James Faville and I think that it would be valuable for people to get feedback on posts they are planning on writing, in particular in getting an idea of what others would be most excited to read.
We think this will accomplish a few things:
1. Encourage people to publish the posts
2. Help them prioritize between post ideas based on community feedback
3. Get directed to useful readings/āresources
4. (For everyone) Get a sense of what the community is working on
Edit: If youād like community feedback on a post, there is an EA Editing and Review facebook group.
āThe EA Doldrums: Drifting for no good reasonā
A piece exploring why it took me so long to go from āleader of moderately successful student groupā to āactually applying for jobs in EAā, and speculating that there may be a lot of other people who arenāt aware of how qualified they actually are for direct work (with reference to at least one more anecdotal example of someone who was in the ādoldrumsā for a while). Includes thoughts on what kinds of prompting might actually get people in these positions to take EA jobs seriously.
I feel I should note that there is an opposite problem happening as well. Robert Wiblin once wrote:
There are certainly people on both ends of the (confidence /ā ability) spectrum. I suspect that āskilled people deciding not to try entering EA workā is a bigger problem than āpeople trying to push ahead when they shouldnātā.
Reasoning:
From an individualās perspective, āwasting time trying to enter a fieldā doesnāt seem much worse than āmissing your chance to enter a field where youād have had a much higher impact than you did otherwiseā.
From an orgās perspective, itās much more costly to miss out on a great employee than to say ānoā to one more person.
But there are a lot of other ways you could look at the issue, and this is just my first impression.
Generally, I would expect more people to overestimate themselves (illusory superiority) than underestimate themselves. I also expect that there is a social desirability bias at play here: itās more socially acceptable to point out that people underestimate themselves, than that they overestimate themselves.
Did you ever write this? Iād love to read it.
Unsolicited advice-seeking (respond to all, some, or none, as your schedule and interests permit): Is being the āleader of a moderately successful student groupā in itself a useful qualification for getting EA jobs? And if so, where do you find openings where itās relevant? (Iām the leader of a moderately successful student group! :D) I just finished a bachelors in economics and my very preliminary search of EA-adjacent job postings has turned up a lot of opportunities for grad students, phdās, or programmers, of which I am none. (Fwiw I might actually be overestimating my qualifications, given that I canāt code and my only significant paid job experience is tutoring.)
Didnāt write it, but have two-thirds of a draft lying around to finish someday.
Leading a group is a good signal, but for most jobs, I think other qualifications will also be important (though these could include āhaving a strong application and doing well on work testsā). If youāre trying to do something that makes use of your econ knowledge (rather than your ops/āorganizing ability or general research skills), competing with PhDs will be tough.
Iām an unusual case, because I went to a one-off retreat for people interested in ops work at a time lots of orgs were hiring at onceāit was a bit like a ājob fairā. Had I not gone there, Iād have just kept checking the 80K job board, the āEffective Altruism Job Postingsā Facebook group, and the websites of a few orgs I liked (if Iād seen that their jobs werenāt being added to the board).
FWIW, I think tutoring EAs can be a valuable intervention, though maybe wonāt ever be big enough for an org (or possibly even a single person) to work on this full-time.
Now on a massive tangent, but maybe you could offer to subsidize people buying tutoring from Wyzant?
āExamples of good EA hiring practicesā:
A list of good things Iāve seen various EA orgs do in their hiring processes (in the process of applying to at least seven of them). Meant as inspiration for other organizations; Iād hope that it would get lots of additional material from commenters who have also applied for EA jobs.
(in no particular order)
1. The application of social movement theory to EA group building
a. The tensions between a member-organising movement (grassroots) and a centrally organised (top down) movement (early draft)
b. historical case studies of movement building to learn from (brainstormingāenvironmental movement)
2. Ideas to improve the presence of EA in developing countries and non-EA Hubs (editing stage)
3. Climate Change and EA
a. A research agenda for EA and climate change (early draft)
b. How to make room for climate change research in the EA movement (editing stage)
4. Career Change Resources in the EA Community Research project (research stage)
Wow, they all sound so fascinating!
Iām looking forward to 3a and 3b!
See also:
Climate change, geoengineering, and existential risk
Climate Change Is, In General, Not An Existential Risk
Founders Pledge report on climate change
Checking back on this thread now that everyoneās spending more time cooped up inside :-/ā
Have you made progress on any of these ideas? Iād be happy to help!
Thanks for checking Aaron! Iāve been meaning to update this thread.
1a) I came very close to publishing this in November, but realised it needed a lot more work to be readable and ended up splitting the post into 3 to make it more readable. Iāve been prioritising other projects, aim to publish by April 2020. 1b) I have a bunch of interesting papers collected but havenāt made progress yet. Will likely start after 1a)
I wrote and never published this because:
I think it was too generalized and overly simplistic
I think some of the things I wrote were likely wrong/āinaccurate
I felt the most effective way to help developing EA presence was assisting existing projects and direct work.
