and constant reinforcement. "It is always Day One" [2] refers to how Amazon is trying hard, even as they have grown huge, to preserve their culture of scrappiness and caring. What perks say Fancy, unusual, expensive perks are costly signals. They're saying or implying the following:
Your time is worth a lot of money You are special and important, you deserve this We are rich and successful; we are elite We are generous and you are lucky to be in our orbit You're in the inner ring; you're better than people who aren't part of this We desperately want to keep you around You are free from menial tasks You would never pay for this on your own—but through us, you can have it anyway We're just like Google!
Some of these things might be locally true, but when I zoom out, I get a villainous vibe: this story flatters, it manipulates, it promotes hubris, it tells lies you want to believe. It's a Faustian trade: in exchange for these perks you "just" have to distort your reality, and we're not even asking you to believe hard scary things, just nice ego-boosting things about how special, irreplaceable, on-the-right-track we all are. Signals you might want to send instead The work cultures I prefer would signal something like the following:
We're normal people who have chosen to take on especially important work We have an angle / insight that most people haven't realized/acted on yet We might be wrong, and are constantly seeking evidence that would change our minds We should try to be especially virtuous whenever we find ourselves setting a moral example for others
(We aren't morally better by default, [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/t9e6enPXcH6HFzQku/why-altruists-can-t-have-nice-things
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This post is a personal reflection that follows my journey to effective altruism, my experiences within it, the concerns I've developed along the way and my hopes for addressing them. It culminates in my views on funding constraints — the role we can all play in solving them and a key question I have for you all: What stops us?My journeyWhile this starts with a reflection on my personal journey, I suspect it might feel familiar, it might strike a chord, at times it might rhyme with yours.I was about eight years old when I was first confronted with the tragic reality that an overwhelming number of children my age were suffering and dying from preventable diseases and unjust economic conditions.It broke my heart. I knew that I had done nothing to deserve my incredibly privileged position of being born healthy to a loving, stable, middle-income family in Australia (a country with one of the highest standards of living).Throughout my early years, I took many opportunities to do what I could to right this wrong. In school, that meant participating in fundraisers and advocacy. As a young professional, that meant living frugally but still giving a relatively meagre amount to help others. When I got my first stable job, I decided it was time to give 10% to help others... But when I calculated that that would be $5,000, this commitment began to feel like a pretty big deal. I wasn't going to back down, but I wanted to be more confident that it'd actually result in something good. I felt a responsibility to donate wisely.Some Googling quickly led me to discover Giving What We Can, GiveWell, and Julia Wise's blog Giving Gladly. From this first introduction to what would soon be known as the effective altruism (EA) community, I found the information I needed to help guide me, and the inspiration I needed to help me follow through.I also took several opportunities to pursue a more impact-oriented career, and even tried getting involved in politics. These attempts had varying success, but that was okay: I had one constant opportunity to help others by giving.Around this time, the EA community started expanding their lines of reasoning beyond effective giving advice to other areas like careers and advocacy. I was thrilled to see this. We all have an opportunity to use various resources to make a dent in the world's problems, and the same community that had made good progress on philanthropy seemed to me well-positioned to make progress on other fronts too.By 2016, effective altruism was well and truly “a thing” and I discovered that there was an EA group and conference near me. So, I ventured out to actually meet some of these "effective altruism" people in person.It hit me: I'd finally found "my people."These were people who actually cared enough to put their money where their mouths were, to use the best tools they could find to make the biggest possible difference, and to advocate for others to join them. None of these things were easy, but these [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WMdEJjLAHmdwyA5Wm/we-can-all-help-solve-funding-constraints-what-stops-us
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This is a frame that I have found useful and I'm sharing in case others find it useful. EA has arguably gone through several waves:Waves of EA (highly simplified model — see caveats below) First waveSecond waveThird waveTime period2010[1]-2017[2]2017-20232023-??Primary constraintMoneyTalent???Primary call to actionDonations to effective charitiesCareer changePrimary target audienceMiddle-upper-class peopleUniversity students and early career professionalsFlagship cause areaGlobal health and developmentLongtermismMajor hubsOxford > SF Bay > Berlin (?)SF Bay > Oxford > London > DC > BostonThe boundaries between waves are obviously vague and somewhat arbitrary. This table is also overly simplistic – I first got involved in EA through animal welfare, which is not listed at all on this table, for example. But I think this is a decent first approximation.It’s not entirely clear to me whether we are actually in a third wave. People often overestimate the extent to which their local circumstances are unique. But there are two main things which make me think that we have a “wave” which is distinct from, say, mid 2022:ubstantially less money, through a combination of Meta stock falling, FTX collapsing, and general market/crypto downturns[3]AI safety becoming (relatively) mainstreamIf I had to choose an arbitrary date for the beginning of the third wave, I might choose March 22, 2023, when the FLI open letter on pausing AI experiments was published.It remains to be seen if public concern about AI is sustained – Superintelligence was endorsed by a bunch of fancy people when it first came out, but they mostly faded away. If it is sustained though, I think EA will be in a qualitatively new regime: one where AI safety worries are common, AI safety is getting a lot of coverage, people with expertise in AI safety might get into important rooms, and where the field might be less neglected.Third wave EA: what are some possibilities?Here are a few random ideas; I am not intending to imply that these are the most likely scenarios.Example future scenarioPolitics and Civil Society[4]Forefront of weirdnessReturn to non-AI causesDescription of the possible “third wave” — chosen to illustrate the breadth of possibilitiesThere is substantial public appetite to heavily regulate AI. The technical challenges end up being relatively easy. The archetypal EA project is running a grassroots petition for a moratorium on AI.AI safety becomes mainstream and "spins out" of EA. EA stays at the forefront of weirdness and the people who were previously interested in AI safety turn their focus to digital sentience, acausal moral trade, and other issues that still fall outside the Overton window.AI safety becomes mainstream and "spins out" of EA. AI safety advocates leave EA, and vibes shift back to “first wave” EA.Primary constraintPolitical willResearchMoneyPrimary call to actionVoting/advocacyResearchDonationsPrimary target audienceVoters in US/EUFuture researchers (university students)Middle-upper class peopleFlagship cause areaAI regulationDigital sentienceAnimal welfareWhere do we go from here?I’m interested in organizing more projects like EA Strategy Fortnight. I don’t feel very confident about what third wave EA should look like, or even that there will be a third wave, but it does seem worth spending time discussing the possibilities.I'm particularly interested [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XTBGAWAXR25atu39P/third-wave-effective-altruism
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Executive summaryOne of the biggest challenges of being in a community that really cares about counterfactuals is knowing where the most important gaps are and which areas are already effectively covered. This can be even more complex with meta organizations and funders that often have broad scopes that change over time. However, I think it is really important for every meta organization to clearly establish what they cover and thus where these gaps are; there is a substantial negative flowthrough effect when a community thinks an area is covered when it is not. Why this mattersThe topic of having a transparent scope recently came up at a conference as one of the top concerns with many EA meta orgs. Some negative effects that have been felt by the community are in large part due to unclear scopes, including: Organizations leaving a space thinking it's covered when it's not. Funders reducing funding in an area due to an assumption that someone else is covering it when there are still major gaps.Two organizations working on the same thing without knowledge of each other, due to both having a broad mandate, but simultaneously putting resources into an overlapping subcomponent of this mandate.Talent being turned off or feeling misled by EA when they think an org misportrays itself. Talent ‘dropping out of the funnel’ when they go to what they believe is the primary organization covering an area and finding that what they care about isn’t covered, due to the organization claiming too broad a mandate.There can also be a significant amount of general frustration caused when people think an organization will cover, or is covering, an area and then an organization fails to deliver (often on something they did not even plan on doing). What do I mean when I say that organizations should have a transparent scope: Broadly, I mean organizations being publicly clear and specific about what they are planning to cover both in terms of action and cause area. In a relevant timeframe: I think this is most important in the short term (e.g., there is a ton of value in an organization saying what they are going to cover over the next 12 months, and what they have covered over the last months). For the most important questions: This clarity needs to both be in priorities (e.g., cause prioritization) and planned actions (e.g., working with student chapters). This can include things the organization might like or think is impactful to do but are not doing due to capacity constraints or its current strategic direction.For the areas most likely for people to confuse: It is particularly important to provide clarity about things that people think one might be doing (for example, Charity Entrepreneurship probably doesn’t need to clarify that it doesn’t sell flowers, but should really be transparent over whether it plans to incubate projects in a certain cause area or not). How to do thisWhen I have talked to organizations about this, I sometimes think that the “perfect” becomes the enemy of the good and they do not [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mzzPMrBjGpra2JSDw/ea-organizations-should-have-a-transparent-scope
