Since I got sidetracked in my prior comment as it transitioned into a review of the Centre for Effective Altruism, I’ll start over in laying out what I perceive as a latent structure of authority or hierarchy within effective altruism. This comment is inspired by a question posed in the ‘Effective Altruists’ Facebook group asking about who the leaders in the effective altruism movement are.
As the founders of Giving What We Can, and some of the first self-identified effective altruists, William MacAskill and Toby Ord bear much influence of the direction effective altruism has been heading into over the last few years.
The most well-known public face of effective altruism is Peter Singer, the famous bioethicist and utilitarian philosopher. From the outside, what the public at large perceives as effective altruism is largely shaped by his speech and writings.
The Centre for Effective Altruism is based out of Oxford University, and has spun off several projects and organizations. Now indepedent organizations include Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save, 80,000 Hours. 80k and GWWC still share the same offices as the CEA. Organizations which are still managed by or heavily consult with the CEA are EA Outreach, an organization launched to ensure the robust growth of effective altruism as a movement, in particular organizing conferences and coordinating marketing efforts for publications; EA Ventures, an offiicial coalition of effective altruists who fund or provide seed capital for organizations which will produce outsized amounts of good, whether they be non-profits or for-profits producing positive externalities; and the Global Priorities Project, which works the the Future of Humanity Institute to research cause prioritization and aims to advise policy in the UK on related issues. All these projects make effective altruism the leader within the movement in the novel cause areas of cause prioritization and movement growth.
Givewell is the most cited and trusted charity evaluator within effective altruism, receiving much more attention than Giving What We Can or AidGrade for charity recommendations, even though GWWC and AidGrade are charity evaluators which use similar methodologies gauging effectiveness of charities they recommend. Givewell has also partnered with private foundation Good Ventures to assess and make large grants in broader cause areas, such as US domestic policy and scientific research. To this end, the assessments of causes and projects from the founders of Givewell, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, also carry much weight within effective altruism.
Within the cause area(s) of poverty reduction and (global) public health, the most trusted charity evalutors are Giving What We Can and Givewell. The highest profile organization globally working in this cause area while still being rated as relatively effective by effective altruism is the charity OxFam.
Within the cause area of reducing globally catastrophic and existential risks, the most influential figure is Nick Bostrom. Nick Bostrom is a philosopher out of Oxford University, and the director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He believes the most pressing existential risk facing humanity today is that from machine superintelligence, which is also referred to as (General) Artificial Intelligence, or smarter-than-human intelligence. To this end, he’s written Superintelligence, the most high-profile publication of any kind on the subject to date. The research of himself and his peers at the FHI leads the way of thinking on other global catastrophic risks as well. (Note: The Future of Humanity Institute works closely with the CEA, and jointly manages the Global Priorities Project with them.) Nick Bostrom was also the founder the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) in 1998 with peer and utilitarian philosopher David Pearce, and has historically worked closely with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Since concern for risks from superhuman machine intelligence are so great, the attention it receives dwarfs that of any other particular existential risk. Thus, concern over machine intelligence is somewhat of a cause in its own right within effective altruism. To this end, another influential writer and thinker has been Eliezer Yudkowsky. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a founder, director, and senior research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which works directly on solving the technical problems underlying ethical concerns with machine intelligence. Yudkowsky and the MIRI work closely with Bostrom and the FHI on this issue. Eliezer Yudkowsky also spent 2.5 years writing a seminal and informal series of essays on the subject of human rationality, and its relationship with both science and philosophy. These essays are informally referred to as the Sequences, and were recently released as a book over 1700 pages long. This body of essays has been read by hundreds if not thousands of effective altruists and others who cite the learning they gained from them as influencing them making better practical decisions and clearing their thinking of common logical errors.
An organization which has quickly gained influence within global catastrophic risk reduction is the Future of Life Institute, which raises awareness and coordinates efforts between researchers. One of its founders is physicist Max Tegmark, author of the book Our Mathematical Universe. In 2014, the FLI received a $10 million donation from entrepreneur and philanthropist Elon Musk, earmarked to be granted to organizations working on engineering safety in machine intelligence. To date, over $7 million USD of this $10 million has been granted.
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s work was the impetus for a discussion board, blog, and online community known as Less Wrong. This community is based around “refining the art and cognitive science of human rationality”, where members can submit and rate articles on clearer thinking and improving decision-making on popular topics. These include many foundation essays on effective altruism. Hundreds of people now dedicated to effective altruism were first introduced to it by the website Less Wrong. Less Wrong is less active than it used to be, as the community around it has transitioned to practical work with the Center for Applied Rationality, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and effective altruism. Thus, much of Less Wrong’s influence on this movement is latent and passive rather than actively influencing effective altruism practices in the present. Other bloggers associated with Less Wrong who have written influential pieces on effective altruism include bloggers Luke Muehlhauser, alias lukeprog, Scott Alexander, alias Yvain, Paul Christiano, and Katja Grace.