Why writing the post was still valuable:
Helped me clarify my own theories of movement building
Ended up witing a few other posts to explain some of my assumptions
Iāve shared it with others trying to answer these questions
3a) This became a much more ambitious and comprehensive volunteer project, but it also means that progress has been slow and incremental. I plan on writing a post about how the project failed and lessons learnt (but Iām experimenting with some new ways to make progress on this and want to see the results first).
b) This post is written, but i didnāt see the value of posting another call for climate change on the forum since, as with 2), I updated towards doing direct work to make progress on this space. (Iād be curious to hear if you think thereās still value in posting such a post)
We now have an Effective Environmentalism directory and have started weekly calls on different EE related topics on facebook. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I created an (almost) comprehensive Effective Environmentalism Resources page. Some of us are now working on a more user-friendly introductory resource for non-EAs.
My two cents: I can understand why youād want to not post 2, if you believe it had those issues. But it seems like, if 3b is already written, it might as well be posted, unless you think itās fundamentally mistaken. If you just think that EA climate change research is a less valuable approach than you used to, then maybe you could slap some extra caveats and updates at the top. It could still potentially serve as some useful thoughts for people who do pursue that approach, or serve as an explanation of why you think that approach isnāt that valuable, or that sort of thing.
Iām not personally very focused on climate change, and donāt think Iād personally read the post. But I have a general sense that posts that are just āmaybe not very novel or usefulā still might as well be posted, once the effort has gone into writing them. It seems like they may at least be appreciated in some way by some niche audience, or suggest to others that that topic isnāt worth them writing about. And worst case scenario is usually just they donāt get read much, or slightly waste a few peopleās time.
This doesnāt apply to posts that are so incorrect theyād leave people with worse beliefs, or posts that pose information hazards, but it didnāt sound like you thought those things were true of 3b?
āHealth and happiness: some open research topicsā
This has been 90% complete for >6 months but finishing it has never seemed the top priority. The draft summary is below, and I can share the drafts with interested people, e.g. those looking for a thesis topic.
Summary
While studying health economics and working on the 2019 Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report, I accumulated a list of research gaps within these fields. Most are related to the use of subjective wellbeing (SWB) as the measure of utility in the evaluation of health interventions and the quantification of the burden of disease, but many are relevant to cause prioritisation more generally.
This series of posts outlines some of these topics, and discusses ways they could be tackled. Some of them could potentially be addressed by non-profits, but the majority are probably a better fit for academia. In particular, many would be suitable for undergraduate or masterās theses in health economics, public health, psychology and maybe straight economics ā and some could easily fill up an entire PhD, or even constitute a new research programme.
The topics are divided into three broad themes, each of which receives its own post.
Part 1: Theory
The first part focuses on three fundamental issues that must be addressed before the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and the disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) can be derived from SWB measures, which would effectively create a wellbeing-adjusted life-year (WELBY).
Topic 1: Reweighting the QALY and DALY using SWB
Topic 2: Anchoring SWB measures to the QALY/āDALY scale
Topic 3: Valuing states āworse than deadā
Part 2: Application
Assuming the technical and theoretical hurdles can be overcome, this section considers four potential applications of a WELBY-style metric.
Topic 4: Re-estimating the global burden of disease based on SWB
Topic 5: Re-estimating disease control priorities based on SWB
Topic 6: Estimating SWB-based cost-effectiveness thresholds
Topic 7: Comparing human and animal wellbeing
Parts 1 and 2 include a brief assessment of each topic in terms of importance, tractability and neglectedness. Iām pretty sceptical of the ITN framework, especially as applied to solutions rather than problems, and I havenāt tried to give numerical scores to each criterion, but I found it useful for highlighting caveats. Overall, Iām fairly confident that these topics are neglected, but Iām not making any great claims about their tractability, importance or overall priority relative to other areas of global health/ādevelopment, let alone compared to issues in other cause areas. It would take much more time than I have at the moment to make that kind of judgement.
Part 3: Challenges
The final section highlights some additional questions that require answering before the case for a wellbeing approach can be considered proven. These are not discussed in as much detail and no ITN assessment is provided (the Roman numerals reinforce their distinction from the main topics addressed in Parts 1 and 2).
(i) Donāt QALYs and DALYs have to be derived from preferences?
(ii) In any case, shouldnāt we focus on improving preference-based methods?
(iii) Should the priority be reforming the QALY rather than the DALY?
(iv) Are answers to SWB questions really interpersonally comparable?
(v) Which SWB self-report measure is best?
(vi) Whose wellbeing is actually measured by self-reported SWB scales?
(vii) Whose wellbeing should be measured?
(viii) How feasible is it to obtain the required data?