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TL;DR: The EA movement should not use techniques that alienate people from the EA community as a whole if they do not align with a particular subgroup within the community. These approaches not only have an immediate negative impact on the EA community, but also have long-term repercussions on the sub-community utilizing them. Right now, the EA movement uses these sorts of tactics too often. People connect with the EA movement through many different channels, and often encounter sub-communities before they have a full understanding of the movement and the wide variety of opinions and viewpoints within it. These sub-communities can sometimes make the mistake of using "polarizing techniques". By this, I mean strategies that alienate people or burn bridges with the broader community. This could be from pushing a sub-perspective too hard, or being aggressively dismissive of other views.An example of this might be if I met a talented person at a party and they said they wanted to change to an impactful career, but had never heard of EA. If I then proceeded to aggressively push founding a charity through Charity Entrepreneurship (the organization) as a career path to them, to the point where they got turned off of EA altogether if they don’t come on board with my claims, I would consider that a polarizing approach: either they choose charity entrepreneurship as a path, or they don’t engage with effective altruism at all. Note that in the short term, all Charity Entrepreneurship really measures impact-wise is how many great charities get started, so a good person going into policy due to me connecting them to Probably Good means nothing to our organizational impact. Taken to an extreme, it might be worth pushing quite hard if I think that founding nonprofits is many times more important as a career path than policy. However, I think this style hurts both the community and Charity Entrepreneurship long-term. This phenomenon occurs across a diverse range of people, both in terms of funding and career transitions. Most often, it revolves around cause prioritization. It can be disappointing when someone does not share your enthusiasm for your preferred causes, but there is still a lot of value in directing them to the most impactful path they would in fact consider pursuing. The clearest way this technique is damaging, is that turning off someone from one part of the community often demotivates them to engage positively in other parts of the community. It makes them more likely to become an active critic instead of a neutral or contributing member of a different sub-community, or to the philosophy of effective altruism as a whole.Different sub-communities look for different types of people and resources. It's difficult for one person to have a bird's eye view on all sub-communities within EA, and it’s easy to overvalue your own community's certain needs or strengths. On numerous occasions, I have witnessed instances where one sub-community dismisses individuals possessing skills that would be immensely valuable in another segment of the community. It seems [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/viXCv8thAAd68Qnfs/effective-altruism-organizations-should-avoid-using
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In this series, we consider AI safety organizations that have received more than $10 million per year in funding. There have already been several conversations and critiques around MIRI (1) and OpenAI (1,2,3), so we will not be covering them. The authors include one technical AI safety researcher (>4 years experience), and one non-technical community member with experience in the EA community. We’d like to make our critiques non-anonymously but believe this will not be a wise move professionally speaking. We believe our criticisms stand on their own without appeal to our positions. Readers should not assume that we are completely unbiased or don’t have anything to personally or professionally gain from publishing these critiques. We’ve tried to take the benefits and drawbacks of the anonymous nature of our post seriously and carefully, and are open to feedback on anything we might have done better.This is the second post in this series and it covers Conjecture. Conjecture is a for-profit alignment startup founded in late 2021 by Connor Leahy, Sid Black and Gabriel Alfour, which aims to scale applied alignment research. Based in London, Conjecture has received $10 million in funding from venture capitalists (VCs), and recruits heavily from the EA movement. We shared a draft of this document with Conjecture for feedback prior to publication, and include their response below. We also requested feedback on a draft from a small group of experienced alignment researchers from various organizations, and have invited them to share their views in the comments of this post.We would like to invite others to share their thoughts in the comments openly if you feel comfortable, or contribute anonymously via this form. We will add inputs from there to the comments section of this post, but will likely not be updating the main body of the post as a result (unless comments catch errors in our writing).Key TakeawaysFor those with limited knowledge and context on Conjecture, we recommend first reading or skimming the About Conjecture section. Time to read the core sections (Criticisms & Suggestions and Our views on Conjecture) is 22 minutes. Criticisms and SuggestionsWe think Conjecture’s research is low quality (read more). Their posts don’t always make assumptions clear, don’t make it clear what evidence base they have for a given hypothesis, and evidence is frequently cherry-picked. We also think their bar for publishing is too low, which increases the signal to noise ratio. Conjecture has acknowledged some of these criticisms, but not all (read more).We make specific critiques of examples of their research from their initial research agenda (read more).There is limited information available on their new research direction (cognitive emulation), but from the publicly available information it appears extremely challenging and so we are skeptical as to its tractability (read more).We have some concerns with the CEO’s character and trustworthiness because, in order of importance (read more):The CEO and Conjecture have misrepresented themselves to external parties multiple times (read more);The CEO’s involvement in EleutherAI and Stability AI has contributed to race dynamics (read more);The CEO [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gkfMLX4NWZdmpikto/critiques-of-prominent-ai-safety-labs-conjecture
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Crossposted on Medium here.Twitter: @lucreti_aFrom Lore Olympus.Thank you to the supportive EA members who encouraged me to publicly share this difficult experience, to my friends and research collaborators for your kindness, and to the courageous women who helped me in writing this post, who I hope can someday speak publicly.To those who know me, please call me Lucretia.This is a megapost. Each section has a distinct purpose and may evolve into its own standalone post. For the full picture, I recommend reading to the end. My cross-posted version on Medium is broken into sections for easier reading.0. OverviewIntroduction. I was one of the women who spoke to TIME magazine about sexual harassment and abuse in EA. Here is my story without media distortions.Advice for Female Founders and AI Researchers in the Valley. Silicon Valley can be a brutal place for women. This is what I wish I knew five years ago.My Case Study: I am an AI researcher. I believe my AI alignment research career was needlessly encumbered by:My experience with the sexually abusive red pill and pickup artist sphere, which entwined with a branch of AI safety in Cambridge, MA and Silicon Valley. I describe the unethical core of red pill ideology, including the running of “rape scripts.”The recent retaliation by a Silicon Valley AI community to my report of harm. This community’s aggressive reaction showed many gender biases latent in AI culture.Systemic Sexual Violence in Silicon Valley. I believe the male-dominated environment, nepotistic connections to investor money, extreme power disparities between wealthy AI researchers and aspiring young women in the AI and startup sectors, hacker house party culture, psychedelics misused as date rape drugs, cults of personality, substantial population of low empathy, risk-seeking, and/or narcissistic men, and lack of functional policing mechanisms make sexual violence a systemic problem in a critical X-risk industry.Why I Spoke to TIME. I address some misconceptions about the original TIME article on sexual harassment, and why I spoke to TIME in the first place.Helpful Books and Movies. I share learnings about sexual harassment and abuse after ~15 months of focusing on the problem, including my favorite books and movies about sexual harassment/abuse to flesh out more conceptual space. For all the seriousness of this post, these books and movies are entertaining, gorgeous, and healing!Future Sequences? Depending on the reactions to this post, I would love to write a Sequence of sexual harassment and abuse from first principles.Call to Action: Recovery and Litigation Funds. AGI should neither be built nor aligned in environments of deceit. We propose a call-to-action for a Recovery Fund and Sociological AI Alignment Fund / Litigation Fund to counteract the sexual predation Moloch in Silicon Valley, which is a sociological AI safety problem.AppendixExcerpts from red pill literatureNotes on Rape vs Consent Culture1. IntroductionSome recent posts on the EA forum have thoughtfully and earnestly addressed sexual harassment and abuse. Thank you to the EA community for your insightful posts and comments, and for genuinely trying to address the problem, which made [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LqjG4bAxHfmHC5iut/why-i-spoke-to-time-magazine-and-my-experience-as-a-female
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In the 2000s, cost-effectiveness analysis said it was a bad use of money to send antiretroviral drugs to low-income countries—drugs that ended up saving millions of lives.
Twenty years ago, in the same State of the Union speech in which he made the case for invading Iraq, George W. Bush asked Congress for $15 billion over five years for an ambitious new plan to pay for antiretroviral drugs for two million AIDS patients in Africa and the Caribbean.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, went on to become probably the most celebrated American foreign aid program since the Marshall Plan. An evaluation by the National Academy of Sciences estimates PEPFAR has saved millions of lives (PEPFAR itself claims 25 million). Impacts on total mortality rates across fourteen African countries were visible within just the first few years of the program (see figure 1). Separate research suggests the rollout of antiretrovirals, of which PEPFAR was a major component, explained about a third of Africa’s economic growth resurgence in the 2000s.
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https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyhDz9djZAmxZ6Qzx/how-economists-got-africa-s-aids-epidemic-wrong
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This post is a summary of some of my work as a field strategy consultant at Schmidt Futures' Act 2 program, where I spoke with over a hundred experts and did a deep dive into antimicrobial resistance to find impactful investment opportunities within the cause area. The full report can be accessed here.
Antimicrobials, the medicines we use to fight infections, have played a foundational role in improving the length and quality of human life since penicillin and other antimicrobials were first developed in the early and mid 20th century.
Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve resistance to antimicrobials. As a result, antimicrobial medicine such as antibiotics and antifungals become ineffective and unable to fight infections in the body.
AMR is responsible for millions of deaths each year, more than HIV or malaria (ARC 2022). The AMR Visualisation Tool, produced by Oxford University and IHME, visualises IHME data which finds that 1.27 million deaths per year are attributable to bacterial resistance and 4.95 million deaths per year are associated with bacterial resistance, as shown below.
