EA Updates for January 2020
Meta
• Open Phil have made 6 grants recently with a total value of $4,405,000. With $3,555,000 on criminal justice reform, $750,000 for macroeconomic stabilisation policy and $100,000 on global development
• Parth Thaya on how they promoted effective altruism at Microsoft and advice for others interested in promoting EA at their workplace
• Charity Entrepreneurship with posts on 5 challenges entrepreneurs may face and 6 ways a charity start up could fail
• 80,000 Hours with anonymous answers on “What’s one way to be successful you don’t think people talk about enough?”
• The EA Survey 2019 with research into careers and skills of respondents and their cause prioritisation
• EA Giving Tuesday successfully helped people match $563,000 in donations, which is 51% of the total donated by people interested in EA
• The Centre for Effective Altruism with advice on how to get more involved in EA if you want to organise events or set up 1-1s
• Rethink Priorities with research on the effectiveness of ballot initiatives
Global Development
• GiveWell on why it’s important to think through all of the factors that influence a charity’s impact
• John Halstead and Hauke Hillebrandt with research on whether advocacy for economic growth in low and middle income countries is more cost-effective than interventions that can be tested by randomised controlled trials
• James Snowden with a talk on how GiveWell is investigating giving opportunities related to policy
• Rob Mather from the Against Malaria Foundation with an ‘Ask Me Anything’ on the EA Forum
• Charity Entrepreneurship on the strengths and weaknesses of four different cause areas, looking at mental health, family planning, animal welfare and health policy
• Twice as many people as previously believed are dying of sepsis worldwide. The study revealed 48.9 million global cases of sepsis in 2017 and 11 million deaths, representing 1 in 5 deaths worldwide
• EA is mentioned in a mini documentary by the Economist, with Julian Austin from the Against Malaria Foundation discussing their work
• Devex with a list of the 10 most under reported humanitarian disasters
• An ‘Ask Me Anything’ with Jon Behar and Kathryn Mecrow-Flynn from The Life You Can Save
• Think Global Health, a new news website that examines the ways in which changes in global health are reshaping economies, societies and the lives of people around the world
• The Gates Foundation 2019 in review
• The World Bank blog with their top social protection & cash transfer papers of 2019
• Caleb Parikh on setting up a charity to advocate for tobacco taxation in Mongolia and Armenia
• An article in Nature on the role of AI in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
• Effective Altruism Foundation with a write up on their successful ballot initiative asking to increase the city of Zurich’s development cooperation budget and to allocate it more effectively
Animal Welfare
• Sentience Institute podcast with Kristof Dhont on intergroup contact research and research careers
• The EA Animal Welfare Fund is looking for applications until the 6th of February
• Animal Charity Evaluators are looking for external reviewers of their research
• Charity Entrepreneurship with reports on whether charities should attempt to change animal welfare laws in India or Taiwan and plant-based seafood as a food technology intervention
• Animal Ethics with their 2020 plans
• A talk by Varun Deshpande on the importance of clean and plant-based meat in low and middle income countries
• Lauren Mee with a post introducing Animal Advocacy Careers, who are attempting to address the career and talent bottlenecks in the effective animal advocacy community
• The Guardian looking into the global trade of live animals
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
• Key questions that could determine if the coronavirus outbreak becomes a pandemic
• Owen Cotton‐Barratt, Max Daniel and Anders Sandberg with a paper on prevention, response, resilience, and why they all matter when trying to reduce extinction risk
• Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative on their plans for 2020
• CSER have set up the Existential Risk Research Network to help build a network of researchers who have an interest in existential risk and other forms of global catastrophic risk
• CSER with summaries of 12 recent publications
• NPR with an article on how much should the public be told about research into risky viruses
• The Global Challenges Foundation with an overview of complexity thinking for governing global catastrophic risks
Long Term Future
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Will MacAskill on EA culture, longtermism and whether we are living in the most influential time in history
• Write ups of the EA Long Term Future Fund for November 2019
• The Survival and Flourishing Fund is open for applications until 7th March
• Founders Pledge are looking for input on the idea of setting up a long-term investment fund
Environmentalism
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is creating a new agriculture-focused nonprofit to accelerate the development of innovations that are needed to improve crop productivity and help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change
• A job board looking at impactful careers in climate change
• Louis Dixon has written up notes on this talk by Niel Bowerman on the relationship between climate change, longtermism, and effective altruism
• Our World in Data with a post suggesting that if you want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food, you should focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
• Microsoft on how they plan to be carbon negative by 2030 and are putting $1,000,000,000 into a climate innovation fund
• Stephen Clare on how thoughtful philanthropists should think about two key aspects of the Australian fires: climate change and animal welfare
Other Causes
• Deepmind with a paper in Nature and a post on how they are using AI for scientific discovery
• A paper in Science Direct on funding conservation research through the effective altruism movement
• A new FAQ on longevity research
• Tobias Baumann arguing that space governance has been overlooked as a potentially promising cause area
• Happier Lives Institute with their research plan for 2020 and openings for research interns
• A post looking at psychedelics, their potential to alleviate suffering and the role played by philanthropy to support research and advocacy
• An article looking at natural disasters in 2019, with there being 9,000 deaths, down from 15,000 in 2018, and below the 30 year annual average of 52,000
• An overview of the intersection of natural disasters and political violence
• An overview of Google AI in 2019 and their plan for social good in 2020
Miscellaneous Updates
• Why do non profits give away so many gifts?
• How 42 countries interpret the trolley problem
• A post looking at how sanitation led to large mortality reduction rates before vaccines or antibiotics had been invented
• Simon Beard with a biography of Derek Parfit
• Clearer Thinking have created a new tool to help form beneficial daily habits
• Marc Gunther on their charitable donations for 2019
• Jason Dang on why they’ve signed up to Try Giving, to give away 10% of their income to impactful charities
• Julia Wise on the positives and negatives of small acts of kindness
• Rose Hadshar writing in praise of unhistoric heroism
• A Reddit thread on combining financial independence and effective altruism
• Helen Toner on avoiding burnout at work
Good News Roundup
• New research has identified that the majority of schistosomiasis control initiatives across countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Yemen have reached the disease-control target by two treatment rounds or less, as opposed to the five to 10 years projected by current WHO guidelines
• Over half of Colombia is now landmine free and they are aiming to remove all of them by 2021
I think “Tobias Baumann arguing that space governance has been overlooked as a potentially promising cause area” would make sense under “Existential & Catastrophic Risks” or “Long Term Future”.