(ix) Are more objective measures of SWB viable yet?
Part 3 also concludes the series by considering the general pros and cons of working on outcome metrics.
I know itās been a while since you posted this, but if you still hope to post it someday, and if thereās anything I can do to help with the last 10%, please let me know!
(With everyone cooped up inside, I figured this might be a good chance for folks to get to the writing projects they thought theyād never have time for, though of course not everyone has become less busy as a result of the pandemic.)
Hah! I was working on them before getting sidelined with covid stuff.
I can send you the drafts if you send me a PM. The content is >80% done (Iāve decided to add more, so the % complete has dropped) but they need reorganising into ~10 manageable posts rather than 3 massive ones.
These are important topics IMO.
A sequence on moral anti-realism and its implications
I published the firstpost āWhat is moral realism?ā last year and have about five half-finished drafts stored somewhere, but then I got sidetracked massively. Tentative titles were:
1. What is moral realism? [published]
2. Against irreducible normativity
3. Is there a wager for moral realism?
4. Metaethical fanaticism (dialogue about the strange implications of an infinite āmoral realism wagerā)
5. [Untitled ā something about āPeople arenāt born consequentialists; people live their lives in different modes; vocations are not just discovered but also chosenā]
6. Introspection-based moral realism
7. Why Iām a moral anti-realist (sequence summary)
8. Anti-realism is not nihilistic
9. Anti-realism: What changes?
Less bullet biting?
Treating peer disagreements about values differently
Moral uncertainty vs. moral underdetermination
I might find some time later this year to finish more of the posts, but Iām not sure I still want to do the entire sequence. I considered just skipping to posts 7. ā 9. because that used to be my original plan, but then the project somehow took on a much larger scale. Iād be curious to what degree thereās interest on the following topics:
(a) What are the arguments against (various angles of) moral realism?
(b) What is it that people are even doing when they do moral philosophy?
(c) What do anti-realists think theyāre doing; why do they care?
(d) Implications for moral reasoning if anti-realism is correct
Whatās the status of this project? Even if you no longer plan to publish most of these posts, I suspect that some people would be interested in seeing even very rough versions of the material, and Iād be happy to look over anything you werenāt sure about posting!
I started working on them in December. The virus infected my attention, but Iām back working on the posts now. I have two new ones fully finished. I will publish them once I have four new ones. (If anyone is particularly curious about the topic and would like to give feedback on drafts, feel free to get in touch!)
Great to hear youāre still planning to write these!
I currently assign very high credence to anti-realism, but:
I donāt really know what I mean by that
I (at least believe I) basically act as if moral realism is true, due to:
āwagerā-style reasoning (but I donāt know if it makes sense to do that)
not feeling I get why to care if anti-realism is ācorrectā
I donāt really know if Iād actually act differently if I decided to āact as if an antirealistā
So all the tentative titles and four topics you listed sound very interesting to me, and like things Iāve wanted to write about but doubt Iāll get around to (partly because I lack the relevant background).
I included links to my working drafts to help understand the projects better, but please keep in mind that they contain statements that I will change my mind on after further research or contemplation. Also, they are not very tidy.
Year-by-year analysis of corporate campaigns (~50% done, draft)
This is basically an appendix to my cost-effectiveness estimate of corporate cage-free and broiler campaigns. Will contain graphs that will show how many animals were affected by campaigns each year, how cost-effectiveness has changed, and why we shouldnāt overreact to the analysis.
Numbers of animals slaughtered (~40% done, draft)
A collection of estimates of how many animals are kept in captivity for various purposes. E.g., meat, fur, wool, experiments, zoos, fish stocking, silk, etc.
Numbers of wild animals affected by humans in various ways (~30% done, draft)
Another collection of estimates. E.g. how many wild fish we catch, how many animals are killed by domestic cats, how many birds die after colliding with man-made objects, etc.
Surveys about veg*ism in the U.S. (not started)
I previously examined surveys about veganism and vegetarianism in the U.S. here. Results were conflicting. Now I want to conduct my own surveys to try to figure out whatās happening. This SSC post provides a hypothesis about why 2-6% of people claim to be vegetarians in surveys but then >60% of them report eating meat on at least one of two days for which they were asked to fill a dietary recall survey. I want to test it by seeing how many people will claim that they eat a breatharian diet (eat no solids at all). I think that ~3% of people will claim that they do it because they answer questions without reading, or purposefully answer incorrectly, or misunderstand the question. This would explain why surveys that simply ask people āAre you a vegan?ā find such unreasonably high percentages. I also want to test other survey designs in a similar way and then make a better survey on the subject.
Trends of vegetarianism and veganism in the UK (not started)
Similar to what I wrote for the U.S. (link) but for the UK. I want to see if there will be similar patterns.
Relatedly, I put some of my posts that I decided are not good enough to go on the EA Forum on a wordpress site here (Iāve never advertised this website before).