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https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/W93Pt7xch7eyrkZ7f/cause-area-report-antimicrobial-resistance
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Introduction“News through prediction markets”The Base Rate Times is a nascent news site that incorporates prediction markets prominently into its coverage.Please see current iteration: www.baseratetimes.comTwitter: www.twitter.com/base_rate_timesWhat problem does it solve?Forecasts are underutilized by the mediaPrediction markets are more accurate than pundits, yet the media has made limited use of their forecasts. This is a big problem: one of the most rigorous information sources is being omitted from public discourse!The Base Rate Times creates prediction markets content, substituting for inferior news sources. This improves the epistemics of its audience.Forecasts are dispersed, generally inconvenient to consumePrediction markets are dispersed among many different platforms, fragmenting the information forecasters provide. For example, different platforms ask similar questions in different ways. Furthermore, platforms’ UX is orientated towards forecasters, not information consumers. Overall, trying to use prediction markets as ‘news replacement’ is cumbersome.There is value in aggregating and curating forecasts from various platforms. We need engaging ways of sharing prediction markets’ insights. The Base Rate Times aims to make prediction markets easily digestible to the general public.How does it work?News media (emotive narrative) vs Base Rate Times (actionable odds)For example, this is a real headline from a reputable newspaper: “Taiwan braces for China's fury over Pelosi visit”. Emotive and incendiary, it does not help you form an accurate model of the situation.By contrast, The Base Rate Times: “China-Taiwan conflict risk 14%, up 2x from 7% after Pelosi visit”. That's an actionable insight. It can inform your decision on whether to stay in Taiwan or to flee, for example.News aggregation, summarizing prediction marketsNaturally, the probabilities in the example above come from prediction markets. The Base Rate Times presents what prediction markets are telling us about news in an engaging way.Stories that shift market odds are highlighted. And if a seemingly important story doesn’t shift market odds, that also tells you something.On The Base Rate Times, right now you can see the latest odds on:Putin staying in powerRussian territorial gains in UkraineEscalation risk of NATO involvementand more...By glancing at a few charts, you can form a more accurate model (in less time) of Russia-Ukraine than reading countless narrative-based news stories.InspirationA key inspiration was Scott Alexander’s Prediction Market FAQ:I recently had to read many articles on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which all repeated that “rumors said” Twitter was about to go down because of his mass firing. Meanwhile, there were several prediction markets on whether this would happen, and they were all around 40%. If some journalist had thought to check the prediction markets and cite them in their article, they could have not only provided more value (a clear percent chance instead of just “there are some rumors saying this”), but also been right when everyone else was wrong.Also Scott’s 'Mantic Monday' posts and Zvi’s blog.This simple chart by @ClayGraubard was another inspiration. Wanted something like this, but for all major news stories. Couldn't find it, so making it myself. (Clay is making geopolitics videos and podcasts now, check it out.)GoalsLike 538, but for prediction marketsThe Base Rate Times is a bet that forecasts [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hChXEPPkDpiufCE4E/i-made-a-news-site-based-on-prediction-markets
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Epistemic status: some thoughts I wanted to get out quicklyA lot of fantastic work has been done by people in the AI existential risk research community and related communities over the last several months in raising awareness about risks from advanced AI. However, I have some cause for unease that I’d like to share.These efforts may have been too successful too soon.Or, more specifically, this level of outreach success this far ahead of the development of AI capable of posing existential risk may have fallout. We should consider steps to mitigate this. (1) TimelinesI know that there are well-informed people in the AI and existential risk communities who believe AI capable of posing existential risk may be developed within 10 years. I certainly can’t rule this out, and even a small chance of this is worth working to prevent or mitigate to the extent possible, given the possible consequences. My own timelines are longer, although my intuitions don’t have a rigorous model underpinning them (my intuitions line up similarly to the 15-40 year timelines mentioned in this recent blog post by Matthew Barnett from Epoch).Right now the nature of media communications means that the message is coming across with a lot of urgency. From speaking to lay colleagues, impressions often seem to be of short timelines (and some folks e.g. Geoff Hinton have explicitly said 5-20 years, sometimes with uncertainty caveats and sometimes without).It may be that those with short (<10 years) timelines are right. And even if they’re not, and we’ve got decades before this technology poses an existential threat, many of the attendant challenges – alignment, governance, distribution of benefits – will need that additional time to be addressed. And I think it’s entirely plausible that the current level of buy-in will be needed in order to initiate the steps needed to avoid the worst outcomes, e.g. recruiting expertise and resources to alignment, development and commitment to robust regulation, even coming to agreements not to pursue certain technological developments beyond a certain point. However, if short timelines do not transpire, I believe there’s a need to consider a scenario I think is reasonably likely.(2) Crying wolfI propose that it is most likely we are in a world where timelines are >10 years, perhaps >20 or 30 years. Right now this issue has a lot of the most prominent AI scientists and CEOs signed up, and political leaders worldwide committing to examining the issue seriously (examples from last week). What happens then in the >10 year-timeline world? The extinction-level outcomes that the public is hearing, and that these experts are raising and policymakers making costly reputational investments in, don’t transpire. What does happen is all the benefits of near-term AI that have been talked about, plus all the near-term harms that are being predominantly raised by the AI ethics/FAccT communities. Perhaps these harms include somewhat more extreme versions than what is currently talked about, but nowhere near catastrophic. Suddenly the year is 2028, and that whole 2023 furore is starting to look [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/weJZjku3HiNgQC4ER/a-note-of-caution-about-recent-ai-risk-coverage
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This is partly based on my experiences working as a Program Officer leading Open Phil’s Longtermist EA Community Growth team, but it’s a hypothesis I have about how some longtermists could have more of an impact by their lights, not an official Open Phil position.Context: I originally wrote this in July 2022 as a memo for folks attending a retreat I was going to. I find that I refer to it pretty frequently and it seems relevant to ongoing discussions about how much meta effort done by EAs should focus on engaging more EAs vs. other non-EA people. I am publishing it with light-ish editing, and some parts are outdated, though for the most part I more strongly hold most of the conclusions than I did when I originally wrote it. Tl;dr: I think that recruiting and talent pipeline work done by EAs who currently prioritize x-risk reduction (“we” or “us” in this post, though I know it won’t apply to all readers) should put more emphasis on ideas related to existential risk, the advent of transformative technology, and the ‘most important century’ hypothesis, and less emphasis on effective altruism and longtermism, in the course of their outreach. A lot of EAs who prioritize existential risk reduction are making increasingly awkward and convoluted rhetorical maneuvers to use “EAs” or “longtermists” as the main label for people we see as aligned with our goals and priorities. I suspect this is suboptimal and, in the long term, infeasible. In particular, I’m concerned that this is a reason we’re failing to attract and effectively welcome some people who could add a lot of value. The strongest counterargument I can think of right now is that I know of relatively few people who are doing full-time work on existential risk reduction on AI and biosecurity who have been drawn in by just the “existential risk reduction” frame [this seemed more true in 2022 than 2023]. This is in the vein of Neel Nanda’s "Simplify EA Pitches to "Holy Shit, X-Risk"" and Scott Alexander’s “Long-termism vs. Existential Risk”, but I want to focus more on the hope of attracting people to do priority work even if their motivations are neither longtermist nor neartermist EA, but instead mostly driven by reasons unrelated to EA. EA and longtermism: not a crux for doing the most important workRight now, my priority in my professional life is helping humanity navigate the imminent creation of potential transformative technologies, to try to make the future better for sentient beings than it would otherwise be. I think that’s likely the most important thing anyone can do these days. And I don’t think EA or longtermism is a crux for this prioritization anymore. A lot of us (EAs who currently prioritize x-risk reduction) were “EA-first” — we came to these goals first via broader EA principles and traits, like caring deeply about others; liking rigorous research, scope sensitivity, and expected value-based reasoning; and wanting to meet others with similar traits. Next, we were exposed to a cluster of philosophical and empirical arguments about [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cP7gkDFxgJqHDGdfJ/ea-and-longtermism-not-a-crux-for-saving-the-world
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From late 2020 to last month, I worked at grassroots-level non-profits in operational roles. Over that time, I’ve seen surprisingly effective deployments of strategies that were counter-intuitive to my EA and rationalist sensibilities.I spent 6 months being the on-shift operations manager at one of the five largest food banks in Toronto (~50 staff/volunteers), and 2 years doing logistics work at Samaritans (fake name), a long-lived charity that was so multi-armed that it was basically operating as a supplementary social services department for the city it was in(~200 staff and 200 volunteers). Both of these non-profits were well-run, though both dealt with the traditional non-profit double whammy of being underfunded and understaffed.Neither place was super open to many EA concepts (explicit cost-benefit analyses, the ITN framework, geographic impartiality, the general sense that talent was the constraining factor instead of money, etc). Samaritans in particular is a spectacular non-profit, despite(?) having basically anti-EA philosophies, such as:Being very localist; Samaritans was established to help residents of the city it was founded in, and now very specialized in doing that.Adherence to faith; the philosophy of The Catholic Worker Movement continues to inform the operating choices of Samaritans to this day.A big streak of techno-pessimism; technology is first and foremost seen as a source of exploitation and alienation, and adopted only with great reluctance when necessary.Not treating money as fungible. The majority of funding came from grants or donations tied to specific projects or outcomes. (This is a system that the vast majority of nonprofits operate in.)Once early on I gently pushed them towards applying to some EA grants for some of their more EA-aligned work, and they were immediately turned off by the general vibes of EA upon visiting some of its websites. I think the term “borg-like” was used.Over this post, I’ll be largely focusing on Samaritans as I’ve worked there longer and in a more central role, and it’s also a more interesting case study due to its stronger anti-EA sentiment.Things I LearnedLong Term Reputation is PricelessNon-Profits Shouldn’t Be IslandsSlack is Incredibly PowerfulHospitality is Pretty ImportantFor each learning, I have a section for sketches for EA integration – I hesitate to call them anything as strong as recommendations, because the point is to give more concrete examples of what it could look like integrated in an EA framework, rather than saying that it’s the correct way forward.1. Long Term Reputation is PricelessInstitutional trust unlocks a stupid amount of value, and you can’t buy it with money. Lots of resources (amenity rentals; the mayor’s endorsement; business services; pro-bono and monetary donations) are priced/offered based on tail risk. If you can establish that you’re not a risk by having a longstanding, unblemished reputation, costs go way down for you, and opportunities way up. This is the world that Samaritans now operate in.Samaritans had a much better, easier time at city hall compared to newer organizations, because of a decades-long productive relationship where we were really helpful with issues surrounding unemployment and homelessness. Permits get [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5oTr4ExwpvhjrSgFi/things-i-learned-by-spending-five-thousand-hours-in-non-ea
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- Tl;drMany reports indicate that indoor air quality (IAQ) interventions are likely to be effective at reducing respiratory disease transmission. However, to date there’s been very little focus on the workforce that will implement these interventions. I suggest that the US Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and building maintenance workforces have already posed a significant obstacle to these interventions, and broad uptake of IAQ measures will be significantly hindered by them in the future. The impact will vary in predictable ways depending on the nature of the intervention and its implementation. We should favor simple techniques with improved oversight and outsource or crosscheck technically complex work to people outside of the current HVAC workforce. We should also make IAQ conditions and devices as transparent as possible to both experts and building occupants.To skip my bio and the technical horrors section, proceed to the recommendations in section 4.2. Who am I? Why do I think This? How Certain am I? I began working in construction in 1991. I did a formal carpentry apprenticeship in Victoria BC in the mid-90s and moved to the US in ‘99. Around 2008 I started taking greater interest in HVAC because - despite paying top dollar to local subcontractors - our projects had persistent HVAC problems. Despite protestations that they were following exemplary practices, our projects were plagued with high humidity, loud noise, frequent mechanical failure, and room-to-room temperature differences. This led me to first learn all aspects of system design and controls, and culminated in full system installations. Along the way I obtained a NJ Master HVAC license, performed the thermal work of ~2k light-duty energy retrofits, obtained multiple certifications in HVAC and low-energy design, and became a regional expert in building diagnostics. Since 2010 I’ve worked as a contractor or consultant to roughly a dozen major HVAC contractors and hundreds of homeowners.I’m reasonably certain that the baseline competence of the HVAC workforce is insufficient to broadly and reliably deploy IAQ interventions and that this is a serious obstacle. My comments are specific to the US. I’ve discussed these problems extensively with friends and acquaintances working at a national level and in other parts of the US and believe them to be common to most of the country. The problems are specific to the light commercial and residential workforce, but not domains that are closely monitored by mechanical engineering teams (e.g. hospitals). Based on some limited experience I suspect these problems are also common to Canada, but I’m less certain about their severity.3. Technical Horrors: Why is This so Difficult?Within HVAC, many important jobs are currently either not performed or delegated to people who are largely incapable of performing them. Many people convincingly lie about their capacity to perform a job they’re incapable of, report having done things they haven’t, or even make statements at odds with physics.Examples include:Accurate heat load/loss calculations: These are used to size heating and cooling systems, and in most areas are code mandated for both new and replacement systems. Competent sizing (Manual J [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/q7dJz9ZaZGTSZL8Jk/obstacles-to-the-implementation-of-indoor-air-quality