Within the cause area of animal welfare/rights, the most influential organization is Animal Charity Evaluators. The executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators is Jon Bockman, and was founded by Eitan Fischer, Rob Wiblin, and Brian Tomasik. Globally, the most well-known aspect of the animal welfare movement is concerns over industrial, i.e., factory farming. Within effective altruism, one of the most influential leader on this issue is Nick Cooney, who leads Mercy For Animals, one ACE’s top-recommended charities. As most of the development for effective advocacy against factory farming has historically taken place in the United States in the last few decades, the practical work within this cause area disproportionately takes place in the United States. Another field within the animal welfare over which there is growing concern and is generally being spearheaded from within effective altruism is concern over wild-animal suffering. Concern over wild-animal suffering has historically been neglected, and efforts to organize and advocate for this field have been led by philosophers both self- and formally educated. From Europe, philosophers Oscar Horta, and Lucius Caviola and Adriano Mannino educate people on these issues. Caviola and Mannino also work with organizations based out of Switzerland Giordano Bruno Stiftung Schweiz, Raising for Effective Giving, and Sentience Politics, which do innovative work on the issues of animal welfare. Effective altruists Brian Tomasik, Rob Wiblin and David Pearce have online built a grassroots movement around concerns for wild animal suffering, numbering in thousands of people and growing hailing from education in ethics and utilitarianism, and the animal welfare/rights movement. Brian Tomasik has been a founder of Animal Ethics, the Foundational Research Institute, and is a board member with Animal Charity Evaluators.
Informally counted among the ranks of effective altruism are several individuals and private foundations who have each donated millions of dollars to charities associated with effective altruism. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna are the major philanthropists behind Good Ventures, which has partnered with Givewell to launch the Open Philanthropy Project. Dustin Moskovitz is a cofounder of Facebook. Working with Givewell, Good Ventures has granted millions of dollars to effective causes. They will do so even more in coming years, and are set to donate more than any other single actor within effective altruism. Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist who founded PayPal, and was an initial investor in Facebook. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality, among other charities he himself personally considers important and effective. Peter Thiel was also a keynote speaker at the 2013 and 2014 Effective Altruism Summits. One of his fellow cofounders at PayPal is Elon Musk, who has also founded high-profile technology companies Spacex and Tesla. in 2014, he donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute to be granted to research working on engineering safety in machine Artificial Intelligence. He will also be the keynote speaker at the 2015 Effective Altruism Global conference in California. Jaan Tallin is another tech entrepreneur who cofounded Skype and Kazaa, and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars each to organizations such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Center For Applied Rationality, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. He is also a cofounder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, the Future of Life Institute, and Effective Altruism Ventures.
A novel approach to philanthropy within effective altruism is earning to give, which is the idea of taking a relatively high-earning job and donating the money earned to the most effective identifiable charities. Earning to give was formally laid out by Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, cofounders of 80,000 Hours. Pioneering role models of earning to give include Brian Tomasik, Matthias Wage, Jeff Kaufman, and Julia Wise, who have all been publicly profiled in major media outlets for their association with earning to give and effective altruism, and have all personally written about their choices for earning to give.
Outside of its centers in England and California, effective altruism has growing communities in other countries. In Brazil, effective altruism was popularized by philosopher and transhumanist Diego Caleiro, who founded IEFRH. In Australia, particularly in the city of Melbourne, an effective altruist enclave was founded by Brayden MacLean and Ryan Carey. In Canada, efforts have been led by Joey Savoie and Xio Kikauka, who also do advocacy and fundraising work through their organization Charity Science from Vancouver. Much of the effective altruist community in Switzerland and Germany has been led by organization Giordano Bruno Stiftung Schweiz, based out of Basel. [There is also a sizable community of effective altruists in Spain and Portugal, which overlaps greatly with the animal welfare movement there. One of their organizers has been Oscar Horta, but there are others, who I don’t know about]. Universities with substantial effective altruism clubs include Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.
.impact is a networked and distributed task force of effective altruists who work on projects for effective altruism not associated with any formal organization. It is coordinated by Ozzie Gooen, Peter Hurford, and Tom Ash, who also maintains the Effective Altruism Hub website. The EA Hub contains a donation registry, a map of effective altruists around the globe, and personal profiles for effective altruists.
Someone else mentioned in the open thread they’re building a new and better wiki for effective altruism on the Effective Altruism Hub. I’ll put this up on that wiki when it’s approaching completion and others can contribute. Thanks for the suggestion.