I strongly recommend you add more of these posts to the Forumāin particular, I really like the post on ways that cost-effectiveness estimates can be misleading.
cf. The Optimizerās Curse & Wrong-Way Reductions
I found sauliusā post useful in different ways than Chris Smithās. I especially like that it covers mistakes that seem more ābasicā and easier to avoid/ācorrect for. But āThe Optimizerās Curseā is also worth looking at.
Thanks. I think Iām afraid to publish posts if Iām unsure they are good/āuseful. But I will consider publishing some these, especially ways that cost-effectiveness estimates can be misleading.
[8 months on] ā¦well, that went very well, haha. I believe itās now got the 8th most karma on the forum.
Has this updated you to being more willing to post on the forum?
Also, for ones that youāre still not sure are worth posting, have you considered posting them as shortforms?
Yes, it made me a bit more willing to post here. But I put another week of work into that post before publishing. And I worked 2 more days on that post that I posted a couple of days ago which is also from my blog. Iām sure that some other posts from that blog are worth publishing after I put more work into them but Iām unsure if this is what I should be spending my time on. E.g., I donāt want to post Cost-effectiveness of trap-neuter-return programs for cats on the EA forum without doing more to make sure itās correct (e.g. reading recent related research by other EAs). Iām unsure if I want to post Should you donate to a fund-raising meta-charity? without looking into the current situation of these charities (e.g. if there is room for more funding) and just generally thinking more about the topic. I guess it would be fine to still post it with a disclaimer but I would be afraid of giving people the wrong advice and also hurting my credibility. And I donāt think posting it on the shortform would make much impact but Iād still care about saying the right things so I donāt want to bother with that.
I just skimmed some of the recent posts on your website and liked them! What makes you think that theyāre not good enough to be posted here? They definitely seem less comprehensive than some of your (very comprehensive) posts here, but still more than good enough to post here.
Itās been cool to see some of these go up on the Forum since you posted this!
Iād be interested to see the veg*ism survey if you still think you might work on it at some point. And of course, Iām happy to look over drafts of anything you write if you want feedback.
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Both of these posts sound great! I would especially like to see the second one, because there is a lot of outward emphasis on being successful and doing things that signal success (like attending Ivy Leagues).
+1
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I agree with khortonāit really depends your goal with the post. If you want to offer support to others who feel the same way, a feelings post is good (including specific examples would be great, and point at broader issues without needing to explicitly research them.
If you want to make a broader point, you could even just make those thoughts in a question and encourage people to share their experiences (I would love to see this!).
Then it could be an informal resource for others feeling that way, and might give you some ideas if you (or someone else) want to write the comprehensive version of the post.
You could ask it as a question if your response would be ~3 paragraphs. I think that would work well, but Iām not sure if that would give you enough space to express your feelings.
Thanks for collating these ācriticism of EAā posts.
Reminds me a bit of sealioning, though I think what youāre pointing to is not exactly that.
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Concern trolling?
Is this user now inactivated (in case someone reads this comments and knows)? It would be a shame if that person actually did not feel accepted and therefore left. One idea I had when reading this is that EAs might want to connect over other things than EA. For example, hobbies, sports, etc. might be a way for people to connect in EA across āstatusā.
1. āSurvey of arguments for focusing on suffering reductionā
-Iām particularly interested in arguments from and for the nonexistence of positive mental states.
2.āThe case for studying abroad at Oxfordā
-Argue, based on personal experience, that students across the world who are interested in EA should seriously consider studying abroad at Oxford and provide advice on how to make the most of that experience.
3.āThe case for recruiting for AI safety research in Brazilā
-Lay out the reasons for thinking Brazil is a low hanging fruit for recruiting in AI safety research
Iām especially curious about (2) if you include āspending time in the city of Oxfordā and not just āgetting into Oxfordā (which, as noted below, is hard). Iāve been looking for posts about what itās like to be part of EA culture in the cities where it is most present (I now live in one of those, but Iām guessing that Oxford differs from Berkeley in many ways).
Re:2. I hope youāre not going to ignore that is really hard to get into Oxford? Thereās also the general tendency in EA to glorify Ivy League education, which makes a lot of people feel inadequate/āexcluded.
I would be really interested in hearing the case for 3)!
āList of public donation logsā:
A list of people who have made their donations public. Meant as inspiration for people who might consider doing the same, or information for people who want more perspective on causes they might consider supporting.
Is it a list of blog posts that explain why people made the donations they made? Or just a list of donors and their donations similar to this?
Closer to Vipulās list. Iāve spoken to him already as I drafted the idea, and I think it would be helpful to have a more focused list of specifically people whoāve created their own web pages/āspreadsheets to share the information.