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TL;DRWe are a new AI evals research organization called Apollo Research based in London. We think that strategic AI deception – where a model outwardly seems aligned but is in fact misaligned – is a crucial step in many major catastrophic AI risk scenarios and that detecting deception in real-world models is the most important and tractable step to addressing this problem.Our agenda is split into interpretability and behavioral evals:On the interpretability side, we are currently working on two main research bets toward characterizing neural network cognition. We are also interested in benchmarking interpretability, e.g. testing whether given interpretability tools can meet specific requirements or solve specific challenges.On the behavioral evals side, we are conceptually breaking down ‘deception’ into measurable components in order to build a detailed evaluation suite using prompt- and finetuning-based tests. As an evals research org, we intend to use our research insights and tools directly on frontier models by serving as an external auditor of AGI labs, thus reducing the chance that deceptively misaligned AIs are developed and deployed. We also intend to engage with AI governance efforts, e.g. by working with policymakers and providing technical expertise to aid the drafting of auditing regulations.We have starter funding but estimate a $1.4M funding gap in our first year. We estimate that the maximal amount we could effectively use is $4-6M in addition to current funding levels (reach out if you are interested in donating). We are currently fiscally sponsored by Rethink Priorities. Our starting team consists of 8 researchers and engineers with strong backgrounds in technical alignment research. We are interested in collaborating with both technical and governance researchers. Feel free to reach out at info@apolloresearch.ai.We intend to hire once our funding gap is closed. If you’d like to stay informed about opportunities, you can fill out our expression of interest form.Research AgendaWe believe that AI deception – where a model outwardly seems aligned but is in fact misaligned and conceals this fact from human oversight – is a crucial component of many catastrophic risk scenarios from AI (see here for more). We also think that detecting/measuring deception is causally upstream of many potential solutions. For example, having good detection tools enables higher quality and safer feedback loops for empirical alignment approaches, enables us to point to concrete failure modes for lawmakers and the wider public, and provides evidence to AGI labs whether the models they are developing or deploying are deceptively misaligned.Ultimately, we aim to develop a holistic and far-ranging suite of deception evals that includes behavioral tests, fine-tuning, and interpretability-based approaches. Unfortunately, we think that interpretability is not yet at the stage where it can be used effectively on state-of-the-art models. Therefore, we have split the agenda into an interpretability research arm and a behavioral evals arm. We aim to eventually combine interpretability and behavioral evals into a comprehensive model evaluation suite.On the interpretability side, we are currently working on a new unsupervised approach and continuing work on an existing approach to attack the problem of superposition. Early experiments have shown promising results, but it [...] Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ysC6crBKhDBGZfob3/announcing-apollo-research
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Today, the AI Extinction Statement was released by the Center for AI Safety, a one-sentence statement jointly signed by a historic coalition of AI experts, professors, and tech leaders.Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio have signed, as have the CEOs of the major AGI labs–Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, and Dario Amodei–as well as executives from Microsoft and Google (but notably not Meta).The statement reads: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”We hope this statement will bring AI x-risk further into the overton window and open up discussion around AI’s most severe risks. Given the growing number of experts and public figures who take risks from advanced AI seriously, we hope to improve epistemics by encouraging discussion and focusing public and international attention toward this issue. Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Yk4D4DZpx6eriMDyY/statement-on-ai-extinction-signed-by-agi-labs-top-academics
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Dear EA Forum readers,
The EA charity, Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), just filed our second lawsuit!
As many of you know, LIC is a litigation nonprofit dedicated to making factory-farm cruelty a liability. We focus on chickens because of the huge numbers in which they suffer and the extreme severity of that suffering. Today, we sued one of the country’s largest poultry producers and a KFC supplier, Case Farms, for animal cruelty. The complaint comes on the heels of a 2021 undercover investigation by Animal Outlook, revealing abuse at a Morganton, N.C. Case Farms hatchery that processes more than 200,000 chicks daily. Our lawsuit attacks the notion that Big Ag is above the law. We are suing under North Carolina's 19A statute, which lets private parties enjoin animal cruelty. Case Farms was documented knowingly operating faulty equipment, including a machine piston which repeatedly smashes chicks to death and a dangerous metal conveyor belt which traps and kills young birds. Case Farms was also documented crushing chicks’ necks between heavy plastic trays. Case Farms supplies its chicken to KFC, Taco Bell, and Boar’s Head, among other customers.
Thank you so much to all the EA Forum readers who helped make this happen, by donating to, and volunteering for, Legal Impact for Chickens!
Sincerely, Alene Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8Z2uFCkrg2dCnadA4/kfc-supplier-sued-for-cruelty
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Charity Entrepreneurship is frequently contacted by individuals and donors who like our model. Several have expressed interest in seeing the model expanded, or seeing what a twist on the model would look like (e.g., different cause area, region, etc.) Although we are excited about maximizing CE’s impact, we are less convinced by the idea of growing the effective charity pool via franchising or other independent nonprofit incubators. This is because new incubators often do not address the actual bottlenecks faced by the nonprofit landscape, as we see them. There are lots of factors that prevent great new charities from being launched, and from eventually having a large impact. We have scaled CE to about 10 charities a year, and from our perspective, these are the three major bottlenecks to growing the new charity ecosystem further: Mid-stage funding, Founders and Multiplying effects.
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We've just passed the half-year mark for this project! If you're reading this, please consider taking this 5 minute survey — all questions optional. If you listen to the podcast version, we have a separate survey for that here. Thanks to everyone that has responded to this already!
Original text:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9QcmyGAjERHRFfrr7/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-1st-to-7th-may-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
How worried about AI risk will we feel in the future, when we can see advanced machine intelligence up close? We should worry accordingly now.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/05/08/predictable-updating-about-ai-risk
Narrated by Joe Carlsmith and included on the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
We've just passed the half-year mark for this project! If you're reading this, please consider taking this 5 minute survey — all questions optional. If you listen to the podcast version, we have a separate survey for that here. Thanks to everyone that has responded to this already!
Original text:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wzn7hEj3BSz7us7ge/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-24th-30th-april-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
People often ask me for career advice related to AGI safety. This post summarizes the advice I most commonly give. I’ve split it into three sections: general mindset, alignment research and governance work. For each of the latter two, I start with high-level advice aimed primarily at students and those early in their careers, then dig into more details of the field. See also this post I wrote two years ago, containing a bunch of fairly general career advice. ## General mindset In order to have a big impact on the world you need to find a big lever. This document assumes that you think, as I do, that AGI safety is the biggest such lever. There are many ways to pull on that lever, though—from research and engineering to operations and field-building to politics and communications. I encourage you to choose between these based primarily on your personal fit—a combination of what you're really good at and what you really enjoy. In my opinion the difference between being a great versus a mediocre fit swamps other differences in the impactfulness of most pairs of AGI-safety-related jobs.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xg7gxsYaMa6F3uH8h/agi-safety-career-advice
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m2Y6HheC2Q2GLQ3oS/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-17th-23rd-april-2023
This podcast has just passed the 6-month mark! Please give us your feedback and suggestions so we can continue to improve — the survey should take no more than 10 minutes, and we really appreciate your input!
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
The excellent report from Rethink Priorities was my main source for this. Many of the substantial points I make are taken from it, though errors are my own. It’s worth reading! The authors are Gavriel Kleinwaks, Alastair Fraser-Urquhart, Jam Kraprayoon, and Josh Morrison.
Clean water
In the mid 19th century, London had a sewage problem. It relied on a patchwork of a few hundred sewers, of brick and wood, and hundreds of thousands of cesspits. The Thames — Londoners’ main source of drinking water — was near-opaque with waste. Here is Michael Faraday in an 1855 letter to The Times:
"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface even in water of this kind […] The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water. It was the same as that which now comes up from the gully holes in the streets. The whole river was for the time a real sewer […] If we neglect this subject, we cannot expect to do so with impunity; nor ought we to be surprised if, ere many years are over, a season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness."
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WLok4YuJ4kfFpDRTi/first-clean-water-now-clean-air
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This is a linkpost for a new 80,000 hours episode focused on how to engage in climate from an effective altruist perspective.
- The podcast lives here, including a selection of highlights as well as a full transcript and lots of additional links. Thanks to 80,000hours’ new feature rolled out on April 1st you can even listen to it!
- My Twitter thread is here.
Rob and I are having a pretty wide-ranging conversation, here are the things we cover which I find most interesting for different audiences:
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/A3ZLLanDZZt9sgGQ9/new-80-000-hours-podcast-on-high-impact-climate-philanthropy
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/o3Gaoizs2So6SpgLH/summaries-of-top-forum-posts-27th-march-to-16th-april
This podcast has just passed the 6-month mark! Please give us your feedback and suggestions so we can continue to improve — the survey should take no more than 10 minutes, and we really appreciate your input!
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
I recently spent some time reflecting on my career and my life, for a few reasons:
- It was my 29th birthday, an occasion which felt like a particularly natural time to think through what I wanted to accomplish over the course of the next year 🙂.
- It seems like AI progress is heating up.
- It felt like a good time to reflect on how Redwood has been going, because we’ve been having conversations with funders about getting more funding.
I wanted to have a better answer to these questions:
- What’s the default trajectory that I should plan for my career to follow? And what does this imply for what I should be doing right now?
- How much urgency should I feel in my life?
- How hard should I work?
- How much should I be trying to do the most valuable-seeming thing, vs engaging in more playful exploration and learning?
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2DzLY6YP2z5zRDAGA/a-freshman-year-during-the-ai-midgame-my-approach-to-the
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This is a linkpost for https://www.forourposterity.com/want-to-win-the-agi-race-solve-alignment/
Society really cares about safety. Practically speaking, the binding constraint on deploying your AGI could well be your ability to align your AGI. Solving (scalable) alignment might be worth lots of $$$ and key to beating China.
Look, I really don't want Xi Jinping Thought to rule the world. If China gets AGI first, the ensuing rapid AI-powered scientific and technological progress could well give it a decisive advantage (cf potential for >30%/year economic growth with AGI). I think there's a very real specter of global authoritarianism here.
Or hey, maybe you just think AGI is cool. You want to go build amazing products and enable breakthrough science and solve the world’s problems.