Since I got sidetracked in my prior comment as it transitioned into a review of the Centre for Effective Altruism, I’ll start over in laying out what I perceive as a latent structure of authority or hierarchy within effective altruism. This comment is inspired by a question posed in the ‘Effective Altruists’ Facebook group asking about who the leaders in the effective altruism movement are.
As the founders of Giving What We Can, and some of the first self-identified effective altruists, William MacAskill and Toby Ord bear much influence of the direction effective altruism has been heading into over the last few years.
The most well-known public face of effective altruism is Peter Singer, the famous bioethicist and utilitarian philosopher. From the outside, what the public at large perceives as effective altruism is largely shaped by his speech and writings.
The Centre for Effective Altruism is based out of Oxford University, and has spun off several projects and organizations. Now indepedent organizations include Animal Charity Evaluators, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save, 80,000 Hours. 80k and GWWC still share the same offices as the CEA. Organizations which are still managed by or heavily consult with the CEA are EA Outreach, an organization launched to ensure the robust growth of effective altruism as a movement, in particular organizing conferences and coordinating marketing efforts for publications; EA Ventures, an offiicial coalition of effective altruists who fund or provide seed capital for organizations which will produce outsized amounts of good, whether they be non-profits or for-profits producing positive externalities; and the Global Priorities Project, which works the the Future of Humanity Institute to research cause prioritization and aims to advise policy in the UK on related issues. All these projects make effective altruism the leader within the movement in the novel cause areas of cause prioritization and movement growth.
Givewell is the most cited and trusted charity evaluator within effective altruism, receiving much more attention than Giving What We Can or AidGrade for charity recommendations, even though GWWC and AidGrade are charity evaluators which use similar methodologies gauging effectiveness of charities they recommend. Givewell has also partnered with private foundation Good Ventures to assess and make large grants in broader cause areas, such as US domestic policy and scientific research. To this end, the assessments of causes and projects from the founders of Givewell, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, also carry much weight within effective altruism.
Within the cause area(s) of poverty reduction and (global) public health, the most trusted charity evalutors are Giving What We Can and Givewell. The highest profile organization globally working in this cause area while still being rated as relatively effective by effective altruism is the charity OxFam.
Within the cause area of reducing globally catastrophic and existential risks, the most influential figure is Nick Bostrom. Nick Bostrom is a philosopher out of Oxford University, and the director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He believes the most pressing existential risk facing humanity today is that from machine superintelligence, which is also referred to as (General) Artificial Intelligence, or smarter-than-human intelligence. To this end, he’s written Superintelligence, the most high-profile publication of any kind on the subject to date. The research of himself and his peers at the FHI leads the way of thinking on other global catastrophic risks as well. (Note: The Future of Humanity Institute works closely with the CEA, and jointly manages the Global Priorities Project with them.) Nick Bostrom was also the founder the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) in 1998 with peer and utilitarian philosopher David Pearce, and has historically worked closely with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
Since concern for risks from superhuman machine intelligence are so great, the attention it receives dwarfs that of any other particular existential risk. Thus, concern over machine intelligence is somewhat of a cause in its own right within effective altruism. To this end, another influential writer and thinker has been Eliezer Yudkowsky. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a founder, director, and senior research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which works directly on solving the technical problems underlying ethical concerns with machine intelligence. Yudkowsky and the MIRI work closely with Bostrom and the FHI on this issue. Eliezer Yudkowsky also spent 2.5 years writing a seminal and informal series of essays on the subject of human rationality, and its relationship with both science and philosophy. These essays are informally referred to as the Sequences, and were recently released as a book over 1700 pages long. This body of essays has been read by hundreds if not thousands of effective altruists and others who cite the learning they gained from them as influencing them making better practical decisions and clearing their thinking of common logical errors.
An organization which has quickly gained influence within global catastrophic risk reduction is the Future of Life Institute, which raises awareness and coordinates efforts between researchers. One of its founders is physicist Max Tegmark, author of the book Our Mathematical Universe. In 2014, the FLI received a $10 million donation from entrepreneur and philanthropist Elon Musk, earmarked to be granted to organizations working on engineering safety in machine intelligence. To date, over $7 million USD of this $10 million has been granted.
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s work was the impetus for a discussion board, blog, and online community known as Less Wrong. This community is based around “refining the art and cognitive science of human rationality”, where members can submit and rate articles on clearer thinking and improving decision-making on popular topics. These include many foundation essays on effective altruism. Hundreds of people now dedicated to effective altruism were first introduced to it by the website Less Wrong. Less Wrong is less active than it used to be, as the community around it has transitioned to practical work with the Center for Applied Rationality, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and effective altruism. Thus, much of Less Wrong’s influence on this movement is latent and passive rather than actively influencing effective altruism practices in the present. Other bloggers associated with Less Wrong who have written influential pieces on effective altruism include bloggers Luke Muehlhauser, alias lukeprog, Scott Alexander, alias Yvain, Paul Christiano, and Katja Grace.