My goal is to use the post to show people that it isnāt totally unusual to make these things public, and to nudge people closer to making donations public if they were interested but worried about seeming āweirdā. Part of that is showing others doing it, and part of it is showing different strategies for making these disclosures.
1) Data point: Until reading these comments just now, Iād seen that some people had spreadsheets/āwebpages like these, and I think I vaguely felt that that was good, but I also think I simply hadnāt even considered for a second the idea of doing so myself. (Iād considered writing blogposts about specific or annual planned or prior donations, where I also discussed some of my rationale, but hadnāt considered a comprehensive, public spreadsheet/āwebpage.)
Iām now very likely to do this, as a result of these comments.
2) Do you still plan to make a post collecting these lists?
3) Do you think it would be possible and/āor good for there to just be a button on the EA Pledge dashboard for people to opt into making their reported donations from there publicly visible? This may increase the number of people who do this, as itād be easier and might seem a bit closer to āsort-of a defaultā than āstrange thing these 3 people somewhere have doneā. I guess one downside would be that, if that button was displayed prominently, it could make the dashboard as a whole seem āweirdā.
4) Somewhat separately, I like Claire Zabelās statement that:
(I tried to contribute to this norm with this recent post.)
Do you have any thoughts on how that spreadsheet/āwebpage approach (or a post about it) could also contribute to or tie in with that norm?
(A fair response to 3 and 4 could be āHey Michael, why donāt you spend at least 2 minutes of your own damn time thinking about it?ā :D)
Wonderful!
Yes, I do plan to do this at some pointāin fact, Iāve added it as something to do this week thanks to your comment, thanks for the push.
Thatās an interesting idea. Iāll pass it along to CEAās tech team, though Iād guess it wouldnāt be something that would happen soon (no guaranteed demand, unlikely to increase peopleās use of the platform, some risk that people accidentally expose sensitive information).
Iām a fan of Claireās suggestion. Not likely to do it myself, because my reasons for donating are pretty quirky and difficult to explain, but Iāve liked all the posts of this kind that Iāve seen from others on the Forum.
Iām going to list my answers separately for easier upvoting/ācommentary.
āEffective Altruism 2050: The Grand Storyā, which explores how people might think about EA in the future, and especially how ācreditā might be allocated for whatever weāve accomplished.
The thesis of the piece is that most of our current concerns about which kinds of work are high-status or not may fade away over time, to be replaced by a general sense that everyone who did EA-adjacent things was part of the same āstoryā, trying to do their best under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
I would be really interested in seeing this written up. I have many thoughts related to the idea of geting credit (probably not directly related to your post)
I have been thinking a lot about how much of a role high-status plays in influencing people to make decisions, and whether this is always a good thing. For example, many things are highly uncertain but ones endorsed by the community might get a sense of security that even if this doesnāt pan out, the person has the support of the community that they did the best thing. Whereas, another cause or intervention might be avoided due to this lack of support.
I also wonder to what extent people take into account being given ācreditā for contributing to a cause or intervention, be it consciously or unconsciously.
Finally, I think post could also raise some interesting questions about the long-term sustainability of EA and its perception to non-EAs, and suggest that tracking as much EA activity as possible now is important if we need to convince people that we made an impact (to combat arguments like āthese positive things would have happened anyways/āwere inevitableā
(Also, perhaps I should have also separated my answers! For next time)
Hmm.. I would like to see this with caveats or something: EA is far from being sure of success and there are a number of failure modes I can imagine. The risk of this article might be that it would paint an overly optimistic picture of EA. Although I would love to see the description of a best-case scenario!
It seems more likely that not (at least to me) that EA will make only a small dent in history, if it is remembered at all. The post explores what might happen in the timelines where we succeed.
Alright that seems cool! I look forward to it. I think plenty of people have dreamed of a best case scenario, but itās definitely good to write that up :)
āEAs within non-EA charitiesā
A post to explore the following and put a lot more detailed thought, based on my own professional experience of trying to do this for a few months or so, into how it could work...
I work in a large charity in the UK and although I think the work we do is important, it doesnāt fit into the highly valuable cause areas commonly accepted by the EA community.
Still, there are lots of reasons that someone like me might continue to work in a less effective job. For example:
Itās a good employer in your area and you need to stay living around there for caring/āfamily reasons
Youāre building up your skills in an early or new career position
Youāve worked there for ages and only recently discovered EA principles
So skipping part the āgo work on a more effective causeā answer, what can people who support EA ideas do in a non-EA charity?
I think there might be crossover with the kind of recommendations you might give to someone work in government, especially when you consider how bound up a lot of UK charities are with public work (Alzheimers Society, Citizens Advice, Church of England, Trussell Trust)
Apart from that I would have thought you could bring over EA principles and play a sort of activist role to make a positive impact when it comes to:
prioritising research and product development
raising awareness of good impact based decision making within the organisation
encouraging a more enlightened view of career development within the organisation
sharing and collaborating more generously with the wider social sector
in the case of large organisations, doing more to shape the market in terms of what funders aim for when they award grants or commission work
Thatās all Iāve got for now but Iāve actually been able to put some of this into effect, in a fairly modest way, where I work. I wondered if this seems like an interesting topic to explore in more detail?