So, race to AGI with reckless abandon then? At this point, people get into agonizing discussions about safety tradeoffs. And many people just mood affiliate their way to an answer: "accelerate, progress go brrrr," or "AI scary, slow it down."
I see this much more practically. And, practically, society cares about safety, a lot. Do you actually think that you’ll be able to and allowed to deploy an AI system that has, say, a 10% chance of destroying all of humanity?
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Ackzs8Wbk7isDzs2n/want-to-win-the-agi-race-solve-alignment
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Far fewer people are working on it than you might think, and even the alignment research that is happening is very much not on track. (But it’s a solvable problem, if we get our act together.)
Original article:
This is a linkpost for https://www.forourposterity.com/nobodys-on-the-ball-on-agi-alignment/
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5LNxeWFdoynvgZeik/nobody-s-on-the-ball-on-agi-alignment
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In my last essay, I looked at two stories (brute preference for systematic-ness, and money-pumps) about why ethical anti-realists should still be interested in ethics – two stories about why the “philosophy game” is worth playing, even if there are no objective normative truths, and you’re free to do whatever you want. I think some versions of these stories might well have a role to play; but I find that on their own, they don’t fully capture what feels alive to me about ethics. Here I try to say something that gets closer.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/seeing-more-whole
Narrated by Joe Carlsmith and included on the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/idpbfmPjHFCvzj46L/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-13th-19th-march-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. In this paper, we show that the case for preventing catastrophe does not depend on longtermism. Standard cost-benefit analysis implies that governments should spend much more on reducing catastrophic risk. We argue that a government catastrophe policy guided by cost-benefit analysis should be the goal of longtermists in the political sphere. This policy would be democratically acceptable, and it would reduce existential risk by almost as much as a strong longtermist policy.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DiGL5FuLgWActPBsf/how-much-should-governments-pay-to-prevent-catastrophes
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Oral rehydration therapy is now the standard treatment for dehydration. It’s saved millions of lives, and can be prepared at home in minutes. So why did it take so long to discover?
Written by Matt Reynolds for Asterisk Magazine.
Original article:
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/2/salt-sugar-water-zinc-how-scientists-learned-to-treat-the-20th-century-s-biggest-killer-of-children
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fWGdsWbS6vtC9E7ii/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-6th-12th-march-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yCxsz9jk5iau2uvYH/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-27th-feb-5th-mar-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
This document looks at the predictions made by AI experts in The 2016 Expert Survey on Progress in AI, analyses the predictions on ‘Narrow tasks’, and gives a Brier score to the median of the experts’ predictions.
My analysis suggests that the experts did a fairly good job of forecasting (Brier score = 0.21), and would have been less accurate if they had predicted each development in AI to generally come, by a factor of 1.5, later (Brier score = 0.26) or sooner (Brier score = 0.29) than they actually predicted.
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I don’t think the existing evidence justifies HLI's estimate of 50% household spillovers.
My main disagreements are:
- Two of the three RCTs HLI relies on to estimate spillovers are on interventions specifically intended to benefit household members (unlike StrongMinds’ program, which targets women and adolescents living with depression).
- Those RCTs only measure the wellbeing of a subset of household members most likely to benefit from the intervention.
- The results of the third RCT are inconsistent with HLI’s estimate.
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bEJ6SyrkSF45B2LWZ/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-20th-26th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
Ethical philosophy often tries to systematize. That is, it seeks general principles that will explain, unify, and revise our more particular intuitions. And sometimes, this can lead to strange and uncomfortable places.
Original article:
https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why-should-ethical-anti-realists-do-ethics
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fAWotZTEnyycJnuxz/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-6th-19th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
This is the story of how I came to see Wild Animal Welfare (WAW) as a less promising cause than I did initially. I summarise three articles I wrote on WAW: ‘Why it’s difficult to find cost-effective WAW interventions we could do now’, ‘Lobbying governments to improve WAW’, and ‘WAW in the far future’. I then draw some more general conclusions. The articles assume some familiarity with WAW ideas. See here or here for an intro to WAW ideas.
Original article:
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Apply now to start a nonprofit in Biosecurity or Large-Scale Global Health
In this post we introduce our top five charity ideas for launch in 2023, in the areas of Biosecurity and Large-Scale Global Health. These are the result of five months’ work from our research team, and a six-stage iterative process that includes collaboration with partners and ideas from within and outside of the EA community.
We’re looking for people to launch these ideas through our July - August 2023 Incubation Program. The deadline for applications is March 12, 2023.
We provide cost-covered two-month training, stipends, ongoing mentorship, and grants up to $200,000 per project. You can learn more on our website. We also invite you to join our event on February 20, 6PM UK Time. Sam Hilton, our Director of Research, will introduce the ideas and answer your questions. Sign up here.
Original article:
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Hi everyone,
I've been reading up on H5N1 this weekend, and I'm pretty concerned. Right now my hunch is that there is a non-zero chance that it will cost more than 10,000 people their lives.
To be clear, I think it is unlikely that H5N1 will become a pandemic anywhere close to the size of covid.
Nevertheless, I think our community should be actively following the news and start thinking about ways to be helpful if the probability increases. I am creating this thread as a place where people can discuss and share information about H5N1. We have a lot of pandemic experts in this community, do chime in!
Original article:
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This is a linkpost for https://epochai.org/blog/literature-review-of-transformative-artificial-intelligence-timelines
We summarize and compare several models and forecasts predicting when transformative AI will be developed.
Highlights
- The review includes quantitative models, including both outside and inside view, and judgment-based forecasts by (teams of) experts.
- While we do not necessarily endorse their conclusions, the inside-view model the Epoch team found most compelling is Ajeya Cotra’s “Forecasting TAI with biological anchors”, the best-rated outside-view model was Tom Davidson’s “Semi-informative priors over AI timelines”, and the best-rated judgment-based forecast was Samotsvety’s AGI Timelines Forecast.
- The inside-view models we reviewed predicted shorter timelines (e.g. bioanchors has a median of 2052) while the outside-view models predicted longer timelines (e.g. semi-informative priors has a median over 2100). The judgment-based forecasts are skewed towards agreement with the inside-view models, and are often more aggressive (e.g. Samotsvety assigned a median of 2043).
Original article:
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Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qzfew7EBPgdCzsxED/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-30th-jan-5th-feb-2023
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
This post outlines the capability approach to thinking about human welfare. I think that this approach, while very popular in international development, is neglected in EA. While the capability approach has problems, I think that it provides a better approach to thinking about improving human welfare than approaches based on measuring happiness or subjective wellbeing (SWB) or approaches based on preference satisfaction. Finally, even if you disagree that the capability approach is best, I think this post will be useful to you because it may clarify why many people and organizations in the international development or global health space take the positions that they do. I will be drawing heavily on the work of Amartya Sen, but I will often not be citing specific texts because I’m an academic and getting to write without careful citations is thrilling.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zy6jGPeFKHaoxKEfT/the-capability-approach
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/hzc26vGa4RLns7TvK/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-23rd-29th-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6Ezg8HgHib9bpWCFr/ea-and-lw-forum-weekly-summary-16th-22nd-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
- We offer welfare range estimates for 11 farmed species: pigs, chickens, carp, salmon, octopuses, shrimp, crayfish, crabs, bees, black soldier flies, and silkworms.
- These estimates are, essentially, estimates of the differences in the possible intensities of these animals' pleasures and pains relative to humans' pleasures and pains. Then, we add a number of controversial (albeit plausible) philosophical assumptions (including hedonism, valence symmetry, and others discussed here) to reach conclusions about animals' welfare ranges relative to human's welfare range.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.7) that none of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest have a welfare range that’s more than double the size of any of the others. While carp and salmon have lower scores than pigs and chickens, we suspect that’s largely due to a lack of research.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another.
- Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence 0.6) that all the invertebrates of interest have welfare ranges within two orders of magnitude of the vertebrate nonhuman animals of interest. Invertebrates are so diverse and we know so little about them; hence, our caution.
- Our view is that the estimates we’ve provided should be seen as placeholders—albeit, we submit, the best such placeholders available. We’re providing a starting point for more rigorous, empirically-driven research into animals’ welfare ranges. At the same time, we’re offering guidance for decisions that have to be made long before that research is finished
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Qk3hd6PrFManj8K6o/rethink-priorities-welfare-range-estimates
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
For many years, I've actively lived in avoidance of idolizing behavior and in pursuit of a nuanced view of even those I respect most deeply. I think this has helped me in numerous ways and has been of particular help in weathering the past few months within the EA community. Below, I discuss how I think about the act of idolizing behavior, some of my personal experiences, and how this mentality can be of use to others.
Note: I want more people to post on the EA Forum and have their ideas taken seriously regardless of whether they conform to Forum stylistic norms. I'm perfectly capable of writing a version of this post in the style typical to the Forum, but this post is written the way I actually like to write. If this style doesn’t work for you, you might want to read the first section “Anarchists have no idols” and then skip ahead to the section “Living without idols, Pt. 1” toward the end. You’ll lose some of the insights contained in my anecdotes, but still get most of the core ideas I want to convey here.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jgspXC8GKA7RtxMRE/on-living-without-idols
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DNWpFLrtrJXe4mted/ea-and-lw-forum-summaries-9th-jan-to-15th-jan-23
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
I previously wrote an entry for the Open Philanthropy Cause Exploration Prize on why preventing violence against women and girls is a global priority. For an introduction to the area, I have written a brief summary below. In this post, I will extend that work, diving deeper into the literature and the landscape of organisations in the field, as well as creating a cost-effectiveness model for some of the most promising preventative interventions. Based on this, I will offer some concrete recommendations that different stakeholders should take - from individuals looking to donate, to funders, to charity evaluators and incubators.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uH9akQzJkzpBD5Duw/what-you-can-do-to-help-stop-violence-against-women-and
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
In this post, we point out that short AI timelines would cause real interest rates to be high, and would do so under expectations of either unaligned or aligned AI. However, 30- to 50-year real interest rates are low. We argue that this suggests one of two possibilities:
- Long(er) timelines. Financial markets are often highly effective information aggregators (the “efficient market hypothesis”), and therefore real interest rates accurately reflect that transformative AI is unlikely to be developed in the next 30-50 years.
