EA Updates for November 2021
Events
In Person Events
3-5th December—EAGxPrague
Virtual Events
2nd November—Discussion Group for Improving Institutional Decision Making − 6 weekly discussions organised by the Effective Institutions Project
5th November—Future-proofing global health: Governance of priorities—Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
7th November—Giving What We Can Meetup
7th November—EA For Christians Weekly Discussion
10th November—Cognition, Welfare, and the Problem of Interspecies Comparisons—Organised by Rethink Priorities
10th November—Q&A with Mirasbek Kuterbekov from Hoxton Farms—Organised by Cellular Agriculture UK
Mid November—Animal Advocacy Careers Introductory Course—Apply by November 10th
15-18th November—The Aquatic Life Conference—Organised by The Aquatic Life Institute
18th November—Effective Giving Open Forum—Organised by GWWC
18th November—Artificial intelligence and worker activism—Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
26th November—Altruism in international law—Organised by the Legal Priorities Project
4th December- Salary Negotiation Training Programme
4-12th December—Vision Weekend—Organised by Foresight Institute, with talks from Anders Sandberg, Jaan Tallinn, Tom Kalil and Jose Luis Ricon
6-8th December − 8th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research—Apply by November 14th, Organised by the Global Priorities Institute
Mid December—Impactful Policy Careers (training programme)
13-15th December—Interpretability, Safety, and Security in AI—A conference organised by the Alan Turing Institute
January 2022 - AGI Safety Fundamentals − 8 week course organised by EA Cambridge
Latest Research and Updates
Meta
A post introducing High Impact Professionals, a new organisation aiming to enable working professionals interested in EA to have the biggest positive impact possible
A post on the cost of rejection in EA
There is a new beta version of the Probably Good website, an EA careers organisation
Cristina Schmidt Ibáñez and Vaidehi Agarwalla with a post looking at ‘Coordination within EA: Community & Ecosystems’
Bill Zito suggests that early career people interested in EA should consider joining fast-growing start-ups in emerging technologies
Michael Aird with advice for apply to EA Funds
Charity Entrepreneurship introducing their 2021 incubated charities
Effective Thesis offer free coaching and guidance to students who want to begin research careers that improve the world
80,000 with the post ‘Effective altruism in a nutshell’
A post announcing the launch of EA for Jews, and a call for volunteers
FTX is funding EA Fellowships for people that want to work in the Bahamas remotely
A post introducing The Nonlinear Library, aiming to help people listen to more EA content
Ozzie Gooen with ‘Prioritization Research for Advancing Wisdom and Intelligence’
Mathieu Putz suggesting that more people should aim to become billionaires
Michael Dickens with a post suggesting ‘Future Funding/Talent/Capacity Constraints Matter, Too’
Aaron Gertler with an update on the creative writing contest taking place on the EA Forum
Devin Kalish with a critique of EA being less responsive to critiques than in the past
A post introducing Training for Good, a new effective altruism training organisation
EA Survey 2020: Geography
EA Survey 2020: Donation Data
80,000 Hours have launched a new podcast series ‘Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems’
Michael Aird with a list of EA funding opportunities
If you’re planning on running a fundraising campaign at your organisation this year, High Impact Professionals are providing resources and advice. You can also arrange a chat with them here
Jamie Harris asking whether you should run experiments when doing EA movement building
Training for Good are running a needs survey for current and aspiring policy makers in the UK and Europe
An EA Forum user offering free coaching for software developers in the EA community
Grants
Open Phil have made 8 grants recently with a total value of $7,100,000
$3,570,000 - Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness
$3,330,000 - Center for Security and Emerging Technology
$1,770,000 - Scientific Research
$1,560,000 - Farm Animal Welfare
Global Development
GiveWell with their initial thoughts on malaria vaccine approval
Kelsey Piper looking into the WHO approving the first malaria vaccine
A post for UK Research & Innovation on helping mosquitoes fight back against the diseases they spread
Sean Mayberry, the CEO of StrongMinds, looking at mental health in Africa
GiveDirectly with a write up of their financial situation
130 countries have reached a global deal for 15 per cent minimum corporate tax rate
New research suggesting that StrongMinds is 12 times more cost-effective than GiveDirectly in terms of subjective well-being
A post with concerns about AMF from GiveWell reading
Varsha Venugopal on the 80,000 Hours podcast discussing using gossip to help vaccinate every child in India
Saloni Dattani discusses progress and mental health on this podcast