In particular, assuming that there are people who will stay in a non-EA role but still have some capacity and interest in doing a bit more good by using EA principles, what are the methods/ātools/āguidelines they can use?
Iām enthusiastic about seeing EAs do good work in a variety of fields, including those unrelated to standard EA cause areas. Iād be really interested to see you work on this post, and Iād be happy to read over a draft if you want feedback before you publish.
PSA: the EA Editing and Review facebook group is intended for this use-case. It has 650 members; feedback on posted drafts is generally good.
Thanks! edited the post to include a link to the group.
āMy EA Origin Storyā:
An attempt to answer the question āwhy did I become part of the EA movementā in excruciating detail. Would examine every factor I can think of, from the circumstances of my birth to movies I liked as a teenager to the specific set of classes I took in my freshman year of college.
The goal: Get other people to think about what really got them into EAānot just what happened right before the transition, but all the factors that led to their being ready to accept the ideas. Iād hope to see other people write similar stories (maybe in less detail) after reading mine.
Have you seen this post? It seems to have done something very similar to what you proposed.
āPossible Edge Cases in Dietary Effects on Animal Welfareā
When I do consume meat, itās āhumanely raisedā (grass-fed etc. etc.) or wild-caught. I think the state of the art on the ethics and evidence around these food sources (vs. plausible substitutes) is muddy, and I want to publish my thoughts so someone can help me see things more clearly.
I would personally find this very useful!
Thinking of writing a shallow cause profile on lobbying for country-to-country debt relief
Iād be really interested to see this! Itās one of those causes that pops up from time to time in writing by EA-adjacent organizations, but I donāt have a sense for what the core numbers even look like (e.g. what debt relief allows countries to accomplish that isnāt feasible without debt relief, what the actual cost of relief is to countries that hold debt).
Thanks for commenting! I actually forgot I was meaning to do this⦠Maybe Iāll find some time over the next few weeks!
In case this data point is useful when thinking about what knowledge/āviews some readers may come to the table with: Pretty much all I currently know about debt relief is some half-remembered arguments from The Dictatorās Handbook for why debt relief might be actively bad.
(Not saying these arguments are correct. Also not sure if ācountry-to-country debt reliefā differs in important ways from the type of ādebt reliefā which that book critiqued.)
1. Framing issues with the unilateralistās curse.
Iād like to expand this shortform comment into a more detailed post with slightly better examples, some tentative conclusions, and a clear takeaway for what types of future research would be desirable.
2. A Post on Power Law distributions
Two possible posts here:
A. Power Law Distributions? Itās less likely than you think.
a. Basically, lots of EAs arguing that the distribution over {charitable organizations, interventions, people, causes} is ~power law.
b. I claim that this is unlikely. The distribution over most things that matter seem to be a heavy tail distribution thatās less extreme than power law.
c. outline here: https://āādocs.google.com/āādocument/āād/āā17n27ygtUloGrFGqJyOV0Q-yUdGrK5HQoEI-de8lXTy0/āāedit
d. Unfortunately understanding this well involves some mathematical machinery and a lot of real-world stats thatās been somewhat hard for me to make progress on (happy to hand it off to somebody else!)
B. What to do if we live in a power law world
The alternative post is to argue for why if were to take the power law hypothesis about EA-relevant things seriously, we should change our actions dramatically in key ways. I think it might be helpful to start a conversation about this.
3. Thoughts on South Bay EA
I cofounded and co-organized South Bay EA, and had a pretty comprehensive write-up about what futures we should be planning for. My co-organizers and I are still debating between whether to anonymize and share the write-up to benefit future organizers.
4. EA SF tentative plan
Similarly, Iāve vaguely been thinking of having a public write-up about plans for EA San Francisco so itās easier to a) get feedback through external criticism and b) find collaborators/āpotential co-organizers online rather than entirely through my network.
Iād be really excited to see 2A written up! Also 3 and 4 (in that order)
I think Iād be interested in 1. Also, I recently collected all prior work Iād found that seemed substantially relevant to the unilateralistās curse; unfortunately it wasnāt much, and you may have seen it all already, but just thought Iād mention it in case it could help you with that post idea.
(Iāve also added your shortform comment to that list now.)
Hereās some stuff which I may consider writing when I have more time. The posts are currently too low on the priorities list to work on, but if anyone thinks one of these is especially interesting or valuable, I might prioritize it higher, or work on it a little when I need a break from my current main project. For the most part Iām unlikely to prioritize writing in the near future though because I suspect my opinions are going to rapidly change on a lot of these topics soon (or my view on their usefulness /ā importance /ā relevance).