- Market inefficiency. Markets are radically underestimating how soon advanced AI technology will be developed, and real interest rates are therefore too low. There is thus an opportunity for philanthropists to borrow while real rates are low to cheaply do good today; and/or an opportunity for anyone to earn excess returns by betting that real rates will rise.
In the rest of this post we flesh out this argument.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8c7LycgtkypkgYjZx/agi-and-the-emh-markets-are-not-expecting-aligned-or
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JZuCg7TtfzzaX9bBY/ea-and-lw-forum-summaries-holiday-edition-19th-dec-8th-jan
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
At Anima International, we recently decided to suspend our campaign against live fish sales in Poland indefinitely. After a few years of running the campaign, we are now concerned about the effects of our efforts, specifically the possibility of a net negative result for the lives of animals. We believe that by writing about it openly we can help foster a culture of intellectual honesty, information sharing and accountability. Ideally, our case can serve as a good example on reflecting on potential unintended consequences of advocacy interventions.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/snnfmepzrwpAsAoDT/why-anima-international-suspended-the-campaign-to-end-live
This is a linkpost for https://animainternational.org/blog/why-anima-international-suspended-the-campaign-to-end-live-fish-sales-in-poland
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
This is a linkpost for https://simonm.substack.com/p/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated
GWWC lists StrongMinds as a “top-rated” charity. Their reason for doing so is because Founders Pledge has determined they are cost-effective in their report into mental health.
I could say here, “and that report was written in 2019 - either they should update the report or remove the top rating” and we could all go home. In fact, most of what I’m about to say does consist of “the data really isn’t that clear yet”.
I think the strongest statement I can make (which I doubt StrongMinds would disagree with) is:
“StrongMinds have made limited effort to be quantitative in their self-evaluation, haven’t continued monitoring impact after intervention, haven’t done the research they once claimed they would. They have not been vetted sufficiently to be considered a top charity, and only one independent group has done the work to look into them.”
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ffmbLCzJctLac3rDu/strongminds-should-not-be-a-top-rated-charity-yet
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
If you fear that someone will build a machine that will seize control of the world and annihilate humanity, then one kind of response is to try to build further machines that will seize control of the world even earlier without destroying it, forestalling the ruinous machine’s conquest. An alternative or complementary kind of response is to try to avert such machines being built at all, at least while the degree of their apocalyptic tendencies is ambiguous.
The latter approach seems to me like the kind of basic and obvious thing worthy of at least consideration, and also in its favor, fits nicely in the genre ‘stuff that it isn’t that hard to imagine happening in the real world’. Yet my impression is that for people worried about extinction risk from artificial intelligence, strategies under the heading ‘actively slow down AI progress’ have historically been dismissed and ignored (though ‘don’t actively speed up AI progress’ is popular).
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vwK3v3Mekf6Jjpeep/let-s-think-about-slowing-down-ai-1
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
In previous pieces, I argued that there's a real and large risk of AI systems' aiming to defeat all of humanity combined - and succeeding.
I first argued that this sort of catastrophe would be likely without specific countermeasures to prevent it. I then argued that countermeasures could be challenging, due to some key difficulties of AI safety research.
But while I think misalignment risk is serious and presents major challenges, I don’t agree with sentiments along the lines of “We haven’t figured out how to align an AI, so if transformative AI comes soon, we’re doomed.” Here I’m going to talk about some of my high-level hopes for how we might end up avoiding this risk.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rJRw78oihoT5paFGd/high-level-hopes-for-ai-alignment
Narrated by Holden Karnofsky for the Cold Takes blog.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8bcPkqdLYG78YbnTh/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-5th-dec-11th-dec-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
Key Takeaways
- Our objective: estimate the welfare ranges of 11 farmed species.
- Given hedonism, an individual’s welfare range is the difference between the welfare level associated with the most intense positively valenced state that the individual can realize and the welfare level associated with the most intense negatively valenced state that the individual can realize.
- Given some prominent theories about the functions of valenced states, we identified over 90 empirical proxies that might provide evidence of variation in the potential intensities of those states.
- There are many unknowns across many species.
- It’s rare to have evidence that animals lack a given trait.
- We know less about the presence or absence of traits as we move from terrestrial vertebrates to most invertebrates.
- Many of the traits about which we know the least are affective traits.
- We do have information about some significant traits for many animals.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnSg6o7crcHFLc395/the-welfare-range-table
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
Hiya folks! I'm Patrick McKenzie, better known on the Internets as patio11. (Proof.) Long-time-listener, first-time-caller; I don't think I would consider myself an EA but I've been reading y'all, and adjacent intellectual spaces, for some time now.
Epistemic status: Arbitrarily high confidence with regards to facts of the VaccinateCA experience (though speaking only for myself), moderately high confidence with respect to inferences made about vaccine policy and mechanisms for impact last year, one geek's opinion with respect to implicit advice to you all going forward.
A Thing That Happened Last Year
As some of the California-based EAs may remember, the rollout of the covid-19 vaccines in California and across the U.S. was... not optimal. I accidentally ended up founding a charity, VaccinateCA, which ran the national shadow vaccine location information infrastructure for 6 months.
The core product at the start of the sprint, which some of you may be familiar with, was a site which listed places to get the vaccine in California, sourced by a volunteer-driven operation to conduct an ongoing census of medical providers by calling them. Importantly, that was not our primary vector for impact, though it was very important to our trajectory.
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NkPghabDd54nkG3kX/some-observations-from-an-ea-adjacent-charitable-effort
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
client: ea\_forum
project\_id: summaries
narrator: cs
---
Original article:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LdEPDqyZvucQkxhWH/ea-and-lw-forums-weekly-summary-28th-nov-4th-dec-22
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA Forum — you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
Narrated by Coleman Jackson Snell. Summaries written by Zoe Williams (Rethink Priorities).
Published by TYPE III AUDIO on behalf of the Effective Altruism Forum.
---
client: ea\_forum
project\_id: curated
narrator: pw
qa: km
narrator\_time: 2h
qa\_time: 35m
---
Key Takeaways:
- Several influential EAs have suggested using neuron counts as rough proxies for animals’ relative moral weights. We challenge this suggestion.
- We take the following ideas to be the strongest reasons in favor of a neuron count proxy:
- neuron counts are correlated with intelligence and intelligence is correlated with moral weight,
- additional neurons result in “more consciousness” or “more valenced consciousness,” and
- increasing numbers of neurons are required to reach thresholds of minimal information capacity required for morally relevant cognitive abilities.
- However:
- in regards to intelligence, we can question both the extent to which more neurons are correlated with intelligence and whether more intelligence in fact predicts greater moral weight;
- many ways of arguing that more neurons results in more valenced consciousness seem incompatible with our current understanding of how the brain is likely to work; and
- there is no straightforward empirical evidence or compelling conceptual arguments indicating that relative differences in neuron counts within or between species reliably predicts welfare relevant functional capacities.
- Overall, we suggest that neuron counts should not be used as a sole proxy for moral weight, but cannot be dismissed entirely. Rather, neuron counts should be combined with other metrics in an overall weighted score that includes information about whether different species have welfare-relevant capacities.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Mfq7KxQRvkeLnJvoB/why-neuron-counts-shouldn-t-be-used-as-proxies-for-moral
This is a linkpost for https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p50vw84-ry2taYmyOIl4B91j7wkCurlB/edit?rtpof=true&sd=true
Narrated for the Effective Altruism Forum by TYPE III AUDIO.
The resources for members of the EA community in light of the FTX situation (Minute 34:24) are the following:
Open Phil is seeking applications from grantees impacted by recent events by Bastian_Stern
Announcing Nonlinear Emergency Funding by Kat Woods, Emerson Spartz, Drew Spartz
AI Safety Microgrant Round by Chris Leong, Damola Morenikeji, David_Kristoffersson
Up to $2K USD grants, with total available funding of $6K.
Effective Peer Support Network in FTX crisis (Update) by Emily, Inga
Includes a table of supporters you can contact for free, as well as a peer support network slack.
Thoughts on legal concerns surrounding the FTX situation by Molly
Thank you all for listening, you can follow Coleman on Twitter at @SnellColeman for any updates on the EA Forum Weekly and also his interview-based podcast, 21st Talks.
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This week's episode is a little different from our normal programing due to front-ending news and discussion about the FTX situation. If you need someone to talk to, even just to vent, CEA’s community health team is available or you can access peer support set up by Rethink Wellbeing and the Mental Health Navigator here.
Limited emergency funding is available via Nonlinear or the AI Safety Microgrants round
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Link to the 2022 EA Survey!
EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (Oct. 31st - Nov. 6th 22')
The Effective Altruism Forum Weekly is hosted by Coleman Snell and Summaries are written by Zoe Williams of Rethink Priorities. Each week, we summarize the top-voted posts and articles on the EA Forum, conveniently separated into different categories for easier listening.
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ea-forum-podcast/message
Link to the 2022 EA Survey!
EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (24 - 30th Oct 22')
The Effective Altruism Forum Weekly is hosted by Coleman Snell and Summaries are written by Zoe Williams of Rethink Priorities. Each week, we summarize the top-voted posts and articles on the EA Forum, conveniently separated into different categories for easier listening.
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ea-forum-podcast/message
The Effective Altruism Forum Weekly is a podcast that summarizes the top posts on the EA forum from the previous week, written by Zoe Williams and supported by Rethink Priorities.
A written version of the summaries can be found here.
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Quick update on this podcast ... where it's come from and where it's going etc. (David Reinstein off-the-cuff)
- EA Forum Weekly summaries will keep happening
- Watch this space; we may return to full readings of EA Forum posts (and maybe comments), with even better production value than a year ago
- Maybe other content too (authors read own posts, interviews/discussions with authors, etc), contact daaronr AT gmail.com if you are interested in contributing content
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EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (10 - 16 Oct 22') Hosting: "EA Forum Summaries Weekly"; Episode 4 (10-16 October, 2022), summaries by Zoe Williams, supported by Rethink Priorities. Synthesized, narrated and produced by Coleman Snell.
Starting with "We can do better than Argmax".
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Hosting: "EA Forum Summaries Weekly" Episode 3 (Sept 26 - Oct 9, 2022), summaries by Zoe Williams, supported by Rethink Priorities. Synthesized, narrated and produced by Coleman Snell
Link: EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (26 Sep - 9 Oct 22')
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Read/adapted from EA & LW Forums Weekly Summary (19 - 25 Sep 22') by Zoe Williams (I believe only the EA Forum part is narrated.)
