Latest Research and Updates for December

• There is a new organisation called the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research, their main mission is to complement the Global Priorities Institute by promoting academic work that addresses the question of how to use our resources to improve the world by as much as possible

• Research from the Forethought Foundation examining past events that have had very long-run influence, including the rise of early Christianity and Confucius vs Mozi

• Rob Wiblin has put together a google doc listing various fundraising and annual review posts by effective altruism related organisations

• 80,000 Hours interview with the chief economist at DFID, looking at if it’s possible to fund a year of education for 30 cents, the right balance of RCTs and how much we can generalise from studies

• More evidence that unconditional cash transfers are impactful, as well as more governments starting to roll out their own cash transfer programmes

• The donor lottery for 2018 is live, closes on January 10th

• Lessons learnt from a prospective alternative meat startup team

• The management teams for the animal welfare, long-term future and EA meta funds all took part in AMAs last month

• An overview of the AI safety landscape in 2018 and potential places to donate

• A post on why giving more might not make you happier

• An overview of donation data from the 2017 EA survey

• Kimberley Jayne has co-edited a book exploring non-animal approaches set to replace animal use in science, including a foreword from Peter Singer

• Sjir Hoeijmakers has written a report on potential interventions for increasing women’s empowerment. They also appeared on a Life You Can Save podcast, talking about Founders Pledge

• Liv Boeree has written for Vox on how to make better decisions

• Phil Hewinson with a in depth post about building a chatbot to protect people from malaria

• Hauke Hillebrandt and John Halstead have a detailed post on why impact investing may not be as good as donating to charity

• Charlotte Stix has written an overview of the EU Commissions new coordinated plan on AI, including a projected aim of €20 billion in funding by 2020

• Rossa O’keeffe-O’donovan was presenting their paper at the inaugural Yale RISE conference, which focuses on the science behind scaling up policy interventions. Also a twitter overview of the conference

• Jamie Harris with a review of EA Global 2018 and of the book “The End of Animal Farming”

• Michael Plant has written up a cause profile on mental health with potential donation and career suggestions

• Sanjay Joshi, Stefan Torges and Adam Gleave won prizes for their posts on the EA Forum last month

• 80,000 Hours podcast on how we could feed the world after a nuclear winter

• A post on which animals might need the most help from animal advocacy

• A transcript of the closing talk given by Will MacAskill from EA Global 2018: San Francisco—Why should effective altruists embrace uncertainty?

• Open Phil made 11 grants in November, with $5.5 million for criminal justice reform, $2.2 million for farm animal welfare, $1.9 million for bio-security and $1.1 million in AI Safety

• The EA Hotel is fundraising

• A potentially useful checklist from Rob Wiblin on overcoming life and career setbacks

• A visualisation by Olivia Fox Cabane with over 100 organisations in the new protein space

• Open Phil have a new calibration tool that may help you become more accurate

• Clearer Thinking have a quiz to help you work out what causes might be a good fit for your values. They also have a game to see if you can determine if an intervention had a positive or negative impact

• A Vox explainer of the “vulnerable world hypothesis” by Nick Bostrom

• Emergent ventures with their second cohort of winners

• Open Philanthropy with an overview of how you can do the most good for animals

• Effective altruism in media & blogs—Ollie Base from Effective Giving with an overview of EA for Philanthropy in Focus, a piece on what Superman could learn from Peter Singer and Will MacAskill talking about the five best books on effective altruism

• In a good news roundup, there were no coups in 2018, the world’s first no-kill eggs go on sale, FGM rates in east Africa have dropped from 71% in 1995 to under 10%, PEPFAR was reauthorised, the UN has committed to using cash assistance during global crises and Vox looking at four ways the world got better in 2018