1) Where Does EA take root? The characteristics of geographic regions which have unusually high numbers of effective altruists, with a eye towards guessing which areas might be fertile places to attempt more growth. (Priority 4ā10, mostly because I mostly already have the data due to working on another thing, but Iām not sure to which growth is a priority)
2) Systemic ChangeāWhat does it mean in concrete terms? How would you accomplish it within an EA framework? How might you begin attempting to quantify your impact? Zooming out from the impact analysis side of things a bit to look at the power structures creating the current conditions, and understanding the āreplaceabiltyā issues for people who work within the system. (priority 3ā10, may move up the priorities list later because I anticipate having more data and relevant experience becoming available soon, but Iām ).
3) A (as far as I know novel) thought experiment meant to complicate utilitarianism, which has produced some very divergent responses when I pose it conversation so far. The intention is to call into question what exactly it is that we suppose ought to be maximized. (priority 3ā10)
4) How to turn philosophical intuitions about āhappinessā, āsufferingā, āpreferenceā, āhedonsā and other subjective phenomenological experiences into something which can be understood within a science/āmath framework, at least for the purposes of making moral decisions. (priority 3ā10)
5) Applying information in posts (3) and (4) to make practical decisions about some moral āedge casesā. Edge cases include things like: non-human life, computer algorithms, babies and fetuses, coma, dementia, severe brain damage and congenital abnormalities. (priority 3ā10)
6) How are human moral and epistemic foundations formed? If you understand the āNo Universally Compelling Argumentsā set of concepts, this post is basically helping people apply that principle in practical terms referencing real human minds and cultures, integrating various cultural anthropology and post modernist works. (priority 2ā10)
You may have seen that we analyzed this a bit as part of the EA Survey. Iām curious what data source you have?
That very EA survey data, combined with Florida et all The Rise Of The Megaregion data which characterizing the academic/āintellectual/āeconomic output of each region. It would be a brief post, the main takeaway is that EA geographic concentration seems associated with a regionās prominence in academia, whereas things like economic prominence, population size, etc donāt seem to matter much.
Would be highly interested in this, and a case study showing how to rigorously think about systemic change using systems modeling, root cause analysis, and the like.
āHow targeted should donation recommendations beā (sorta)
Iāve noticed that Givewell targets specific programs (e.g. their recommendation), ACE targets whole organisations, and among far future charities you just kinda get promising-sounding cause areas.
Iām interested in what kind of differences between cause areas lead to this, and also whether anything can be done to make more fine-grained evaluations more desirable in practice.
Iām thinking of writing a post about my experience doing an economics PhD with EA motivations. I think this might be interesting to people considering a career in research and especially in social science research, given that this is a career path 80k hours has discussed in the past (e.g. āEconomics PhD the only one worth getting?ā). I donāt have an overarching thesis, so this would be more of a collection of observationsāwhat itās like, whatās good about it, whatās bad about it.
i just want to write about Do plants really feel pain? i think it might be a great topic to share here.
āGenome editing and the replacement, reduction and relief of pain as a cause areaā
A few individuals lead near-normal lives with the complete absence of pain due to natural genetic variations.
Genome editing has the potential to replicate these genetic variations in all animals and people.
The problem with eliminating pain is its important role in the detection and avoidance of injury.
The challenge is to remove pain while retaining this function. Options include these 3Rs (inspired by the 3Rs of animal testing):
Replace pain with a painless sensory system. Complete absence of pain while retaining the detection and avoidance of injury.
Reduce the maximum level of pain from 10 to a 1 or 2 on the pain scale. Keep pain but reduce its severity.
Relieve pain for those who, out of choice or necessity, have not replaced or reduced pain.
Hello!
Iāve recently started to write a post about how our education system could be structured to nurture to the full spectrum of health that an indvidual has (physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially, spiritually). Iām thinking about drawing from many different fields of science such as neuroscience, psychology, sports science, sociology, public health (my own field), and education management.
As you may know, cardiovascular diseases and mental health are on the rise in the west and are becoming pressing problems for our society, which may accumulate in the future if nothing is done to alter the course.
Let me know what you think and if this is the right place for such a post.
Thanks!
Hi Felix, Iād personally be very interested in reading such a post !
Things I think might make this more interesting /ā that are may be typically missing from such evaluations are :
what country are you talking about? Why the country?
what kind of positive effects for society would these changes produce ? On what timescale?
which solutions create the most value or could be prioritised above others? (If we would need to implement multiple changes, why?)
are any of these solutions cost effective ? Iād be especially curious on the cost of advocacy, not just implementation costs, especially if the solution requires policies to change
who are the current actors in this space and what is their track record? If they havenāt been very successful why?
is this relevant to any other regions of countries?