Synthesized/ narrated and produced by Coleman Snell with consultation from David Reinstein.
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EA Forum Podcast hosts...
Note from Coleman Snell:Thanks for listening to the very first episode of EA Forum Summaries Weekly! Narrated and produced by Coleman Snell. Written summaries by Rethink Priorities Executive Research Assistant Zoe Williams.
You can check out all the articles in the links below:
An experiment eliciting relative estimates for Open Philanthropy’s 2018 AI safety grants
Could it be a (bad) lock-in to replace factory farming with alternative protein?
Differential technology development: preprint on the concept
Announcing the Space Futures Initiative
Requesting feedback: proposal for a new nonprofit with potential to become highly effective
What could an AI-caused existential catastrophe actually look like?
Improving "Improving Institutional Decision-Making": A brief history of IIDM
Roodman's Thoughts on Biological Anchors
Apply now - EAGxVirtual (21-23 Oct)
Announcing an Empirical AI Safety Program
My emotional reaction to the current funding situation
My closing talk at EAGxSingapore
Bring legal cases to me, I will donate 100% of my cut of the fee to a charity of your choice
"Agency" needs nuance
CEA Ops is now EV Ops
EA architect: Building an EA hub in the Great Lakes region, Ohio
It’s not effective to call everything effective and how (not) to name a new organisation
Please note that this podcast will only contain summaries of EA forum posts, and not LessWrong posts. This is to keep the episodes short & sweet for a weekly series. Other options would include raising the karma threshold on both.
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"Do good better" Creative Writing Contest Fiction joint 2nd prize winner, by Andrew Kao, read by David Reinstein
Link: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SQZKZe3MLjiAuyxGJ/creative-writing-contest-fiction-do-good-better
3 Jan 2022 -- improved sound quality (less mic distortion, I hope)
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Reading https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T4F6ZW5Hzv4Tz9Mrm/the-value-of-money-going-to-different-groups
This is an edited repost of a previous reading (reader David Reinstein); I removed my commentary so you can listen to the full essay uninterrupted.
Used an audio tool for this; let me know what you think I may do this for other prior episodes (remove the comments), if there is interest. I'm thinking for future readings to save my comments for the end, if at all (maybe still including a few explainers if they don't distract from the flow.)
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Cross-post of:
https://bit.ly/fitstoby
I'm about to post a version with (almost?) NO COMMENTS ...
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Cross-post from Found In the Struce
Reading Seeing the effects of your donation and making incremental choices from the EA Forum, by David Reinstein ... (read by the author)
Part of the 'giving and gifts podcast trilogy'
along with Profusion: The Big, Christmassy Data Special and
FITS "The Economics of the Gift" reading
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"The Unweaving of a Beautiful Thing" (1st prize 2021 creative writing contest), by atb, read by David Reinstein. Sorry for the half-assed accent work.
Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mCtZF5tbCYW2pRjhi/the-unweaving-of-a-beautiful-thing
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Original post
Written by Jason Schukraft
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Original post by Jonathan Harris
Graph mentioned in episode
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Original post
Written by Jason Schukraft
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Read content and comments from EA Forum post "Research Summary: The Intensity of Valenced Experience across Species" by Jason Schukraft.
Read by David Reinstein, who interjects with some small discussion points and thoughts.
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Cross hosted from "Found in the Struce"
David Reinstein:
I read "Cultured meat: A comparison of techno-economic analyses I added some comments including a few 'what does this mean?' cries for help. Note, I mentioned stray content in one place when it was actually a link to a google doc -- I was reading this on a black and white e-reader that didn't show this as a link. Some highlights: Laugh at my mispronunciation of biological terms, and mixing up the Greek letters upsilon and mu.
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Note: Despite what is said in this episode, today is not Smallpox Eradication Day. Smallpox Eradication Day is on December 9th.
Original post by Jai
Read & edited by Garrett Baker
This post is a primarily motivational work on the horrible effects & eradication of smallpox.
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Original post by Benjamin Todd
Read & edited by David Reinstein
Here’s a summary of what’s coming up:
- How much funding is committed to effective altruism (going forward)? Around $46 billion.
- How quickly have these funds grown? About 37% per year since 2015, with much of the growth concentrated in 2020–2021.
- How much is being donated each year? Around $420 million, which is just over 1% of committed capital, and has grown maybe about 21% per year since 2015.
- How many committed community members are there? About 7,400, growing 10–20% per year 2018–2020, and growing faster than that 2015–2017.
- Has the funding overhang grown or shrunk? Funding seems to have grown faster than the number of people, so the overhang has grown in both proportional and absolute terms.
- What might be the implications for career choice? Skill bottlenecks have probably increased for people able to think of ways to spend lots of funding effectively, run big projects, and evaluate grants.
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Podcast originally posted here
Original Effective Altruism Forum post here
Read & Edited by David Reinstein
Reading "Why scientific research is less effective in producing value than it could be: a mapping" post in the EA Forum (and peering at some links). Some comments and thoughts/my own experience. Reading the comments section, especially comments from Linch Zhang, IanDavidMoss, and AllAmericanBreakfast.
Outro snip: "Magic Terrapin" by Alfie Pugh, performed by the Locked Horns
I hope to follow up on this with a reading/discussion of bit.ly/unjournal (or the EA Forum post version of this, if and when I make it)
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Read and Edited by Sam Nolan, Written by MichaelA
This is the second post in the series Improving the EA-Aligned Research Pipeline, What's wrong with the EA-Aligned Research Pipeline.
This reading discusses 10 potential issues with the pipeline as it currently stands. Most notably, it finds that although there are a large number of people, research questions and funders, but a bottleneck in vetting potential EA research candidates.
The first post in this series was:
- Improving the EA-Aligned Research Pipeline
Further posts in this series will be released soon.
Links:
- Original post
- A central directory for open research questions
- EA is vetting-constrained
- Ben Todd discussing organizational capacity, infrastructure, and management bottlenecks
- Call to action anonymous form
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/fSmBYeTyisyM9fkmD/p/ysHq3K2asNwsCRWeG
Read & edited by Sam Nolan
This post is the introduction to the sequence, Improving the EA-Aligned Research Pipeline by MichaelA. The sequence discusses the problems with the current system for EA aligned research, and issues with allocating resources (particularly human resources) effectively. It also discusses possible intervention options to solve these bottlenecks in the research pipeline.
This episode is an introduction to the sequence. The rest of the sequence is:
- What's wrong with the EA Research Pipeline?
The rest of the sequence is, as of writing this, yet to be published, but hopefully will be soon!
The links in this post can be found by browsing the original post above.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3voXaqvPutSrHvuCT/the-case-against-ea-cause-areas
Read & edited by Garrett Baker
Everyone reasonably familiar with EA knows that AI safety, pandemic preparedness, animal welfare and global poverty are considered EA cause areas, whereas feminism, LGBT rights, wildlife conservation and dental hygiene aren't.
The state of some very specific cause areas being held in high regard by the EA community is the result of long deliberations by many thoughtful people who have reasoned that work in these areas could be highly effective. This collective cause prioritization is often the outcome of weighing and comparing the scale, tractability and neglectedness of different causes. Neglectedness in particular seems to play a crucial role in swaying the attention of many EAs and concluding, for example, that working on pandemic preparedness is likely more promising than working on climate change, due to the different levels of attention that these causes currently receive worldwide. Some cause areas, such as AI safety and global poverty, have gained so much attention within EA (both in absolute terms and, more so, compared to the general public) that the EA movement has become somewhat identified with them.
Prioritizing and comparing cause areas is at the very core of EA. Nevertheless, I would like to argue that while cause prioritization is extremely important and should continue, having the EA movement identified with specific cause areas has negative consequences. I would like to highlight the negative aspects of having such a large fraction of the attention and resources of EA going into such a small number of causes, and present the case for more cause diversification and pluralism within EA.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/YCa8BRQoxKbmf5CJb/p/vQpk3cxdAe5RX9xzo
Read & Edited by Garrett Baker
Spoilers ahead — listen to the episode beforehand if you don’t want to hear a rough summary first.
I quite liked the "Playing God" episode of RadioLab.
The topic is triage, the practice of assigning priority to different patients in emergency medicine. By extension, to triage means to ration scarce resources. The episode treats triage as a rare phenomenon– in fact, it suggests that medical triage protocols were not taken very seriously in the US until after Hurricane Katrina– but triage is not a rare phenomenon at all. We are engaging in triage with every decision we make.
The stories in “Playing God” are gripping, particularly the story of a New Orleans hospital thrown into hell in a matter of days after losing power during Hurricane Katrina. Sheri Fink from the New York Times discusses the events she reported in her book, Five Days at Memorial. The close-up details are difficult to stomach. After evacuating the intensive care unit, the hospital staff are forced to rank the remaining patients for evacuation; moving the patients is backbreaking labor without the elevators, and helicopters and boats are only coming sporadically to take them away. Sewage is backing up into the hospital and the extreme heat is causing some patients and pets to have seizures.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/YCa8BRQoxKbmf5CJb/p/5EqJozsDdHcF7dpPL
In this talk from EAGxBerkeley 2016, Ajeya Cotra shares what led her to join the effective altruism movement, then provides an overview of its basic principles.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LpkXtFXdsRd4rG8Kb/reducing-long-term-risks-from-malevolent-actors
Read by: Wuschel
Edited by: Garrett Baker
Summary * Dictators who exhibited highly narcissistic, psychopathic, or sadistic traits were involved in some of the greatest catastrophes in human history. (More) * Malevolent individuals in positions of power could negatively affect humanity’s long-term trajectory by, for example, exacerbating international conflict or other broad risk factors. (More) * Malevolent humans with access to advanced technology—such as whole brain emulation or other forms of transformative AI—could cause serious existential risks and suffering risks. (More) * We therefore consider interventions to reduce the expected influence of malevolent humans on the long-term future.
The development of manipulation-proof measures of malevolence seems valuable, since they could be used to screen for malevolent humans in high-impact settings, such as heads of government or CEOs. (More)
We also explore possible future technologies that may offer unprecedented leverage to mitigate against malevolent traits. (More)
Selecting against psychopathic and sadistic tendencies in genetically enhanced, highly intelligent humans might be particularly important. However, risks of unintended negative consequences must be handled with extreme caution. (More) * We argue that further work on reducing malevolence would be valuable from many moral perspectives and constitutes a promising focus area for longtermist EAs. (More)
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/347gJg88ZxxE7Jhch/report-on-running-a-forecasting-tournament-at-an-ea-retreat#Tournament_Outcomes Read & edited by: Garrett Baker Tournament Outcomes In this section I’ll go over the strategies used by players, final scores, and the winner of the tournament. For the actual outcomes of the predictions, see the appendix.
