E.A. Megaproject Ideas

Tomer_Goloboy21 Mar 2022 1:23 UTC
15 points
4 comments4 min readEA link

There are a number of “megaprojects” which I’d like to see people in the E.A. community carry out. Posts like this have been enormously helpful to me as I’ve browsed the E.A. forum. This is my first post on this forum, so please be nice :)

Without further ado:

E.A. Megaprojects Ideas

  • Do research into using AI, biological engineering and brain-computer interface to enhance our capacity for love, compassion, reason, and other positive traits for the long-term future.

    • From 80,000 Hours:

      • “better reasoning and cognitive capacities usually make for better outcomes, especially when problems are subtle or complex. And as with institutions, work on improving individual decision-making is likely to be helpful no matter what challenges the future throws up”

  • Improving the psychiatric crisis system through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness, and Atomic Habits (training for building good habits and breaking bad ones).

  • Fund E.A. student groups at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Womens’ colleges, and colleges in low- and middle-income countries through the Centre for Effective Altruism to decrease hegemony in E.A.

  • Grant for shifting the focus of AI safety research from value alignment to inculcating virtue and moral character in AI systems (see Moral Machines)

  • E.A.-aligned think tank for drafting evidence-based legislation on X-risks, biosecurity, global health and development, climate change, factory farming, institutional reform, etc., and a SuperPAC for E.A.-aligned candidates in the United States.

  • Launch XPRIZE competitions to:

    • Spur innovation in Global Health and Development by offering $10 million for the creation of a novel intervention at least twice as effective as GiveWell’s top charities.

    • Create an extracurricular training program to rapidly train people to do high-impact work in 80,000 Hours priority paths in less time and for less money than a typical degree program.

  • Launch a lobbying firm to advocate for free trade policies.

    • From Copenhagen Consensus:

      • The goal with the highest benefit-cost ratio in the area of trade policy reform is:

        • Complete the languishing Doha Development Agenda process at the World Trade Organization, which will return ~$2000 to the world for every dollar spent and ~$3,400 to developing countries as a group for every dollar spent.

      • Three other goals in this area which have valuable global benefit-cost ratios are:

        • Implement a free trade agreement between member states of the free trade area of the Asia Pacific which will return ~$1,700 to the world for every dollar spent and ~$2,600 to developing countries as a group for every dollar spent.

        • Implement a free trade agreement between selected APEC countries (known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership) which will return ~$1,200 to the world for every dollar spent and ~$1,900 to developing countries as a group for every dollar spent.

        • Implement a free trade agreement between ASEAN countries and China, Japan, and South Korea (known as ASEAN+3) which will return ~$1,900 to the world for every dollar spent and ~$3,400 to developing countries as a group for every dollar spent.

  • Graze half of the world’s deserts to restore carbon to preindustrial levels (Climate Change/​Long-Term Future)

    • How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory

    • Grasslands are vast landscapes that have the capacity if properly managed, to address some of humanity’s most urgent challenges such as water and food insecurity, poverty, and climate change.

    • Currently, grasslands are desertifying at alarming rates.

    • Holistic Management of grasslands can result in the regeneration of soils, increased productivity and biological diversity, as well as economic and social well-being.

    • Savory Institute works to regenerate these critically important and fragile grasslands.

    • On average, $30 allows the Savory Global Network to influence 100 acres of land as regional Hubs train farmers, ranchers, and pastoralist communities in their local context.

      • Back of the napkin math from Project Drawdown indicates that Savory Institute may be comparably effective to top climate change charities, like CATF, Carbon180, TerraPraxis, etc.

  • Dating app for Effective Altruists. Or alternatively, a particularly effective dating app (Subjective Well-Being/​E.A. Community Building)

    • If the app led to more E.A.s getting married, they could share finances allowing each of them to be able to donate to E.A. charities more than they would have otherwise.

    • Qualia Research Institute research finds that ‘falling in love’, ‘marriage’, ‘children born’, and ‘sex’ are among the four most pleasurable experiences which occur in life

      • This means that if we can achieve outcomes far better than typical dating apps, this could potentially be very effective at promoting subjective well-being.

    • May introduce many women and LGBTQ+ folk to Effective Altruism, which it is currently lacking.

    • Downside: May increase insularity in E.A., i.e. through “inbreeding”

  • Using ALLFED resilient food solutions to provide abundant food to end world hunger and malnutrition now (Global Health and Development)

    • These foods can be scaled up quickly and cheaply.

    • Peer-reviewed paper on how these foods together can achieve a balanced diet.

  • Buy out the most effective mental health apps and provide them for free to increase well-being (Subjective Well-Being)

    • Actissist and UCSF PRIME (reduced psychotic symptoms and symptoms of schizophrenia)

    • Virtual Hope Box (reduced self-harming and suicidal behavior),

    • Agoraphobia free (reduced symptoms of agoraphobia),

    • Challenger (reduced general anxiety and social anxiety)

    • MoodHacker and SuperBetter (reduced depression).

  • Research into psychological homogeneity of folks attracted to EA (on the Big 5, Myers-Briggs, etc) being curious and perhaps concerning re: EA’s generalizability (from Milan Griffes’s Twitter thread on E.A. blindspots)

  • Fully funding the Qualia Research Institute (from Milan Griffes’s Twitter thread on E.A. blindspots) to:

    • Develop a precise mathematical language for describing subjective experience.

    • Understand the nature of emotional valence (happiness and suffering).

    • Build technologies to radically improve people’s lives through a better understanding of subjective experience.

  • Fund visionaries like Vishen Lakhiani to upgrade human consciousness (i.e. through upgrading the human education model, models of work and career, spirituality, health and wellness, parenting, politics, citizenry, etc.) to prepare for exponential growth in technology, i.e. through A.I.-induced singularity.

Tomer_Goloboy21 Mar 2022 1:23 UTC
15 points
4 comments4 min readEA link