These kind of questions would help people understand the scope of the problem, and be more action-relevant if they are interested in the topic!
Hey, Vaidehi! Thanks for your feedback, I hadnāt considered these questions before and they are of great help. Do you have any idea on where to find more information on the cost of advocacy and implementation costs? I feel like this is outside my current knowledge.
Thatās a good question, I am not sure of specific resources on advocacy in particular, but highly recommend checking it Charity Entrepreneurshipās resources on their idea evaluation process and how they evaluate different interventions. Some of their research reports also cover interventions that include advocacy (e.g. they previously looked into tobacco policy).
It might also be interesting to see about ACE (Animal Charity Evaluators) evaluates their top recommendations, because most of them do advocacy work.
Sorry about lack of links, Iām on mobile. But you can just Google the names of the orgs. If you have any trouble finding info or these arenāt that useful let me know!
No worries! Iāll be sure to check them out and see if theyāre relevant to the post Iām thinking about writing. I bet I could also just google randomly lik āadvocacy work costā or something like that to see what comes up. Thanks for your help man! :)
Iām doing a lit review on the effectiveness of lobbying and on some of the relevant theoretical background that Iām planning on posting when Iām done. I feel like this is potentially very relevant but Iām not sure if people will be interested.
Hi, is be interested and have been thinking about similar stuff (meeting the impact of lobbying, etc) from a uk policy perspective.
If helpful happy to chat and share thoughts. Feel free to get in touch to: sam [at] appgfuturegenerations.com
Consider reaching out to Rethink Priorities, Charity Entrepreneurship and Good Policies (a CE-incubated charity). I think theyād be very interested, given that theyāre doing similar research (RP on ballot initiatives, CE did some on lobbying for animal welfare and has had interest in lobbying for tobacco taxation). Open Philanthropy Project and the managers of the EA Funds would also probably be interested in your findings.
I donāt follow their work closely, but I believe the Good Food Institute interact with policymakers on the matter of regulation/ālabelling of alternative proteins, so perhaps theyād also be interested/āhave interesting thoughts.
Iāll throw my hat in as someone who would be interested to read this!
I am planning on writing a post summarizing the existing discussion of information cascades in EA and when doing and the different forms and possibilities to do something against it. Lastly, I discuss why the concept of the information cascade might disadvantageous. I would be interested in comments on the draft.
Iām writing a post about how our discussions of emerging technologies could apply technological determinism or social construction theory more rigorously. For example, we often talk about AI in a way that suggests that it is likely to advance towards superintelligence (technological determinism), but then assert that society has the power to shape the development of AI (social constructivism), given that superintelligence will emerge (determinism again). I think this reasoning is muddled, but I am not suggesting that we must choose either-or between determinism and constructivism.
An AMA. I honestly donāt think Iām a particularly good person to write one, but I think it would be good to have more on here.
I think if youāre in an EA job Iād love to see an AMA from you.
I donāt think I will write these posts very soon, but I want to get my ideas out there so that others can help write them if I donāt.
A post on the problem of language barriers
How auxiliary languages could help make EA more accessible to people who donāt speak English
How political action against artificial intelligence might slow down its development
Associative morality
This concerns how connections between ideas in peopleās brains could be relevant to moral philosophy, or at least convincing people of new ideas.
Business ethics and its relevance to different problem areas
If you make any posts based on my ideas, please let me know so I can give you feedback.
Importance, Tractibility and Neglectedness should not have equal weight.
TL;Dr, Neglectedness is a useful tiebreaker and gives you information about tractability but the relatively common matrix approach of scoring possible ideas on ITN and then ranking based on the sum of the scores overweights it.
If youāre using the formal mathematical definitions of the terms from this section of the 80,000 Hours article, then their product (before taking logs) has an interpretation in natural units, as good done /ā extra person or $, so if you reweight, this interpretation for the product will be lost. Are you interpreting the ITN terms differently?
Yes, or at least I think the way they are often interpreted is different. I actually have no issue with 80kās formal definition, but qualitative use in practice (not by 80k) has often put both both of 80kās last two points in the tractability metric, then thereās this other nebulous factor called āNeglectednessā which ends up being counted again. The key metric is how much good can be done by one marginal extra person or dollar, and Iāve seen a few cases of people estimating that (which will clearly be affected by diminishing marginal returns), then adding a Neglectedness score on as well, which seems wrong.
I havenāt written this up yet as I donāt think itās hugely important- itās typically a feature of naĆÆve/ārough work, and thereās definitely a chance that some of this kind of work is actually using a framework modelled on 80k but just not exposing that well. Most high quality research is just done by an actual CEA rather than by ITN framework, so thereās obviously no issue there.
Ok, makes sense!
In case you havenāt seen it, this might be helpful to see what other critiques are out there already.