Strategies Used by Players The most common strategy I observed was when a question’s outcome could be influenced by player behaviour, players would predict an outcome with 99% confidence then devise a plan to make their predicted outcome happen. One player even made a to-do list:
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/347gJg88ZxxE7Jhch/i-ran-a-forecasting-tournament-at-an-ea-retreat-here-s-what
Read & edited by Garrett Baker
This post describes a simple forecasting tournament I ran during the 2021 Effective Altruism New Zealand retreat as an experimental exercise in improving judgement and decision making. I asked players to predict whether certain events would occur within the span of the retreat, like whether Peter Singer would post to Instagram, or whether anyone would lose their hat.
The tournament was surprisingly fun, and went in many unexpected directions. I would strongly encourage other EA retreats and similar gatherings to run their own prediction tournaments, and I provide some resources to get started.
A summary of this post:
- Motivation for the tournament.
- Summary of the rules, questions, and scoring system I used.
- Outcomes of the tournament: strategies used by players and the scores obtained.
- Discussion of stuff I found interesting or surprising, and changes I would make to future iterations of the tournament.
- Conclusion and promises for follow-up posts.
- Appendix: the outcomes of the prediction questions.
Motivation The art of forecasting is an important part of the Effective Altruism extended universe. There are at least three reasons for this. First, if you can predict which problems are going to be important in the future, then you can start preparing solutions now (unaligned AI, runaway nanotech, engineered pandemics...) Secondly, if you can predict the future conditional on your actions, then you can choose interventions which do more good for longer (if we transfer cash to poor countries, will this help them build a self-sustaining economy, or will it foster dependence and fragility?) Thirdly, in a broad sense, good forecasting requires clear thinking and improves decision-making, which are virtues we want to cultivate in building a wiser society. In other words, cultivating forecasting skills is an act of everyday longtermism.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HGLK3igGprWQPHfAp/against-neutrality-about-creating-happy-lives
Narration by: The Girl Reading This
Editing by: Garrett Baker
(Warning: spoilers for the movie American Beauty.)
“Once for each, just once. Once and no more.
And for us too, once. Never again. And yet
it seems that this—to have once existed,
even if only once, to have been a part
*of this earth—can never be taken back.
And so we keep going, trying to achieve it,*
trying to hold it in our simple hands,
*our already crowded eyes, our dumbfounded hearts.”
– Rilke, Ninth Elegy*
Various philosophers have tried hard to validate the so-called “intuition of neutrality,” according to which the fact that someone would live a wonderful life, if created, is not itself reason to create them (see e.g. Frick (2014) for efforts in this vicinity). The oft-quoted slogan from Jan Narveson is: “We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people” (p. 80).
I don’t have the neutrality intuition. To the contrary, I think that creating someone who will live a wonderful life is to do, for them, something incredibly significant and worthwhile. Exactly how to weigh this against other considerations in different contexts is an additional and substantially more complex question. But I feel very far from neutral about it, and I’d hope that others, in considering whether to create me, wouldn’t feel neutral, either. This post tries to point at why.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ozyQ7PwhRgP7D9b2w/new-org-canning-what-we-give
Narration by: Pixel Brownie Software (Prownie)
Editing by: Garrett Baker
Epistemic status: 30% (plus or minus 50%). Further details at the bottom.
In the 2019 EA Cause Prioritisation survey, Global Poverty remains the most popular single cause across the sample as a whole. But after more engagement with EA, around 42% of people change their cause area, and of that, a majority (54%) moved towards the Long Term Future/Catastrophic and Existential Risk Reduction.
While many people find that donations help them stay engaged (and continue to be a great thing to do), there has been much discussion of other ways people can contribute positively.
In thinking about the long-run future, one area of research has been improving human's resilience to disasters. A 2014 paper looked at global refuges, and more recently ALLFED, among others, have studied ways to feed humanity in disaster scenarios.
There is much work done, and even much more needed, to directly reduce risks such as through pandemic preparedness, improving nuclear treaties, and improving the functioning of international institutions.
But we believe that there are still opportunities to increase resilience in disaster scenarios. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to directly link the simplicity of donations with effective methods for the recovery of civilisation?
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/i24sXY8v6FXLyJKXF/why-ea-groups-should-not-use-effective-altruism-in-their
Narration by Liam Nolan
Editing by Garrett Baker
Starting a conversation about the name “Effective Altruism” for local and university groups.
Abstract: most EA groups’ names follow the recipe “Effective Altruism + [location/university]”. In 2020 we founded a university EA group who’s name does not include the words “Effective Altruism”. We have grown rapidly, and it now seems more and more likely that our organization will stick around in years to come. We think our name played a non-negligible part in that. In fact, we believe that choosing an alternative name is one of the most cost-effective things you can do to make your group grow. In this article we argue that more (potential) groups should consider an alternative name. We propose a method for coming up with that name. Lastly, we propose that “part of the EA network” could serve as a common subtitle to unite all EA groups despite their various names. Scroll down to ‘summary’ for a quick overview of our arguments.
One of my teachers, a social entrepreneur, once told me: “when you are doing any kind of project, first make sure to give it a good name.” These words ran through my mind when I, together with five others, started a new EA student association at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
At our second collective meeting we decided against the name “Effective Altruism Erasmus” and opted for “Positive Impact Society Erasmus” (PISE) instead. Now, 6 months in, we still believe this was a great decision. Our association is doing well, and we believe that our name has had some part in that.
As we speak, more Dutch EA groups are considering changing their name. Maastricht University’s chapter is already called “LEAP” (Local Effective Altruism Project) and the group at Wageningen University is also considering a name change.
We think we should have a movement wide conversation about “Effective Altruism” as the name for local and university groups. Below we have written down our thoughts on two questions: firstly, should local and university groups have a name other than “Effective Altruism X”? Secondly, if so, what should that name be? Lastly, we propose a common subtitle for all EA groups with an alternative name. Our thoughts are far from complete and we are uncertain on many accounts. We invite anyone to add to the discussion!
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RZ4cWxEkTsCqGgfut/how-to-run-a-high-energy-reading-group
Narration by Garrett Baker
Editing by Athenae Galea
Why are reading groups and journal clubs bad so often?
I think there are two reasons: boring readings and low-energy discussions. This post is about how to avoid those pitfalls.
The problem I have participated in (and organized) some really bad reading groups. This is a shame, because I love a good reading group. They cause me to read more things and read them more carefully. A great group discussion will give me way more than I’d get just by taking notes on a reading.
This is what a bad reading group looks like: six people gather around a table. Two kind of skimmed the reading, and two didn’t read it at all. No one knows quite what to talk about. Someone ventures a, “so, what surprised you about the paper?” Another person flips through their notes, scanning for a possible answer. Most people stay quiet. No one leaves the table feeling excited about the reading or about being a part of the group.
This is avoidable, but you need to find interesting and valuable readings and you need to structure your group to encourage high-energy discussions.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ntLmCbHE2XKhfbzaX/how-much-does-performance-differ-between-people
Narration by Liam Nolan
Audio editing by Garrett Baker
Some people seem to achieve orders of magnitudes more than others in the same job. For instance, among companies funded by Y Combinator the top 0.5% account for more than ⅔ of the total market value; and among successful bestseller authors, the top 1% stay on the New York Times bestseller list more than 25 times longer than the median author in that group.
This is a striking and often unappreciated fact, but raises many questions. How many jobs have these huge differences in achievements? More importantly, why can achievements differ so much, and can we identify future top performers in advance? Are some people much more talented? Have they spent more time practicing key skills? Did they have more supportive environments, or start with more resources? Or did the top performers just get lucky?
More precisely, when recruiting, for instance, we’d want to know the following: when predicting the future performance of different people in a given job, what does the distribution of predicted (‘ex-ante’) performance look like?
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2BEecjksNZNHQmdyM/don-t-be-bycatch
It's a common story. Someone who's passionate about EA principles, but has little in the way of resources, tries and fails to do EA things. They write blog posts, and nothing happens. They apply to jobs, and nothing happens. They do research, and don't get that grant. Reading articles no longer feels exciting, but like a chore, or worse: a reminder of their own inadequacy. Anybody who comes to this place, I heartily sympathize, and encourage them to disentangle themselves from this painful situation any way they can.
Why does this happen? Well, EA has two targets.
- Subscribers to EA principles who the movement wants to become big donors or effective workers.
- Big donors and effective workers who the movement wants to subscribe to EA principles.
I won't claim what weight this community and its institutions give to (1) vs. (2). But when we set out to catch big fish, we risk turning the little fish into bycatch. The technical term for this is churn.
Part of the issue is the planner's fallacy. When we're setting out, we underestimate how long and costly it will be to achieve an impact, and overestimate what we'll accomplish. The higher above average you aim for, the more likely you are to fall short.
And another part is expectation-setting. If the expectation right from the get-go is that EA is about quickly achieving big impact, almost everyone will fail, and think they're just not cut out for it. I wish we had a holiday that was the opposite of Petrov Day, where we honored somebody who went a little bit out of their comfort zone to try and be helpful in a small and simple way. Or whose altruistic endeavor was passionate, costly, yet ineffective, and who tried it anyway, changed their mind, and valued it as a learning experience.
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Original post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMCWXTayji7gvRK9p/is-democracy-a-fad
This cross-post from my personal blog explains why I think democracy will probably recede within the next several centuries, supposing people are still around.
The key points are that: (1) Up until the past couple centuries, nearly all states have been dictatorships. (2) There are many examples of system-wide social trends, including the rise of democracy in Ancient Greece, that have lasted for a couple centuries and then been reversed. (3) If certain popular theories about democratization are right, then widespread automation would negate recent economic changes that have allowed democracy to flourish.
This prediction might have some implications for what people who are trying to improve the future should do today (although I'm not sure what these implications are). It might also have some implications for how we should imagine the future more broadly. For example, it might give us stronger reasons to doubt that future generations will take inclusive approaches to any consequential decisions they face.
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