Sounds reasonable—and if successful will come back to a funding constraint.
You want to put your most expensive resource at the bottle-neck as an efficiency heuristic.
Do people think the bottle neck is ideas, execution, or funding—or the infrastructure needed to facilitate one or more of those?
It seems a shame that such intelligent and amazing people in the EA movement are, on the whole, putting their most productive and creative years (25-35?) into EtG rather than building and delivering practical solutions to improve the world in the best way possible outside of AI/Xrisk and movement building—as I think there is a lot of learning value from this kind of thing!
EA groups specialised around key promising interests such as healthcare, AI, governance, animal welfare, poverty and development etc. that can learn together, network efficiently, keep track of projects, prioritise collective resources etc. might be a way forward. AI/X-risk and perhaps animal welfare appears from the outside to be more developed along these lines than the others? What are people’s thoughts?
It seems a shame that such intelligent and amazing people in the EA movement are, on the whole, putting their most productive and creative years (25-35?) into EtG rather than building and delivering practical solutions to improve the world in the best way possible outside of AI/Xrisk and movement building—as I think there is a lot of learning value from this kind of thing!
I think animal welfare is more developed along these lines as well. Animal Ethics, the Foundational Research Institute, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Raising for Effective Giving are all organizations started by effective altruists with a total or partial focus on animal welfare. The coordinated efforts for animal welfare within effective altruism are newer, so you may not have heard of these organizations as much as MIRI or FLI. None of those organizations was founded earlier than late-2013. Hopefully more success is to come to and from them.
Thanks Evan—is it your impression that EAs across these activities are in touch and taking each other’s projects, strategies and learning into account when they plan their work?
Animal Charity Evaluators acts like the nexus between all these organizations. The newer ones founded by effective altruists don’t have enough of a track record to merit a recommendation from Animal Charity Evaluators yet. However, all these, and ACE’s top recommended charities, like Mercy For Animals and the Humane League, are in touch with each other. Nick Cooney, who works for Animal Charity Evaluators, has written a book about effective altruism this year, in addition to the one Peter Singer has written, and recommend each other’s books to the public.
So, yes, they’re definitely in touch with each other. One difference between existential risk reduction and animal activism is x-risk is smaller. X-risk reduction is so integrated with effective altruism that I think EA knows about everyone in x-risk reduction, and everyone in x-risk reduction knows about EA. However, animal activism is a much bigger movement than just what’s touched by effective altruism. Animal welfare/rights has much overlap with environmentalism, which might be the biggest social movement in the world, stretching even the definition of “movement”, really. The rest of animal activism seems so big it’s difficult for effective altruism to take into account the actions of the rest of that community, and EA itself is probably only a small part of animal activism.
For more information, I recommend contacting a director from the Board of ACE, such as Rob Wiblin, Brian Tomasik, or Jacy Anthis
Nick Cooney, who works for Animal Charity Evaluators, has written a book about effective altruism this year, in addition to the one Peter Singer has written, and recommend each other’s books to the public.
Nick Cooney works for MFA. Although MFA is one of ACE’s top ranked charities.
Sounds reasonable—and if successful will come back to a funding constraint.
You want to put your most expensive resource at the bottle-neck as an efficiency heuristic.
Do people think the bottle neck is ideas, execution, or funding—or the infrastructure needed to facilitate one or more of those?
It seems a shame that such intelligent and amazing people in the EA movement are, on the whole, putting their most productive and creative years (25-35?) into EtG rather than building and delivering practical solutions to improve the world in the best way possible outside of AI/Xrisk and movement building—as I think there is a lot of learning value from this kind of thing!
EA groups specialised around key promising interests such as healthcare, AI, governance, animal welfare, poverty and development etc. that can learn together, network efficiently, keep track of projects, prioritise collective resources etc. might be a way forward. AI/X-risk and perhaps animal welfare appears from the outside to be more developed along these lines than the others? What are people’s thoughts?
I think animal welfare is more developed along these lines as well. Animal Ethics, the Foundational Research Institute, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Raising for Effective Giving are all organizations started by effective altruists with a total or partial focus on animal welfare. The coordinated efforts for animal welfare within effective altruism are newer, so you may not have heard of these organizations as much as MIRI or FLI. None of those organizations was founded earlier than late-2013. Hopefully more success is to come to and from them.
Thanks Evan—is it your impression that EAs across these activities are in touch and taking each other’s projects, strategies and learning into account when they plan their work?
Animal Charity Evaluators acts like the nexus between all these organizations. The newer ones founded by effective altruists don’t have enough of a track record to merit a recommendation from Animal Charity Evaluators yet. However, all these, and ACE’s top recommended charities, like Mercy For Animals and the Humane League, are in touch with each other. Nick Cooney, who works for Animal Charity Evaluators, has written a book about effective altruism this year, in addition to the one Peter Singer has written, and recommend each other’s books to the public.
So, yes, they’re definitely in touch with each other. One difference between existential risk reduction and animal activism is x-risk is smaller. X-risk reduction is so integrated with effective altruism that I think EA knows about everyone in x-risk reduction, and everyone in x-risk reduction knows about EA. However, animal activism is a much bigger movement than just what’s touched by effective altruism. Animal welfare/rights has much overlap with environmentalism, which might be the biggest social movement in the world, stretching even the definition of “movement”, really. The rest of animal activism seems so big it’s difficult for effective altruism to take into account the actions of the rest of that community, and EA itself is probably only a small part of animal activism.
For more information, I recommend contacting a director from the Board of ACE, such as Rob Wiblin, Brian Tomasik, or Jacy Anthis
Nick Cooney works for MFA. Although MFA is one of ACE’s top ranked charities.