Animal Welfare
Vox covering the European Commission announcing a ban on cages for a number of animals in 27 countries
Nicole Rawling, CEO of the Material Innovation Initiative, on the MII’s first podcast episode
Denmark announces €168 million in funding to advance plant-based foods
A post introducing Healthier Hens, a new EA-aligned animal welfare organisation
The Cultured Meat Conference is taking place between the 29th Nov −1st Dec this year
Existential & Catastrophic Risks
80,000 Hours podcast with Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk with a call for lightning talks at the CSER 2022 Conference. Submission deadline is 15th November
Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani on the assessment of volcanic eruptions as global catastrophic or existential risks
David Manheim with a paper called ‘High-risk human-caused pathogen exposure events from 1975-2016’
Filippa Lentzos discussing global catastrophic biological risks on the Future of Life Institute podcast
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk submitted evidence to the UK Government’s National Resilience Strategy
Asaf Tzachor and Catherine Richards have published a new article on the future of food
A post called ‘Feedback on Meta Policy Research Questions to Help Improve the X/GCR Field’s Policy Engagement’
The Nuclear Threat Initiative have updated their website
Improving Institutions
Maha Rehman on the 80,000 Hours podcast talking about working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people
A paper called ‘Training effective altruism: Experimental evidence from Pakistan’
Lizka with a post collecting possible issues with futarchy, a proposed form of governance based on prediction markets
Environment
The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance has launched six finance solutions to drive private capital to climate action in poorer economies
Daniel Stein, founder of Giving Green, writing about how donors can maximize impact for fighting climate change
Longtermism
Eric Martínez and Christoph Winter with the paper ‘Protecting Future Generations: A Global Survey of Legal Academics’
The Ezra Klein podcast with Holden Karnofsky
Samuel Hilton with ‘A practical guide to long-term planning – and suggestions for longtermism’
Krister Bykvist on moral uncertainty, rationality, metaethics, AI and future populations
David Manheim with a post about recent critiques of longtermism
Robin Hanson with criticism of the ‘Long Reflection’ idea
The APPG for Future Generations with an impact report for 2020 − 2021
Sjir Hoeijmaker from Founders Pledge on a podcast discussing longtermism
Hear This Idea podcast with Christoph Winter on the Legal Priorities Project
Legal Priorities Project with an overview of their ‘Working Paper Series’
Emerging Technology
Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth with their 2021 State of AI Report
A summary of ‘Truthful AI: Developing and governing AI that does not lie’ by Owen Cotton-Barratt, Lukas Finnveden and Avital Balwit
Jason Crawford with Matt Clifford discussing how technology collides with politics, culture and society
Phil Trammell on economic growth under transformative AI
AGI Safety Fundamentals curriculum posted to the EA Forum
An ask me anything with Redwood Research, who do applied alignment research
Alex Lintz with a collection of AI governance-related podcasts, newsletters and blogs
Sam Clarke with lessons learned running the survey on AI existential risk scenarios
Other Links
Vox looking into how ethical ‘ethical investing’ is
Peter Wildeford with notes on the book ‘Managing to Change the World’
A Forbes overview of Sam Bankman-Fried, the worlds richest under 30 year old, covering his interest in effective altruism
An interview with Rutger Bregman on effective altruism and why he took the GWWC pledge
Spencer Greenberg in discussion with Daniel Kahneman on ‘Beyond cognitive biases: improving judgment by reducing noise’
Sebastian Schmidt and Henning Bartsch with a post on coaching as a way to reduce struggle and develop talent
Giving What We Can podcast with Geetanjali Basarkod on how to talk about effective altruism and giving effectively
Holden Karnofsky with a post asking ‘Has Life Gotten Better?’
Benjamin Todd on the Clearer Thinking podcast discussing ‘How to use your career to have a large impact’
Alan Taylor with ‘A Duty to Look After Yourself’
Taylor Jones has a website for the design work he can do for EA related organisations and projects
Sam Enright with a book review of Open Borders by Bryan Caplan
Michael Plant on the Clearer Thinking podcast discussing ‘How to measure impact, and why we may have all been doing it wrong’
A post by Khorton looking at counterfactual impact when your co-workers share your values
Good News
A global total of 135.1 square kilometres was cleared of unexploded submunitions in 2020, a new annual record. This leaves 29 areas that are suspected to have cluster munition remnants-contaminated areas under their jurisdiction
Thanks for this David. I find all of these posts to be very helpful.