Within the cause area of animal welfare/rights, the most influential organization is Animal Charity Evaluators. The executive director of Animal Charity Evaluators is Jon Bockman, and was founded by Eitan Fischer, Rob Wiblin, and Brian Tomasik. Globally, the most well-known aspect of the animal welfare movement is concerns over industrial, i.e., factory farming. Within effective altruism, one of the most influential leader on this issue is Nick Cooney, who leads Mercy For Animals, one ACE’s top-recommended charities. As most of the development for effective advocacy against factory farming has historically taken place in the United States in the last few decades, the practical work within this cause area disproportionately takes place in the United States. Another field within the animal welfare over which there is growing concern and is generally being spearheaded from within effective altruism is concern over wild-animal suffering. Concern over wild-animal suffering has historically been neglected, and efforts to organize and advocate for this field have been led by philosophers both self- and formally educated. From Europe, philosophers Oscar Horta, and Lucius Caviola and Adriano Mannino educate people on these issues. Caviola and Mannino also work with organizations based out of Switzerland Giordano Bruno Stiftung Schweiz, Raising for Effective Giving, and Sentience Politics, which do innovative work on the issues of animal welfare. Effective altruists Brian Tomasik, Rob Wiblin and David Pearce have online built a grassroots movement around concerns for wild animal suffering, numbering in thousands of people and growing hailing from education in ethics and utilitarianism, and the animal welfare/rights movement. Brian Tomasik has been a founder of Animal Ethics, the Foundational Research Institute, and is a board member with Animal Charity Evaluators.
[Continued from above]
Informally counted among the ranks of effective altruism are several individuals and private foundations who have each donated millions of dollars to charities associated with effective altruism. Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna are the major philanthropists behind Good Ventures, which has partnered with Givewell to launch the Open Philanthropy Project. Dustin Moskovitz is a cofounder of Facebook. Working with Givewell, Good Ventures has granted millions of dollars to effective causes. They will do so even more in coming years, and are set to donate more than any other single actor within effective altruism. Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist who founded PayPal, and was an initial investor in Facebook. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Center For Applied Rationality, among other charities he himself personally considers important and effective. Peter Thiel was also a keynote speaker at the 2013 and 2014 Effective Altruism Summits. One of his fellow cofounders at PayPal is Elon Musk, who has also founded high-profile technology companies Spacex and Tesla. in 2014, he donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute to be granted to research working on engineering safety in machine Artificial Intelligence. He will also be the keynote speaker at the 2015 Effective Altruism Global conference in California. Jaan Tallin is another tech entrepreneur who cofounded Skype and Kazaa, and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars each to organizations such as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Center For Applied Rationality, and the Centre for Effective Altruism. He is also a cofounder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University, the Future of Life Institute, and Effective Altruism Ventures.
A novel approach to philanthropy within effective altruism is earning to give, which is the idea of taking a relatively high-earning job and donating the money earned to the most effective identifiable charities. Earning to give was formally laid out by Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, cofounders of 80,000 Hours. Pioneering role models of earning to give include Brian Tomasik, Matthias Wage, Jeff Kaufman, and Julia Wise, who have all been publicly profiled in major media outlets for their association with earning to give and effective altruism, and have all personally written about their choices for earning to give.
Outside of its centers in England and California, effective altruism has growing communities in other countries. In Brazil, effective altruism was popularized by philosopher and transhumanist Diego Caleiro, who founded IEFRH. In Australia, particularly in the city of Melbourne, an effective altruist enclave was founded by Brayden MacLean and Ryan Carey. In Canada, efforts have been led by Joey Savoie and Xio Kikauka, who also do advocacy and fundraising work through their organization Charity Science from Vancouver. Much of the effective altruist community in Switzerland and Germany has been led by organization Giordano Bruno Stiftung Schweiz, based out of Basel. [There is also a sizable community of effective altruists in Spain and Portugal, which overlaps greatly with the animal welfare movement there. One of their organizers has been Oscar Horta, but there are others, who I don’t know about]. Universities with substantial effective altruism clubs include Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.
.impact is a networked and distributed task force of effective altruists who work on projects for effective altruism not associated with any formal organization. It is coordinated by Ozzie Gooen, Peter Hurford, and Tom Ash, who also maintains the Effective Altruism Hub website. The EA Hub contains a donation registry, a map of effective altruists around the globe, and personal profiles for effective altruists.
This should be a wiki page IMO. I was looking for a list of thinkers and project leads in the EA space and this was the best resource.
Someone else mentioned in the open thread they’re building a new and better wiki for effective altruism on the Effective Altruism Hub. I’ll put this up on that wiki when it’s approaching completion and others can contribute. Thanks for the suggestion.